Michael Dibdin - Dead Lagoon

Zen got out his cigarettes. After a moment’s hesitation he offered one to the woman, who took it with a shrug.

‘I shouldn’t, but…’

‘At this stage, my dear,’ Dolfin put in, ‘I can’t really see what you have to gain by giving up.’

Zen lit their cigarettes.

‘You were talking about moving to Israel,’ he said.

She nodded.

‘I lived there for almost ten years. It was a wonderful experience which I don’t regret for a single moment, but I never really felt at home. At first I assumed that that would pass. Where is a Jew at home if not in Israel? It was a long time before I realized that I must give up the idea of ever being at home anywhere. I would always be an Italian in Israel and a Jew in Europe. And once I accepted that, there seemed no reason not to come back to Venice.’

Zen smoked quietly for a moment. Now that the fit of rage had left him, he felt dazed and drained.

‘And Rosetta?’ he murmured.

‘Everything I told you about her was true,’ said Andrea Dolfin. ‘She had the run of my house, and came and went as she pleased. One afternoon I came home to find a note from her on the dining table. She apologized for putting me to so much trouble, but she said she knew I’d understand.’

He sighed.

‘I did, and I didn’t. In the end, it’s impossible to understand something like that. Anyway, it made no difference. She’d been dead for several hours.’

Dolfin struck his fist hard on the table.

‘She should have told me! At the very least I could have given her some practical advice. She must have thought it would be quick and painless, like an execution. She didn’t know that without a drop, hanging is a form of slow strangulation. I could have told her. I’d seen enough partisans hanged that way, from lampposts and balconies. I knew how long it took them to die. She should have told me! She should have trusted me!’

He broke off, struggling to control his emotion. The woman covered his trembling hands with her long, slim, articulate fingers, like a benign insect.

‘I’d failed Rosetta,’ Dolfin went on in a low voice, ‘so I decided to make amends by saving her friend. That meant concealing the truth from Ada Zulian. I could claim that that was a difficult decision over which I agonized long and hard, but it would be a lie. If her daughter had been driven to take her life, the contessa was at least partly to blame. If I’d failed Rosetta, what had her mother done? Perhaps it was just as well that she never knew the truth.’

He took the woman’s hands in his.

‘The main cause of Rosetta’s despair was undoubtedly the fact that the Coin family were among those Jews who had been selected for the next round of deportations. The Ghetto had been cut off from the rest of the city, like in the old days, but with my position it wasn’t hard to persuade the guards to let me take Rosa Coin out for a few hours on my personal recognizance. I told them that she had been my secretary, and that I needed her to help put my papers in order before she was deported. I did not tell the Coins about Rosetta. I only said that I would do what I could to save their daughter.’

The woman dropped her cigarette on the floor and stepped on it. She wiped her rheumy eyes on her sleeve.

‘When the police came, they never doubted the identity of the corpse. I’d dressed it in Rosa’s clothes, including the Star of David, and cut the hair to match. I told them she had hanged herself while I was out. They weren’t surprised, given the fate in store for her. They took the body away and told the Germans what had happened. And meanwhile the real Rosa was hiding in my attic, where she stayed for the rest of the war.’

‘I remember my father calling me,’ the woman said in a dreamy voice, as though talking to herself. ‘Andrea was sitting on the best chair, the one only visitors used. I had only met him once, when I was out walking with Rosetta, but she had told me how kind he had been to her since her father was killed. Papa said I was to go and stay with Signor Dolfin for a few days, until things got better again. He tried to make it sound casual, but his voice was hoarse and my mother was crying and I knew that something strange and terrible was happening.’

She started to weep.

‘Afterwards, when Andrea told me the truth, I tried to imagine the unspeakable anguish they must have felt, knowing that they were seeing me for the last time, yet having to pretend that everything was all right so as not to scare me.’

Zen was staring out of the window, his attention drawn by a movement on the other side of the square. A group of men had emerged from the sottoportego and were now standing in a circle, talking loudly and gesturing expansively. The sound of their voices could be heard faintly even inside the bar. Zen got to his feet.

‘I apologize for intruding, and for my rudeness. Please forgive me.’

Andrea Dolfin glanced out at the square.

‘You’re surely not going to meet that band of hooligans, dottore?’

Zen shook his head.

‘My interest in them is purely professional.’

Dolfin raised his eyebrows.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve got something on Dal Maschio!’

‘Would that surprise you?’

Dolfin laughed harshly.

‘It would surprise me if you could make it stick.’

The men in the square had concluded their discussion and were leaving in different directions in twos and threes. Zen buttoned up his overcoat and threw a note on the table to pay for his coffee.

‘After what you’ve just told me, I’m certainly going to try,’ he declared grimly.

Dolfin frowned.

‘What has that got to do with Dal Maschio?’

Zen looked at Rosa Coin.

‘Nothing. Everything.’

The windswept expanse of Campo Santa Margherita was deserted when Zen emerged from the bar. He turned left, walking quickly. It was a clear night, the darkness overhead pinked with stars and a bright battered moon rising. In the distance, on the bridge over the canal, Zen could just make out the figure of Dal Maschio and his two companions. Slowing his stride to match theirs, he followed.

The three men walked at a leisurely pace past the church of San Barnaba, through the dark passage burrowing beneath the houses on the far side, along walkways suspended over small canals or jutting out from the side of buildings linked by clusters of telephone and electricity cables and a washing-line from which an array of teddy bears dangled by their ears. The sound of their voices drifted back to Zen, resonant in the narrow streets, more faint in the open, sometimes snatched away altogether by the wind.

They crossed the bowed wooden bridge over the fretful, jostling waters of the canalazzo and rounded the church blocking the entrance to Campo San Stefano, where the trio came to a halt. Concealed in the shadows cast by a neighbouring church, Zen looked on as they concluded their discussion and said good night. Dal Maschio saluted his cohorts with a last masterful wave and walked off down a street to the left. The other two continued on across the square. Deprived of their leader’s inspirational presence, they walked more quickly and in silence, eager to get home.

Zen followed them along the cut to Campo Manin, past the hideous headquarters of the Cassa di Risparmio bank and into the warped grid of alleyways beyond. The bitter wind had sent the usual crew of fops and flaneurs scurrying for cover, clearing the streets for Zen and his quarry. By the church of San Bartolomeo the two men paused briefly to say good night. One turned up the street leading to the Rialto bridge while the other, with Zen in attendance, continued straight on towards Cannaregio.

Lengthening his stride, Zen gradually closed the gap between them, and when they reached the broad thoroughfare of the Strada Nova he made his move. Hearing footsteps close behind him, the man looked round. Shock and suspicion mingled in his expression as he recognized his pursuer. Then, as though by an intense effort of will, he smiled.