‘You watch-a her rise,’ he bellowed in my ear, and rise we did, to such an extent that my stomach turned over with the inevitable thud of our descent, and the spray that we had not left behind us trickled over my collar and down my back. Standing in the prow, revelling in every moment, his light hair tossed about in the breeze we were making, stood Ganymede, a sea-sprite, joyous and free. He was my only consolation, and the sight of him there, turning now and again to smile, prevented me from ordering an instant return to Venice.
When we reached the Lido, a pleasant enough trip by
vaporetto
, I was not only wet but deaf into the bargain, the spray and the roar of the engine combined having successfully blocked my right ear. I stepped ashore shaken and silent, and it was odious when the tout took my arm in a familiar gesture and shepherded me into a waiting taxi, while Ganymede leapt in front beside the driver. Where to now, I asked myself? How fatal to make a picture of one’s day in fantasy. In the church, during the singing of Mass, I had seen myself landing with Ganymede from some smooth craft piloted by a discreet nonentity, and then the two of us strolling to a little restaurant I had marked down on my previous visit. How delightful, I had thought, to sit at a corner table with him, choosing the menu, watching his happy face, seeing it colour, perhaps, with the wine, and getting him to talk about himself, about his life, about the complaining mother and little sister. Then, with the liqueurs, we would make plans for the future, should my letter to my London superior prove successful.
None of this happened. The taxi drew up with a swerve before a modern hotel facing the Lido bathing-beach. The place was crammed, despite the lateness of the season, and the tout, known apparently to the maître d’hôtel, thrust his way through the chattering crowd into the airless restaurant. To follow in his wake was bad enough, the flaming orange shirt making him conspicuous, but worse was to come. The table in the centre was already filled with hilarious Italians talking at the tops of their voices, who at sight of us rose in unison, pushing back their chairs to make room. A dyed blonde with enormous earrings and reeking of scent swooped upon me with a flow of Italian.
‘My sister,
signore
,’ said the tout, ‘she make-a you welcome. She no speak-a the English.’
Was this Ganymede’s mother? And the full-bosomed young woman beside her with scarlet fingernails and jangling bangles, was this the little sister? My head whirled.
‘It is a great honour,
signore
,’ Ganymede murmured, ‘that you invite my family to lunch.’
I sat down, defeated. I had invited nobody. But the matter was out of my hands. The uncle - if uncle indeed he was, the monster, the tout - was handing round to everyone menus the size of placards. The maître d’hôtel was bending himself in two in his effort to please. And Ganymede . . . Ganymede was smiling into the eyes of some loathsome cousin who, with clipped moustache and crew-cut, was making the motions of a speed-boat going through the water with a pudgy, olive hand.
I turned to the tout in desperation. ‘I had not expected a party,’ I said. ‘I am afraid I may not have brought enough money.’
He broke off his discussion with the maître d’hotel.
‘Don’t worry . . . don’t worry . . .’ he said, waving the air.‘You leave’a the bill to me. We settle later.’
Settle later . . . It was all very well. By the time the day was over I should not be in a position to settle anything. An enormous plate of noodles was set before me, topped with a rich meat sauce, and I saw that my glass was being filled with a particular barolo that, taken in the middle of the day, means certain death.
‘You ’avin’ fun?’ said Ganymede’s sister, pressing my foot with hers.
Hours later I found myself on the beach, still seated between her and her mother, both of them changed into bikinis, lying on either side of me like porpoises, while the cousins, the uncles, the aunts splashed into the sea and back again, shrieking and laughing, and Ganymede, beautiful as an angel from heaven, presided at the gramophone that had suddenly materialized from outer space, repeating again and again the long-playing record that he had bought with my thousand lire.
‘My mother wants so much to thank you,’ said Ganymede, ‘for writing to London. If I go, she will come too, and my sister.’
‘We all go,’ said his uncle. ‘We make one big party. We all go to London and set-a the Thames on fire.’
It was over at last. The final splashing in the sea, the final poke from the scarlet toe of the sister, the final bottle of wine. I had a splitting head, and my inside had turned on me. One by one the relations came to shake me by the hand.The mother, voluble with thanks, embraced me. That none of them were to accompany us back to Venice in the speed-boat and continue the party there was the one measure of solace left to me at the end of the disastrous day.
We climbed aboard.The engine started.We were away.And this should have been the return journey I had already made in fantasy - the smooth, rather idling return over limpid water, Ganymede at my side, a new intimacy having grown up between us because of the hours spent in each other’s company, the sun, low on the horizon, turning the island that was Venice into a rose façade.
Halfway across, I saw that Ganymede was struggling with a rope that lay coiled across the stern of our craft, and the uncle, easing the throttle so that our progress was suddenly slowed, left the controls to help him. We began to rock from side to side in a sickly fashion.
‘What is going to happen now?’ I called.
Ganymede shook the hair out of his eyes and smiled. ‘I water-ski,’ he said. ‘I follow you home to Venice on my skis.’
He dived into the cabin and came out again with the skis. Together the uncle and nephew fixed the rope and the skis, and then Ganymede flung off his shirt and his shorts and stood upright, a small bronzed figure in bathing slip.
The uncle beckoned me. ‘You sit-a here,’ he said. ‘You pay out the rope so.’
He secured the rope to a bollard in the stern and put the end into my hands, then rushed forward to the driving seat and started to roar the engine.
‘What do you mean?’ I cried. ‘What do I have to do?’
Ganymede was already over the side and in the water, fixing his bare feet into the slots of the skis, and then, unbelievably, pulling himself up into a standing position while the craft began to race ahead.The uncle sounded the klaxon with an ear-splitting screech, and the craft, gathering momentum, sped over the water at top speed. The rope, made fast to the bollard, held, though I still clung to the end, while in our wake, steady as a rock on his dancing skis, the small figure of Ganymede was silhouetted against the already vanishing Lido.
I seated myself in the stern of the boat and watched him. He might have been a charioteer, and the two skis his racing steeds. His hands were stretched before him, holding the guide-rope as a charioteer would gather his reins, and as we circled once, twice, and he swung out in an arc on his corresponding course, he raised his hand to me in salutation, a smile of triumph on his face.
The sea was the sky, the ripple on the water wisps of cloud, and heaven knows what meteors we drove and scattered, the boy and I, soaring towards the sun. I know that at times I bore him on my shoulders, and at others he slipped away, and once it was as though both of us plunged headlong into a molten mist which was neither sea nor sky, but the luminous rings encircling a star.
As the craft swung into the straight again and bounced away on its course, he signalled to me with one hand, pointing to the rope on the bollard. I did not know whether he meant me to loosen it or make it more secure, and I did the wrong thing, jerked it, for he over-balanced instantly and was flung into the water. He must have hurt himself, for I saw that he made no attempt to swim.
Flustered, I shouted to the uncle,‘Stop the engine! Go astern!’
Surely the right thing to do was to bring the boat to a standstill? The uncle, startled, seeing nothing but my agitated face, put the engine hard into reverse. His action threw me off my feet, and by the time I had scrambled up again we were almost on top of the boy.There was a mass of churning water, of tangled rope, of sudden, splintering wood, and leaning over the side of the boat I saw the slim body of Ganymede drawn into the suction of the propeller, his legs enmeshed, and I bent down to lift him clear. I put out my hands to grip his shoulders.
‘Watch the rope,’ yelled the uncle. ‘Pull it clear.’
But he did not know that the boy was beside us, was beneath us, and that already he had slipped from my hands which struggled to hold him, to bear him aloft, that already . . . God, already . . . the water was beginning to colour crimson with his blood.
8
Yes, yes, I told the uncle. Yes, I would pay compensation, I would pay anything they asked. It had been my fault, an error of judgement. I had not understood. Yes, I would pay any and every item he liked to put down on his list. I would telegraph to my bank in London, and perhaps the British Consul would help me, would give advice. If I could not raise the money immediately I would pay so much a week, so much a month, so much a year. Indeed, the rest of my life I would continue to pay, I would continue to support the bereaved, because it was my fault, I agreed that it was all my fault.
An error of judgement on my part had been the cause of the accident. The British Consul sat by my side, and he listened to the explanations of the uncle, who produced his notebook and his sheaf of bills.
‘This gentleman take-a my apartment for two weeks, and my nephew he bring-a him his breakfast every day. He bring-a flowers. He bring-a coffee and rolls. He insists my nephew look after him and no one else. This gentleman take great fancy to the boy.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Yes, it’s true.’
The lighting of the apartment was extra, it seemed. And the heating for the bath. The bath had to be heated from below in a special way. There was a man’s time for coming in to repair a shutter. The boy’s time, he told the Consul, for bringing my breakfast, for not going to the café before midday. And the time for taking a Sunday off that was not the regular Sunday. He did not know if the gentleman was prepared to pay for these items.
‘I have already said that I will pay for everything.’
The notebook was consulted again, and there was the damage to the engines of the speed-boat, the cost of the water-skis that were smashed beyond repair, the charge for the craft that had been hailed to tow us back to Venice, to tow the speed-boat back to Venice with Ganymede unconscious in my arms, and the telephone call from the quayside for the ambulance. One by one he read out the items from the notebook. The hospital charges, the doctor’s fees, the surgeon’s fees.
‘This gentleman, he insist he pay for everything.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Yes, it’s true.’
The yellow face against the dark suit seemed fatter than before, and the eyes, puffy with weeping, looked sideways at the Consul.
‘This gentleman, he write to his friend in London about my nephew. Perhaps already there is a job waiting for the boy, a job he can no longer take. I have a son, Beppo, my son also a very good boy, known to the gentleman here. Beppo and my nephew they both work at the café every night, and serve the gentleman. The gentleman so fond of these boys, he follow them home. Yes, I see it with my own eyes, he follow them home. Beppo would like to go to London in place of his poor cousin. This gentleman arrange it, perhaps? He write again to his friend in London?’
The Consul coughed discreetly. ‘Is that true? Did you follow them home?’
‘Yes, it’s true.’
The uncle took out a large handkerchief and blew his nose.
‘My nephew very well brought-up boy. My son the same. Never give any trouble. All the money they earn they give to their family. My nephew he had very great trust in this gentleman, and he tell me, he tell all the family, his mother, his sister, that this gentleman will take him back to London. His mother, she buy a new dress, and his sister too, she buy new clothes for the boy to go to London. Now, she ask-a herself, what happens to the clothes, they cannot be worn, they are no use.’
I said to the Consul that I would pay for everything.
‘His poor mother, she break-a her heart,’ the voice continued, ‘and his sister too, she lose-a all interest in her work, she become nervous, ill. Who is to pay for the funeral of my nephew? Then this gentleman, he kindly say, no expense to be spared.’
No expense to be spared, and let that go too for the mourning, and the veils, and the wreaths, and the music, and the weeping, and the procession, the endless long procession. And I would pay, too, for the tourists clicking cameras and feeding pigeons who knew nothing of what had happened, and for those lovers lying in each other’s arms in gondolas, and for the echo of the Angelus sounding from the Campanile, and the lapping water from the lagoon, and the chug-chug of the
vaporetto
leaving the landing-stage which turns into the chug-chug of a coal barge in the Paddington canal.
It passes, of course - not the coal barge over there, I mean, but the horror. The horror of accident, of sudden death. You see, as I told myself afterwards, if it had not been an accident it would have been a war. Or he would have come to London and grown up, grown fat, turned into a tout like the uncle, grown ugly, old. I don’t want to make excuses for anything. I don’t want to make excuses for anything at all. But - because of what happened - my life has become rather different. As I said before, I’ve moved my quarters in London to this district. I’ve given up my job. I’ve dropped my friends, in a word . . . I’ve changed. I still see my sister and my nieces from time to time. No, I don’t possess any other family. There was a younger brother who died when I was five, but I don’t remember him at all: I’ve never given him a thought. My sister has been my only living relative for years.