The Girl From Venice Read online

  “Why do I have the feeling this is not going to be flattering?”

  “What I mean is that it’s a real love story. In fact, it may be the truest love story of all.”

  “You saw King Kong too many times.”

  “In fact, it’s just like Dante. About thirty seconds to go. In The Divine Comedy, the poet Dante falls in love with Beatrice the same way the giant gorilla, Kong, falls for Fay Wray. I don’t know why they call it a comedy. Laurel and Hardy are a comedy.”

  She gave a start as the back of the crab’s shell split and the crab began to crawl backwards out of itself, out of its shield and claws, nibbling at odd pieces like a tenant leaving a tidy home.

  • • •

  On the way back, Cenzo lowered the sail and punted through a maze of grass islands and channels so narrow and shallow that at times he had to lift the rudder to ease the Fatima through. An egret measured the channel in self-absorbed steps while swallows darted in and out of the mist. Broken duck blinds stood along a pond.

  Giulia said, “In the wintertime, my father and his friends used to shoot ducks. I remember him coming home with bloody birds and saying he had ‘bagged the limit.’”

  Cenzo had guided hunters into the marsh during duck season. He remembered the rich men with their oiled boots, flasks of whiskey, and expensive guns. He also remembered having to dive for cover when one of the guests took a shot. Of course, there had been no hunting since the war began.

  Giulia was off in a new direction. “Do you like your brother’s movies?”

  “I’m not a film critic.”

  He had seen only one of his brother’s films. The Lion of Tripoli had been screened with much fanfare at the Palace of Cinema on the Lido. The family had been given a place of honor, and Gina stifled her alarm over the perils the celluloid Giorgio faced with a handkerchief he gave her.

  “It’s hard to believe you’re the brother of Giorgio Vianello.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  She reached up and shook the lower branches of a tamarisk tree until they were enveloped by a shower of pink blossoms. The more he asked her to stop, the more branches she shook. He was not in a mood to play games. At the same time, it was a relief to see her enjoy the moment like a child and throw blossoms into the air.

  “I wish we didn’t have to leave,” Giulia said absentmindedly.

  “I know.” For a moment he stood still, if only for a rest. She stiffened and he asked, “What’s the matter?”

  Giulia pointed ahead where the blossoms were overhung with shadow. “There’s another boat.”

  The Fatima glided up to a boat as narrow as a punt and nudged it. The boat was empty. That was his first concern. Then they took in its peculiarities: the fact that it was barely wide enough for a man to lie down in, that it was built as low to the waterline as a crocodile, and that a musket almost as large as a cannon protruded from the bow.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a duck gun,” Cenzo said. “A s’ciópon.”

  “Not like my father’s.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be.”

  The s’ciópon was a single-barrel shotgun mounted directly on a boat and designed to blow a hole in a flock of birds. It was not a subtle weapon. It sounded like a cannon and could bring down fifty or more ducks with one shot.

  The boat lay in a bower of cobwebs that winked in the sunlight. Water pooled in the hollow carved for a hunter to lie in. Ropes tied the gun to stakes fore and aft with slack enough to allow for the rise and fall of tides, but not enough for the gun to wander away.

  “How long do you think it’s been here?” Giulia asked.

  “Two months, at least.” He lifted the lid of the firing chamber and extracted a moldy oversized shotgun cartridge.

  “Would it work?”

  “It’s a little like using a hammer to kill a fly, but if you cleaned and oiled the gun, it should work. It’s a death trap.”

  She watched him toss the cartridge aside.

  “I’ve got more of these at the shack,” Cenzo said.

  “It gives me goose bumps.”

  “Well, it’s a nasty piece of work.”

  A discolored rope connected the trigger to a trip wire at the end of the barrel. The gun was a trap that had never been sprung. It had been meant for somebody, though. Someone had been expected to stand where Cenzo stood and be cut down. Anyway, the girl had not noticed and it was nothing she needed to know about.

  • • •

  It was dark by the time Cenzo delivered the crabs and returned to the fishing shack. Giulia had set out a dinner of sausage and cheese. She had become a different person from the girl he had found floating in the lagoon. She pulled more than her weight on deck. Her jibes were fewer and she acted interested in the art of fishing. He didn’t believe it for a moment, but it was a nice effort on her part.

  “Maybe I’ll get you a rod and reel after all so you can battle the mighty sea bass. Then you will have a struggle on your hands.”

  “What else would be fun?”

  “Octopus is an interesting character. He winks at you and disappears. Squid is a torpedo. Flatfish are clowns with two eyes on one side because God has a sense of humor. And a cuttlefish is not so much a fish as an inverted mollusk that swims backwards.”

  “What—”

  Cenzo abruptly put a finger to his lips and pointed below the shack. He turned the lamp to its dimmest flame and motioned Giulia to lie in the darkest corner. He slipped a gutting knife into his hand.

  A massive but familiar figure rose from the ladder.

  “Nido.”

  “The same.” The bartender hauled himself up through the floor of the shack and into a more comfortable position.

  Cenzo tossed the knife aside. “Don’t you ever knock?”

  “You have so many visitors?” Nido was in a ratty sweater and a beret reminiscent of his days in Paris as a boxer. “This place is as dark as a coal mine. Do you mind?” Nido turned up the lamp’s flame. “Having a little repast, are we? A picnic for two?” He looked significantly at the corner where Giulia curled up. “I wasn’t invited?”

  “I’m taking care of a nephew from Milan. His parents thought he would be safer here.”

  “Than Milan?”

  “Than Milan.”

  “An odd choice.” Nido picked at a scrap of ham. “What’s his name?”

  “Marco.”

  “He’s helpful?”

  “He shows promise.”

  “High praise coming from you. You must be working him like the devil. Look at the boy. Sound asleep.”

  “Don’t wake him.”

  “Well, I just wanted to come by and see how you were. You should bring little Marco around the bar to say hello.”

  “I may do that.”

  “All that rowing makes a man thirsty,” Nido said.

  Cenzo poured out two glasses of grappa that Nido sniffed.

  “Swill,” he said.

  “You sold it to me.”

  “So I should know.”

  “Another?”

  “Why not?” Nido picked at the ham and bread. “Cenzo, I thought we had an understanding that we wanted no part in this war. We were going to be bystanders.”

  “What makes you think I’m not?”

  “Nobody’s seen you for days.”

  “So?”

  “People have noticed how you steer clear of other boats. How you suddenly have someone else on deck. How you no longer come to the bar, even to catch Farina’s Fascist dick in the doorjamb.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point, dear friend, is that you and I have made a commitment to stay out of this idiotic war. Now, I’m not so sure about you. The Germans have come by asking about you. That’s always a bad sign, won’t you agree?”

&
nbsp; “Asking what?”

  “General questions. One question in particular: Are you a Jew?”

  “That’s ridiculous. Vianellos have been here forever.”

  “That’s what I told them.”

  Giulia sat up cool and collected. “He’s not a Jew. He’s the brother of Giorgio Vianello, the movie star.”

  “Ah, this is, I take it, your ‘nephew.’ My God. And unless I have completely lost my eyesight and my wits, ‘he’ is a ‘she.’”

  “So now you know,” Cenzo said.

  “This is, you understand, a deception that won’t last a minute in daylight.”

  “We’ve done pretty well so far.”

  “Well, dear boy, the Germans smell something. They found the body of an SS officer down a well. Do you know anything about that?”

  “No,” Cenzo said.

  “It was self-defense,” said Giulia.

  Nido rubbed his face. “Cenzo, how could you get into so much trouble in the middle of a fucking lagoon?”

  “I just have to get the girl somewhere safe. I’ve smuggled things on the black market before.”

  “You smuggled cigarettes. This is different. Ask your friend Russo: the Gestapo arrested him.”

  Giulia got to her feet. “I can hide someplace else. My father said the war will be over in a matter of weeks.”

  “And where is your father now?” Nido asked. “The SS are in some kind of final frenzy. They’re more dangerous than ever.”

  “Then I can go on my own.”

  Cenzo said, “Do you hear that, Nido? A girl is willing to go where grown men are afraid to tread. How does that make you feel?”

  “That my skin comes first. Fortunately for you, I am the only one in Pellestrina who has connected the arrival of your ‘nephew’ to the escape of a Jewish girl.”

  “Giulia. Her name is Giulia.”

  “It’s not like you to pull a stunt like this, Cenzo, not like you at all.” Nido turned his attention to Giulia. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “She’s just a kid,” Cenzo said.

  “Eighteen is not a kid,” Nido said. “Open your eyes.”

  “We’re talking about hiding here for a few more days, a week at the most,” Cenzo said. “You know everyone in Pellestrina. Can you put me in touch with partisans?”

  “Which band of partisans? The communists? Socialists? Anarchists? They’d as soon shoot at each other as at a stranger. Usually I would say drop her off with a sympathetic family, a nun or a priest, but not with Squadron Leader Farina nosing around.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s your answer.” He heaved himself to his feet. “Come to the bar tomorrow. Alone, just yourself. In the meantime, all I can tell you is what I told Primo Carnera: ‘Stay down!’”

  10

  Cenzo was sailing to Pellestrina from the shack when he was surprised by the sound of an airplane. It did not have the symphonic drone of a multi-engine bomber or the intense buzz of a fighter plane.

  Instead it reminded him of the small aircraft that used to tow banners over the Lido before the war: “Hotel Excelsior” or “Cin­zano.” It took daring to fly one and challenge enemy domination of the sky. The pilot deliberately drew a crowd by flying nearly low enough to touch the rooftops. Lower until it flashed across windowpanes, sails, and nets hung to dry. Lower still until it touched down on pontoons, skied over water, and feathered to a stop by the village promenade.

  The plane was a two-seater Stork designed for wartime reconnaissance—but planes rarely visited Pellestrina, let alone in the middle of the war. The pilot opened a door, stepped out onto a pontoon, and waved to spectators who gathered. When he was recognized, a cheer went up. He was a movie star, the “Lion of Tripoli.” He was Giorgio Vianello in tweeds, with aviator goggles hung jauntily around his neck and a Hollywood smile for the crowd.

  Giorgio took Pellestrina’s one and only motorboat to the dock. By the time Cenzo tied up the Fatima his brother was ambling along the houses that faced the dock, accompanied by a photographer and an entourage of children who marched like soldiers. On the fringe was a pudgy Farina Junior, the Son of the She-Wolf, in his black Fascist short pants and carrying his wooden rifle. Women who were tatting lace in the alleyways went still, needles poised, and surreptitiously tracked Giorgio’s progress with their eyes. This was, after all, the leading man of We March on Rome, The Young Marconi, and The Lion of Tripoli. His flesh had pressed against the flesh of famous actresses, and if he had transgressed, it only made him more romantic and, perhaps, irresistible. That he had fallen in love with a married woman like Gina Vianello only stamped him as a man of passion.

  As he passed a market, a greengrocer rushed out to press an apple into his hand. The photographer, a hawk-eyed man in a straw hat, stepped forward with a flash camera to memorialize the moment.

  Cenzo had been on his way to Nido’s, but Giorgio’s entourage exerted a gravitational pull of curiosity that was irresistible, and he trailed behind.

  At a bicycle repair shop, Giorgio approved a poster of a boy donating his tire to a soldier on a motorcycle under the question: “Rubber? Who Needs It More?” At a window box thick with geraniums he presented a “Certificate of Fascist Sacrifice” to a mother who had lost her sons in combat. At a sweetshop he bought lollipops for all the children and, after posing for more photographs, sent them on their way. The crowd dwindled down to Cenzo.

  “Want me to stay?” the photographer asked Giorgio.

  “No, it’s just my brother.”

  The photographer looked Cenzo up and down and found his statement humorous. He bummed a cigarette from Giorgio and sauntered back toward the center of town.

  “What is this circus all about?” Cenzo asked. “Happy times on the home front?”

  “It gets me away from the radio station.”

  “At the cost of possibly being shot down.”

  “Would you like it if I had been shot down?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s better than the General Staff’s backstabbing and boredom.” Giorgio lit cigarettes from a silver lighter for himself and Cenzo. It had a willow pattern that he held out for Cenzo to admire. “Japanese. The detail is amazing. And if you touch a hidden spring . . .” The bottom opened to reveal a short barrel and a 22mm round. “A gift from the Japanese envoy. A fascinating people, the Japanese. But doomed.”

  “No more than us.”

  “Much more. Italians adjust. You don’t find Japanese changing sides in the middle of a war.”

  Giorgio tried to hand the lighter to Cenzo. “A gift.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I insist.” Giorgio handed the lighter to Cenzo.

  “No.”

  “You never change. It’s been ten months since she left you, eight months since she died. Time to move on.” Giorgio returned the case to his jacket. “I hear you’re not happy about marrying Celestina. Most men would be overjoyed to have a woman like her. She’s pretty enough, in a bouncy fashion. Why not make your mother happy?”

  “You mean make you happy? Salve your conscience?”

  Giorgio laughed. “You’re wasted as a fisherman. You should have been a priest.”

  “What makes you so sure I’m not going to kill you?”

  “You would have by now, but I have to admit that the prospect keeps me on my toes.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “I have news about your friend Russo. Is Nido’s bar open?”

  It was where Cenzo was headed anyway.

  This early, they had the bar to themselves. Nido brought glasses of Campari. “I trust if you’re going to shoot each other, you’ll do it outside.” He retreated behind the bar, where he made himself busy wiping glasses.

  Giorgio settled into a booth. “Nothing has changed. It has authentic Venetia
n charm. Your seashell mural and Nido’s boxing pictures. Do they still serve clams and spaghetti here?”

  “No. The cook was killed at Anzio.”

  “That’s a shame. Cin Cin!”

  “To the pointlessly dead.” Cenzo touched glasses. “The cook is dead, Giovanni who used to play the accordion and Scarpa Junior the shoemaker are dead, a dozen fishermen you grew up with are dead, killed on this beach or in that lemon grove because of the war. A war you promote. Just as you’re selling it today. You were a hero, now you’re a salesman.”

  “Well, it’s almost over.” Giorgio leaned back.

  “So you said.”

  “Does Nido still tell those outlandish boxing stories?”

  “Ask him yourself.”

  Giorgio was not so inclined. He waved away cigarette smoke. “Do you have any idea how small the world is?” Giorgio asked.

  “The lagoon seems fairly large.”

  “Perhaps. Imagine how different perspectives can be to a horse, to a crab, to a dove. Really, Cenzo, sometimes you drive me crazy. Remember how I used to do your homework?”

  “I didn’t like school.”

  “Too bad, I guess you’ll always be a fisherman. You might have gotten an education.”

  “Your kind of education. I remember how you won a prize in school for your Fascist essays. Total horseshit. Why aren’t you in Salò ironing Mussolini’s pants?”

  “Salò is full of diehards who are willing to do that.”

  “Even now?”

  “Even now.”

  “What about the Germans?” Cenzo asked.

  “The Germans live in another dimension. They half exist for us and we half exist for them.”

  The brothers sat back and allowed Nido to pour another round.

  “How’s the smuggling going, Nido?” Giorgio asked.

  “Without fuel for my motorboat, I’ve become a very honest man.”

  “And the boxing?” Giorgio asked.

  “No more boxing,” Nido said. “Cenzo can tell you: we’re both pacifists.”

  “Both of you? That will come as a surprise to some people, I’m sure. Leave the bottle.”

  “I have some fishing to do,” Cenzo said.