The Undrowned Child (42 page)

As Teo stood by the curtain, it tore her heart to see her parents dressed in deepest mourning. How pale their cheeks were! How dark the circles under their eyes!

She stepped out to center-stage, reaching out her hand towards them.

Before coming to the conference, Teo had tidied herself thoroughly, and herded her curls back into plaits. So now she strongly resembled the LOST GIRL posters.

At first, intent on their notes, neither Leonardo nor Alberta Stampara saw her approach. They were mystified when the other delegates suddenly rose to their feet, erupting into roars of delight and thunderous applause. They looked back in confusion at the drawing of the Vampire Eel, which seemed to have created such joyous excitement. Cries of horror and fear would have been much more appropriate.

“No!” shouted the scientists. “Look behind you!”

First Teo’s father and then her mother turned to see what exactly was causing such a sensation. Their faces drained to white.

Teo ran into their arms and stayed there a long time, until after the clapping and shouting had stopped, and everyone had dried their eyes, and said that surely the reappearance of Teodora Stampara must be a good omen for the saving of Venice.

Teodora Gasperin did not correct them.

A good omen? That was not scientist-talk, was it? In the emotion of the hour, even those scientists were human beings first.

“Teodora, darling, tell us what happened to you!”

Finally, Teo understood why Lussa had refused to explain how she got from her hospital bed to that grave in the park and what happened to her between the night of June 1 and the early morning of June 3. Now Teo was sincerely grateful for her loss of memory, and even more so for Lussa’s tactful failure to give an explanation, because it meant that she could look into her parents’ eyes as she declared, “Mamma, Papà, I have no idea what happened to me at the hospital. Or afterwards.”

Teo was interrupted before she had to grapple with more difficult explanations.

A young scientist burst into the hall, waving a vial of water in his hand and a broad smile painted all over his face.

“Tremendously good news!” he shouted, and Teo was thankful to see that all eyes turned from her to him.

The gathering of scientists was of the collective opinion that the tempest in the lagoon had reversed the dangerous decline of the city. The new measurements were showing quite unbelievably improved results now: Venice’s lagoon was cool and clean, more so than the untouched waters around a Pacific island. Salt levels were returning to normal. And the water was dropping down to its normal height with astonishing rapidity.

The city was filthy, cruelly damaged by the water, but officially saved.

The news spread fast to the mainland, where thousands of Venetians were waiting to hear whether their city had survived the storm. Within hours a huge re-migration had taken place. The streets were flooded, not with water, but with grateful Venetians, all looking at their mud-bathed city with loving eyes. On every corner, you could see people holding each other and weeping for joy. An army of Venetians with buckets and mops sloshed through the mud to clean up their streets.

The printing presses of the Gazzettino and the Nuova were silent, clogged up with a rich soup of machine oil and mud. So everyone seized on Signor Rioba’s bulletin, the only news in town. The Seldom Seen Press obliged one last time.

As you shovel your stinking silt, Venetians, remember who let this happen to ye. Who told ye there was nothing to worry about? Yes! Your great steaming heap of a mayor. Wrapped that one up tight, didn’t he just? Didn’t know shucks about nuffink, did he? Ye’ll have your chance with him yet, Venetians. Election Day is coming.…

By the time the Venetians returned to their city, the Hotel degli Assassini was back to its modern-day dimensions, but with a new coat of paint on all the walls. The winged lions all had their benign expressions back. Some were a little chipped from the battle, but their paws rested on open books, for Venice was no longer at war. The stone wells stopped gushing hot water. Everyone was relieved, for once, to see a sparkling High Water flood into San Marco, the lowest point in the city, at the natural phase of the moon. Not so many people were happy to see the rats coming home.

An impromptu Carnevale broke out all over town. Everyone was celebrating the saving of Venice—both the ordinary human beings and the mythical creatures. In their party clothes and masks, the Nereids and Wild-but-Good Faeries could mix unnoticed with the human beings. There were processions down the Grand Canal and balls in San Marco. The mayor returned to Venice to take credit for the city’s salvation, not that anyone believed him. Standing on a ribboned podium, he announced that the Campanile would be rebuilt exactly where it was and how it was. No one was listening.

Excited children stripped to their underwear and dived into the Grand Canal. There were no more sharks in the cold, clear water.

“Oh my, what inelegance!” remarked Teo, watching the excited boys and girls leaping in and out of the water in their cami-knickers and vests. Then she laughed out loud at herself. “How awful. I sound just like Renzo. What a snob!”

There was only one more magical happening that needed to be accounted for by the mayor and the minister for tourism and decorum.

A week after the storm, the column of infamy, with its inscription about Bajamonte Tiepolo’s crimes, mysteriously turned up in the Campiello del Remer. The reappearance of the column after six centuries inspired the newly working newspaper presses to print the story of the Tiepolo conspiracy again, reminding the Venetians of their narrow escape from disaster. The minister for tourism and decorum, in an interview, actually compared the defeat of Il Traditore in 1310 with the city’s recent deliverance from a watery peril.

Reading the slightly muddy Gazzettino at the hotel breakfast table, Teo grinned from ear to ear. If only the pompous old fool knew how very accurate his metaphor really was!

The minister mused on and on about the column of infamy and its inexplicable provenance. “Vandals do the strangest things. However, all our tourists shall love the new attraction. People who’ve been before—why, it’s an excuse to come back!”

Renzo, reading the Gazzettino at his favorite bar, scoffed to himself, “Just what we need, more foreigners.” Then he stopped himself. “That’s not quite fair. Teo was a sort of foreigner.…”

When Teo opened The Key to the Secret City in bed that night, just out of habit, a single word wrote itself on the first page: Grazie.

When she closed the book, Lussa’s smiling face, now lightly gilded with the inscriptions of the Spell Almanac, winked at her one last time, and whispered, “Fair Winds, Teodora. Steady as You go!”

a beautiful afternoon, June 17, 1899

There was one more thing that Teo wanted to do. She could not leave Venice without saying thank you to someone whom she had not even met, or at least whom she could not remember at all. Renzo agreed to come with her when she told him, “I don’t know if I can do this on my own.”

At the House of the Spirits, Teo asked permission to visit the old nuns. She had bought a bouquet of flowers and dressed as carefully as she knew how. The caretaker smiled and waved her in.

Teo and Renzo wandered through the gardens, so different during the day—so delightfully lush and peaceful. The ghosts, of course, had gone to their reward. The old nuns sat quietly on benches in the sun, knitting and embroidering handkerchiefs. As Teo passed by they gave her such sweet smiles that they could almost have been nutritious.

It was the oldest nun of all who first recognized Teo. She was almost transparent with age, her face whiter than sugar, her skin creased like old silk. But such beauty shone out of her that Renzo bowed as if she was a great lady.

“Teodora,” said the nun in a soft, crackling voice. “It does us a wonder of good to see you again. Come sit with me a moment.”

She drew Teo down to a bench and stroked her forehead with a papery hand.

“Did you know me when I was a baby?” Teo asked simply.

“Yes, I did, Teodora, I did. You were put into my arms first of all when you arrived. You were cold and limp, and we thought you might be dead. But I warmed you with my own skin and cuddled you until you came back to life.”

Both Teo and the nun were now weeping unashamedly, and Renzo was trying very hard not to kick the nearest bush with embarrassment. If he didn’t do something, he might start crying himself.

“Thank you, Sister,” wobbled Teo, pushing the flowers into the nun’s hands.

“It was not just myself, child. All the nuns wanted to hold you. We passed you round and round like a precious parcel. Whenever it was my turn, it was so very hard to give you up.”

Shyly, Teo took the old nun’s delicate hand in hers and squeezed it. The gentlest pressure answered her back.

“And we prayed for your parents and your family too.”

“Did I go to their funeral?”

“Yes, I carried you myself.”

“Did I …” Teo made a huge gulp. “Did I cry?”

“No, you seemed to be greatly occupied with some deep thoughts. You stared intently at the priest who gave the service.”

“She was probably seeing his words.” Renzo’s voice was not quite steady.

“Yes, I have heard that you have that talent, little Teodora, as your parents did. And that it has served you well.”

“And served Venice well,” sobbed Renzo, abandoning any pretense of not crying.

“And who is your sentimental young friend?” the nun asked Teo.

“He is Renzo, the Studious Son of the old prophecy, and I could never have done anything for Venice without him.”

“Something in my eye,” muttered Renzo.

Teo smiled at the nun. “Did I stay long with you here at the House of the Spirits?”

“A few months. You were already talking when you left, though not walking. You were rather precocious that way. We had a suspicion that you were teaching yourself to read when we weren’t looking.”

The nun looked deeply into Teo’s eyes. “There is something I always asked myself. Did we do the right thing, to give you up and send you away from Venice? It hurt us so badly, and yet it must have been for the best, because you are still alive.”

Teo asked, “Would you mind … could I possibly touch your heart?”

“You are also a Lettricedel-cuore, dear child? Of course you may.” The nun placed Teo’s hand on her snowy habit.

“Ahh,” gasped Teo, for the feeling in her fingers was like the most exquisite perfume flooding through the veins of her hand. “You followed your heart,” she told the nun, “when you sent me away, and your heart is completely pure. Yes, yes, yes—you did the right thing.”

“Now,” said the nun. “There is someone else here who has been longing to talk to you. He was forced to counterfeit his own death before the forces of evil made it a reality. Another of our number, the circus-master, Sargano Alicamoussa, provided some animal blood to make the death seem more real. Then we hid Professor Marìn here. And now he has become our archivist and librarian. We Incogniti must keep our identities secret even from one another, so we could not tell you that he was safe—until now.”

She waved to an open doorway.

Professor Marìn, the old bookseller from Miracoli, walked out of the House of the Spirits, smiling broadly and holding out his arms to Teo.

“Come, dear child,” he said. “I have many things to tell the daughter of Marta and Daniele Gasperin.”

an amicable breakfast, June 18, 1899

“Shall you be sorry to leave Venice, pet?” Teo’s father asked. Her adoptive parents were sipping their last coffees on the terrace of the Hotel degli Assassini, from which the Tiepolo-colored curtains had now vanished. Fresh white muslin and the Venetian flag fluttered in the breeze instead. Everyone was gathered there for a final breakfast before their return to Naples.

Teo wanted to say, “Unbearably sad, because it is where I come from. Where my friends Professor Marìn and the nuns live. Where my real family is buried …”

But she had promised herself not to tell her Naples parents what she now knew. Legally speaking, anyway, she would still be in their care for another seven years. In seven years she would be able to decide what to do with her own life, and where to live. Then she would come back to Venice, go to Ca’ Foscari University and study the history and language of the city, until she knew just as much as Renzo. Well, almost as much as Renzo. Even with her photographic memory, she would probably never catch him up.

Seven years! It seemed impossible, but she had already lived eleven years away from Venice.

Teo was concerned to see Maria looking miserable. Maria’s parents had thrown away all the jewels and scarves. There would be no more glittering gifts from Bajamonte Tiepolo. Teo complimented Maria on her simple cotton dimity dress. Maria looked like a pretty girl, not a girl masquerading as a fully grown coquette. In the past days Maria had also given up her affected lisp. The fashionable crowd at school would not recognize their former little princess.

“They’ll jeer and talk about her behind their hands if they see her like this,” worried Teo.

Nor did Maria try to flirt with Renzo when he came to say goodbye, and to be introduced to all the parents. He joined them at the breakfast table, looking a little awkward in his white shirt and a pair of not-very-new flannel trousers.

Teo jabbed him in the ribs. “You look rather casual, Renzo!”

He blushed fiercely, muttering, “There are more things in life than looking perfect all the time.”

Teo’s father joked, “So you’re the young chap who’s swept our daughter off her feet.”

“Papà!” agonized Teo. But Renzo picked up Teo’s hand and bent over it for a moment, not quite kissing it. He executed this gesture without embarrassment and with a touching amount of dignity. His hand felt warm and light, holding hers.

The hotel manager, who was passing by, commented, “Ecco—a lesson for everyone. A true Venetian always has a lord’s manners, signori. This is how a Venetian gentleman greets a respected lady of his acquaintance.”

“A respected lady,” whispered Maria with awe. “So elegant!”