The Art of Waiting (5 page)

PART TWO

Italy

Isabella

Venice, autumn 1941

Aldo Gardini watched dusk arrive, gradual and furtive, bringing with it a late-autumn mist that hovered in threads above the Rio della Sensa, a chill lifting up from the waters of the canal as the sun dipped behind the buildings of the ghetto. He wiped the condensation from the window with his sleeve, peered out at the people passing below in the dim glow of the streetlamps, and wondered if Isabella would really be there to meet him as she had promised. He could hardly believe what was on the cards, but could see no other reason for her invitation. Well, he would find out soon enough – he could hardly wait! He looked again at his watch. Time to go, no more waiting now, no more bated breath. He took the key from the table by his bed, pulled up the collar of his coat, and hurried downstairs. He could hear his parents talking in the kitchen, something about Fausto Pozzi. Mussolini's strident voice maintained its familiar steady rhythm in the background, intermittently cut short by the crackle and fuzz of poor reception, struggling to be heard above the insults that Luca, Aldo's father, hurled at the radio at regular intervals.

‘Fucking delinquent!' he was shouting, the usual thing. ‘Jumped-up bastard! War-mongering pig! Go fuck your mother! Go kiss Hitler's fat fascist arse!'

Then Aldo's mother's voice, quiet, reproachful, ‘Calm yourself, Luca. The children might hear.'

Then Luca's voice again, quieter now, still muttering profanities. As Aldo walked through the hall he could hear his teenage sister, Elena, in the front room, singing something to herself, one of those songs she was always inventing about love, and the sound of their
maternal grandmother snoring by the fire, the air rattling up out of her throat, dreaming of her native Ukraine again, no doubt, slipping ever closer to her past as her advancing years took her closer to death.

‘Aldo, where are you going?'

It was his mother's voice again now. Damn it, he thought, not now! Not now that his time with Isabella was so close! His mother must have heard the creaking of the stairs as he descended.

‘Dinner will be ready soon, Aldo!'

She emerged from the kitchen, a freshly plucked chicken in one hand, a filleting knife in the other. The family dog followed, turning its nose to the dead bird and tentatively licking the skin, ears pinned back in anticipation of the coming blow.

‘Get off!' she said. ‘Bloody dog!'

‘I'm off out for a walk,' said Aldo. ‘I'll be back soon . . .'

His mother's eyes narrowed, then she noticed the increasingly bold attention that the dog was paying to the principal ingredient of the evening meal. She struck the animal across the rump with the object of its desire, and as it scurried away Aldo slipped outside, breathed in the cool air, and hurried off along the quay. His mind buzzed with uncertainty as he made his way along Fondamenta della Sensa and down the shopping street of Strada Nuova, built by the practical Austrians during their time in charge, then on through the chaos of narrow alleyways and passages, dimly lit and damp, between San Marco and the Ponte di Rialto. Crossing Campo Santo Stefano, he passed the statue of Niccolò Tommaseo, who had led a popular revolt against those practical Austrians about whom Aldo had written a history essay in his final year at school – a schooling that had been a torment for him, desperate to get out, to free himself from its walls and do useful things, things with his hands, not with books. As he hurried on he saw a familiar shape heading his way from the other side of the square. It was Massimo, his best friend, walking in that fat, busy way of his.

‘Hey, Aldo!' Massimo's voice was as full as his belly, each preceding the rest of him by a distance.

‘Oh, hi there, Massimo. I'll see you tomorrow,' Aldo replied, all in a rush, as if keen to hurry on past. Massimo was a diverting companion, and they had spent so much of their youth together he was almost a brother, but any time spent chatting here would leave even less of it for Isabella – and whatever it was she had in mind for Aldo that evening.

‘Wait, Aldo, wait. I was just on my way round to see you. I thought we could go down to the bar after dinner?'

Massimo had clearly had his dinner early. He usually did – that way there was always time for another one. He lifted his hand now in that habitual way of his, an involuntary motion, rubbing his chin with an open palm as if something edible might leap out of it and into his mouth. Aldo noticed the grime beneath his friend's nails, a crescent of slime from the fish he flung about in boats every day. Massimo was a fisherman's son, and his hands would always smell of them now, just as Aldo's would have done if Luca had not found a place for himself, and therefore his son, on dry land. And it occurred to Aldo now how important to this evening's events his own clean fingers might be. However little he knew about Isabella, he was quite sure she wouldn't want a fisherman's breamy hands upon her, a fisherman's stinking fingers in the perfumed waves of her hair. But he was getting well ahead of himself now, and he hauled himself back in and suddenly realised that Massimo's mouth was full again with words.

‘So, how about it?' Massimo's question came again. ‘Just a couple of drinks before bed?'

‘Oh, I don't know, Massimo. I've got to be up early tomorrow, you see.'

‘Come on, Aldo, don't be a bore.'

‘Er, well . . .'

‘Please, Aldo.'

Aldo thought again of Isabella, the look he had seen in her eyes. ‘Look, I'm really sorry, Massimo. I'm on an errand, you see. I have to dash.'

‘An errand? No problem, I'll come with you. I fancy a walk.'

Aldo looked at him, considered his options. ‘No, really, er . . . look, Massimo, really it's . . . well . . . you see, it's a
private
errand.'

‘A private errand?'

‘Precisely.'

Massimo looked at him, then burst out laughing and punched him on the shoulder, almost knocking him over.

‘Oh, I get it, Aldo, you little devil.' He laughed again. ‘I thought you looked a bit too spruce. Scrub up well when you want to, don't you? Go on, then, who is she? Do I know her, the little minx?'

‘Can't say. Sorry. Listen, got to go.'

‘All right, all right, tell me all about it tomorrow. I'm only your best friend, after all. Don't forget, though!'

Aldo was hurrying away now, glancing back to check that Massimo was not coming after him on the sly. But his fat friend would not have been able to keep up with him anyway, not if he ran. And run he would. He would run miles for Isabella, he would cross the whole city just for the thought of her. He quickened his pace now, thrusting his hands deeper into his coat, warming them, the fingers of one hand closing once more around the heavy key, the other around the little fish he had carved for himself out of oak the previous week. He hurried across the wooden bridge at Accademia. From there it was just a short walk along the Rio di San Trovaso, past his father's trattoria – Casa Luca – to the boatyard where he now spent most of his days learning his new trade from a master. A fresh doubt sidled up and whispered in his ear: ‘Might Antonio still be there?' He usually left the boatyard before dark but you could never be sure and no one would want to get on the wrong side of Antonio, least of all one of his young apprentices.

Antonio ate regularly at Casa Luca and it was six months earlier, over a jug of lunchtime wine, that Luca had first brought up the idea of Aldo helping out down at the yard. Aldo was nearly eighteen and needed to learn a proper trade. Fishing was always a possibility – the boy seemed to enjoy helping out on the boats and at the Rialto market in the holidays, and he had made innumerable crossings to and from the lagoon island of Burano – but Luca knew from experience
what a hard life that would be. If Antonio would take him on, Aldo would work for virtually nothing for the first year, learning the basics, after which another arrangement could be made. This suited Antonio and so the two men cemented their agreement over plates of polenta and squid and another jug of wine.

Aldo began the following week. His first task as an apprentice was to learn to prepare Antonio's coffee just the way his new master liked it, an undertaking that required the best part of a week. In the interim, numerous offerings were pitched into the canal, much to the amusement of the other craftsmen who would chuckle at the newcomer while whittling their wood into intricate shapes.

‘I can't drink that!' Antonio would bellow, startling passers-by on the other side of the canal and sending the neighbourhood's pigeons up into the air in fright. ‘How can I teach you to build the most beautiful boats in the world when you can't even make me a decent cup of coffee? In this yard, only perfection will do, and don't you ever forget it! Go make me another!'

And the pigeons would settle back down as Aldo returned to the kitchen for another attempt. Finally mastering the art of the perfect espresso, Aldo then learned to clean the yard to Antonio's fastidious requirements. As the long, sleek, gently curving boats took embryonic shape upon the trestles – their three-month gestation a reflection of the paternal pride of the craftsmen – the resulting sawdust and chippings, in nearly a dozen different varieties, kept Aldo busy with the broom. If it wasn't the beech, pine, larch and elm that he swept up into bags, then it was the cherry, mahogany, walnut and oak. Every now and again Antonio would toss an offcut in Aldo's general direction, scattering a carefully gathered pile of sawdust.

‘What sort of wood?' he would growl.

‘Walnut?' Aldo would venture.

‘Walnut?! Look at the grain.'

‘Elm?'

‘Elm?!' Antonio would rage, shoving it close up under Aldo's nose. ‘Elm?! That's oak! Oak! Smell it! Touch it! Feel its weight! Go make me a coffee!'

Soon Aldo came to know each type of wood – initially by sight, then by smell, and finally, with his eyes lightly closed to heighten the sensation, by touch, his long fingers running gently up and down the lengths of wood, tripping across the grain which, as he came to know it more intimately, seemed to rise lightly up to meet his touch, revealing to him its true identity. Towards the end of each week Luca would pitch up, set a couple of sacks of mixed sawdust down in the bottom of his boat, and chug the short distance up San Trovaso to Casa Luca, the floor of which would subsequently boast the most upmarket sawdust in all the downmarket restaurants in Venice. After a few weeks, Antonio decided his apprentice could be permitted to touch the virgin wood, lifting it off the delivery barge with the nervous anticipation of a husband carrying his new bride across the threshold, stacking it in long racks and piles against the walls of the cavernous shed. In quieter moments, Aldo tried out the lathes, planes, chisels and saws that hung in orderly rows along the tar-stained wooden walls, cutting and scraping the scraps and offcuts that were kept in a pile by the quay. Soon he was allowed to repair small faults on the older gondolas, worn-out ladies of the canals who were brought into dry dock for new coats of black paint in a vain attempt to make them beautiful again. Finally, just a month before, with no explanation other than a grunt and a wink, Antonio had taken Aldo out in one of the older craft. They had been drifting in and out of side-canals for the best part of an hour when Antonio beckoned Aldo back towards the stern.

‘Come on, then, let's see how you get on.'

Aldo clambered up from the bench in the middle of the boat and stumbled around on the rear platform, wielding the long oar to little effect, sending the boat around in slow circles as he maintained his precarious position upon the slippery deck. Since that first nervous attempt, Aldo had been out in the gondolas regularly and now considered himself sufficiently competent to risk an attempt at waterborne seduction. Of course, Antonio had not the slightest idea of Aldo's plans. When he had noticed before locking up for the night that the spare key to the yard was missing from its usual place, he never
imagined that Aldo could have had the nerve to hatch such a plot. He was a spirited and determined youth, but he would certainly know the consequences of such an escapade if it ever came to Antonio's attention. And very little that happened in and around the boatyard ever went unnoticed by those steel-grey eyes, hard as the Dolomite hills in which their owner had been raised.

But Aldo wasn't thinking of Antonio now, he was thinking of Isabella. He crossed the little hump-backed bridge, next to Casa Luca, that led over the canal and past the church of San Trovaso. Just across the square from the church lay the boatyard. The mist had come down again in rapidly thickening drapes, stilling the night to silence. A solitary sound came to Aldo through the fog – a door slamming some way off in the night – and the square lay deserted but for figures that formed, morphed and disappeared as the denser patches of mist alternately communed and dispersed. The church bell sounded out, muffled by the fog. He could hear footsteps somewhere behind him, fading across the bridge on the other side of the square. He thought of Isabella waiting for him out there in the darkness and he took the key, turned the handle, and shoved the door of the boatyard open. Inside, all was quiet, the only living thing the tree that stood in the corner furthest from the canal, dripping autumn damp from black branches. The wooden buildings away to the left, fashioned in the alpine style with balconies running their full length, lay in darkness. Aldo knew which gondola he would take, one of the older ones that would forgive his amateurish technique. He swiftly found the boat in the darkness, lying on her side at the end of the row of upturned craft that lined the slipway. He struggled to right her, then dragged the heavy vessel to the lip of the canal, the gentle waves slapping her belly as he took an oar, and a couple of cushions for the bench, and pushed off into the night.