The Thief of Venice(46)

And there she was, Dottoressa Lucia Costanza, a handsome woman in an old shirt, trimming a rosebush.

Henchard cried, "Shit! Fucking shit!" and sank down on the bed.

"What is it, Riccardo?" said Giovanna, dumbfounded.

Oh, Christ, it was his own fault. He had seen her, she had been right there on the fondamenta beside the apartment on the Rio della Sensa. He had jumped to a conclusion, too fast, too fast! He had assumed she was just somebody's girlfriend. He should have seen at once that a woman with her bearing couldn't possibly be a common whore like Giovanna. Oh, God forgive him, he had made a gruesome mistake.

Henchard ground his teeth and covered his face with his hands, trying to think. He ran his memory back to the day in the agenzia with Signorina Pastora. She had turned away from him to talk on the telephone, he remembered that, and he had picked up from her desk the lease signed by the other client, and read the name and address.

Oh, Christ, had it been S.re L. Costanza, meaning the husband, Lorenzo Costanza, or Sig.ra L. Costanza, meaning the wife, Lucia Costanza? Fucking Christ, he had assumed it was the husband! He had matched the whole thing to his own life, to his own rental of the apartment for a girlfriend, his own discovery of the treasure in the closet. He had assumed the wretched Costanza had discovered it. He had assumed that the woman at the door was merely his girlfriend, when she was really his wife.

She was Lucia Costanza herself. It was Lucia Costanza who had tried to rent the apartment because she was leaving her husband, and therefore Lucia Costanza must have seen what was in the closet. Her husband, that poor fucking sod, had been killed by mistake. Jesus Christ!

Viciously Henchard jerked the cord of the television out of the wall and told himself miserably that there were now two women who knew about his treasure—that goddamn American woman Mary Kelly and the goddamn female procurator of San Marco, Lucia Costanza.

Thank God, he had moved quickly. The treasure was here, not there. They might know that it existed, but they didn't know where, and they would never, never find it. In this anonymous apartment, one of a thousand in this part of town, it was perfectly safe.





*39*


There was so much to tell Homer. Mary labored up the stairs of the house on Salizada del Pignater, painfully realizing that she would have to explain everything. Not just some of it, all of it.

Mary and Homer had been married a long time, not always comfortably. But there had been so many times when Mary had felt a warm wifely tenderness, critical moments when Homer had been nothing less than magnificent. Oh, once in a while he could be infuriating and impulsive, and sometimes he drifted off into otherworldly states, like now. But there had also been amazing occasions when he had gathered his wits and called upon his crazy transcendental intuition and then, bang, things would begin to happen. He was like a violinist who hits all the wrong notes but drives forward, ever forward, miraculously keeping up, arriving at the final chord with a triumphant sweep of his bow.

When she walked into the apartment Mary found Homer grubbing around in the kitchen, looking for something to eat. She led him to a chair and kissed him, then seized a loaf of bread and began slicing it, waving the knife dangerously in the air as she talked, sawing the loaf into pulverized pieces. "Homer, tell me what you know about the fate of the Jews in Venice during World War II."

Homer looked dazed. "Nothing much, I'm afraid. Are you about to tell me it was bad?"

"It was horrible. I bought a book. Wait a minute." Mary put down her knife and plucked the book out of her bag. "Here it is, the story of Venetian Jews from 1938 to 1945." She dropped it in Homer's lap and went back to her loaf of bread. "The deportation of Venetian Jews began in September 1943." The loaf of bread under Mary's knife disintegrated. She found another loaf and sliced it savagely in half. "It went on through 1944. Men, women, and children, old people, sick people. More than two hundred people went to death camps. Only four or five came back."

"My God." Homer got up and took Mary's knife. "Here, let me."

He began cutting clumsy slices while Mary threw open the refrigerator door. She took out a plate of prosciutto, slapped it on the table, and went on talking. "A few people hid themselves away in dark corners for years, like Anne Frank's family in Amsterdam. And in some of the synagogues they were afraid the Nazis would steal their Torah scrolls and Passover plates, so they hid them from the Germans for the duration. And then when the war was over they brought them out of hiding."

She began making sandwiches, not looking at Homer. He watched her, listening soberly. "I saw one of the hiding places. It's just been discovered. I mean, I saw what was in it." She snatched up a tray and began to gabble, because the hard part of the story was coming.