Michael Dibdin - Dead Lagoon

It is some time during the long, sleepless night that it occurs to Ada that her persecution may not have ceased but simply taken on a new guise.

She has never slept well, even before there was a reason to stay awake, deciphering each creaking board and squeaking hinge, fighting off her drowsiness lest she wake to find the intruders already there, in full possession. She can barely recall what it means to sleep well. A sort of absence, wasn’t it? A stillness like the lagoon on a hot summer night. From time to time, like a passing breeze, a dream would ruffle the otherwise invisible surface. Then the intimate, horizonless darkness closed in again, and the next thing you knew it was morning.

It’s been years since she slept like that. Now she is no longer always sure when she’s dreaming and when she’s awake. Perhaps there is no essential difference. Nothing seemed more real than Rosetta, after all, and yet she vanished without the slightest trace or explanation, just like a dream. Had she only dreamt that she’d had a daughter? That would be both a comfort and a clarification, if she could bring herself to believe it. But she can’t. Despite the years that have passed, she can still recall the silky fuzz on the child’s arms, the milky smell of her breath, her oddly pedantic intonation, the tender shade of those hazel eyes…

Her dreams are not like that. They may be scary or confusing, devious and deranged, but they cannot make her weep. Perhaps that’s why Ada prefers their company. At all events, she gets a lot of ideas as she lies there night after night, suspended between sleep and wakefulness. They are not pleasant or useful ideas. They are certainly not the sort of ideas she would choose to have, if she had a choice. It can’t even be said that they are better than nothing — nothing would be infinitely preferable — but they are all she has to go on. Ada is used to mending and making do.

The idea she had in the night was especially unwelcome, so much so that she pushed it to one side and took refuge in the restless, exhausted prostration that passes for sleep with her. In fact it is not until she hears the bell, goes to the window and catches sight of the figure standing outside the door below that she even remembers what it was. Her tormentors have not relented, they have merely changed the form in which they present themselves. And with the diabolical cunning which typifies them, the vehicle they have chosen is the man who claimed to be protecting her from them — her shield and strength, her bold avenger.

It all makes sense! Aurelio Battista, Giustiniana’s boy, that milk-sop dreamer, turn out a policeman? She’d known from the beginning that the thing was utterly absurd. Her new idea makes much better sense, but the sense it makes is so horrific in its implications that it takes Ada quite some time to master the trembling which has taken over her limbs at the knowledge that the man standing at her front door is no more the real Aurelio Zen than the cruelly mocking figures which had disrupted her life for so long were the real Nanni and Vincenzo.

The doorbell rings, long and insistently. Ada draws back hastily from the window before the figure glances up at the angled mirror and catches her looking at him. But of course it’s no use hiding. They know she’s there, and are merely going through the motions of requesting admittance. If she does not respond, the phantasm below will simply turn on its shadowless side and slip into the house through the joints in the stone like vapours from the canal. Better to face the threat boldly and try and fend it off with some invention of her own. After all, she is no slouch at fabrication herself.

The expression of mingled shock and suspicion on her caller’s face when Ada opens the door and graciously bids him enter demonstrates that this was the right thing to do. Her opponents have been thrown off balance and for the moment she has regained the initiative.

‘Come upstairs,’ she says warmly, ‘and have… have a glass of something.’

She was about to offer tea, but realized just in time that this would mean leaving the room and taking her eyes off the intruder. She knows better than that.

‘I just came to apologize, contessa,’ he mutters in a respectful tone as they walk upstairs.

Ada fixes her visitor — she decides to call him Zeno — with an untroubled eye.

‘Apologize? Whatever for?’

The look he gives her is almost comic in its consternation.

‘For what happened yesterday. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be provoked like that, but… Well, I’d had a difficult day at work. When your nephews started to taunt me, it was just the last straw.’

Ada laughs archly as they enter the salon.

‘I admit I was a trifle taken aback by your comments.’

Her visitor looks suitably mortified.

‘They were unforgivable.’

‘You see, I thought that I was the only person who knew what had happened.’

A bold thrust, and it drives home. Zeno stands there gawping at her like an idiot.

‘To Rosetta?’ he murmurs.

She corrects his mistake with an indulgent smile.

‘To Rosa. Rosa Coin.’

He nods like a somnambulist. Ada sits down on the chaise-longue and indicates with a gracious wave that her visitor should take the rather less comfortable chair opposite.

‘Of course, one had heard the most extraordinary rumours,’ she continues smoothly. ‘As though the Germans could possibly have mistaken a Venetian aristocrat for the offspring of some Jewish tradesman!’

In a vain attempt to look confident and relaxed, Zeno crosses his legs and clasps his knees with his hands.

‘And… taken the wrong child, you mean?’

‘The thing is clearly absurd!’ Ada declares airily. ‘But you know what people are. Once they’ve taken an idea into their heads…’

Nod, nod, goes the head opposite. It’s not even a good likeness, she thinks dismissively. Giustiniana Zen’s boy, if he were still alive, wouldn’t look anything like that.

‘For a time I suspected a man called Dolfin,’ she goes on without faltering. ‘He lived quite close by and Rosetta used to call at his house now and then. He bribed her, you see, with sweets and cakes and all that sort of thing. That’s the only reason she went. I had no access to such luxuries at that time, but Dolfin had friends in high places and could get anything he wanted. That’s the only reason she used to visit him, of course. It was pure cupboard love.’

As Zeno goes on nodding, Ada realizes with a thrill that this is all he can do. Her opponents are condemned to nod to her tune for ever. She has outmanoeuvred them completely. After all these years of confusion and uncertainty, she sees her way clear at last.

‘So when she vanished like that, I naturally suspected Dolfin of having a hand in it. It’s not natural, a man like that, living all alone, inviting young girls into his house. And this was during the war, don’t forget. In those days a body was just a body.’

Nod, nod. Ada nods too, but with an ironical edge of which her visitor remains ignorant.

‘But then I got a letter, out of the blue! That’s where she lives now. Apparently she had been hidden away until the war was over, and then spirited away to the promised land.’

She beams at her visitor triumphantly.

‘I hope that clears the matter up once and for all.’

There is a long silence. Then Zeno stands up, awkwardly.

‘I shan’t be seeing you again, contessa.’

Ada frowns. She can hardly believe her ears. Are her opponents conceding defeat? Is her victory assured?

As though in answer to her questions, he adds, ‘There’s nothing more I can do here.’

A wave of sweet relief sweeps through her. She longs to sing and dance and openly exult, but good breeding has taught her never to gloat.