The Bellini Card (8 page)

He sighed and rubbed his ear. “I wanted to see that chess set so much. But when I asked him if he would bring it to the house, he told me he didn’t have it anymore. I asked him where it had gone, and he only smiled and shrugged. Sold, or lost, or stolen—which? I wondered, every time I wondered.”

“Perhaps,” Yashim said carefully, “it was simply—left behind.”

The old Armenian cocked his massive head. “Much better, Yashim efendi.” He made a slow, sweeping gesture, taking in the pistols in their box, the knife, the shelves at his back. “Left behind,” he said in his deep voice.

“Who knows?” Yashim said slowly. “Perhaps one day, Malakian efendi, it will come to you. A caravan driver with a chess set.”

“You understand too much, Yashim efendi,” Malakian said. He sounded sad. “Metin Yamaluk lives in Üsküdar. He said the drawings were by Bellini.”

P
ALEWSKI
was right that Antonio Ruggerio had been disappointed by his choice of lodgings, but the cicerone had not abandoned him yet, by any means.

He presented himself early at the American’s apartment, anxious that Signor Brett should not give him the slip. He need not have worried.

“Perhaps the signore would prefer if I were to return in—one hour?” he suggested, once he had caught sight of Palewski’s bleary face at the door.

“Just come in, Ruggerio. What time is it?”

Palewski excused himself to dress, leaving the Venetian sitting at the window in the vestibule. There was nothing in the room but an empty bottle of prosecco, a glass, a copy of Vasari’s
Lives
, and the gentleman’s splendid top hat, sitting by the pier glass on a little marble console. Its shiny nap had already encouraged Ruggerio to draw important conclusions about the American collector.

Ruggerio got up and walked stiffly up and down the vestibule, kicking out his legs, hands clasped behind his back. Eventually he came to a stop by the hat and pulled some faces in the mirror, rocking gently on his toes. He put out his tongue. He wagged his head from side to side. He cast a quick furtive glance toward the bedroom door and very gingerly picked up the hat and put it on his own head.

Ah, what a hat! It was a good fit. Ruggerio glanced again at the closed
door, then at his own reflection. Even he could tell what a difference the hat made: he looked taller, younger, richer. Yes, it was the sort of hat a man like him needed.

He took off the hat and glanced inside for the maker’s name.
Verbier: Constantinople
.

He laid the hat quickly back on the console. He returned to the window, where Palewski found him a few minutes later flicking through Vasari’s
Lives
, pondering a handwritten dedication in a language he didn’t know. Ruggerio snapped the book shut and laid it aside.

Palewski picked it up and dropped it into his pocket. “Breakfast, Ruggerio. Breakfast and Bellini.”

“Bellini? Certainly, maestro!” As he followed Palewski out the door, Ruggerio glanced back into the room with a puzzled frown.

“The Rialto, signore?”

Palewski considered. “I’d rather go somewhere we can sit, my friend. But let’s walk for a change. If we can?”

“Of course, of course. Please, follow me. But take care—the stones are uneven.”

Palewski was glad to be moving on foot. However disorienting, threading the narrow alleys and
fondamenta
gave him a sense of the city’s shape in a way a gondola ride did not. In a gondola he was just a parcel to be delivered, swaying to the rhythm of the oar and exclaiming like so many before him over the beauty of a view or the intricacy of a doorway. On the water he was always lost,
all at sea
, as the English said.

They walked in file, Ruggerio leading the way. Off the canals Venice seemed less dreamlike. In the dark, narrow courts, each with its old stone well, sunburned children sat on the stones picking through baskets of shrimps, or threading beads; a few
nonni
sat on tiny stools in a patch of sunlight, bending over their sewing with weak eyes. Men as brown as gypsies sat outside their workshops, planing, hammering, sewing, making an industrious racket you scarcely heard as you drifted along the canals, too low down to peer into anyone’s shop.

Grass sprang through the uneven stones, and there was rubbish everywhere. Once or twice, a mound of dirty rags actually stirred and a hand protruded, begging for alms. Such was the fate of those who had no work,
and the sight made Palewski flinch as he groped for coins. He was not used to it. In Istanbul, such abject beggars did not exist; they seemed to be everywhere in Venice.

At turnings, Palewski stopped and glanced around to get his bearings. He noticed that the buildings had a strange way of muffling and amplifying sound, so that the bright childish echo of a
campo
was snuffed out while the sound of a falling hammer followed them relentlessly over bridges and down passageways. Sometimes, as he looked back down the alleyway they had just left, he had a curious sense of being followed; another trick of the winding streets, he thought.

“Signor Brett!” Ruggerio exclaimed, when Palewski paused for the twentieth time. “I think one day you will write a book about Venice!”

Palewski smiled and shook his head. “I have heard that everything that can be said about Venice has been said already.”

Ruggerio looked pained. “I would say, signore, that on the contrary we have not said nearly enough. Everything that has been said and written about Venice is only the beginning of the first page of the first chapter of the first volume”—he raised a finger—”of the story of La Serenissima. Every Venetian has his own Venice—and every visitor, too. And so,
da capo
, till the city sinks—or the world ends!”

He made a little flourish of his arm. Palewski almost blushed, ashamed.

“And the Republic?”

Ruggerio touched a finger to his lips. “Let us go to the café,” he said.

They emerged shortly onto a
campo
where chairs and tables were set out in the sun.

“Now we can sit and have breakfast,” Ruggerio declared. He ordered coffee and rolls, cheese and salami. “But this morning, signore, I think—no grappa!” He chuckled, recalling Palewski’s washed-out look at the door.

“As it happens, Ruggerio, I think a grappa would be in perfect order,” Palewski lied, a little stiffly.

Ruggerio was not put out. “Aha,” he beamed, signaling the waiter.
“Un amaro, caro, per favore
. This is something better, Signor Brett.”

“Hmph.” Palewski took out his Vasari and laid it on the table.

“Lives of the Painters,”
Ruggerio said, touching the leather with a forefinger. “This is a very old book.”

“Yes. I’ve had it—” Palewski paused; he had been about to say that he’d had it all his life. “A long time,” he concluded.

Ruggerio looked away. “Breakfast will be here in a moment, signore, and you can try the
amaro!”

“And afterward,” Palewski added, “I want to look at all the Bellinis in Venice. Gentile Bellini, that is; I’m not so interested in the brother.”

He picked up the Vasari and idly thumbed the pages. The more he wanted to look at the title page, with its inscription in Polish, the more he felt Ruggerio watching him. In the end, he gave up. “Vasari doesn’t say where they are.” He put the book back in his pocket.

“I can help you,” Ruggerio said. “Here’s our coffee—and your
amaro.”

The
amaro
came in a small, stemmed glass. Palewski picked it up suspiciously, a brown, treacly liqueur that smelled of—what, exactly? Wormwood. Aniseed. He tilted it to his lips.

“Disgusting,” he said, after a moment’s pause. Some of the throbbing in his temples—the effect, he supposed, of that dangerously black wine—was eased. “I like it.”

They spent the morning searching out the works of Gentile Bellini. Palewski was impressed by his companion’s resourcefulness. Although Ruggerio knew very little about Gentile Bellini himself, he was unafraid to ask—beginning at the Correr.

“And Correr left all this for us to look at?” Palewski wondered. He was unfamiliar with the idea of a public gallery. There were none in Istanbul, and in Poland, long ago, one simply left one’s card at a nobleman’s private house and was invited to look around.

The director of the gallery snuffled with amusement. “One day, Signor Brett, Count Correr’s example will be followed around the world. Connoisseurs like him, with the means and the eye to build wonderful collections, will leave them to the public—maybe even in New York.”

“Why not!” Palewski responded enthusiastically. “After all, they can’t take it with them!”

The director drew back and began to laugh. “Ha ha ha! Signor Brett, you are absolutely right!”

On the director’s advice they unearthed three Bellinis by lunchtime; two were in churches and one hung in the Accademia. Palewski inspected them carefully, looking for evidence of the master’s style.

They lunched at Florian, after which they parted at Palewski’s insistence. At the apartment he found a card informing him that Count Barbieri would have the honor of calling on Signor Brett at six o’clock that evening, if the time was convenient.

Palewski spent the afternoon dozing on his bed, but he was at his window before six to await the arrival of Gianfranco Barbieri.

A gondola swept up to the water door in a graceful curve. The gondolier pinned it to the wall with his long oar, the doors of the felze snapped open, and a fair-haired man in an elegant coat stepped out and disappeared below.

As Palewski watched, the gondolier slipped his oar into its crooked rowlock and swept the long boat with insouciance across the channel, narrowly missing a heavy barge and another gondola coming in the opposite direction. For a gondolier, Palewski thought with admiration, a near hit was still a miss.

He went to the door and pulled it open.

W
HATEVER
Palewski had supposed, Antonio Ruggerio was telling the truth when he boasted of belonging to one of the oldest families of the Republic. Ruggerios had been present, if not prominent, at the sack of Constantinople in 1204, when the energies of the Fourth Crusade were unexpectedly diverted to the enrichment of La Serenissima. Members of the clan had left their bones all over the Mediterranean—in Cyprus, in the Aegean islands, even North Africa. But for many centuries the Ruggerios
had seldom ventured much farther than the Campo San Barnaba near the banks of the Grand Canal, in whose dreary baroque church they were baptized, married, and dispatched to a pauper’s grave.

The Ruggerios belonged to a special class of impoverished nobility, the so-called Barnabotti, who had withdrawn from the Venetian administration at the beginning of the fourteenth century, for reasons of cost. Ever since, these families had survived in and around the
campo
on the charity of the state, which provided them with tiny apartments, and on profit from the
casino
, where gambling had been licensed, enabling the Barnabotti to make a living from high-rolling foreign visitors.

Neither the French, nor the Austrians who came after, had felt the Republic’s sense of obligation to the Barnabotti. The stipends were withdrawn; rents were introduced; those Barnabotti who were too proud, too old, or simply too unskilled to take on real work lived on in wretched and degrading poverty.

After an excellent lunch with his new friend, Antonio Ruggerio went quickly on foot to the Rialto market with three lire rescued from the bill. The market was winding down, and there were bargains to be had: spoiled tomatoes, wilted greens, bread that was almost fresh.

As Ruggerio approached, various marketeers reached back for a handful of vegetables and offered them with a shrug and a smile; if Ruggerio made to pay they waved him away. “Later, Barone, another day, maybe.” Others studiously ignored him, indicating without rancor—and with the special tact and grace of the Venetian—that they had already parted with their leftovers to another of the Barnabotti, or had nothing to give away.