Against the Day (141 page)

Up above in the boat, beneath a
Stetson long in service, in the shade of whose brim his face could not be
quickly read, Foley supervised the Italians working the air pump. Through the
bluegreen water he could see the gleam off the helmets and breastplates of the
divers. Now and then, fitfully, his hands would begin to approach the nozzles
of the plenum chamber from which the airsupply hoses led below. Before touching
the apparatus, however, the hands were taken back, often directly into Foley’s
pockets, where they remained for a time before beginning their next stealthy
approach. Foley did not seem to notice that this was happening, and if
questioned about it would probably have expressed genuine puzzlement.

He
also did not notice that he was being observed from the shore by the Traverse
brothers through Reef’s new pair of twentyfourline marine glasses finished in
claretcolored Morocco, a gift from ’Pert ChirpingdonGroin. They had been
putting in an hour or two a day tracking Scarsdale around town, just to see if
there was going to be any such thing as a clear shot.

In a distressed light over the Grand
Canal, autumnal and hazy, the last of the summer tourists were drifting away,
rents had become cheaper, and Reef and Kit had found a room in Cannareggio,
where everybody seemed to be poor. Beadstringers sat in the little open spaces
and uncheerful
lucciole
appeared at dusk.
Squadri
of young
rio
rats burst out of alleyways screaming
“
Soldi, soldi!
” The
brothers
walked around the canalsides all night, up and across and down the little
bridges, among the fluent breezes of the nocturnal city, scents of late
vegetation, broken bars of song, calls upward to shuttered windows, small
unseen liquid gestures now and then out in the misty waterways, the creak of a
gondola oar against a
forcheta,
the glare of the paraffin lamps at the
latenight fruit markets reflecting off the shiny skins of melons, pomegranates,
grapes and plums
. . . .

   
“So
how we going to do the Hottentot on this bird?”

   
“The
what?”

“French—it means assassination.”
Reef had guessed that tracking his target and outwitting tycoonical security
would not be the only obstacles to getting the deed done. “Got to be sure,
Professor—I can count on you in this, can’t I?”

   
“You
keep asking.”

“Since that
spiritual confab
we
had up north there with Pa, seems like that there’s something else on your mind
now, and settling this score ain’t it exactly.”

   
“Reefer,
anytime it’s a matter of your back, you know I’m there.”

“Never disputed that. But look here,
it’s wartime, ain’t it. Not like Antietam maybe, big armies all out in the
light of day that you can see, but the bullets are still flyin, brave men go
down, treacherous ones do their work in the night, take their earthly rewards,
and then the shitheads live forever.”

   
“And
what is it they’re fighting about again?”

“ ‘
They,’ I wish it was ‘they,’ but it’s
not, it’s us. Damn, Kit, you’re in this. Ain’t you?”

   
“Well
Reefer, that sounds like Anarchist talk.”

Reef shifted into what Kit had to
assume was a calculated silence. “Worked with a number of that persuasion over
the last few years,” he said, finding in a shirt pocket the hard black stub of
a local cigar and lighting up. Then, twinkling malevolently, “Guess there can’t
be too many of ’em in the mathematics line.”

If
Kit had been feeling touchy he might have shot back with something about
Ruperta ChirpingdonGroin, but decided only to nod at Reef’s turnout. “Nice
suit.”

   
“All
right.” Chuckling into a cloud of evil smoke.

They stumbled, exhausted, on into the
imminent daybreak in search of strong drink. On the San Polo side of the Rialto
bridge they found a bar open and went in.

Early one morning
the previous April, Dally Rideout had woken up knowing without being told that
the new peas, the word in her thoughts being
bisi,
were in at the Rialto
market. It had seemed like an occasion. She had already forgotten—having
nightwalked into the dialect the way we can pass gently from dream out into the
less fluid terms of waking—exactly when conversations in the street had
turned less opaque, but one day the bobwire was down, and she had been
reckoning for a while in etti and soldi and no longer steering
campo
to
campo
looking up to uncommiserating walls for names of alleyways and bridges,
serenely alert to saline winds and currents and the messages of bells
. . . .
She looked in mirrors to see what
might have happened, but found only the same American mask with the same
American eyes looking through—the change must lie elsewhere.

And months later here she was at the
same market, early as usual, a nice sharp wind raising a steelgray nap on the
water in the Grand Canal, looking for something to bring back to the kitchen of
Ca’ Spongiatosta, where they were finally allowing her to do some cooking,
after she had showed Assunta and Patrizia one of Merle’s old soup recipes.
Today there were topinambur from Friuli, the Treviso radicchio was in, the
verza looked good, and just to make the morning complete, well what do you
know, who should come sauntering out of this little dive by the fish market but
Mr. Goawayyou’retooyoungforshipboardromance himself, yehp that Kit Traverse all
right, same hat, same worried look, same potentially fateful baby blues.

“Well, Eli Yale. Ain’t this
peculiar.” Over his shoulder appeared a face you couldn’t miss the family
resemblance in, which she figured must belong to the third Traverse brother,
the faro dealer.

   
“Well
bless me, Dahlia. Thought you’d be back in the States by now.”

   
“Oh,
I’m never goin back. What happened to you, you get to Germany O.K.?”

   
“For
a while. Right now me and Reef here,” Reef smiling and tipping his hat, “have
got some business in town, and then we’re off again.”

   
Well
auguri, ragazzi,
and damn if this was about to ruin her day. More of

these birds that come flying in, was
all—look around, gather in flocks like the pigeons in the Piazza, fly off
again. No, as Merle used to say,
apiarian byproduct
of hers. Despite
which, “You fellows staying around here?”

After a warning look sideways at Kit,
“Just some little pennsilvoney,” Reef insincerely twinkled, “forget just what
part of town.”

“Forthcomin as ever I see, family
trait, well it’s all been mighty nice and I have to get to work now.” She moved
off.

   
“But
say,” Kit began, but she kept moving.

Later the same morning, walking with
Hunter past the Britannia, once known as the Palazzo Zucchelli, damned if there
wasn’t Reef Traverse again, accompanied this time by a slender blonde woman in
one of those slanted feathery hats, and a beefy individual whose eyes were made
more complex than they perhaps were by gray sungoggles, bustling out of the
hotel and heading apparently for a day on the Lagoon.

“Good God—Penhallow, I say, it
isn’t you? Well I mean of course it’s you, but dash it all, how can that be,
don’t you see! Though I suppose you could be some sort of
twin
or
something—”

“Do stop driveling, Algernon,”
advised his companion, “it’s far too early in the day,” though in fact the
sfumato
had burned off an hour ago.

Reef widened his eyes slightly in
Dally’s general direction, which she read as,
Don’t let’s get into it just
now.

“Hullo, ’Pert,” Hunter taking her
hand it seemed emotionally, “lovely to see you, and where else could it’ve been
but here?”

“Yes and whatever have you been up
to,” Algernon went on, “one moment you’re quite splendidly eightyseven not out,
they offer old Barkie the light, and next day not only you, but the entire side
as well, are all”—he shrugged— “gone.” A species of giggle.

In the slightly baffled pause that
followed, their owners taking notice of Dally for the first time, eyebrows came
into play, fingertips investigated earorifices. Reef, though in full sunlight,
had found some way to keep inside his own shadow. The blonde woman put forth
her hand and introduced herself as Ruperta ChirpingdonGroin. “And these
are—I don’t know, some collection of idiots I’ve fallen in with.”

Briefly taking the hand, “What
pleasure, signorina. I am Beppo, Mr. Penhallow’s beesiness associateh.”

“You speak most frightfully good
English,” the ChirpingdonGroin woman examining the white kidskin of her glove,
a bit puzzled. “And your hands are far too clean for an Italian’s. Who are you,
exactly?”

   
Dally
shrugged. “Eleanora Duse, I’m, eh, researching a role. Who are you?”

   
“Oh,
dear,” Ruperta’s face growing even less distinct behind her blue sunveil.

“Here,” Hunter producing his
sketchbook and opening it to a charcoal rendering of Dally, as a girl, lounging
pensively beneath a
sotopòrtego,
“here’s who she is. Exactly.”

They gathered round, as if this were
one more Venetian sight they must take in, and all started twittering, except
for Reef, who, patting his pockets as if having forgotten something, touched
his hatbrim and disappeared back into the hotel. Ruperta seemed to take it
personally. “Damned cowboy,” she muttered, “can’t wait till I’m gone.”

“How long are you in town?” Hunter
more anxious than Dally had seen him lately.

   
Ruperta
rearranged her scowl and began to recite a complicated itinerary.

“If you’re free tonight, then,”
Hunter suggested, “we might meet at Florian’s.”

Dally congratulated herself for not
smirking—she knew it was a place Hunter had ordinarily little patience
with, though she had found its tables and chairs a productive field for
scavenging cigarettes, coins, uneaten bread, not to mention on lucky days a
forgotten billfold or camera, walkingstick,
qualsiasi,
that could be
turned for a few francs. And that evening, sure enough, long after the King’s
Band had left off playing, there they were, together out in front of Florian’s,
Hunter’s eyes exclusively engaged with those of the Englishwoman. Romantic
Venice. Dally snorted and lit up half an Egyptian cigarette. Next evening
Hunter was out with his tack as usual, brighteyed and bushytailed, painting
through the night, unapproached by any of yesterday’s party, seeming no more
melancholy than usual. Whatever this cookie might be to him, Dally was sure not
about to put her nose in.

At first
she had
wondered briefly at the readiness with which the Principessa Spongiatosta had
taken her in, attributing it to some kind of a history between her and Hunter.
After a while she wasn’t so sure. She had pretty much moved into Ca’
Spongiatosta by now, the life of the
fondamente
not so easygoing these
days, better left to younger norats
. . . .
“But
just ’cause you’re off the pavement,” she was soon reminding herself, “don’t
mean you’re any safer.”

The Principessa’s daily life was an
incomprehensible plexus of secrets, lovers male and female, young and old, a
relation not so much to the Prince as to his absence, though she had been known
to scowl at and occasionally curse any who by so much as a gesture might have
taken her for only another

depraved young wife. The Prince’s
absence was more than an unclaimed half of the Principessa’s bed—there
was business afoot, sometimes as it seemed far from Venice, and she appeared
quite often to be acting as some sort of necessary link, when not actually in
his place—closeted for hours in remote shuttered rooms, never talking
louder than a murmur with a dapper English individual named Derrick Theign who dropped
by at least once a week with a gray morning hat in his hand, leaving his card
when the Princess wasn’t in. The
camerieri,
ordinarily amused at the
goingson here, seem to shy away whenever he came in sight—covered their
eyes, spat, crossed themselves. “What thing goes on?” Dally asked, but nobody
would say. It did not appear to be romantic, whatever it was. Sometimes Theign
showed up when the Prince was away, but more often it seemed to be the
Prince—who, like the
levante,
could blow into town at any
season—that Theign was eager to see.

It hadn’t taken Dally long to learn
what this Princess could be like, and sometimes she found herself just wanting
to give the woman a kick. “Your friend sure knows how to bring on the blues,”
she told Hunter.

“For a long time I imagined her quite
deep indeed,” said Hunter. “Then I saw that I was mistaking confusion for
depth. Like a canvas that gives the illusion of an extra dimension, yet each
layer taken by itself is almost transparently shallow. You see what sorts of
visitor come by. You see how long she can concentrate on anything. She’s living
on borrowed time.”