The Lying Tongue (3 page)

The next afternoon I returned from a day of sightseeing to find a letter waiting for me at the pensione. The man at the front desk told me that it had been delivered by messenger just after lunch. I ran up to my room and ripped open the envelope.

I wrote back to Crace suggesting a day and time and, again, hand-delivered the note so as to speed up the process. Crace sent a letter back to the pensione by messenger to say that was acceptable and that he looked forward to our meeting. My future was being mapped out before me.

I stood outside Crace’s palazzo. It was the morning of my interview and my palms were damp with sweat. I had dressed in the only smart clothes I had—a cream-colored linen suit and a white shirt. Just before I left the hotel I checked myself in the mirror. Sunlight streamed through the window, bleaching out my blond hair, making it so difficult to see my features that I had to draw the blind and examine myself in the room’s half light.

I was a couple of minutes early for my appointment with Crace, but I didn’t feel like strolling around in the heat any longer. I took a deep breath and walked across the bridge. As I pushed the bell on the side of the door, I stared into the unseeing eyes of the marble dragon that guarded the letter box and smiled to myself. It was obvious that Crace had a sense of humor, even if it was a black one. I knew that from reading his book, which I’d finished in the early hours of that morning.

The Debating Society
centers on a group of sixth-form boys at a minor English public school who meet each week to discuss a certain pressing issue or topic. After talking about the usual subjects—capital punishment, animal rights, the advantages and disadvantages of socialism, oligarchy versus democracy—the leader of the society, Charles Jennings, puts forward a motion to debate, in secret, the merits of murdering their respectable classics master, Mr. Dudley Reeve. The boys pass the motion, thinking it all a hoot until one day Jennings lures the teacher into a forest and bludgeons him to death. There is no reason given for the murder—the master is neither an abuser nor a sadist; in fact, he is a rather gentle and kind man—and it seems the only motivation lies with the passing of the motion in the debating society. At the end of the book, Jennings is not caught and he, together with the rest of the boys in the debating society, leave school, go to university, and take up respectable professions with the secret buried in their past. On the back of my paperback edition, which I had found in a second-hand bookshop in Dorsoduro, there were a selection of quotes from critics raving about the novel’s sardonic humor, how it cleverly used the framework of the crime to expose the dark heart of British society. There was a lot Crace could teach me.

I pressed the bell again. Crace was in his early seventies and perhaps it took him a while to get down the stairs to the door. But then, just as I released my finger, the door edged open.

In front of me stood a man who seemed much, much older than I had imagined. He was stooped, nearly bent double, and as he slowly raised his head upward to look at me, I saw that the flesh on his neck had lost all definition. His tiny gray-green eyes narrowed as he squinted into the sunlight, and instead of moving forward to greet me, he took one step back into the shade.

“Adam Woods?” he said. His voice was crisp and sharp, distinctly upper class and authoritative.

“Yes. Sorry I’m a little early,” I said.

“Never mind,” he said, slowly lifting his right hand to shake mine. It felt like the lifeless body of a tiny bird.

“Come on in. This way,” he said, leading the way into a portico-lined courtyard.

The walls of the yard were crawling with vines, snaking up the columns and the staircase that led to the entrance on the first floor. Dotted around the outside space were a number of large pots containing overgrown bay trees or pink hydrangeas. In the center of the courtyard there was what looked like the top of a Corinthian column, its capital decorated with acanthus leaves, on which stood the figure of a naked cherub, darkened by green-black moss.

“As you can see, I’ve let things get a little out of hand,” said Crace. “That’s one of the reasons I’m obliged to employ someone such as yourself, Mr. Woods. Now, let’s go upstairs and have a drink.”

As he slowly climbed the stone steps, his right hand grasped the metal banister for support, a tendril of a vine caressing his fingers. I noticed that his yellowing skin, discolored and speckled with liver spots, looked like thinning, ancient parchment. The linen suit that hung from his emaciated frame, once cream, now sallow and jaundiced, seemed like the loose, decaying flesh of a dead man.

At the top of the stairs, he stepped directly into the portego, a grand central hall that ran the length of the building. The mullioned windows at each end of the vast space were so dirty that they not only obscured the light, but forced me to question whether I had really seen a form walk across the room when I had delivered my letter the other night. The etchings and prints that lined the walls were thick with cobwebs; the elaborate stucco work and the decorative touches of the ceiling and cornices had long lost any touch of splendor, and the cloudy white marble floor was covered with balls of dust and fluff. Behind me I noticed that there was another staircase, an internal one, that led to a door secured by a padlock.

“Oh, I never go up there,” he said, meeting my gaze. “I haven’t in years. It’s completely empty. I never bother with the floor below either, as it’s damp and always flooding out. Follow me.”

He led me down the central hall, with its wonderful display of drawings, etchings and prints, and through some double doors into the drawing room. Its walls were covered with a rich red fabric across which were displayed an array of Renaissance paintings in elaborate gilt frames. The windows on the street side of the palazzo were shrouded in heavy red velvet curtains, and the only light came from the two lamps that stood on either side of the marble fireplace, over which was a large antique mirror. An enormous chandelier hung from the ceiling, its shards of glass occasionally ringing above us.

Crace shuffled across a large Persian rug and eased himself down into one of the two red velvet chairs by the fireplace and gestured for me to sit in the other.

“Oh what a silly fool,” he said, just as he was settling down into the chair. “I’ve forgotten to get you a drink.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Please, let me.”

“That’s really very kind of you, Mr. Woods. What would you like? Gin? Whiskey? Dry sherry?”

Although it was only eleven in the morning, coffee, water or other nonalcoholic drinks did not seem to be on the menu.

“A sherry would be lovely, but I’ll get it,” I said. “And you?”

“Yes, I’ll join you. You can find everything in that cabinet over there.” He raised a bony finger and pointed toward a side of the room that was in shadow. “Most kind of you, most kind.”

I spotted another lamp positioned near the drinks cabinet, but as I was about to switch it on, Crace barked, “No—no more light. I think we have enough.”

I withdrew my hand from the switch and bent down to get the drinks. Crace had already set aside two glasses, both of which were exquisite—one a cristallo funnel-shaped glass with a baluster stem, the other a goblet with a fine
vetro a retorti
filigree decoration—yet sticky to the touch, covered with dust and coated with smudges, perhaps even hair. I poured the clear, sweet-smelling liquid into the two glasses, handed one to Crace, placed the other on a little side table by my chair, and sat down.

“Now, Mr. Woods, I know something about you from your letter, but can you tell me a little more about yourself?”

Rather like a reptile, Crace fixed me with his eyes. They were small and seemed to flit about the room while at the same time never leaving mine. I cleared my throat.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “I’ve been in Venice now for just over a week, and as I’d said, I’m here to try and write.”

Crace nodded but remained silent.

“I’ve just finished an art history degree at London University, and before I get distracted, I think it would be a good idea to try, to give it a go, at least.”

“Have you written anything before?”

“Nothing you would call proper writing—a couple of fragments of short stories. Nothing that I could show anybody, if that’s what you mean.”

“Have you always wanted to be a writer?”

“Well, yes, for as long as I can remember,” I said. “But I haven’t really had very much encouragement from my family. My father is a banker—I grew up in Hertfordshire—and he wanted me to do something useful. I think he thought art history a decadent choice for a degree. But I want to prove to him, and to myself, that I can actually write. I want to set the novel in Venice, which is why it’s so important for me to stay here.”

“Yes, I see,” Crace replied.

Another pause.

“And which is why I think this job, working with you, would be perfect for me,” I continued. “I can help you around the house, do your shopping, a bit of cooking, some cleaning. I can sort out your post and settle bills and such like. It looks as though your courtyard might need a bit of a clear out, and I could do that, if you like. Really, anything to make your life more comfortable, to give you more time to write.”

He grimaced as if steeling himself against some kind of inner pain.

“I don’t write, Mr. Woods, in fact, I wish I had never done so,” he said. “If you were to take on this position, it is something I would expect you never to refer to. And I mean that most sincerely. It is a part of my life I wish I had never lived. Of course, you would be able to talk about your writing—to deny that would be cruel—but I really could not abide you discussing mine—with me or anyone else. Do you understand, Mr. Woods?”

I didn’t understand at all, but nevertheless I said that I did.

“There is also one other thing you should know about me,” he continued. “I never set foot outside this palazzo and I never expect to do so. You may think it odd—people have called me worse things, I imagine—but although I have lived in Venice for thirty or so years now, I have never desired to see it.”

“You mean you’ve never been outside?”

“There really is no need, no need at all. As we all know, it is the easiest city to visit without ever going there. Anyway, the Venice in here,” he said, tapping his head, “is so much richer and stranger than anything I could ever experience out there. The so-called
real world
is vastly overestimated, don’t you think?”

I answered with another question. “How have you managed, I mean, in the past?”

“Previously, when I was in much better health, I relied on local women to do my shopping and various errands,” he said. “The last one, Maria, she was all very well, but somewhat prone to nervous hysteria. Made me feel on edge—no good, no good for my constitution at all. And the girl I used to organize sending those letters to you is not particularly reliable. Now I realize that in order to carry on, I need to employ someone such as you. As I had said in my letter, the boy I recently employed did not work out, and that’s why you are here today.”

I nodded and waited. Crace took a sip of sherry and seemed to compose himself.

“Mr. Woods, I am an intensely private person. What I’m sure you have already gathered is that whatever you witness within these walls is for you and for you alone. It’s not as if I have anything to hide, but you must guarantee total confidentiality. If I found out that you had so much as whispered something as trivial as, I don’t know, what I had for breakfast or how much milk I like in my morning coffee, you would have to go. And go straightaway. I really could not abide that.” He paused. “Do you have any questions, Mr. Woods?”