Part 9

"One more thing, Leonora. The money we still owe you for the supper with Candiano..."

She was petrified, as if she had been bitten by a snake, and suddenly turned pale. "By all saints," she said, "not a word about this, never mention it again, and donate the rest of the money to the church, they shall say Mass for his soul and - for mine. Whenever this name is mentioned, I always feel like hearing a trumpet of judgement day."

"You're a child," said the man. "The responsibility for this supper is ours, not yours. He was a criminal, and only his connections and the respect he got obliged us to execute the sentence in secret. He has died quietly in his bed, and no one was ever able to say that he had brought death with him, when he left your house. Or have you heard anything of the kind?"

She shivered and looked to the ground. "No," she said. "But at night, I'm awakened by a voice, whispering it to me. Oh! If I only hadn't done this one thing, not this one thing!"

"This is a passing delusion, Leonora; you'll get over it. I just wanted to tell you this one thing: the money is waiting for you at Marchesi's. Good night, countess. I see that I've already used too much of your time. Sleep tight, and tomorrow, don't cloud the sun of your beauty, but let it rise on the just as well as the unjust. Good night, Leonora!"

He made a little bow towards her and walked towards the door. Just briefly, Andrea was able to see his face while he left. His features were cold, but not hard, a face without a soul, without passions, only the expression of a powerful will governed the forehead and his eyebrows. He put on a mask and threw the black cloak, which he had left at the entrance, around his shoulders. Then, he left the chamber, without waiting for her goodbye.

In this very moment, Andrea heard the girl's voice down below in the large room, quietly calling him to come down. He obeyed, after having had one last glance at the beautiful woman, who was still standing motionlessly in the middle of the chamber and was staring pensively at the door, through which the man had left. Unsteadily, like a man who had suffered a stroke, he descended from the estrade and followed, without speaking a single word, the girl who was leading the way with swift, but quiet, steps. In her chamber, the light had been lit again, the wine was still on the small table by the window, and nothing seemed to prevent them from continuing their interrupted game. But a frightening shadow had come across the man's face, which even intimidated Smeraldina's levity and quenched all of her hopes for this night.

"You're looking," she said, "as if you had seen ghosts. Come on, have a glass of wine and tell me what has happened. After all, they talked much more calmly than we had feared."

"Oh, certainly," he said, forcing himself to seem unemotional. "Your mistress is very much in their favour, and there is even a chance that you'll soon be payed the wages she still owes you. Otherwise, they were talking so quietly that I understood only a little, and now, I'm more than anything else very tired from kneeling on those hard boards. Next time, I'll appreciate your wine more, my dear girl. But tonight, I must sleep."

"You haven't even told me, whether you're thinking that she's just as beautiful as all the other people say she is," said the girl and tried to pout at her ungrateful, uncommunicative friend.

"As beautiful as an angel or a devil," he mumbled through his teeth. "I thank you, Madamigella, for enabling me to see her. Another time, I'll be good and stay with you, since I've suffered plenty tonight for my curiosity. Good night!"

He leaped up onto the ledge and stepped onto the board, which she had reluctantly put back over the chasm. Standing up there, he looked downstream along the canal, where in the distance, the gondola's light was just now disappearing. "Good night!" he called out to her once more, before carefully descending from the board into his room, while Smeraldina dismantled the bridge and endeavoured in vain to explain how the strangers unusual behaviour, his poverty, his generosity, his gray hair, and his lust for adventure would fit together.

One week passed, without Smeraldina seeing any particular consolidation in her relationship with her neighbour, whom she had thought she had conquered. Only once, after having got the porter on her side, she let him in through the door at night and, wearing a mask, conducted him to the small door on the waterside and entered the gondola with him, which he personally propelled through the dark labyrinth with slow strokes of the oar, in order to finally float along openly on a Great Canal for an entire hour. In spite of the good opportunity, he was not in a loving mood this time either, while she was constantly chatting and was trying to amuse him with tales from the world of the high society, in which the countess played her part. He was told that for the last few days, the secretary of the Austrian embassy had been paying long visits to her mistress, at which, undoubtedly, they were both discussing how they could go about affecting a withdrawal of young Gritti's exile. She said that the countess was in a better mood than ever and had given her generous gifts. Andrea seemed to listen to this only with half an ear and to concentrate solely on steering the gondola. Thus, even the girl had no objections when her taciturn companion turned the boat around and, on the most direct course, directed it back home. Without making a sound, he pushed the narrow vessel close to the pole, attached the chain after they had disembarked, and asked for the key, in order to lock it. She gave it to him and had already gone through the door when he called out to her that, in this haste, the small key had slipped out of his hand and had fallen into the canal. She was actually upset about this, but in her usual, light-hearted manner she comforted her friend, saying that a second key would be likely to be found in the house, and this time, he could not help but bid his farewell to her by giving her a casual kiss on the cheek, when she let him out at midnight through the main portal of the palace.

To his landlady, Signoria Giovanna, he said the next morning that there had been a lot of work to be done for his employer, so that they had to make use of the night. This was the only time he needed the key for the front door. Usually, he was already back at nightfall, only had some bread and wine, and put out his light early, so that the good woman praised him all over the neighbourhood as a paragon of hard labour and decent living. Only one thing she complained about: that he would not conserve his strength and that he, at his age, would not take part in any permissable entertainment, which would cheer him up and prolong his life. Whenever she talked like this, Marietta was quiet and look down into her lap. As soon as the stranger was in his room, she stopped singing, and quite generally gave the impression as if, since the stranger's arrival, she had spend more time pondering than she would previously have done in a year.

In the morning of the second Sunday which Andrea had spent in the widow's house, the woman entered his room in a hurry with a disturbed look on her face, dressed in her best clothes, just as she had returned from church. He sat at the table, was not fully dressed yet, and read in one of his prayer-books. His face was paler than usually, but his eyes were calm, and it seemed as if he disliked being disturbed in his meditation.

"What are you still sitting quietly in your room, Signore Andrea," she called out to him, "while all of Venice is up and about? Hurry up and get dressed and go out into the street for yourself, where you'll be able to see as many horror-stricken faces as there are pieces of grain in a mill. Holy Jesus! That I've got to live to see the day, and I've thought there was nothing else that could happen in Venice to surprise me!"

"What are you talking about, good woman?" he asked in an indifferent tone and put the book down.

She threw herself onto a chair and seemed to be very exhausted. "All the way to the Piazzetta, the crowd has been pushing me," she started again, "and there I saw the gentlemen of the Great Council climbing in droves up the huge staircase in the court of the Doges' Palace and the flags of mourning waving in the windows of the Procurators' Offices. Will you believe it? Tonight, between eleven and midnight, the most noble one of the three inquisitors of the state, the venerable lord Lorenzo Venier, has been murdered on the threshold of his own house."

"Has he lived to an old age?" Andrea asked calmly.

"Misericordia! The way you talk! As if he had merely died in his bed. But of course, you're no Venetian and can't understand what this means: a member of the inquisition has been murdered, one of the tribunal. This is worse than if it had been a doge, of whom many have come to an unnatural death, for the tribunal has the power, and the doge has the robe. But the most horrible part of it is this: engraved in the dagger they've found in the wound it reads: `Death to all inquisitors'; all of them! Do you understand, Signore Andrea? This isn't just some scoundrel being payed by a bravo to do away with a single man, because he's keeping him from a love affair, a powerful position, or something else. `This is a political murder,' my neighbour the spicer told me, `and there is a conspiracy behind it and henchmen and that Angelo Querini with his followers.' He was rubbing his hands while saying this, but I felt my heart shivering in my body, for I don't want to say what I'm thinking, but I know: an evil deed is like a cherry, once one of them has been shook off a tree, twenty more will come after the first, and this blood will cost much more blood."

"Don't they have any lead pointing to the murderer, Signoria Giovanna? What good are those hundreds of spies, they are paying, for the tribunal?"

"Not even the shadow of a lead," answered the widow. "It was a dark night, the bora was blowing, and on the Grand Canal, which runs by his palace, there were no gondolas at all. Then, all by himself, he came home through one of the small alleys, and then, that invisible hand struck him down, and he only lived long enough to scare up the porter with his last sighs. Then, there was a deadly silence throughout the alley, and nobody was in sight. But I know what I know, Signore Andrea. Do you want me to tell you? You're decent and good and won't pass it on to anybody else and won't bring new hardship upon me: I know the hand which has spilled this blood."

He looked at her firmly. "Talk," he said, "if you've got to get it off your chest. I won't give you away."

"Don't you suspect anything?" she said, rising from her seat and stepping up close to him: "Haven't I told you that there are many who are alive and don't return and many who are dead and still return? Do you know it now? He hasn't forgotten about them who've dragged his wife and his child under the lead roofs and tortured them. But, for God's sake, don't say a word about this! If his spirit should have done it, the living would have to suffer for it."

"And what reason do have to believe in this?"

She took a frightened look around the room. "You should know," she whispered, "this house was haunted tonight. I've heard something rushing up and and down the walls, like the footsteps of ghosts, I lay in bed and listened, and there was a noise, secretly buzzing along the canal down below, and a rattling at your window, and scared beasts scurried through the adjoining alley until long past midnight. Only after the the bell had struck one o'clock, it was quiet; I know just too well, who had disturbed them. He came, after he had done it, to greet us, since we hadn't been able to say farewell."

His head had dropped to his chest. Now, he got up and said that he wanted to go out personally, in order to inquire what had happened. He had, as she would know, gone to bed early and had been particularly fast asleep, so that all of this fuss had not disturbed him. And besides, she should keep it to herself, for it was indeed dangerous to have received but a ghostly knowledge of such a crime. - Having said this, he got dressed in a hurry and went out into the city.

Agitated and busy crowds had gathered in the alleys, in a way which was even unusual for important holidays of the republic. Quietly, coming from the centre of the city, hasty groups of curious people moved through the narrow streets towards the Piazza San Marco, and whoever did not join them was at least standing by the door of his house, exchanging meaningful gestures and looks with acquaintances who were rushing by. It was plain to see that something outrageous and horrible had both upset and stunned these people, so that they were all following the general march without an individual plan, most of all being eager to see the event with their own eyes and to touch it with their hands. Nobody talked aloud, nobody laughed, whistled, or sighed even audibly; it was as if those honourable citizens felt the pile-work quaking, on which the city of the lagoon had been built.