The Undrowned Child (18 page)

Renzo continued to stare at Maria, who was making great big eyes at him. Renzo bowed like a courtier and formally requested permission to see “you delightful young ladies” back to the hotel. All the way, Teo endured Maria’s squeals and giggles, wondering how Renzo could be so blind as to respond so gallantly to them. Maria was a Napoletana—not a Venetian. Why was Renzo treating her like a princess? Maria’s inane flirting rattled Teo’s nerves. At the door to the hotel, Maria announced that she was going inside for her “beauty sleep.”

“Not needed at all!” purred Renzo with an approving smile.

Maria gave Teo a half-lidded triumphant glance that announced I got him.

Renzo bowed. “It has been the greatest of pleasures to meet you, Signorina Maria. Naturally I trust we can count on your discretion. Given the delicacy of the situation, it would be advisable not to mention to anyone that you have, as it were, encountered young Teodora. I’m confident you comprehend perfectly.…”

“What?”

Teo practically snarled, “Sorry, Maria, Renzo doesn’t speak baby-talk. Let me translate. You’re not to tell anyone you’ve seen me. Did that sink in?”

Renzo looked daggers at Teo and beamed at Maria. “If you would be so kind, dear girl.”

“Who? Dora? I’ve forgotten her already! That’s not hard!”

Maria gave Renzo a coquettish wink and flounced indoors.

As soon as Maria was gone, Teo—although she’d sworn that she would deal with this in a cool, collected manner—simply could not stop herself.

“How could you?” she hissed. “Carrying on so disgracefully with Maria! She’s not a great lady, and you’re certainly not a courtier. Not only is she mixed up with Bajamonte Tiepolo but she’s nothing more than a stupid flirt. With the inner life of a hairbrush, or maybe a comb …”

Teo did not stop for breath. There was so much to spill, so many incidents, so many slights in those eleven long years of being forced into Maria’s company because of the friendship of their parents. At the end of her recital, Teo felt empty but also somehow dirty and ashamed, even though it had been Maria whose character and intellect she had just torn to pieces.

Renzo met her outburst with silence.

“Well?” she challenged, leaning back against a lamppost with her arms folded. “Do you disagree with me?”

Renzo looked astonished. “Oh, Teo, I’m no more captivated by Maria than you are.”

Teo’s face blazed like a sunset. She was grateful for the cover of darkness.

“Though clearly she’s not such a consuming subject for me, ahem! Don’t you see? We have to keep Maria ‘sweet.’ We don’t want her running to Bajamonte Tiepolo, to tell him about her two friends wandering the town at night, do we? Given the prophecy, I’d say her friend Il Traditore might be quite interested to hear of a pair of children, an orphan girl and a rather clever, that is to say, studious boy.…

“And before I, er, worked on her, she was also threatening to tell your parents that she’d seen you,” Renzo continued in his lecturing voice. “Your parents would be devastated. They would think you’d been playing some kind of cruel game of hide-and-seek. By being polite to Maria, I’ve persuaded her to promise not to tell them either. Now, isn’t that better than the alternative?”

Teo was forced to admit that Renzo had been clever. But a sliver of leftover resentment made her say, “Still, aren’t Maria’s clothes unbearably ridiculous?”

Renzo surprised her. “At least she makes an effort with her appearance. It may be misguided, but an effort is always appreciated here.”

Teo looked down on her damp dress, crumpled pinafore and scuffed shoes. Remnants of seaweed bandage trailed from her bloodstained leg. Her hair was surely standing on end: her curls always frizzed up when she swam. For the second time she noticed that Renzo, even a little chewed up by sharks, wet and exhausted, still had a kind of elegance in his appearance.

Renzo said benevolently, “Well, if you’re to be a proper Veneziana now, there are some things you must learn, Teo. We Venetians hate the way tourists wear seaside-holiday clothes in our churches and museums. Men walking around with their cravats untied, as if they were at a bar in a seedy port.”

Teo protested, “But some people cannot afford nice clothes. You can’t be such a snob. Just because someone doesn’t dress well doesn’t mean that they’re Venice’s enemy.”

“It’s a question of respect! Look at how Venice dresses for us! So beautiful, every day, every hour. We Venetians try to keep up appearances. There’s so few of us now that it is even more important. We’ve lost half our citizens in the last fifty years.”

“If they love it so much, then why are so many Venetians leaving?”

“Love her so much. Venice is always referred to in the feminine, Teo. You must learn that now.” Renzo sighed. Educating Teo to be a proper Venetian clearly seemed an enormous job of work to him.

Teo persisted, “So why are the people abandoning her?”

“It breaks their hearts. But now the salt is eating the ground floors of the buildings, so you just can’t live in the cheaper housing. It’s too bad. The damp gave my father bronchitis.… The steam ferries drench the gondoliers ten times a day.”

As if to reinforce his point, at that moment a gondola passed by on the other side of the canal, and the gondolier gave a hacking cough into a white handkerchief.

Renzo flinched but continued, “Even young people get rheumatic illnesses. Listen.…” He stretched out his arms and turned them around. His shoulder joints clicked loudly.

“Oh! Does that hurt?”

“Not yet. But so many of the real Venetians, who stay on, grow ill. It’s like a tax on their health. And diseases spread like wildfire here, because we live so close together. The bubonic plague killed a third of the population. But no one wanted to leave.”

Renzo wrinkled his nose. A whiff of something rotten had floated in off the canal. Teo decided it was safer not to remark upon it. Renzo might take it as an insult to Venice. Instead, she exclaimed, “So if you are loyal to Venice, you’ll suffer for her? Even the bubonic plague?”

Renzo said warmly, “Teo, you are …” Then he shoved his hands in his pockets. He pulled out his hand with a wry expression; it was still full of gravel from their fall in the garden of the House of the Spirits. He tossed the stones in the canal.

So deep were they in conversation that neither Renzo nor Teo noticed that, just where the pebbles had fallen, the water was starting to stir in circular motions. Behind Renzo’s back one of the striped poles began to quiver. Then it flexed upwards and slowly spiraled down into the water. The foul stench immediately disappeared.

Teo offered shyly, “I would suffer for Venice, if I had to. If I could help her.”

A splashing noise drew Teo’s eyes to a sudden blur of movement behind him.

“Renzo!” she screamed. But it was too late. The tentacle that had pretended to be a palina surged out of the water and wrapped itself around Renzo’s left leg. A second, more slender feeler slid forth to take his neck. Renzo toppled over, screamed and pulled at his throat, around which the living noose was tightening. The two tentacles started to drag him towards the water.

Renzo could not utter a word, but his agonized eyes implored Teo for help. She threw herself on the ground and wedged her own ankles around the lamppost, at the same time grabbing Renzo’s right leg and clinging with all her might.

“Take my arm!” she cried. His trembling hand reached and gripped her elbow.

The larger tentacle was thicker than Teo’s waist, and powerfully muscled. But it was not expecting resistance. Or attack.

With her free hand, Teo pulled The Key to the Secret City out of her pinafore and struck out again and again with the book’s sharp corners. The small tentacle recoiled and slid back into the water. The larger one released its grip for a moment, and then grabbed the fabric of Renzo’s trousers at the ankle. This was its mistake. With a retching noise, the flannel came away to the knee, and Renzo kicked himself free and rolled over on his back.

Teo dealt one final blow to the striped tentacle. This time the corner of the book pierced the slimy skin, and a reeking ooze of yellow and black slime exploded over Renzo’s shin, bare from where the fabric had torn away. Renzo screamed as his skin fizzed and smoked, as if acid had been thrown on his leg.

But the tattered tentacle at last withdrew back into the water.

Renzo, barely conscious, lay on the paving, gasping shallow breaths. Teo dragged him back to the lamppost and propped him up against it. She ran into the hotel and snatched a jug of water from the deserted kitchen. Back by the canal she rinsed the slime off Renzo’s leg, revealing three angry raised blisters, each the size of a small egg. Her own lip burned; a drop of the stinking viscera had splashed onto her mouth. She could taste its rottenness. She upended the jug over her face, so the dregs of the water washed away every trace of it. Then she spat repeatedly into the canal.

Renzo spluttered back to life and into tears of unashamed pain and relief. Teo quietly wiped his eyes with the corner of her pinafore, and held his hand until his sobs subsided.

“You saved my life,” he whispered eventually. He did not let go of her hand.

“I owed you for the sharks. Does it still hurt?”

“Less.”

Teo knew he was lying. She asked, “Do you think you can walk?”

Renzo clambered to his knees, with a brave, false smile. “Look at me!” he grimaced, pointing to his ripped trousers. “After my great speech on Venetian elegance, I’ve turned out a very poor example, haven’t I? Well, must get myself home and deal with this shambles,” he added, with a brightness that did not deceive Teo for a moment.

“Shall I come with you? You can lean on me.”

“I can walk perfectly well.” Renzo took a few steps, wincing.

“You’re limping!”

“I am not. I’m just a little tired. Good night, Teo. Or I mean good morning, I suppose. We’ll meet at the usual place? Then the Archives, yes?”

She nodded. Renzo walked normally until he reached the edge of the courtyard, when he thought he was out of her sight. Then he sagged, and she saw his shoulders shaking. And finally he limped away, slowly and awkwardly.

She slipped inside the hotel and up to her room and rinsed the blood out of her clothes.

Then she washed and combed her hair. And thoughtfully looked through her armoire for a fresh pinafore and some rather tidier clothes to wear to the Archives later that day.

June 8, 1899

Teo woke suddenly with a high temperature and a streaming nose. The sore spot on her lip throbbed and burned. She couldn’t help wondering if she had caught something from the entrails of the tentacle—perhaps she had swallowed a drop of that stinking slime? The very notion brought on a wave of nausea. Meanwhile, the water from her swim in the lagoon had got inside her ears and they echoed like a cave.

“No, it’s just a cold,” she told herself. When she’d thought she was dead, at least she had not caught any human colds.

She dressed quickly and hurried over to Maria’s room. Much as it irked her, she knew she should reinforce Renzo’s flattery from last night. But the door was locked, and her frantic whispers raised no answer.

In the dining room, Teo watched her parents eating their miserable, rushed breakfast. They were going to the gathering of scientists: she could see that from their satchels. Of course they could not spend all their time looking for their daughter.

Teo guessed, “They must be beginning to believe I am dead. It would be just their way to try to work themselves to distraction.”

Teo felt doubly guilty. Her absence was causing all this pain—not that she could do anything about that. But it also made her uncomfortable that she now knew who her real parents were, and who she was herself. And even if she could speak to her adoptive parents now, she could not talk of Daniele and Marta Gasperin, not without hurting them terribly.

She followed them out of the dining room, listened to them urge the manager to send a messenger if even the smallest piece of news came in about Teo.

“Even a false alarm,” said her father.

“Even a rumor,” whispered her mother.

Teo climbed up the stairs back to her bedroom and lay on the bed. A dry pain seared her throat and she snuffled pathetically. A cold seemed almost a joke after all the danger she had passed through. But it was a tiring joke. Gradually her eyes grew heavier.

Well after nightfall she woke again, her throat on fire and her head thumping. A wistful memory came to her, of that delicious seaweed cocoa down in the cavern. Consulting the wall-clock, she calculated that she had been asleep for at least twelve hours. Had Maria betrayed her yet? Or had she kept her promise to Renzo? She certainly wouldn’t do it for Teo’s sake.

Lying in her hot bed, Teo’s next thought was of her real parents, her dead parents, hidden in their leafy graves on San Michele. She pictured the family funeral and wondered if she had been there, perhaps held in the arms of one of the white-clad nuns from the House of the Spirits. Had she cried? Babies cry; they understand things.

Then there came into her mind an image of Renzo being dragged towards the canal by the two tentacles. Renzo! He had not hesitated to jump into the water to follow her. She had practically led him to a ghastly death in the jaws of a shark! Teo lurched out of bed. Renzo must have been wondering what had happened to her. She hurried downstairs to the kitchen in her petticoat. Who would see her to notice? After two jugs of water, she felt much better. She helped herself to a spoonful of honey for her sore throat.

Back in her room she washed and dressed with care, choosing her best skirt and a clean blue bodice, and even brushed her shoes. Running a comb through her hair, she experimentally changed the parting. She tried to look at herself through Renzo’s eyes: did she pass muster as a Venetian? She hoped so.

As she stole out of her room, she noticed light under Maria’s door. Muffled shouts leaked out into the corridor. She ran to put her ear to the door, and soon realized with horror what was going on.

Maria’s parents had finally noticed their daughter’s new slippers, jewels and scarves. Jumping to the worst conclusion, as was their wont, they had accused her of stealing and of being a superficial little girl, obsessed with fripperies and chasing boys.