Alibi: A Novel Read online

  “No, Venetian. Not rich either. A doctor.”

  “My father was a doctor. He didn’t have a box at La Fenice.”

  “This one had doges in the family.”

  “Oo la. A doge’s box.”

  I smiled at her. “You don’t believe me?”

  “You, yes. Maybe not him.”

  Then our gondola reached the entrance and I had to help her out and tip the gondolier, and her attention shifted to the crowd inside. We took the stairs to the second tier and followed the number plates to Gianni’s box. Every light in the theater seemed to be on, making the red-and-gold walls glow, almost burning. We were the first to arrive, so took the seats nearest the rail.

  “Who else is coming?” Claudia said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he has the whole thing. Here, let me take your coat.”

  “A minute,” she said, reaching into the pocket and pulling out a fan, then opening it, her eyes lowered in a mock flirtation over the edge. “Like this?”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “With the shoes. A Carnival costume.”

  “Not that, though,” I said, nodding at the brooch on the front of her dress.

  “No, my mother’s. A friend hid it.”

  “Hid it?”

  “When I was away.”

  She went to the edge of the box and leaned forward, taking in the scene like gulps of air. Below, people were settling in and looking around, nodding to one another, testing their opera glasses, everyone smiling, expectant.

  “Look at them, like birds,” she said, her eyes darting around the theater.

  I glanced down—the dresses in fact were as bright as feathers—then over at her. Her dress, a dark blue clinging fabric gathered at the waist, would have been dull without the pin, but it opened at the neck in a way that drew your eyes upward, toward the face, flushed and eager, and her hair had been pulled back, exposing her ears, making her look even younger. A different Claudia, girlish and wide-eyed, not the woman in the hotel room. How many others were there?

  She caught my stare and pulled up the fan again, giggling, having fun.

  “Oh, you brought glasses,” she said as I lifted them out of my pocket. “Can I see, please?” Suddenly twelve.

  I watched her as she scanned the audience.

  “There’s Rusconi, from the Accademia. My god, what a wife. Two of him. Do you think Signor Howard’s here?”

  “No idea,” I said, still watching her, face tilted up now as she took in the upper tier.

  “Where do they all come from?” she said. “You always hear it’s a small town, but I don’t know any of them.”

  “Maybe it’s small to them. Same people.”

  “The musicians are coming,” she said, almost fidgeting now with anticipation.

  There was a final rustle of feathers below as the lights dimmed for the overture, then the music started and I moved my chair closer to hers. She was sitting erect, years of table manners and piano lessons, a well-brought-up girl. The back of her neck was pale and thin, and when I reached to touch it with my fingers, she turned with a shy smile, as if in fact we’d been flirting over fans.

  The opera was Così fan tutte, and since the program notes were in Italian, beyond my guidebook vocabulary, I just sat back and listened, not even bothering to follow the story. Real fans and full-skirted gowns began to appear on the stage below, as natural there as the gilt-and-red wallpaper. How did they stage tragedies in a room like this? Nothing worse than mistaken identity and harmless jealousy could happen here. When Claudia leaned over to whisper, “They’re pretending to be Albanians,” I almost laughed out loud at the silliness of it, then felt a kind of giddy release. Even Claudia was smiling broadly, almost grinning, maybe the way she used to be all the time, after the piano lessons.

  The four lovers were singing an ensemble piece when the door opened behind us. I turned to find a middle-aged woman in a prewar evening gown, trailed by a white-haired man with a bushy fur-collared coat, like the cartoon plutocrat on Monopoly cards. Everything about her was lacquered—glistening lipstick and nails, dress shiny with beadwork. She looked at us, her eyes moving from surprise to displeasure in a second, obviously put out to find strangers in her box. I got up, gesturing to my front-row seat, but she waved her hand in a kind of dismissal, pretending to be concerned about distracting the people next to us, and took the chair behind.

  We spent the rest of Act I speculating about one another—only Claudia in all that rustling and craning of necks seemed to be paying attention to the opera—but it was only when the interval finally came that we could stand and introduce ourselves in the light. Their name was Montanari. I mentioned Gianni and insisted that the woman move to the front row, but she was interested only in Claudia now, literally going over her from head to foot, eyes cold and superior behind the public smile. Then she raised her head, finished, with that peculiar satisfaction of finding someone wanting. Claudia, who had started with a polite nod, moved back a little against the rail, caught by the woman’s gaze, her color suddenly draining away.

  “Grassini,” the woman said carefully, repeating Claudia’s name as if she were trying to place her, the way her eyes had judged the rhinestone slippers cheap, the dress ordinary, everything somehow wrong.

  And for a second I saw it too, not the young skin and high spirits that had made everything seem right before, but someone found out, in the wrong box. There are tiny moments that change the nature of things. I glanced at Signora Montanari, the withering, stupid eyes, and suddenly I wanted to fold up Claudia in some protective cape, safe, so that no one could look at her again. I touched her hand at the rail, asking her to read my face. Never mind about the dress, never mind about any of it. You’re not just someone I sleep with.

  But Claudia’s color had come back and with it her assurance. “Yes, Grassini,” she said evenly. “Perhaps you knew my father, Abramo Grassini.”

  The woman blinked. “Ah. Abramo. No.” She turned to me. “And you’re a friend of Gianni’s?” she said, still assessing.

  “Yes,” I said easily. “He’s with a patient. I’m sorry about the seat. Will you have a drink with us?”

  “No, no, we’re meeting some people.” She gathered up her cloak, eager now to leave. “Please,” she said, evidently offering us the run of the box.

  “What was that all about?” I said when she’d left.

  “She knows I’m a Jew,” Claudia said.

  “Don’t be silly. How could she possibly know? She just doesn’t want to share the box.”

  “No. She knows. Once you see the look, you don’t forget it.” She picked up the fan, opened it, and put it against her face. “Well, so much for this. Let’s go.” She reached for her coat.

  “Later,” I said. “Right now we’re going downstairs and have some champagne. Then we’ll come back and listen to the rest.”

  “She doesn’t want me here.”

  “Well, I do. Would you rather please her?”

  She looked up, a small smile. “One grandfather. It’s easy for you. But for me, it’s not—comfortable.”

  “I’ll sit between you. Come on, let’s have some champagne.” I held out my hand to her. “Tell me the rest of the story. Why they’re pretending to be Albanians.”

  Another smile.

  “It’s our box,” I said, taking her hand. “We’re not leaving.”

  In the end it was the Montanaris who left, midway through the second act, after Fiordiligi sang in the garden by the sea. Signora Montanari had taken the rail seat next to Claudia, and it may be that she finally realized, distressed, how they must appear from below—one young, her pale skin catching the stage lamps, the other expensive and brittle, attractive now only to men on Monopoly cards. Or it may be this was just my idea, the story I made up as Signor Montanari nodded off at my side. But when Fiordiligi finished and Signora Montanari made an apologetic headache motion and slipped out with her surprised husband under the applause, I felt as if we had won somet
hing. I moved down to the rail seat.

  “We’ve run them off.”

  Claudia shrugged, a wry smile. “One victory for the Jews.”

  But she seemed happier now, relieved, and the music went with her, buoyant, heading into the finale. As things sorted themselves out onstage, something for everyone, it seemed to me that we had gotten our earlier mood back, frothy again, like the interval champagne.

  Outside it was cold and damp, and I put my arm around her as we walked.

  “You looked lovely, just sitting there, waiting it out like that.”

  “It didn’t feel lovely. Bitch. Probably a Fascist too.”

  “No, there aren’t any, haven’t you heard? Same thing in Germany. All disappeared somehow.”

  “You think it’s funny.”

  “No, but I spent months chasing them, so I know what it’s like. Anyway, she’s gone, so let’s have a drink. The Gritti’s right up here—they’ll be open.”

  The street was filled with people coming from La Fenice, wrapped in coats and furs, like the shuttered stores.

  “No, it’s late.”

  “All right, I’ll take you home.”

  “No,” she said, putting a gloved hand on my chest. “I’ll go. It was wonderful, the opera.” She looked up. “So, shall we meet tomorrow?”

  “I want to go home with you.”

  “Why? You can’t wait?”

  “Not for that.” I stopped. “It’s not that.”

  “What?”

  I put my hand up to the side of her neck. “I don’t want to skip anything. I want to take you to dinner. Out, like this. I want to spend the night with you. See you sleep, what you look like. Wake up. Make coffee. All of it. Not skip anything.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said softly, lowering her head. “I don’t want that.”

  “Yes, you do. Everybody does.”

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t.”

  “You mean, not with me.”

  She looked up, then turned away. “It’s not enough for you? Just to—”

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  I smiled. Something she couldn’t say, not even in the hotel, where anything was possible. A well-brought-up girl.

  “Go to bed,” she said, still not saying it. “It’s not enough?”

  “No.”

  “Ha. Since when? You were happy enough to—”

  I brushed back a lock of her hair. “Things change. I want to be with you. That’s all.”

  “No, I can’t,” she said, moving my hand away. “I don’t want anybody. Oh, what a judge I am. I see you, I think, yes, nice-looking, American. They never stay. They go home. No problems.”

  “You want me to leave?”

  She looked down, biting her lip. “No. Oh, it’s difficult.”

  “Explain it.”

  “Explain it. So easy. Some little talk over a drink.” She met my eyes. “I don’t want anything more. It’s better for me.”

  “How could it be better?”

  “It’s better. Safer.” She hesitated. “Sometimes, do you know what I think you see? Another one of your cases, back in Germany. You want to make everything all right again. Maybe that’s why you want to be with me. You think you can change what happened. But do you know how it really was? When people think you’re going to die, you don’t exist for them anymore. You disappear, become nothing. That first train, none of them even looked. I thought, this is what it’s like, there’s nobody else. Then not even you. So you live here,” she said, pointing to her skin. “And here.” Her eyes. “Food, whatever makes you feel alive. Reminds you what it’s like. Even pain sometimes. Just to feel it. But not here.” Now her chest. “Nothing here. You have to stay safe.”

  “From what?”

  “The others. Everybody. They’ll leave you alone if you’re playing dead. You think you can get through the rest of it if you do that. But then it’s hard coming back, you can’t do it all at once. Just seeing things. Eating. Simple things, that’s all I can do. Not people.”

  “It’s not like that anymore.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. Anyway, how do you know? It didn’t happen to you.”

  “No.”

  “To know that everyone wants you dead.”

  “Your friend didn’t.”

  “No, he didn’t want me dead. He wanted—” She stopped, then breathed out, almost a snort. “People. You know what he wanted? He wanted me to like it. It wasn’t enough for him, just to do it. He wanted me to like it. To like him. What he could do to me. He wanted to hear it.”

  “So you pretended.”

  “Well, we can do that. Make sounds. It’s what they like. So.” She looked down. “And then sometimes it would happen. Even with him. I could feel it in me, beginning, and I couldn’t stop it. With that pig. I’d feel it anyway—you couldn’t take your mind far enough away, it would happen. And he knew. He wanted it like that. At first I was so ashamed, and then—then it was a way of being alive. So I let it happen. Maybe that’s worse. Knowing it can happen with anyone. Like animals. So what does it matter who? Does it matter where food comes from? It’s all the same.”

  “It doesn’t feel the same to me.”

  “No?”

  “No. It’s not like with anyone else.”

  “Ha, how many—”

  “Don’t,” I said, stopping her. “I’m not him.”

  “No? You think it’s so different? You want me to like it too.”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, I do. I like it with you. So you can be happy. Tell your friends in New York.”

  “I’m not him,” I said again, holding her shoulders. “It’s different.”

  She looked down. “But I’m not. I’m the same. I’m the same. In Fossoli.”

  “No. What happened to you—”

  “It’s still happening to me. All those feelings. The hate. At first you want to kill all of them, and you can’t even kill one. Not one. And then you know what happens, I think? You start killing yourself. You have to kill someone and there’s no one else.”

  “Stop,” I said, placing my finger in front of her mouth without touching it.

  “Yes, stop,” she said. “What’s the good of all this?” She twisted her mouth. “Not what you expected, is it? Such talk. A girl you met at a party.”

  “You’re not just a girl at a party.”

  “Yes, I am,” she said, pretending to be light, but I was shaking my head. “No? What happened to her?”

  “Signora Montanari looked at her dress.”

  She met my eyes, a little startled, then looked down. “My poor dress. So, what happened then?”

  “I knew I was in love with you.”

  “Oh,” she said, only a sound, her head bent. “You don’t mean that,” she said quietly. “You don’t even know me.”

  “Yes I do. Everything about you. Right then.”

  “Oh, all in one look. You’re being—”

  “I know. All right, not everything. Just enough.”

  “What does it mean, to say something like that?”

  “What it always means. I want to be with you.” I lifted her head. “I’ll take Italian lessons.”

  She smiled weakly, her eyes troubled. “No. Go to America. Your life is there. Not all this.” She spread her hand. “But thank you. To say that. The opera, even. I didn’t expect—” She leaned and kissed me on the cheek, a flutter of breath. “It’s a good time to stop. While it’s all still nice.”

  I reached for her, but she put her hand on my chest again.

  “No, go.”

  “I can’t walk away from you.”

  “No? All right. Me, then,” she said, her hand trembling. She looked up. “Don’t follow. I’m all right on my own,” she said, then turned and started walking.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said to her back. “I don’t believe it’s all the same for you.” No answer but the click of her heels on the stone. “Tell me it was the same.”

 
; “Yes, the same,” she said, not turning around, still walking. Then she stopped, her shoulders drooping. A long quiet. “No,” she said finally.

  I stood for a minute, then started moving toward her gently, as if she were a bird that still might be scared off. I stepped around to face her, not saying anything. She looked up, her eyes still uneasy.

  “Not the same?” I said softly.

  “No,” she said, the word not much more than a breath.

  “Then let’s go home,” I said, stepping closer, our faces almost touching.

  “You’re so sure. How can you be so sure about this?”

  “We can get a taxi at the Gritti,” I said, putting my arms around her, feeling her head fall against my shoulder. “Is that all right, a taxi?”

  She nodded, resting against me. “To the gardens. Not to the house. Signora Bassi, the owner, she lives there too. The noise—”

  We were quiet in the taxi, as if Signora Bassi were already listening. The room was plain, up a staircase at the side of the house, overlooking the small misty canal and a back calle full of clotheslines. We stayed quiet in the room, not making love, just holding each other in bed. I did get to see her asleep, hours later, in the predawn when I usually tried to make out the Redentore and wonder how I was going to spend the day. Now in the light from the window all I could make out was the sewing machine and a dressmaker’s dummy, her own shape standing straight and purposeful, the way she had at Bertie’s party, and in some wonderful way I saw there were two of them now—the public, tailored Claudia at the window and the one only I knew, who’d stepped out of the dummy to crawl into the warmth beside me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The library ceiling was as beautiful as Gianni had promised.

  “Early sixteenth century,” he said, not a boast, just placing it. “The carving is the best in Venice, I think. Of course today it’s difficult to see.”

  The morning had been dismal, and even the long side windows were not much help—the library seemed barely lit. But the ceiling turned the patchy light to its advantage, forcing you to look at it carefully, follow its intricate lines into shadow. Only Venice could have a hospital like this, a converted scuola grande whose façade was crowded with trompe l’oeil and marble panels. The entrance hall was a soaring space with pillars, as damp and gloomy as an old church, filled with the ghosts of shivering consumptives, but beyond it the working hospital was bright and up-to-date with wards and nurses’ stations and X-ray rooms, what you’d see anywhere. And now the old medical library, which Gianni had saved for last, a special finale.