Joseph Kanon - Alibi

“You see the tear on her cheek?” Claudia said, pointing. “Mary crying. It’s unique.”

We studied the Apostles for a while, then walked slowly back to the west wall and the big mosaic of the Last Judgment, the afterlife arranged in tiers, a medieval sorting out, with hellfire on the bottom. Dying wasn’t enough for the early Christians-there had to be punishment too. Claudia stood before it with her arms folded across her chest, working her way down through the levels of grace to the figures on the lower right, engulfed in flames.

“So this is what happens after,” she said. “But they didn’t want the Jews to wait. They burned us here.”

The chill of the old stone followed us out into the piazza, not quite as sunny as before. We took one of the footpaths leading away from the canal, waving to the GIs, who were still waiting on the dock for the Burano boat. “Why are they laughing?”

“They think we’re going parking.”

“Parking?”

“Kissing. In a car. People drive somewhere to be alone.”

“America,” she said. “Everyone has a car.”

“Will you like that? You’ll have to learn to drive.” An unexpected thought, jarring, because I had never imagined us beyond Venice, anywhere outside her room.

“Drive,” she said, maybe jarred too. “Here, no one does.”

Except Gianni’s brother, I thought. Who had actually pushed him off the road? Maybe a connection. Something to ask Rosa.

We passed the farm with the dog, then turned onto a path that led down to the water, a cleared patch of dry land that looked back through the reeds to the campanile. In summer, lovers would come with picnics. Now we pulled our jackets tight against the wind.

It was only after his brother’s death that Gianni had made the house calls to Villa Raspelli. Younger, but head of the family, Father Luca had said. His brother’s keeper.

“So you’re thinking again,” she said. “Why is this so important to you?”

“I don’t want to be wrong.” I turned to her. “Then it’s just personal-something I did for myself.”

She stopped in the path. “He was trying to kill you.”

I looked over the reeds. His eyes, hesitating, about to stop, then the slippery stairs, my hand underneath, getting cold as I held him there, my breath ragged.

“What?” she said.

“No, I wanted to do it,” I said finally. “I wanted to do it.”

She came over to me. “You know what he was.”

“If he was. I was wrong about him and my mother. He was never after her money, never. Anyway, it turns out there isn’t any.”

“No?” she said, then started to smile, raising her hand to brush at my hair. “So it’s lucky I found the lace shop.”

“I was wrong,” I said, not letting go.

She brushed my hair again. “It doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t change anything.”

“Of course it matters.”

“Why? So you can blame yourself? And then what? For you it’s like the mosaic.” She tossed her head toward the church. “Always a judgment. There is no judgment. No one is judging. No one is watching.” She stopped, dropping her hand. “No one is watching.”

“Then we have to,” I said.

“Oh, like he did,” she said, annoyed, moving away. “Play God. Of course, a doctor, they’re used to that, aren’t they? Then he plays it with my father. Bah.” She waved her hand. “But that’s not enough for you. How guilty does he have to be? Before it’s all right?”

She walked to the end of the clearing where it was sunny and faced the water, using her back to put an end to the conversation. I went over to her, not saying anything.

“That’s Jesolo,” she said, pointing, meaning nothing, not expecting a response.

I took out my cigarettes and offered her one, waiting for her lead. But she seemed to enjoy the silence, turning her face to the sun, then squatting down to test the ground for dampness, sitting, and lying back. I sat down next to her.

“This is better. All week in the shop, never any sun,” she said.

I stretched out, leaning on my elbow to prop up my head as I looked at her.

“You don’t have to work there,” I said, going along. “I mean, with your English. They’re always looking for translators. Joe would hire you in a second.”

“For the army? No, not even yours. Not carabinieri either. Or police. No uniforms.” She glanced over. “I don’t work for the police. One of us is enough.”

I turned and lay on my back, squinting at the bright sky. In the distance was the faint sound of a boat’s motor, maybe the GIs’ vaporetto. “What’s wrong?” I said. “All week. It’s not Cavallini, not really. What?”

“I don’t know.” She paused. “I’m worried.”

“About what? I’m telling you, they don’t know.”

She shook her head. “Not that. It’s different between us. At first, it made us closer. And now, already we’re quarreling.” She turned to me. “You can’t change it. What it is. You want to make it better. Nothing makes it better.”

“I know.”

“But you keep thinking, maybe. It’s in your head.” She lay on her back again.

“Nothing’s different between us. I just want to know about him, that’s all. It’s important.”

She closed her eyes, another way of turning her back, and said nothing for a few minutes, then sighed, not much louder than the moving reeds.

“They have sun in Georgia?” she said. “Where that soldier lives?”

“Nothing but.”

“So he’s happy there. But not you,” she said, thinking aloud. “You don’t want to go home.”

“I’m happy here.”

“No. Something else. Those men on the ship-in the film, remember? So excited. It’s over for them.” She turned, opening her eyes. “But not for you.”

I said nothing, remembering Rosa wagging her finger between us, both of us still with files.

“Maybe it takes an ocean, and then it’s gone,” she said. “Oh, I want-”

I looked over at her. “What?”

“What? What do I want?” she said to herself. “I want to be Joyce. The girl in the picture. Make curtains. Wait for the ship. Feed the baby.” She stopped, her voice drifting off. “Think how wonderful, not to know about any of it. Not any of it.”

“And that’s the life you want,” I said, teasing. “Joyce.”

“No.” She turned. “Anyway, I can’t. No babies. So that’s something you should know,” she said, her voice tentative, waiting for a response.

“Oh,” I said finally, trying to sound easy.

“Do you mind about that?”

“No.”

“No?”

Another pause, this time waiting for her.

“I got rid of it myself, in the camp. I knew that if he found out, he’d send me. And there was no one to help, so I did it myself. That’s why.”

I looked at her for a minute, not saying anything. Then she moved to brush off a blade of grass, pushing at her sleeve, and for an instant I saw Rosa’s arm again with its jagged patch of white. Visible scars, reminders. But what about the others, the ones you couldn’t see? Years of them, nobody unblemished now.

I reached over and touched her hand. “I don’t want Joyce.”

“So it’s lucky for me.” She closed her eyes. “But now there’s this. Maybe you enjoy it, being police. But it’s both of us they’ll catch. Why do you have to know?”

“I held him under, Claudia. Me. What if-?”

For a minute she didn’t say anything. Then she took a breath. “When it happened, I thought you did it for me. So they wouldn’t take me. I thought my heart would stop. Imagine, someone doing that for me. Everyone else wanted me dead, and you-” She moved her hand away and sat up. “But now it has to be something else, I don’t even know what. You can’t change what happened, whatever he was. Say you did it for me. Isn’t that enough?”