One's office, thought Sam angrily. It wasn't one's office, it was Lucia's office.
"Well, anyway," said the dejected mayor, "does anyone have a suggestion for dealing with the coming disaster?"
"I do," said Signor Bernardi, raising a soft white hand. "I suggest we set up blockades at all the entrances to the piazza and allow only a certain number of people in at a time."
Sam was stunned. How fascinating! He had already admitted Bernardi into his private Society of Bastards, but simple admission was surely not enough. Sam stopped listening to the experts and began thinking up hierarchies of honorBastards Simple and Complex, Evil and Malevolent, Filthy and Abominable. Which one was right for Bernardi?
Leaving the meeting, Sam was surprised to find that his appetite had come back. He was actually hungry for lunch.
*35*
The siren went off very early, five blasts ten seconds apart. High water today, hooted the siren. Put on your boots! Mary had no boots, but she didn't care. She had a date with Richard very early. It was as though they could no longer bear to be apart.
"What's that noise?" said Homer drowsily, lifting his head from the pillow.
"It means high water today," murmured Mary, heading for the shower. Homer went back to sleep.
Before creeping out of the apartment Mary left him a noteOut all day. Love, M.
He wouldn't like it, but at least he wouldn't call the police.
Henchard had prepared the way. The apartment on the Rio della Sensa was grubby, but he couldn't very well take Mary Kelly to his own house, and he certainly couldn't use Giovanna's place on Calle de la Madonna, because Vittoria and Giovanna were squatting in them like toads.
He met Mary at the San Marcuola vaporetto stop, welcoming her with a passionate embrace. Then he took her hand and propelled her along the zigzagging streets of Cannaregio, through Campo Santa Fosca, where there was a statue, but Mary didn't ask whose it was, because they were not talking, only walking very quickly, making a left turn, crossing a bridge, a second bridge, a third, a fourth.
Tintoretto's house, thought Mary, stepping off the last bridge into two inches of water. Together they splashed along the fondamenta beside the Rio della Sensa. It was no longer a muddy gulf but a full and brimming canal. Richard did not slow down as they passed the house with the sign on the wall
JAC. ROBUSTIQUI TINTORETTO DOMUM VETUSTAM
He stopped five or six doors away.
It was where she had first seen him. She had been taking pictures and he had been standing there and she had asked him if Tintoretto's house was open to visitors and he had said no. That was the beginning.
She watched as he fumbled with his key and opened the door. Willingly she followed him up the stairs. They were both overwhelmed.
She saw the room in a haze. Except for a sleeping bag on the floor it was empty. It was an old room with sooty plaster walls. On one side two dirty windows looked out on the canal, on another a bathroom door stood open, and beside it was another door, tightly shut. The second door had no handle, only a dangling padlock.
They fell on their knees on the sleeping bag, and Richard caressed her and undressed her and made love to her tenderly, and then they fell sweetly asleep.
Henchard had netted his fish.
*36*
T hen she woke up, Richard was no longer beside her. Mary could hear the sound of the shower behind the bathroom door. Then as she looked sleepily at the wall, something like a dream began to happen. The other door drifted silently ajar, and the narrow space beyond it was full of gold.
She sat up, awestruck. Gold-handled scrolls leaned upright in the closet. They were bedecked with golden bells. Gold plates and goblets and candlesticks lay on the floor. There were packages wrapped in newspaper and tied with rotting string. A large painting in a gold frame was propped against the curtain on the back wall of the closet. In her visionary state Mary could see every detail. It was a portrait of a beautiful young man with a fur cloak slung over his shoulder. He had a smiling face and dark eyes that gazed directly into hers. I see you. I have always seen you. I have known you since time began.
What were all these things? How had they come here?
She jumped up and pulled on her slip. The shower was still running. She went to the open door of the closet, aware of a faint tinkling sound as her bare feet crossed the floor. Something was weirdly wrong.
Back home in Concord Mary had once cleared out the attic of an ancient cousin, and it had been a strange experience. The boxes of papers and books, the burst trunks, the heaps of memorabilia, all had been covered with a peculiar sort of dirtgray sawdust from the insect-ridden beams overhead, crumbled plaster and powdery black specks, as though the passing years themselves had been pounded into moldering fragments and dropped from the sky. The things in this closet on the Rio della Sensa in the city of Venice were like that. The gold gleamed through a coating of dust that was old, very old.