Текст книги "Alibi"

Автор книги: Joseph Kanon

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“Stop it,” I said, taking her by the shoulders. Behind us a few passengers looked up, curious. A lovers’ quarrel. A thief with a coat. Nothing was what it was.

She twisted away. “Leave me alone. Go back to America. Take him. A souvenir of Venice. No one will know him there. Ha. He thought no one would know him here. We’re supposed to be dead. And then one comes back. They say that, you know? When you least expect it. A party. And here comes death, pointing the finger. So that’s me now. Brava. Oh, look at your face. You think I’m crazy. You don’t know anything about it. For you it’s all nice—kisses, La Fenice, Mama and her nice friend. Maybe it’s better not to know. To be so lucky—”

“Stop it,” I said calmly, holding her still.

She shook my hand off and gathered her coat. “I’m getting off.”

We had rounded the lower bend in the canal and were pulling into San Toma, the Rialto lights up ahead in the distance. I took her hand, holding it down.

“Sit. I want to know.”

“What?”

“What happened. Tell me about the nod.”

She looked at me, slightly puzzled.

“You said with a nod of his head. How?”

“In the hospital.”

“Your father was sick?”

“Yes, sick. Dying. But they didn’t want to wait. Why wait for God when you are God? The Jews weren’t dying fast enough for them.”

“Who?”

“Who. The Germans, their friends. They searched the hospitals. Sometimes there was an informer. Grini—you’ve heard of him? No. He used to help the SS. In the nursing home, even. They took them out on stretchers. But not this time. This time there was only your friend. He pointed out my father to them. ‘That one,’ he said, with the nod. ‘Over there.’ So the SS took him. You know how he knew? My father told me later. From medical school. They were both at medical school, so he knew him.”

“And you were there?”

She nodded.

“Did he point you out too?”

“No, I did. Myself. My father told them I was a neighbor, to protect me.” She paused. “Not his daughter. A visitor. Maybe they believed him, I don’t know. Maybe I could have walked out, hidden somewhere. But how could I do that? Just leave him? Sick. And they find you. In the end, always.”

“So you went with him.”

She nodded. “And all for nothing. When we got there, they looked at him—who wants a sick Jew? Let the Germans take care of him. So, another train. And I said—imagine how foolish—I’ll go too, someone has to take care of him. And they laughed. Don’t worry, you’ll go later. At that time the head would send only the hopeless cases. And the children. The Germans wanted everyone, but he kept the workers back. To save them, maybe to bargain later, I don’t know. Later everyone went. Unless you were special.” She stopped, then looked up. “So you see, it was for nothing. They just put him on another train. I always wondered, did he die on the train? He was so sick. He’s on the list at Auschwitz, but maybe he was dead when he got there, who knows? Nobody can tell me for sure. Nobody came back, not from that train. No one. That’s what he thought, none of us would come back. No one would know. But I know.”

We were passing under the high bridge, a dark space between the wavy lights on the water.

“And where do I see him? Meeting Mama. So I ruin her party. Oh, such behavior. Terrible. And she’s with a man like that. My god. She thinks she knows who he is. None of you know. What are you doing here, all of you?”

I said nothing, letting the words drift off, like vented steam. She lowered her head.

“You should go home.”

“No,” I said. “Not now.”

She looked at me, then turned to the window. “Oh, and that solves everything.”

“What do you want to solve?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. Nobody pays, do they? In a few days, it’ll be—gone. Gossip. ‘Poor man. I heard about that girl. She must have been crazy.’ And everything goes on. Nobody pays, not those people.”

“Yes, they do. In Germany people are starving. Everybody’s paying.”

“You think it’s the same? Hunger? No, they won’t pay, not the murderers. That’s how it is now. Everybody pays but the murderer. And here? Signora Mimi is planning a ball. And the murderer is going to marry a rich American.”

“No, he’s not. You think I’d let that happen?”

“Because of this?” She shook her head. “It won’t make any difference. He’ll explain. Some story. And she’ll believe him. And even if she doesn’t believe him, it’s better to forget, no? Put it in the past. Easier.”

“You’re not being fair.”

“I don’t have to be fair. He pointed at my father. At me. You be fair.”

“He didn’t point at you.”

“No,” she said quietly, “I did.” She looked out the window, then back at me. “So you can feel better when you see him at dinner. He didn’t point at me. Just the sick old Jew.”

“I’m not going to see him at dinner,” I said evenly. “Stop.”

“She’ll thank you for that,” Claudia said, and then she did stop, folding back into herself again, staring out the window. We were almost at San Stae.

“We should go back. I’ll take you home.”

“No, one more stop.”

“What’s there?”

“My old house. I thought I would never go there again, but tonight I want to see it.” She turned to me. “You want to see Venice? I’ll give you a tour. Not the Accademia. This one.”

I said nothing, pulled along by her mood, unsure where she was going now. No one else got off at San Marcuola, so we were alone in the empty square, near a dark silent church and a few streetlamps. She asked for a cigarette.

“You know, my father would never allow it, a woman smoking in the streets. And here, so close.”

We started walking north into Cannaregio, gloomy long canals and workers’ houses.

“He would have been ashamed. Imagine. Of this. Think of the rest of it, what it would have done to him.” Talking to the air, to herself.

We passed a shop with Hebrew lettering.

“This is the ghetto?”

“Almost. The edge. In the beginning you had to live on the island, where the campo is. It’s easy in Venice to separate people. One island, three bridges. At night they put chains across, to keep everybody in. Except sometimes they let a doctor out, if a Christian was sick. My father used to say, no wonder the Jews liked medicine. It got them out of the ghetto.”

“But that was the Middle Ages.”

“Until Napoleon,” she said, playing tour guide. “Then you could live anywhere. Of course, most people stayed here, nearby. It was what they were used to. You see the buildings at the end, how high? They ran out of space in the ghetto, so they had to build on top. Nowhere else do you see buildings like this—six stories, seven. So many stairs.”

We turned off the main street into the narrower Calle Farnese, where we were shielded even from moonlight, forced to rely on a corner light and a few slivers coming from the shuttered windows.

“Here,” she said, stopping about a block before the bridge. “You see up there? Those windows? My aunt lived on the other side. My mother’s sister. They used to talk across. Like cats, my father said.”

We stood there for a few minutes, looking at the house and seeing nothing—ordinary windows like all the others, a door flush with the street. Around us, a smell of canal debris and damp plaster. A cat ran past, then disappeared into a shadow. A drab back calle. But Claudia was seeing something else, her eyes fixed on the dark walls as if she were looking through them to the rooms inside, her own past. Family dinners. Homework. Radio. How different could it have been? Then the change—backdoor patients, unofficial. Curfews. Her aunt’s window shut tight.

“What happened to her?”

“My mother? She died when I was eight. Oh, my aunt. In the roundup, the first one.”

“With the air raid sirens.”

She looked at me. “Yes, with the sirens. You remembered. You can see, in a street like this, how noisy it would be.” An alleyway, every shout an echo. “Come, see the rest.”

She led me over the bridge onto the island and through a passage so low I had to duck my head. We came out into a larger campo with a well in the center, an enclosed patch of faint moonlight entirely surrounded by the built-up houses, walled in.

“You see there, those windows, five in a row? That was the synagogue—out of sight, but a visitor could find it by the windows. Five, for the five books.”

I looked up, involuntarily counting the windows, then turned slowly, taking in the whole campo, dingy and peeling, a tree with spiky winter branches, not a hint of warmth anywhere, the coldest place I’d seen in Venice. It seemed utterly deserted, as if everyone had gone away, leaving a few lights on by accident.

“When was the roundup?”

“Oh, dates. All right,” she said, adopting a guide’s voice, “dates. You know Italy surrendered in forty-three? The king surrenders. September. Mussolini, he goes to Salò, and of course the Germans come in. So now, here, it’s the occupation. New Jewish laws, much worse. Now we are enemy aliens. My family, here since Rome, now we’re aliens. The broadcast was—when? End of November. I remember they came to Jona then for a list. He was head of the community, and the Germans asked him for a list of the Jews living here. Two thousand, I think. Everybody. A good man—my father knew him. What could he do? Yes, tomorrow, he told them, and that night he warned us. Then he killed himself. So he was the first. But now we knew—run, hide if you can. Like rats. You see over there?” She pointed north to a long gray building, prisonlike. “The nursing home. They couldn’t run. Some couldn’t even move. So they were easy to arrest. You see, without the list it was harder, they had to take who they could find.”

“Like your aunt.”

“She wouldn’t run. You have to imagine. Midnight, the sirens, people screaming, pounding on doors. She couldn’t move, the fear was too strong.” She shrugged. “So they took her. She scared herself to death.”

“But you hid from the Germans?”

“Germans? No, Italians. They used us to do it. Our own. Carabinieri, police, some Fascists. Maybe that’s why they waited till it was dark—maybe they didn’t want to be seen. Later it was SS. More efficient. With the police, it became a farce. They took everyone to Collegio Foscarini, but there were no facilities, nothing. So people came with food, they would throw food through the windows for the children. Ten days like that. A public embarrassment. So to Casa di Ricovero and they release the sick ones. They didn’t understand—no one could be released. So the SS came and arrested them again. A farce. But finally, the train. After that it was mostly SS, with their informers. Grini. He would take them through the hospitals, even the mental hospital. It wasn’t enough for them if you were crazy. You had to be dead.”

She folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself, rocking a little.

“You’re cold.”

“Of course we didn’t know they would go through the hospitals. We thought it was safe there. We were on the Lido then. Hiding, but not hiding. A vacation flat someone found for us, empty, you know. The neighbors pretended no one was there. We still had a little money. How much longer could it go on? It was just a matter of time, if we could wait it out. But then my father became too sick to stay there. He had a friend at the hospital, from the old days. He thought it would be all right. Use another name. Who would look in the critical wards? What for? They were already on their way to San Michele, almost dead.” She lowered her head. “But they did look.” She stretched out one arm. “That one. Dr. Maglione. You think I would forget that face? Never. And then tonight, one look and I was back in that ward. But this time, champagne. Everyone smiling. And I thought, he got away with it. They all did. They got away with murder.”

“Not all of them.”

She waved her hand, dismissing this. “They’ll never pay. Who’s going to make them pay? You? Me? A scratch on the face. That’s my revenge, a scratch. And for that, which one of us, do you think, will no longer be welcome in your mother’s house?”

“It’s my house too.”

“No, hers. What do you think, we’re all going to be friends? If I saw him again, I would do it again. Spit and spit. I can’t help it—I don’t want to help it. I want to kill him.”

“No, you don’t.”

She lowered her head. “No. Then I would pay. So they always win.” She moved away, glancing up at the tall buildings. “Look at this place. Who gets an eye for an eye? All dead. It’s like a tomb now. I don’t even know why I came.”

“To show me.”

“Yes, to show you. What they did.” We stood for a minute looking at the silent campo, peering into the dark passages as if we were waiting for whistles and the stamping of boots to break the stillness. “You know what he said to me, my father? When they took him for the train? ‘God will never forgive them.’ But he was wrong. They’ll forgive themselves.”

“Maybe not.”

“Oh, yes. It’s one thing you learn in the camp, what they’re like. Ask your doctor how he feels. Not even embarrassed. And then one night at a party somebody points a finger. You know what I’d like? To keep pointing—wherever he goes, all his parties, his hospital, just keep pointing at him until everyone knows.” She shrugged. “Except what difference would it make? It’s just what some crazy girl says. And who believes her?” She looked down. “Who would believe her?”

“I would.”

She turned away, flustered. “Yes? Why? Maybe she is crazy. Making scenes.”

I put my arm around her. “Come on, we can’t stay here all night.”

She glanced up at the buildings again, stalling. “Look at it. No one left.”

“Maybe we should leave Venice. Go somewhere else. Rome.”

“Just like that.”

“Yes, why not?”

“And who pays? You?”

“It doesn’t matter about the money.”

“And then one day you’re gone and it does matter.”

“Why would I go?”

“Everybody goes.”

I held her by the shoulders. “Not me. Don’t you understand that?”

“No. Why? I don’t understand why.”

“Why. You think there’s a reason? Maybe that morning on the vaporetto. I don’t know why. Maybe the way you scratched Gianni’s face. I liked that.”

She smiled slightly and leaned her forehead against my chest, muffling her words. “And that’s your choice, someone like that?”

“Mm. Forget about this.” I waved toward the dark buildings.

“I can’t.”

I nodded. “I know. But let it go now, for a while. Come with me.”

She was quiet for a minute, close to me, then nodded.

“But not to Dorsoduro. You understand that? I’ll never go there again.”

“Yes, you will. He won’t be there.”

“Where have you been all night? I’ve been worried sick.”

My mother, still in her silk wrapper, was having coffee in the small sitting room, curled up in the club chair next to the electric fire. Her hair was loose, just brushed out, her face pale, with not even the usual morning dusting of powder. An ashtray with a burning cigarette was perched on the arm of the chair, the wisp of smoke rising to mix with the steam from her coffee.

“Although I can guess. Bertie said you’ve become friends with that girl. Really, Adam. She’s obviously a neurotic—hadn’t you noticed?”

“She’s not a neurotic.”

“Well, call it whatever you like. She’s obviously something. Have some coffee. What a spectacle. I mean, you like a party to have a little—but not quite that much. Gianni’s been wonderful about it, but of course it’s embarrassing. The worst part is that since she’s your friend, he can’t help but wonder—well, you know. Which is ridiculous. I said you looked as stunned as anybody. But you might give him a call. You know, talk to him a little. You don’t want him to think—”

“Did he tell you why she did it?”

“Apparently she thinks he caused her father’s death. Of course doctors have to deal with this all the time. You know, somebody dies in hospital and who’s to blame? Anybody will do, really—doctor, nurse, anybody.”

“So he doesn’t know who she is?”

“Doesn’t have the faintest. She must have seen him at the hospital and—well, you know, when you’re in that state.” She looked up. “Adam, I hope you’re putting an end to this. I’m sure the poor thing needs help and it’s very sweet of you, but you don’t have to be the one to do it. They have people for this. I mean, for all you know she could be deranged. Murdered her father. Really.”

“They were at medical school together.”

“Who?”

“Gianni and her father. He knows who she is.”

She was reaching for her cigarette but stopped, surprised by this. “And he murdered her father, I suppose,” she said finally, sarcastic.

“No. He handed him over to the SS so they could murder him. They were rounding up Jews in the hospital. Her father was too sick to move. Gianni handed him over. So what does that make him, an accessory? In her eyes it comes to the same thing.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“Especially when it’s true.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Gianni wouldn’t do such a thing. Is this what she’s going around saying?”

“She was there. She saw him.”

“Well, darling, not exactly the most reliable source, considering.”

“Then ask him.”

“Of course I’m not going to ask him. Why would he do such a thing? What possible reason could he have?”

I shrugged. “Maybe he was an anti-Semite, a collaborator. Maybe he was just a sonofabitch. He handed a sick man over to a death squad. What does it matter why?”

My mother looked at me for a second, then stubbed out her cigarette, taking her time, and gathered herself up out of the chair, balancing the cup over the ashtray.

“Adam, I want you to stop now. I won’t have that tone. And I won’t have any more of this. Last night was bad enough. You seem to forget it was my party, my evening that got spoiled. I didn’t ask for the extra dramatics. So all right, let’s put that behind us. Not your fault if she’s—But now it’s over. I won’t have you saying these things about Gianni. I won’t.”

“Not even if they’re true?”

“They’re not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know him. He’s a wonderful man.”

“So was Goebbels, to his children. Before he poisoned them.”

“Is that supposed to be funny? Is it this girl? Have you lost all your sense? Is Gianni supposed to be a Nazi now? Maybe it’s not her. Maybe something happened to you in Germany.”

“Yes, I met a lot of people like Gianni. Wonderful. And they didn’t think twice about putting people in boxcars.”

“Adam, what is the matter with you?” she said, her voice finally distressed.

“The matter is you won’t listen.”

“Not to this, I won’t. Not anymore. I’m going to have my bath.” She put down the cup and started to move away from the table. “This isn’t Germany, you know.”

“Why, because it’s beautiful?”

She stopped and turned to face me. “I don’t know why you’re doing this. Trying to ruin everything.”

“I’m not trying to ruin anything. I’m trying to help you. You almost married this man.”

She looked at me. “I am marrying this man.”

“You can’t. You can’t marry someone like this. Are you that far gone?”

She tried to smile, her eyes moist. “Yes, I’m that far gone.”

“Have you been listening at all? A man like this—”

“A man like what? Don’t you think I know what kind of man he is?”

“No. I don’t think you know him at all. You’ve just rushed into this like you rush into everything else. Except this time it might be harder to get out. Not to mention more expensive.”

“Oh,” she said with a small gasp, deflated. “What a hateful thing to say.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, seeing her eyes fill, but she waved me away.

“No one can hurt like a child.” She brushed her hair back, rallying. “Is that what you think? Well, darling, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Or him, for that matter. But really, I’m not Doris Duke. Isn’t it too bad? Of course I’ve told him that. But if you like, I’ll tell him again. So he can be absolutely sure what he’s getting. All right?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did. You’re full of meanness today, I’m not sure why. Maybe you don’t want me to marry anyone.”

“I just don’t want you to marry him. Neither would you, if you’d stop and listen for two minutes.”

“Oh, just him. But the thing is, darling, no one else has asked me.”

“Mother—”

“So we’ll do this. I’ll tell him again I’m not rich.”

“It’s not about the—”

“And if he still wants to go ahead—just on the off chance that he’d like me for myself—will that make you feel better?” She stared at me for a second, then turned to the door. “Good. Now can I have my bath?”

After she left, I just stood there, not knowing what to do. Follow her and keep arguing? For what? More tears and stubborn indifference, past listening. What Claudia had predicted; the last thing I’d expected.

I picked up the coffee, tepid now and slightly bitter, and finished it, then stood looking at the wall, the light from the water outside moving on it in irregular flashes, out of rhythm, jumpy.

He’d tell her some story. A hysterical response to a hospital death. Who would say otherwise? Were there hospital records? Another name, she’d said. Not even a paper trail. I walked over to the window. On the side table there was a new picture—not the jaunty Zattere one on the dressing table but Gianni in a more formal pose, seated at a desk, with papers in front of him for signing. I picked up the photograph and looked at his eyes, half expecting to find some peering intensity, visible evil. But of course it was only Gianni. How easy had it been for him to point Signor Grassini out? A struggle? Routine? Something he’d done before, in the habit of informing? There wouldn’t have been only one.

I looked again at Gianni at his desk. Papers to sign. There was always paper somewhere. Almost without thinking, I slid the picture out of its frame and put it in my pocket. More reliable than memory, sometimes, the paper of a crime.