The Visitant: A Venetian Ghost Story (6 page)

Chapter 7

That night, I stood at my bedside, thinking of the quid pro quo Samuel had asked of me. I felt an unwanted anticipation that made me say to myself,
no, you don’t have to read it. Just tell him you have
. But I had a feeling he would know if I lied, that he would ask me something I couldn’t answer. I wasn’t in the habit of breaking promises, either. So I took off my dressing gown and pulled the book from beneath the mattress before I crawled into bed.

It was poorly written, and I winced from the first sentences, and the preposterousness of the conceit: a mother and son needing to hide from the Republicans purging France of all aristocrats, and deciding to take refuge in a nunnery where a relative was abbess, which required that the son be disguised as a girl. I had only skimmed a few pages before they were invited to witness a priest’s “punishment” of a nun. I began to squirm. I was fascinated at the same time I was repulsed, my cheeks heating even with no one here to see,
no one but God, who surely must not want me to be reading this
.

The nun disrobed to take her punishment, and the disguised son began to speak of his own arousal in intimate detail, and I felt a corresponding warmth and slapped the book closed, shoving it beneath the thin mattress. I’d hardly read anything, and nothing of any substance. But what had been about to happen teased at my thoughts, and I felt . . . I hardly knew. Something that wasn’t quite shame, though I wanted it to be. I picked up my
Baedeker’s Paris and its Environs
, trying to forget
The Nunnery Tales
, but when I finally slept, I was restless, my dreams filled with unclothed nuns kneeling on cushions, and a birch rod trembling in an abbess’s hands.

The next morning, the book’s cover, peeking as it was from beneath the mattress, seemed to mock me, and images from my dreams still chased themselves in my head like fluttering ghosts. I was angry with myself for being so preoccupied with it, and feeling as unsophisticated as Samuel had accused me of being. Then I realized that he meant for
The Nunnery Tales
to distract me from my purpose. I did not want to understand what he was giving up. I simply wanted him to do so. Though his wounds were healing, the epilepsy was no closer to controlled than it had been when I arrived ten days ago, nor was I closer to convincing him of the need to give up his degenerate habits.

It was long past time that I understood exactly what I was up against. Both Madame Basilio and Giulia made me think there was something here I wasn’t seeing, and Giulia’s comment last night had only exacerbated the feeling. I wanted to know if they had seen a seizure. Or something else? How much was I going to have to explain away?

I went downstairs and knocked upon Madame Basilio’s door. There was no answer. It was early; perhaps she was not awake. I had just decided to give up when I heard footsteps, and the door opened to reveal Madame Basilio, dressed as austerely as ever, this time in lavender, another half-mourning color—and one that did her sallow skin no favors.

“Mademoiselle Spira,” she said with a chill politeness made even worse by the formality of her French. “What brings you here so early?”

“I’d like to speak with you for a moment, if I could.”

“Of course.” She ushered me inside, closing the door behind me.

I could not wait even the few moments it would take to get to the sala, nor bear the small politeness of an offering of refreshment. I burst out, “I wanted to ask you a question about M’sieur Farber’s dreams. The angels and his singing.”

“It has happened again?”

There was an avidity in her that startled me. “H-he . . . the other night, he was singing, and I would like to know how often you’ve heard him do that. And if . . . if there was anything odd after.”

“We first saw it the second night he was here. Giulia witnessed it.”

“Did anything strange happen?”

“You do not think singing in the middle of the night strange enough?” Spoken so dryly there was not a speck of humor.

“Yes, but—”

“She tried to dance with him and he woke from his dream and threw her to the floor. When Giulia told me of it, I asked her to inform me if it happened again. Which it did, four nights later.”

“You saw it?”

She bowed her head in acknowledgment. “He was a man in ecstasy.”

Just as I’d seen before he’d seized. “And then?”

“He sang ‘
Un Ziro in Gondola
,’” Madame Basilio murmured, her voice soft with memory. “A favorite of the gondoliers. My daughter also had a special fondness for it.”

“I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

Madame Basilio blinked as if to put the memory away. “She has been gone some time.”

I thought of the handkerchiefs in the drawer. Perfumed and monogrammed. But just now I cared only for what Madame Basilio had seen that night in Samuel’s room. “You said he spoke of an angel.”

“Yes, that is what he said. Did he tell you the same, mademoiselle? Was there an angel in the room? Did he talk of her?”

The oddly gleeful light in her eyes unnerved me. “Not really,” I said uncomfortably. “Did . . . was there anything after? I told you what his injuries might cause.”

Madame Basilio shook her head. “He calmed and Giulia put him to bed. He seemed confused.”

It was all I needed to know. Perhaps Samuel had been hallucinating, or perhaps he’d had a petit mal seizure on one of those nights, but if so, neither Giulia nor Madame Basilio had interpreted it as anything more than dreams and sleepwalking. “Thank you, Madame. You’ve been most helpful.”

She nodded and opened the door to show me out. Once I’d stepped onto the landing, she said, “You should be careful of him, mademoiselle, as I said before. I could send Giulia to help you tend to him.”

“Please don’t. I’m not afraid for myself. The medications I’m giving him need time to work, but once they stabilize him, I think you will see no more singing with angels.”

Madame Basilio looked surprised, and displeased, which confused me. “A pity to destroy such beauty.”

“It’s illness,” I said.

“Is it?” she asked, and the way she said it was needling, as if she knew a secret and meant to keep it from me. I was still wondering uneasily about it when she closed the door.

Two days of bright, cold sun passed without incident. Already December 10—time was moving more quickly than I liked, but at least Samuel was as tractable as he’d promised, although still not sleeping well.

Now, it was snowing; heavy wet flakes that melted the moment they hit the carved stone of the balcony’s balustrade, a whirling cloud obscuring the buildings across the canal and masking the black shadows of the gondolas, the whole world muffled and cloaked. It was not like snow at Glen Echo on the Hudson, icy, hard pellets that sparkled over the ground, everything pointed and sharp, icicles and jagged ice forming over the river. As with everything in Venice, even the snow felt as if it held ghosts within it, a lacy shroud hiding indiscretions and secrets.

I’d never had such morbid thoughts before, and I didn’t like them now. This place preyed upon the mind. Behind me, I heard the splash of Samuel rising from the bath, the heavy slide of his hand on the metal side of the tub. He said, “I’m decent.”

He had dug a dressing gown from his trunk. It was heavy, lined with blue satin, paisley patterned in blues and deep maroons, and as I turned from the window, he was securing the belt tightly. His hair curled wetly at the ends. He shivered, glancing past me to the snow, saying, “I dislike it here in the winter so much I’m not tempted to try any other time of year.”

“I hear the summer’s quite fine,” I said.

“Dreaming of romantic rides in gondolas and serenading Venetians?” he asked. “Perhaps mosquitos and stench would be more accurate. Nero avoids summer here like the plague. Perhaps
because
of the plague, for all I know.”

I ignored him, taking in the way he stood, a bit straighter now, as if the pain was not so much. I wondered if he was yet able to manage the burning liniments and massage.

“I can see you’re debating new tortures for me.”

“Only if you can bear them,” I said.

“You mean I have some say in it? Then please, not yet. But I’ll tell you what I would like, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“If I can provide it, and I think it won’t harm you.”

“A long list of
no
s, it sounds like. But what about chocolate? Something warm.” He wrapped his arms about his chest and shivered. “I’m cold to the bone. Deeper than bone, if you want to know the truth.”

“What about some mugwort tea?”

“What about something
good
? And sweet. I’ve obeyed your every command, and I haven’t once asked for laudanum, though I suspect you have some and I’d give a substantial reward to anyone who could procure it for me.”

“You’ve promised.”

“And I’m not breaking my vow, am I? Even though I think you are not quite heeding yours. How much of
The Nunnery Tales
have you read, hmmm? Ah, not much, I see.”

“I’ve been too busy.”

“Or perhaps too frightened.”

“I’m not frightened.”

“Aren’t you? Be honest, Elena. You’re afraid you’ll like it. That it will make you . . . want things.”

“I think you’ve mistaken me for a different kind of woman.”

He grinned, the healing scar on his cheek creasing like a dimple. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

I hastened to change the subject. “If I were to allow you something warm and sweet, what would you like?”

His grin grew, and I realized what I’d said, and how he meant to take it.

I amended it hastily. “To drink, I mean.”

“How virtuous you are,” he said with a sigh. “The things you make me want to say—”

“If you say them, I’ll leave. Now tell me what you wish to drink.”

“Wine or chocolate. Either would suffice.”

I didn’t see how chocolate could hurt, and I had no reason to deny it, so I nodded. “Very well. I suppose they must have some chocolate in the kitchen. God knows there’s everything else.”

“My parents are paying well for my upkeep,” he said wryly.

So he knew. I felt a modicum of ease over the fact that he wasn’t being fooled. It meant I didn’t have to worry. If he knew he was feeding Giulia’s entire family, and did nothing about it, then I no longer had to concern myself.

I left him and went down to the kitchen, huddling against the snow that fell on my exposed neck and melted to trickle cold and wet down my collar. There was no one in the courtyard, and the kitchen was empty too, not even a pot of polenta or steaming water on the stove, though the table was laden with food: peppers and onions and garlic, raisins and eggs, cheese and sausage and a tangle of slippery purple octopi gleaming wetly in a bowl.

But no chocolate, though there was a pitcher of milk capped with a heavy layer of cream. I poured some into a pan and set it on the stove to heat, and then I went in search. I found cornmeal, beans and vinegar, flour flecked with bran. No chocolate anywhere.

I heard a hiss, and turned to see the milk boiling over. I caught it just as the scorching smell filled the air, along with smoke, and without thinking I grabbed the handle with my bare hand, crying out and dropping it, clattering, to the floor, steaming milk spattering everywhere.

I plunged my hand into a bucket of cold water. The burn was not bad, and the pain faded as I set about cleaning up the mess—the burned milk was nearly impossible to scrape from the pan. It seemed to take forever, and when I was done, I was tired and frustrated and cursing Samuel for asking for chocolate. Not that he was going to get it, because there was none anywhere, unless it was in the storage room.

Now that I’d had the idea, I had to look. Muttering to myself about men who should be content with mugwort tea, I went back into the swirling snow. There was no sign of anyone. It was eerie, how deserted it felt. The snow was beginning to stick now, and my smooth-soled boots were no good on it. Twice, I slid, nearly losing my balance the second time. I made my slow, cold, wet way across the short expanse of courtyard between the kitchen and the receiving court with its storage rooms. There, finally, among barrels of fermenting anchovy and kegs of wine and dangling ropes of garlic and drying herbs, I found a package—chocolate wrapped in blue paper. It was very thick, and hard to break. I had to throw it onto the floor before I got a chunk large enough to use.

This time, I watched the milk as it steamed and melted the chocolate. A cone of sugar wrapped in brown paper sat on top of a barrel, but I saw no sugar cutters anywhere. I had to hack at it with a knife and a spoon, cursing, until I had a small pile of it mounded on the table, and even then it wasn’t quite sweet enough. It was going to have to do. Already it felt I’d been in this kitchen for an eternity.

I poured the concoction into a bowl and threw the dirty pan into the wooden sink—let Giulia wash it. I was done with the whole thing. I was sweating from the heat of the kitchen, strands of hair escaped to dangle irritatingly against my cheeks and my throat. It was snowing harder than ever as I went back outside; the other wing and the courtyard stairs were just a dark blur. I held the bowl carefully, but it was steaming, and chocolate sloshed onto my skirt, snow melting into it as I tried to make my way to the stairs without slipping.

I spilled probably a third by the time I got to the door. I nudged it open with my shoulder and stepped inside, but with my wet boots, the floor was just as slick as the courtyard had been, and so I was slow. I’d left Samuel in the sala, but now I heard laughter coming from his bedroom.

I rounded the edge of the door, and saw Samuel lolling on the bed, his dressing gown open, a bottle of brandy in his hand, while Giulia, her hair down and wild, giggled as she licked spilled liquor off his chest.

“What is this?” I cried, stepping inside. Giulia cursed in Venetian, her dark eyes flashing as she jerked away from Samuel, making him groan.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. I put the chocolate down and said to Samuel, “What is she doing here?”