Alibi: A Novel (6 page)

“Inspector Cavallini? Sometimes they come to the hospital for help. Medical evidence.”

“Really?” my mother said. “Did you ever solve anything?”

Gianni smiled. “Not yet. Shall we go?” He leaned over to wrap my mother’s fur around her shoulder.

I got up. Dizzy for a second, I pressed against the table for support.

“Are you all right?” he asked, a doctor’s voice.

I nodded. “Just a drink on an empty stomach. I forgot I haven’t eaten all day.”

“Too busy looking at art,” my mother said, amusing herself.

The dining room at the Monaco was formal and starchy—waiters in black tie, silver serving trolleys, soft, flattering lights. Gianni made a pleasant fuss ordering us schie and polenta to start, a winter specialty, then took his time with the wine list. I had a cigarette and looked around the room—a light crowd, off-season, but dressed for
an evening out, elegant, as if they, like the quails on the serving cart, had somehow been preserved in aspic. The room was almost as warm as Harry’s, immune to fuel shortages. There were arrangements of winter branches, like abstracts of flowers, ice buckets, the smell of perfume. At one point I noticed Gianni smiling at my mother, and I followed his eyes, wanting just for a minute to see what he did and realized that for them the room was somehow erotic. Not cheap hotels and tepid baths, worn sheets and bare skin, nothing that had made my afternoon exciting. For them the furs and perfume and rich food were part of what sex had become. He was looking at money.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” I said, drawing their attention back to the table. “Is he an inspector now?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And he has been—I mean, he consulted you on cases. So that means he was working for the Germans.”

“Technically. At the end. We were an occupied country.”

“But he’s police. Not a doctor or a waiter or something. Police. Why hasn’t he been thrown out?”

“For doing what?”

“Enforcing German laws. And before that—”

“Fascist laws? Yes, you can say it. Well, who knows if he enforced them?” He tasted the wine, the waiter hovering. “Yes, very nice.” We said nothing as the waiter poured.

“But if he didn’t, what makes you think he’ll enforce new ones now?”

Gianni smiled. “Well, it’s a question, yes? But you see, you make the problem for yourself. I don’t expect him to enforce them—not too many anyway. Just the ones we need to live. The others, we bow, we tip our hat, we ignore. Shall we make a toast? To happier times?”

“Yes,” my mother said, raising her glass.

We clinked glasses—celebrating what?

“You’re still troubled by this?” Gianni said, looking at me.

“But if he was a police officer, he must have been a Fascist. I mean, in the party.”

Gianni nodded. “It was required. But what was in his heart, I
don’t know. People do things to survive. So we must give them the benefit of the doubt.”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” my mother said lightly.

Gianni smiled. “Well, innocent, maybe that goes too far.” He looked at me. “I understand what you mean. But how can I explain it to you? To live under—you know the word tyranny is from the Latin
tyrannus
. So we have known how to live with this for a long time. You bend. Maybe you think we bend too much, but we look at history and it tells us, the important thing is to survive.” He opened his hand, gesturing. “And we did. Now with this good wine. In this beautiful city. All still here, still beautiful. It’s the Germans who have gone. We survived them too. For us it’s a kind of strength, to bend.” He paused. “When it’s inevitable.”

“Like
The House of Levi
,” I said, thinking to myself.

“What?” my mother said.

“It was
The Last Supper
. He changed the title because the pope didn’t like it.”

“The Inquisition didn’t like it,” Gianni said. “More Nazis. Torture. Burnings. Worse, sometimes. Castrating people. You learn how to bend with a history like ours.”

“But that was a question of belief.”

“You think Goebbels didn’t believe? Any of them? Right up to the end they believed in something. I don’t know what—their own hate, maybe. And when the Inquisition lit the fires under people, what did they believe? To save them. By killing them. Compared to the Church, the Nazis were amateurs. At least the Nazis didn’t ask you to think they were right to do it. They didn’t care what you thought.” He studied his wine. “Forgive me, no more speeches. But your painting—does it matter what it’s called? So long as it’s beautiful?”

“No.”

“You see, an Italian answer. And Veronese, you know he was also being a tiny bit naughty. Putting all that in, the dwarfs, the drinking. A sacred scene. He knew what they would think. But that’s Italian too, maybe, to tweak the nose—that’s right? tweak?—of the Church. You can do that if you bend. The Germans never understood that—they
never bend and they destroy themselves. Why?” He shook his head. “Northern people. Sometimes they are all a mystery.”

“All of us?” my mother said, flirting.

“Oh, you, certainly. A great mystery. But that’s because you’re a woman. All women are mysteries.” A stage courtliness, the two of them practically winking at each other.

The polenta arrived, covered in tiny brown shrimp from the lagoon.

“Funny about Bertie knowing him,” my mother said. “He was careful with him, did you notice? I’ll bet it wasn’t half as easy as he makes out. During the war.”

“No, not for anyone,” Gianni said. “Of course, Bertie has many friends. I don’t think it was dangerous for him.”

“Irish, my foot,” my mother said, laughing to herself. She glanced over at Gianni, her face soft. Not just a dinner companion, someone to take charge of the wine list.

“In Germany, you were a soldier?” Gianni said, keeping the conversation going.

“G-2. Intelligence. We investigated Germans suspected of Nazi activity.”

“Ah, that explains your interest in Cavallini. One investigator to another, eh? You want to compare methods?” He was smiling.

“Ours was mostly pushing paper around.”

He laughed. “So was his, I think. But it must have been difficult, yes? Surely the real Nazis would lie. So how do you know?”

“We don’t always. That’s what makes it difficult.”

“Impossible, maybe.”

“Maybe. We still have to try.”

“But why? The war is over.”

“Their crimes aren’t.”

“Ah. A passion for justice,” he said, nodding, a paternal indulgence. “Maybe you’ll be a lawyer.”

“Maybe.”

“Oh darling, really?” my mother said. “I haven’t wanted to ask. You’ve seemed—at such loose ends.”

“Don’t rush,” Gianni said. “To be this age, it’s wonderful. You don’t have to decide anything. Not yet. Not like us, eh?” he said to my mother. “We have to hurry with everything now.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Ah, you see,” he said, ostensibly to me, “how she makes fun of me.” His hand moved slightly toward hers and just grazed it.

I looked away. “Did you always want to be a doctor?” I said.

“Well, for me it was different. A family tradition. One of us was for medicine and one for—well, to carry the name. But he died, so it’s the end. I have only a daughter.”

“You’re married?” I said, not expecting this.

“I was. She died.”

“I’m sorry. Where is your daughter?”

“Bologna. At the university.”

“Medicine?”

He smiled. “No, an
avvocato
. Another one with a passion for justice. How did it happen?” he said to my mother. “To have such children?”

“Think of
theirs
.”

“Would you like to see the hospital?” Gianni said to me, not an offhand invitation, an obvious effort to get closer.

“The hospital?”

“For the architectural interest. It was once the Scuola di San Marco. Near Zanipolo. The library has the most beautiful ceiling in all of Venice.”

“Yes, I’d like that,” I said, the only possible answer.

“Even the hospitals,” my mother said, a little dreamy, finding romance in everything now.

“The joke is that you can see San Michele from the wards—the cemetery island. So they say the doctors finish you and the priests at San Lazzaro bless you and the boat outside takes you away. One operation, door to door.” He winked at my mother. “You see how practical we can be.”

And so it went, through the grilled branzino, the radicchio from Trevisio, the little cups of coffee and the shared plate of biscotti—light,
aimless conversation meant to make us easy with one another, a kind of wooing. My mother was happy, enjoying herself, her eyes shiny, catching the light the way her earrings did, in tiny glints. She made jokes, laughed at his, until the table seemed as carefree as one of those afternoons at the Lido. Gianni looked at her with a fondness that surprised and then disconcerted me. And I, who was the object of the wooing, sat wondering why they were bothering. What did it matter what I thought, if they wanted to make eyes at each other and play at being twenty again? What could be nicer? A season in Venice with something to talk about later, over drinks at the Plaza. An old friend, not somebody she’d picked up in a hotel lounge. With a daughter at the university. That respectable. What business was it of mine? The truth was that I didn’t want to think about them at all. My mind was elsewhere, back at the station hotel, in that perfectly hermetic world of sex, where no one else existed. In the warm dining room, with my body loose and tired, all I wanted was my own life.

When we got up to go to the lounge for brandy, I took it as my cue to leave. Gianni would want to sit with my mother in the dim light and look across the water to Salute, letting the evening settle around them. I imagined a kiss tasting of cognac, a last cigarette, low voices—everything the lounge was meant for, what you paid for. But when I suggested going, he insisted I stay for a nightcap. For some reason it took a while to order—everything seemed to have slowed down, even the waiters—and then we drank without saying much. There were only a few other people and a piano near the door, played so softly it seemed the pianist too was logy with food and drink. Gianni fixed a time next week for me to go to the hospital. He sat back with a cigarette, looking contented. Outside the hotel, gondolas with different-colored tarps bobbed on the tide. I slouched, exhausted. There was nothing to do now but wait it out.

“Such a surprise, darling. A lawyer. So sensible.”

“It’s just an idea,” I said, but she waved her hand, brushing it away, and I saw that she hadn’t actually been talking to me but to some unseen audience.

I looked over, hearing the abstract, self-amused talk of drink. My mother, like all her friends, had a strong head, but it had been a long evening since the first Prosecco, through Gianni’s special bottle of Soave and the vin santo at table. Her words were still precise, but everything else about her seemed to have grown a little blurry. Even her lipstick was no longer fresh, faint at the lines. She was nestled into the corner of the settee, her fur draped around her, smiling, in love with the world.

“It’s late,” I said. “We should go.”

“Oh, Adam,” she said, teasing. “So sensible.”

“If you’re tired,” Gianni said to me. “Don’t worry, I will take her home. She’s happy here, you see.”

“Maybe too happy,” I said to him, not loud enough for her to hear.

“There is no such thing as too happy,” Gianni said mildly. “I will see that she gets home.” Firmly, a dismissal. “Can I call you a taxi?”

“No, that’s all right,” I said, getting up. “Thanks for dinner.”

“Oh, you’re going,” my mother said, evidently a new idea to her. She leaned forward to be kissed.

I bent over for a quick peck, and as I stood back I stopped, suddenly dismayed, seeing once again what Gianni must be seeing, not a carefree girl this time but a woman slack with drink, pliable, draped against the couch, her soft white throat tilted up. What he’d waited for all evening, what came after brandy. Did he take a room here, part of the Monaco service? My heart sank a little as I looked at her, a physical drop. When had this happened, this fading into someone else? While I’d been away, not paying attention. And each year she’d become a little more vulnerable, until all it took was a kind word and table manners, someone like Gianni.

I looked at him, half expecting a leer, something predatory, but he was smiling blandly, at ease with himself. What he must be used to, another of the lonely women who floated through Venice, away from home, a little drunk, easy. Without daughters at university and family names. Without anything, except money to buy a little pleasure, an evening out. This one had come with a son—an inconvenience,
but now he’d been charmed too, taken care of, and he was leaving. Would they come back to Dorsoduro? Appear at coffee in the morning without even a blush, all of us grown up?

For a second I stood there, trying somehow to put myself between them. It’s not what she is, I wanted to say to him, but wasn’t it? Isn’t it what she wanted too? Who had actually paid for dinner? I couldn’t remember there being a bill, the sort of discreet arrangement a lady might make. But how do you protect people? And after all, what was the harm? One of those things. Unless it wasn’t. I looked down at her again, wondering what bargain she was making with herself. A fling? But maybe she hadn’t even thought about it, just followed an impulse, the way she’d come to a city where she could read menus and street signs but whose real language was unknown to her.

“Darling, you say you’re going, then you don’t go,” she said, laughing.

I smiled, shaking my head. “Just thinking.”

“Oh, god.”

I held up my hand. “All right, I’m off. Don’t be too late,” I said, imitating her.

“You don’t have to worry,” Gianni said without a hint of guile. “She’s in safe hands.”

The next day I found a hotel near the Rialto with cheap off-season rates and a side view of the canal. The old-fashioned radiator in the room actually produced heat, a luxury that winter, so I took the room for a week, using a chunk of my separation pay. Not what the army had intended, precisely, but in fact the room did finally separate me from the war. Every afternoon we sealed ourselves away behind the fake damask walls, too absorbed in each other to imagine anything outside.