Ghost Music (24 page)

I knocked and waited and knocked again, but there was no reply. Somewhere upstairs I could faintly hear a television, with
what sounded like football scores.
“Genoa, tre . . . Udinese Calcio, zero . . .”

I took out the second key and unlocked the door. Inside, I found myself in a long gallery, with a dark paneled ceiling, and a row of windows with pale yellow glass in them. There were paintings hanging all the way along it, most of them landscapes, with somber skies and shadowy forests.

On either side stood six or seven armchairs, each of them heaped with cushions in red and green tapestry, and the floor was covered in assorted Venetian rugs.

I closed the door and walked along the gallery. Through the yellow glass windows I could dimly make out a very large square, which must have been the Campo San Polo. It was crowded with hundreds of shadowy figures, as if an army of ghosts had recently arrived.

I thought that I could hear somebody walking very close behind me, but when I turned around, I saw that there was nobody there, and that it must have been an echo.

At the end of the gallery I reached an enormous drawing room, with a high decorated ceiling and a pale woodblock floor. It was lavishly furnished with rococo chairs and sofas, and the drapes were patterned with flowers and leaves and songbirds. In the far corner stood a fine antique piano, with a bust of Verdi on top of it.

I looked up. Suspended high above me, from the vaulted ceiling, hung a huge multibranched chandelier, carved and gilded, more like a giant golden spider than a light fitting.

I put down my bag. The apartment was utterly silent. It smelled of old wood and potpourri and faintly of cigarettes, and there was another smell, too, of damp plaster.

I was still standing there, wondering what I should do next, when I heard a sharp snoring sound, and I almost yelped out loud. I walked cautiously across the room, and found a man sleeping in one of the high-backed armchairs. He was almost completely bald,
but he was only about forty-five years old, with a round face and a pointed nose and a sallow suntan. He was wearing an expensive light gray suit, and dark blue velvet slippers. In his right hand he was holding a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles.

I coughed, and he flinched, but he didn't wake up, so I coughed again, much louder this time.

He stirred, and opened his eyes, and stared at me, unfocused.

“Chi sono voi?”
he snapped.
“Che cose state facendo qui?”

“Hey—I'm sorry if I woke you. My name's Gideon Lake. Kate Solway invited me here.”

The man put on his spectacles and peered at me more closely. “Ah yes, Gideon Lake. We have been expecting you. I apologize if I was sleeping. I had a very long night at the hospital.”

He stood up and held out his hand. He was very precise in his gestures, very neat. “Enrico Cesaretti. Welcome to Venice. Is this your first time?”

“It is, yes. I always wanted to come here but I never quite managed to make it before now. It's a pretty amazing place, isn't it?”

“Well, I would prefer it without so many tourists, but I suppose we Venetians have to make a crust of bread somehow.”

“Do you know when Kate's going to get here?” I asked him.

“Oh, she is here already. She has gone out shopping with my wife.”

“Have you known Kate long?”

Enrico pointed to my bag. “You must be tired. I can show you to your room, then perhaps you would care for a cup of coffee?”

“Oh—great, thanks.”

He led me through a door at the far end of the drawing room and along a corridor. This side of the apartment was much less formal, with fitted carpets and framed prints on the walls.

“Here—this is the bathroom if you need it—and this is the room you will share with Kate.”

He opened up the door for me, and ushered me into a huge
bedroom with an emperor-size bed and a carved pine wardrobe that a family of five could have lived in. Outside the windows, through the fine net curtains, I could see a narrow balcony that overlooked the canal, with two cast-iron chairs on it, and a cast-iron table.

“It's real generous of you to have me here, Enrico. You don't mind if I call you Enrico?”

“Of course.” he smiled. “I expect only my staff and my patients to call me ‘
professore
.' And the generosity is yours. These days, not so many people are prepared to give up their time so unselfishly.”

I didn't really know what he meant, but I shrugged and smiled as if I did.

“Come,” he said. “Please refresh yourself and we can have some coffee and you must tell me all about your music.”

“Oh . . . Kate's told you already.”

“Of course. She considers you to be
molto speciale
. Very special.”

“Well, I think she is, too.”

“Yes,” he said. He took off his spectacles, and nodded. “To try so hard to make amends for the unforgivable sins of others, that is almost holy.”

“I'm not too sure that I follow you.”

“Please—if there is anything you need. Anything at all, just ask.”

He left me to unpack. Quite suddenly, I felt exhausted, and I would happily have climbed into that enormous bed, pulled the quilt up over my head, and gone to sleep for the rest of the day.

After I had stowed away my sweaters and my jeans in that cavernous wardrobe, I took my toiletries bag and went into the bathroom. It was tiled from floor to ceiling in gleaming white, and fitted with a monstrous washbasin with old-fashioned faucets, an antiquated shower stall and a massive bathtub on lion's-claw feet, surrounded by a white plastic curtain.

I splashed my face with cold water and reached for a hand
towel. As I dried myself, I looked in the mirror. What the hell are you doing here, dude? Pursuing some hopeless fantasy that you and Kate will ever get together as a real couple? Looking for an answer when you don't even know what the question is? Are you some kind of masochist, or just a fool?

In my bones, though, I knew I was here for a reason, even if I didn't understand what it was. This was no time for giving up. Kate had almost given up, back in New York, but she had clearly changed her mind. Otherwise she wouldn't have given me the keys to the Cesarettis' apartment, and shelled out over seven thousand dollars for me to fly here.

As I stood there, I became conscious that the bathtub faucet was dripping. It made a flat
plip, plip, plip
as if the bath were full of water. I finished drying my face and then I went over and drew back the curtain. The tub was brimming, right up to the overflow.

But more than that, there was a distorted pink shape lying on the bottom. A naked woman, with her dark hair completely covering her face. I was so shocked that I yanked at the curtain, and pulled out some of the curtain rings.

I took hold of the chain and pulled out the bath plug. Then I plunged my hands into the water and tried to lift the woman out. The water was freezing and she was so slippery that I could hardly get a grip on her. I managed to lift her head above the surface, and pull some of her hair away from her face.

She was a young woman. Her lips were blue and she wasn't breathing. Her brown eyes were wide-open and she was staring at me as if she were trying to convince me that any attempt to save her would be useless. I tried to heave her farther out of the tub but she was so heavy and floppy and the sides of the bath were so high that it was difficult for me to get any leverage.

“Enrico!” I shouted. “Enrico, help me! There's a woman drowned in here!”

By now, with a lascivious gurgle, the last of the water was
draining out of the bath. I managed to maneuver the woman so that she was lying on her side, and water poured out of her nose and mouth. But she still wasn't breathing, and when I felt her neck, there was no sign of any pulse.

“Enrico! I need some help in here! Enrico!”

Still no response. The walls of the
palazzetto
were so thick that he probably hadn't heard me, so I went out into the corridor and shouted out again.

“Enrico!”

Enrico appeared almost at once, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. “Gideon? Is something wrong?”

“There's a woman in the bathtub . . . I think she's dead.”

“What?”

He came hurrying along the corridor, and followed me into the bathroom.

“The curtain was drawn . . . I didn't see her at first.”

I looked into the bath. It was empty. Not only was it empty, it was dry. Enrico frowned at me, and said, “
Ciò è uno scherzo, si?
This is a joke?”

I didn't know what to say. I could only think: not again. Not more hallucinations, and people who aren't really there.

“I was sure,” I told him. “I pulled back the curtain and there she was.”

Enrico looked down at the broken curtain rings with undisguised displeasure. “Pah,” he said.

“Look, I realize you don't believe me, Enrico, but check my sleeves out. They're soaking.”

He didn't even bother to look. “I expect you are tired,” he said. “But you must understand that what you have said is in very poor taste.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I was absolutely convinced that I saw what I saw. It wasn't a joke, I promise you.”

“Very well,” he said. “Now, coffee is ready, if you are.”

When I was seventeen, I told Heidi Becker's mother that sauerkraut was the most vomitous vegetable on the planet, just before she served up a Reuben casserole (sauerkraut and corned beef, if you've never had the misfortune to eat one). But the discomfort I felt that day at Heidi Becker's house was nothing compared with the following hour I spent with Enrico Cesaretti.

Enrico was courteous to a fault, and told me in great detail about the transplant surgery he performed at the Ospedale SS Giovanni-e-Paolo. But he didn't leave me in any doubt at all that my “joke” in the bathroom had deeply upset him, and he asked me nothing about myself or my music or my relationship with Kate. He half smoked a cigarette, and crushed it out in his saucer.

A little after three o'clock, I was relieved to hear the front door opening, and Kate calling out, “Hello there! Anybody home?”

A soon as I heard her voice, I stood up and called out, “Kate? Kate—we're in here!” I had never felt so excited in my life. But before I said anything else, I turned back to Enrico. “Listen, Enrico. What happened in the bathroom . . . I had absolutely no intention of giving you any grief.”

He looked at me with great solemnity, as if he were a judge, or a priest, but then he nodded. “All right, my friend, I accept your apology. I have no desire to worry Kate, and I very much appreciate your taking the trouble to come here. But, please, do not mention what you said to my wife.”

“Of course not.”

He took off his eyeglasses. “I had no idea that Kate had told you so much about us. We have always been a family who prefer to keep to ourselves.”

“Enrico—Kate has told me nothing at all about you. I haven't spoken to Kate for nearly a month.”

At that moment, however, Kate came into the drawing room, carrying half a dozen shopping bags.

“Hello, musician.” she smiled. She was wearing the same putty-colored trench coat she had worn in London, and a brown beret. She was just as skinny as ever, but she had much more color in her cheeks than the day she had walked out on me, and her hair was shinier.

She set down her bags on a nearby sofa and I went up to her and took hold of her hands.

“Hello, Kate,” I said, and kissed her, and when I inhaled her fragrance, and tasted her lip gloss, all of the misery of the past three weeks simply curled up and disappeared, like a dead chrysanthemum on a bonfire.

Kate turned around. Close behind her stood a small, dark-haired woman in a red plaid poncho.

“Ciao,” she said.
“Benventuo all nostra casa.”

“Salvina, this is Gideon Lake,” said Enrico. “Gideon, my wife Salvina.”

Salvina had a prominent nose with a bump on the bridge, huge brown eyes and pouting red lips. She took off her poncho and underneath she was wearing a black wool dress with a wide, red patent-leather belt. She had a vaselike figure, with enormous bosoms, a narrow waist and generous hips.

“I am so delighted,” she said. “Welcome to Venice, Gideon. We are so grateful that you could come.”

“I'm extremely pleased to be here,” I told her, and kissed her on each cheek. She smelled strongly of some musky, heavy-duty perfume like Trussardi.

“I have to unpack all of this shopping,” she said. “Enrico, why
don't you ask our guests if they would care for a Punt e Mes, or maybe a glass of wine? I know I would!”

She bustled off to the kitchen, with Enrico following her, carrying the rest of the bags for her. I turned back to Kate and said, “It's so good to see you. You're looking great.”

She turned her face away, almost shyly. I loved that very slight droop of her eyelids, as if she were feeling drowsy. “It's good to see you, too, Gideon. I'm sorry if I hurt you.”

“You don't have to apologize. You told me right at the beginning that you couldn't explain everything, not all at once.”

I put my arms around her and kissed her again—her cheek, her hair and the curve of her ear. She reached up and touched my face as if she couldn't believe that I was really here. “You saw Michael,” she said.

I nodded. “That was when I began to understand what you wanted from me.”

“Poor Michael. Do you know what I used to call him? Michael-Row-The-Boat-Ashore. I used to sing it to him, and it always sent him off to sleep.”

“How old was he?”

“Six months, seven days. He's buried in Sherman, in North Cemetery, next to his great-grandparents.”

“I'm very sorry. How did he die?”

Kate gave the slightest of shrugs. “Heart condition. The doctors did everything they could, but—”