The Undrowned Child (7 page)

The man acted as if she wasn’t there at all.

“I suppose not everyone likes children,” Teo said pointedly, “but it is polite to answer questions. Even from children.”

The manager pulled the newspaper rudely up in front of his face so he could not see Teo anymore. June 3 was written at the top.

“That means,” thought Teo, “that I’ve lost a whole day. Where was I?”

Teo ran up the stairs and knocked on the door of her parents’ room. Her heart thrashed painfully when she heard her mother sobbing inside. Her father spoke low, comforting words.

They did not seem to hear her knock, so Teo let herself in.

“Don’t worry, I’m back!” she trilled joyfully. “Everything’s fine!”

Her parents gave not the slightest sign of having heard or seen her. Teo shuddered to see that a Brustolon had appeared in their room. It glowered in a corner next to her parents’ travel trunk, giving off a strong smell of varnish.

“Do close the door, Alberto,” implored her mother. “It must have blown open in that cold draft. Where did that come from, in this heat?” She dabbed her face with a handkerchief.

Teo ran over to her mother and sank to her knees in front of her. She put her head in her mother’s lap and wrapped her arms around her mother’s knees. She rested her cheek on the warm silk of her mother’s skirt. It smelt of soap, and perfume, a trace of laboratory formaldehyde and, well—home.

“It’s all right!” Teo cried out, her voice choked up with emotion. “You can stop crying now.”

But her mother stared blankly over Teo’s head, and a new tear trickled down her face.

Teo jumped up and tugged at her father’s waistcoat. “But I’m here!”

His voice was stony. “I’ve said it before—we should never have come. There is something not right at all about this city, and not just the water.…” He turned on the Brustolon and gave it a heartfelt kick. The statue’s expression of livid hatred was already adapted for such treatment. Teo trembled, remembering the Brustolon in the hospital. But this one remained motionless. A ray of sunshine blazed over its ivory eyes for a moment, but then the sun passed behind a cloud and the Brustolon’s face went blank again.

Teo’s mother sobbed, “It’s the not knowing that’s the worst. Whether she’s dead or alive.”

“Dead or alive? But I’m here right in front of you!” Teo expostulated.

“And Maria’s quite sure she hasn’t seen our Teodora?”

“She swears she knows nothing, Alberto. Why would she lie to us?”

“Maria would lie to you as soon as look at you,” protested Teo. “What about me? Look at me, Mamma!”

“If only we’d never gone into that bookshop,” Teo’s father groaned.

“If only!” wept Teo, clinging to his hand, unseen.

Teo backed out of the room.

The manager had not been snubbing her. He had simply not seen her.

Teo was invisible.

How had this happened? The newspaper! Perhaps that would fill in the part of her story that she had clearly missed? She ran down to Reception. The manager had his head bent over his ledger. Behind him lay a stack of newspapers with a red banner: SPECIAL AFTERNOON EDITION!

Teo quietly lifted the top copy and made her way to the hotel kitchen. No one shouted at her, although it was supposed to be out of bounds to children. When the chef’s back was turned, she helped herself to some bread rolls and an apple. Then she ran up to her bedroom. It was untouched, all her things still on the bureau, her clothes in the armoire, her books by the bed.

She drained the stale water in her ewer, saving just a few drops to wash her hands in the basin. Then she gnawed hungrily on the rolls and bit into the apple. She threw herself on the bed and scanned the front page for news about her disappearance.

She instantly recognized the picture of the tall brick church under the headline.

BRAGADIN’S SKIN STOLEN FROM TOMB!

Someone, Teo read, had done something unspeakable with the tomb of the Venetian hero Marcantonio Bragadin. The great Bragadin, the paper explained, had been murdered in a particularly cruel way by the Turks after the Battle of Famagosta in 1571. They had cut off his nose and ears, and skinned him alive. Bragadin had withstood all his tortures in noble, uncomplaining silence. When he finally died, the Turks stuffed his skin with straw and paraded it through their streets. In the end, the Venetians had managed to steal their hero’s body from the enemy and had laid it to rest in their Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo. But now—such an outrage!—during the previous night, some intruder of superhuman strength had prised open Bragadin’s casket and taken out the skin. As if the poor hero had not suffered enough!

The newspaper printed a copy of Signor Rioba’s newest handbill:

Venetians! Are ye all bone from the knees up like His Swineship your mayor? What are ye thinking of? Find ye the skin of Marcantonio Bragadin if ye want to save your own! There are worse enemies than the Great Turk afoot! Remember the Butcher Biasio! The cannibal who slaughtered children and sold ’em in stew at Campo San Zan Degolà? Had his hands cut off and got beheaded between the columns of the Piazzetta, you say? But take a care for your children, Venetians—he’s still got a taste for them.

The apple fell out of Teo’s hand. She shuddered—the headless man who came out of the sacristy!

The newspaper concluded, For all our Signor Rioba rants about Turks and Butchers–there were no witnesses to the theft of the hero’s skin. The police are mystified.

“Yes, there was a witness!” thought Teo. “But no one will be able to hear me tell them what happened.”

The next item was about Teo herself.…

Teodora Stampara, who was suffering from suspected concussion, was last seen on the night of June 1. A nurse found her bed empty, and signs of a struggle. Strangely, no one saw the girl leave the hospital. Posters of her have been put up around the city. Her parents and police have expressed grave fears for her safety. She may be suffering from loss of memory.…

Teo was indignant. “But I’m not! I remember everything, almost. The mean nurse, the Brustolon, the doctor. And the book.”

What was it that the book had said, that it would take her, where was it? Oh yes, between-the-Linings of the city? Had she somehow got trapped between-the-Linings? And that was why no one could see her? The pain, the fever—was that what happened when you moved from one side of the Linings to another?

Yet it sounded quite comforting, “between-the-Linings.” Teo imagined something silky and soft, herself safely tucked up inside, like a chrysalis in a cocoon. Also, if this was true, then The Key to the Secret City should be able to show her a way out of the Linings and back to the real world.

Teo pulled the book from inside her pinafore. The girl on the cover looked concerned. Teo nodded to her and opened it to the place she had been reading that night at the hospital. She addressed the page reproachfully. “Now help me! You got me into this mess!”

Even as she spoke, the words disappeared and luminous pictures filled the creamy paper, lively as a tableau inside a shaken snow-globe.

Faces smiled and screamed from those pages. Stories unfolded like plays. The sun rose and set inside the book. Perfumed senators strutted in their red robes in San Marco. The vicious flaying of Marcantonio Bragadin happened in front of her horrified eyes. The Doges’ Palace burnt and was rebuilt. Masked dancers romped at balls. The original Brustolons appeared in elegant drawing rooms. Napoleon arrived to conquer Venice; the city grew dark and subdued. The Austrians marched in. San Marco was silent. The city was under siege, with cannonballs pounding the buildings. Cholera raged through the population and the stench of death hung in the air. Funeral dirges were sung. Then the Austrians slunk out, and the city gave itself up to joy.…

Hours later, Teo shook herself. Her neck was stiff, her leg had gone to sleep, and the sun had gone down. For a while, she had almost been able to forget her predicament.

It was immediately brought back to her.

The door handle turned and her mother’s sorrowful face appeared, lit up with a faint ray of hope.

Her father’s voice urged, “No, Leonora, don’t torture yourself so.”

“You’re right, Alberto,” replied Teo’s mother in a pathetically small voice. “She’s not here. But I could not resist checking. Don’t blame me for that. Look, a maid has dropped an apple-core on the floor!” She tutted.

Teo closed the book and lay back on her bed with the warm weight resting comfortingly on her chest. She fought back the tears.

How could she make contact with her parents, and explain that she was perfectly safe, only inconveniently invisible, hopefully just for a little while?

“But am I truly perfectly safe?” Teo finally forced herself to face the hideous possibility that had haunted her all day.

The possibility that she had died.

“I died in the hospital,” she whispered aloud. “That’s why no one can see me. That’s why I woke up on a tomb in a graveyard. I never thought to read what it said! Was it my name on the headstone?”

Teo remembered the funeral gondolas bearing children’s coffins down the Grand Canal. The doctor had spoken of too many children sick, too many cases of fever. The little boy with the shaved head and the black swelling on his neck—what was that? Had she too fallen victim to whatever was killing the children of Venice? Or was it the Brustolon … he could have …? Had the mayor ordered her to be buried secretly? So even her adoptive parents would not find out?

Could the mayor of Venice be so devious? So cruel? Teo pondered the smooth face, that lustrous black croissant of a mustache. He could certainly be that smooth.

At the thought that her life was over, before it had really begun, Teo was overcome with grief. She let the tears roll down her cheeks and onto the pillow. Then she sat bolt upright with a scream. “If it wasn’t the Brustolon, was I killed by the Butcher Biasio? He has a taste for children! Signor Rioba said so. But how can I be dead?”

She rallied her spirits. It was better to be bewildered than dead. “I am all in one piece, not cut up for a stew! But if I’m not dead, what am I? A kind of a living ghost?”

One of the big, ferocious seagulls cawed suddenly outside her window, in a note of triumph. No doubt it had caught itself something vulnerable.

The Key to the Secret City stirred in her hands, as if trembling. The girl on the cover put her hands together beseechingly.

June 4, 1899

Teo began her new life as a living ghost.

From that first night she still slept in her hotel room. But it was simply too painful to follow her parents as they searched for her through the streets and markets, showing her photograph to everyone, earnestly asking questions, shaking hands, looking hopefully into people’s eyes.

Back at the hotel, she scribbled a letter to tell them what had happened. Yet as soon as she finished the page, the writing disappeared. She carried her dresses into her parents room and spread them on the bed. But when she returned to her own room, they were still hanging up in her armoire. She used her father’s shaving brush to write a soapy message on the mirror. Her words “Mamma! Papà! I am …” faded away before they had even dried.

Even as she sobbed, Teo realized that, bad as they were, things seemed much worse because her belly was hollowed out with hunger. She helped herself to a rather eccentric meal of semi-baked piecrust, raw peas and stewed pear from the hotel kitchen while the chef was busy for a moment in the meat-safe.

“My bed and board were paid in advance,” she told herself defiantly, as the chef set up a great howl about the big hole in his piecrust.

Once she had eaten, Teo went up to her bedroom and tried to think through her situation. “There are always rules,” she reasoned. “I just have to understand how this works.”

This much she had already understood: no one she knew could see her, or hear her. She cast no shadow. And anything she picked up, whether it was an apple or a cup of water, immediately disappeared from everyone else’s sight, though Teo herself could see those things perfectly well.

After a few painful experiments, she learnt that she could not pass through doors or walls. Nor could she fly like an angel; she couldn’t even jump down five steps at once, as a badly skinned knee proved. She could not see through other people’s clothes, which was perhaps fortunate. But she still saw what they said written out in words above their heads. Using The Key to the Secret City, she tested all her old skills. She could still read upside-down and she could still remember whole pages of what she read, as if she had taken a photograph of the page.

“Just like when I was alive,” she thought.

And just as if she was alive, Teo still got hungry, thirsty, sleepy, hot, bothered and cross.

“It’s just that I don’t exist for anyone else,” she whispered to herself sadly. “Except to make them feel a little cold. And why am I whispering? No one can hear me!”

That afternoon she set out to lose herself in Venice, to try to forget what had happened to her. And, indeed, it helped. The constant panorama of new sights soothed the pain, for whole minutes on end.

She had a guide, of course. The Key to the Secret City was now teaching Teo to andar per le Fodere, to go between-the-Linings like a real Venetian child.

Turn left here, the book told her. Now look up.… This is the place where the pirates came ashore to steal our women.… This is the palace where the devil in the shape of a monkey made a hole in the wall.…

There were maps that came to life when she turned the page, with all the streets glowing in sequence to show her how to get to her destination. The Key to the Secret City had torn pieces of paper stuck inside it too, and fingerprints from small hands. There were old faded sweet wrappings and yellowed advertisements carefully cut out of newspapers.

“At least one Venetian child’s already made good use of this book,” Teo supposed. The girl on the cover smiled before lowering her eyes discreetly.

The Key to the Secret City seemed to be able to read Teo’s mind. She had only to think, “I wonder where Marco Polo lived?” and a quick secret route to the Corte del Milion would be illustrated on the page. If she felt hungry The Key to the Secret City showed her the way to the nearest pasticceria, and helpfully puffed out the delicious smell of its special cake, with a picture and a caption, so she knew what to grab and pocket.