The Planet on the Table (5 page)

The Lagoon was as flat as a pond this morning, the sky cloudless, like the blue dome of a great basilica. It was amazing, but Carlo was not surprised. The weather was like that these days. Last night’s storm, however, had been something else. That was the mother of all squalls, those were the biggest waves in the Lagoon ever, without a doubt. He began rehearsing his tale in his mind, for wife and friends.

Venice appeared over the horizon right off his bow, just where he thought it would be: first the great campanile, then San Marco and the other spires. The campanile… Thank God his ancestors had wanted to get up there so close to God—or so far off the water—the urge had saved his life. In the rain-washed air, the sea approach to the city was more beautiful than ever, and it didn’t even bother him as it usually did that no matter how close you got to it, it still seemed to be over the horizon. That was just the way it was, now. The Serenissima. He was happy to see it.

He was hungry, and still very tired. When he pulled into the Grand Canal and took down the sail, he found he could barely row. The rain was pouring off the land into the Lagoon, and the Grand Canal was running like a mountain river, it was tough going. At the fire station where the canal bent back, some of his friends working on a new roof-house waved at him, looking surprised to see him going upstream so early in the day. “You’re going the wrong way!” one shouted.

Carlo waved an oar weakly before plopping it back in. “Don’t I know it!” he replied.

Over the Rialto, back into the little courtyard of San Giacometta. Onto the sturdy dock he and his neighbors had built, staggering a bit—careful there, Carlo.

“Carlo!” his wife shrieked from above. “Carlo, Carlo, Carlo!” She flew down the ladder from the roof.

He stood on the dock. He was home.

“Carlo, Carlo, Carlo!” his wife cried as she ran onto the dock.

“Jesus,” be pleaded. “shut up.” And pulled her into a rough hug.

“Where have you been, I was so worried about you because of the storm, you said you’d be back yesterday, oh, Carlo. I’m so glad to see you…“ She tried to help him up the ladder. The baby was crying. Carlo sat down in the kitchen chair and looked around the little makeshift room with satisfaction. In between chewing down bites of a loaf of bread he told Luisa of his adventure: the two Japanese and their vandalism, the wild ride across the Lagoon, the madwoman on the campanile. When he had finished the story and the loaf of bread, he began to fall asleep.

“But Carlo, you have to go back and pick up those Japanese.”

“To hell with them,” he said slurrily. Creepy little bastards… They’re tearing the Madonna apart, didn’t I tell you? They’ll take everything in Venice, every last painting and statue and carving and mosaic and all… I can’t stand it.”

“Oh. Carlo. It’s all right. They take those things all over the world and put them up and say this is from Venice, the greatest city in the world.”

“They should be here.”

“Here, here, come in and lie down for a few hours. I’ll go see if Giuseppe will go to Torcello with you to bring back those bricks.” She arranged him on their bed. “Let them have what’s under the water, Carlo. Let them have it.” He slept.

He sat up struggling, his arm shaken by his wife.

“Wake up, it’s late. You’ve got to go to Torcello to get those men. Besides, they’ve got your scuba gear.”

Carlo groaned.

“Maria says Giuseppe will go with you. He’ll meet you with his boat on the Fundamente.”

“Damn.”

“Come on, Carlo, we need that money.”

“All right, all right.” The baby was squalling. He collapsed back on the bed. “I’ll do it. Don’t pester me.”

He got up and drank her soup. Stiffly he descended the ladder, ignoring Luisa’s instructions and warnings, and got back in his boat. He untied it, pushed off, let it float out of the courtyard to the wall of San Giacometta. He stared at the wall.

Once, he remembered, he had put on his scuba gear and swum down into the church. He had kneeled behind one of the stone pews in front of the altar, adjusting his weightbelts and tank to do so, and had tried to pray through his mouthpiece and the facemask. The silver bubbles of his breath had floated up through the water toward heaven; whether his prayers had gone with them, he had no idea. After a while, feeling, somewhat foolish—but not entirely——he had swum out the door. Over it he had noticed an inscription and stopped to read it, facemask centimeters from the stone.
Around This Temple Let the Merchant’s Law Be Just, His Weight True, and His Covenants Faithful
. It was an admonition to the old usurers of the Rialto, but he could make it his, he thought; the true weight could refer to the diving belts, not to overload his clients and sink them to the bottom…

The memory passed and he was on the surface again, with a job to do. He took in a deep breath and let it out, put the oars in the oarlocks and started to row.

Let them have what was under the water. What lived in Venice was still afloat.

—1980

“She rules all of Oz,” said Dorothy, “and so
she rules your city and you, because you are in the
Winkie Country, which is part of the Land of Oz.”
“It may be.” returned the High Coco-Lorum,
“for we do not study geography and have never
inquired whether we live in the Land of Oz or not.
And any Ruler who rules us from a distance, and
unknown to us, is welcome to the job.
—L. Frank Baum,
The Lost Princess of Oz

am not, despite the appearances, fond of crime detection. In the past, it is true, I occasionally accompanied my friend Freya Grindavik as she solved her cases, and admittedly this watsoning gave me some good material for the little tales I have written for the not-very-discriminating markets on Mars and Titan. But after The Case of the Golden Sphere of the Lion of Mercury, in which I ended up hung by the feet from the clear dome of Terminator, two hundred meters above the rooftops of the city, my native lack of enthusiasm rose to the fore. And following the unfortunate Adventure of the Vulcan Accelerator, when Freya’s arch-foe Jan Johannsen tied us to a pile of hay under a large magnifying glass in a survival tent, there to await Mercury’s fierce dawn. I put my foot down: no more detecting. That, so to speak, was the last straw.

So when I agreed to accompany Freya to the Solday party of Heidi Van Seegeren, it was against my better judgement. But Freya assured me there would be no business involved; and despite the obvious excesses, I enjoy a Solday party as much as the next aesthete. So when she came by my villa, I was ready.

“Make haste,” she said. “We’re late, and I must be before Heidi’s Monet when the Great Gates are opened. I adore that painting.”

“Your infatuation is no secret,” I said, panting as I trailed her through the crowded streets of the city. Freya, as those of you who have read my earlier tales know, is two and a half meters tall, and broad-shouldered: she barged through the shoals of Solday celebrants rather like a whale, and I, pilotfishlike, dodged in her wake. She led me through a group of Greys, who with carpetbeaters were busy pounding rugs saturated with yellow dust. As I coughed and brushed off my fine burgundy suit, I said, “My feeling is that you have taken me to view that antique canvas once or twice too often.”

She looked at me sternly. “As you will see, on Solday it transcends even its usual beauty. You look like a bee drowning in pollen, Nathaniel.”

“Whose fault is that?” I demanded, brushing my suit fastidiously.

We came to the gate in the wail surrounding Van Seegeren’s town villa, and Freya banged on it loudly. The gate was opened by a scowling man. He was nearly a meter shorter than Freya, and had a balding head that bulged rather like the dome of the city. In a mincing voice he said. “Invitations?”

“What’s this?” said Freya. “We have permanent invitations from Heidi”

“I’m sorry,” the man said coolly. ‘Ms. Van Seegeren has decided her Solday parties have gotten overcrowded, and this time she sent out invitations and instructed me to let in only those who have them.”

“Then there has been a mistake,” Freya declared. “Get Heidi on the intercom, and she will instruct you to let me in. I am Freya Grindavik, and this is Nathaniel Sebastian.”

“I’m sorry,” the man said, quite unapologetically. “Every person turned away says the same thing, and Ms. Van Seegeren prefers not to be disturbed so frequently.”

“She’ll be more disturbed to hear we’ve been held up.” Freya shifted toward the man. “Who are you, anyway?”

“I am Sandor Musgrave, Ms. Van Seegeren’s private secretary.”

“How come I’ve never met you?”

“Ms. Van Seegeren hired me two months ago,” Musgrave said, and stepped back so he could look Freya in the eye without straining his neck. “That is immaterial, however—”

“I’ve been Heidi’s friend for over forty years,” Freya said slowly, once again shifting forward to lean over the man. “And I would wager she values her friends more than her secretaries…“

Musgrave stepped back indignantly. “I’m sorry!” be snapped. “I have my orders! Good day!”

But alas for him, Freya was now standing well in the gateway, and she seemed uninclined to move; she merely cocked her head at him Musgrave comprehended his problem, and his mouth twitched uncertainly.

The impasse was broken when Van Seegeren’s maid Lucinda arrived from the Street. “Oh, hello Freya, Nathaniel. What are you doing out here?”

“This new Malvolio of yours is barring our entrance,” Freya said.

“Oh, Musgrave,” said Lucinda. “Let these two in, or the boss will be mad.”

Musgrave retreated with a deep scowl. “I’ve studied the ancients, Ms. Grindavik,” he said sullenly. “You need not insult me.”

“Malvolio was a tragic character,” Freya assured him. “Read Charles Lamb’s essay concerning the matter.”

“I certainly will,” Musgrave said stiffly, and hurried to the villa, giving us a last poisonous look.

“Of course Lamb’s father,” Freya said absently, staring after the man, “was a house servant. Lucinda, who is that?”

Lucinda rolled her eyes. “The boss hired him to restore some of her paintings, and get the records in order. I wish she hadn’t.”

The bell in the gate sounded. “I’ve got it. Musgrave,” Lucinda shouted at the villa. She opened the gate, revealing the artist Harvey Washburn.

“So you do,” said Harvey, blinking. He was high again; a bottle of the White Brother hung from his hand. “Freya! Nathaniel! Happy Solday to you—have a drink?”

We refused the offer, and then followed Harvey around the side of the villa, exchanging a glance. I felt sorry for Harvey. Most of Mercury’s great collectors came to Harvey’s showings, but they dissected his every brushstroke for influences, and told him what he
should
be painting, and then among themselves they called his work amateurish and unoriginal, and never bought a single canvas. I was never surprised to see him drinking.

We rounded the side of the big villa and stepped onto the white stone patio, which was made of a giant slab of England’s Dover cliffs, cut out and transported to Mercury entire. Malvolio Musgrae had spoken the truth about Heidi reducing the size of her Solday party: where often the patio had been jammed, there were now less than a dozen people. I spotted George Butler, Heidi’s friend and rival art collector, and Arnold Ohman, the art dealer who obtained for many of Mercury’s collectors their ancient masterpieces from Earth. As I greeted them Freya led us all across the patio to the back wall of the villa, which was also fronted with white slabs of the Dover cliffs. There, all alone, hung Claude Monet’s
Rouen Cathedral—Sun Effect
. “Look at it, Nathaniel!” Freya commanded me. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

I looked at it Now you must understand that, as owner of the Gallery Orientale, and by deepest personal aesthetic conviction, I am a connoisseur of Chinese art, a style in which a dozen artfully spontaneous brushstrokes can serve to delineate a mountain or two, several trees, a small village and its inhabitants, and perhaps some birds. Given my predilection, you will not be surprised to learn that merely to look at the antique rectangle of color that Freya so admired was to risk damaging my eyes. Thick scumbled layers of grainy paint scarcely revealed the cathedral of the title, which wavered under a blast of light so intense that I doubted Mercury’s midday could compete with it. Small blobs of every color served to represent both the indistinct stone and a pebbly sky; both were composed of combinations principally of white, yellow, and purple, though as I say, every other color made an appearance.