Sam leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. "We thought we were ready," he told Homer, "but we weren't. We have a plan with four teams, each with its own sector to take care of, but in this emergency some people can't get here, so we've had to scrubble up more manpower at the last minute. Is that the right word? Scrubble? Scrobble?"
"Scrabble?" suggested Homer. "Sam, look." He reached under his damp jacket, extracted the photograph of Lucia Costanza from his breast pocket, and handed it to Sam. "The building in the background isn't a church, it's a synagogue."
Sam took the picture and whooped. "A synagogue, of course! That's why we couldn't find it by looking at pictures of churches. My God, look at it! Those are Hebrew words over the door. Which synagogue is it?"
"It's in the Ghetto Vecchio. Is there more than one synagogue?"
"Of course, but it doesn't matter. Homer, the Ghetto Vecchio! That's where she is!"
"Well, maybe she is and maybe she isn't. It doesn't mean she lives there."
"But it means we can look for her there. Homer, it's a place to start."
Homer's heartsickness returned. His friend Sam was on the verge of finding the woman he loved at the very moment Homer was losing his. He turned abruptly away and drifted downstairs to help with the fetching and carrying, while the water rose on the Piazzetta and washed around the bases of the columns of Saint Theodore and the lion of Saint Mark and reached the top step of the long arcaded gallery of the Marciana.
Sam had done all he could. He slammed out of his office and told Signora Pino that he was going out for an hour or two.
"Ma, Dottore," objected Signora Pino, "il suo programma!" She held up her copy of Sam's schedule. There were appointments with the chief of the polizia and a brigadiere capo from the carabinieri.
"Gli annulli!" said Sam gaily, tossing his hand in the air. "Cancel them. Tell them the truth. Say I am ill."
"Ill? But, Dottore! You surely won't forget the appointment at three o'clock!"
"Oh, that."
Sam ran out of Signora Pino's office while she called after him, "Dottor Bell!" and flapped her appointment book.
He hadn't felt so nimble for ages. Like a boy skipping school Sam galloped down the stairs.
*41*
The Ospedale Civile did not look like a hospital. The famous facade on the square was not at all like the entrance to a place for the practice of modern medicine.
It had once been the headquarters of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, one of the ancient charitable confraternities of the city of Venice. Every pious and ambitious male citizen had belonged to one confraternity or another, helping to make its rules and choose its charities and lavish splendor on its great halls. But in 1797 that Antichrist Napoleon had wiped out all that was venerable and holy in the city, and since then there were no longer any processions of the dignified members of the Scuola Grande di San Marco. There were no public spectacles of Scuola members in monkish robes flagellating themselves, no guardian grande in a crimson toga marching across the bridge over the Rio dei Mendicanti in the company of his fellow cittadini and nobili in their robes of red and black.
Now instead of the music of the choristers of the old scuola there was only the murmur of tourists in the square, the soft flapping of pigeon wings, and the sirens of the ambulanze whizzing along the canal with flashing blue lights.
Out of sight behind the splendid old facade the hospital complex spread east and north in the direction of the lagoon. The modern offices and operating rooms and patient wards were scattered around five ancient cloisters. On the side facing the rio there were separate entries for the staff and an emergency entrance where patients could be hurried into the hospital. Some walked in on their own feet, some were carried on stretchers, some sat upright in rolling chairs like wheelbarrows.
Scuola di San Marco, Ospedale Civile
The hospital was Doctor Richard Henchard's place of work. This afternoon he had come in great haste, half an hour late for his three o'clock appointment, addled by the confusion of settling Giovanna into the apartment on the Rio della Sensa. He would have neglected the appointment altogether if the man with the pancreatic carcinoma did not happen to be his most distinguished patient.
In spite of the rising water and the rain, Henchard was perspiring as he hurried past examining rooms and nurses' stations and toilets and crowded waiting rooms and the double doors of the chamber where he and his colleagues plied their sharp-edged trade. His nerves were at the breaking point. He had taken frantic action to protect his treasure, but the two women who knew it existed were still out there somewhere.
In his haste he was brought up short by his own office nurse, who looked at him with astonishment. "Oh, Doctor, there you are. We've been looking for you everywhere. Didn't you hear the intercom? Your patient is waiting. We have his X rays, and the CAT scans and ultrasound have just come in."