The Rules of Dreaming (22 page)

Bartolli took the news calmly.  “I’m sure I can change her mind.  Would you like to come back out to my house to discuss it?
  I can make it worth your while.”

“Too
late.  It’s already been sold.”

“Nothing’s ever final, though, is it?  Why don’t you stop by and we can discuss it?”

Dubin shrugged and continued toward his car.  “The manuscript has been sold.”

“Please come anyway.”  Bartolli followed him out to the street and stood behind him as he unlocked his car.  “You’d enjoy seeing the rest of my collections.  I’ve got a number of interesting manuscripts, including the autograph score of Boito’s
Mefistofile
, dozens of ritual masks from Polynesia, and of course my collection of  kaleidoscopes.”

“Kaleidoscopes?”

“Yes.  I collect kaleidoscopes from all over the world.”

Dubin smiled for the first time and took a deep breath to keep from showing his excitement.  “That’s something I am interested in,” he said evenly.  “I’d like to come out and see them.”

They arranged to have lunch the next afternoon.  Bartolli hinted that there was something else, in addition to the Offenbach manuscript and his collecting interests, that he wanted to discuss with Dubin.  “As you know,” he added for no apparent reason, “I’m a practicing psychiatrist.”

Dubin climbed into his car and Bartolli smiled down at him through the open window.  “I’ve often said that a psychiatrist is a kind of detective,” Bartolli said.  “But a cynic might say we’re more like blackmailers than detectives.”

Dubin felt a little chill run through him as he returned the smile.  “Really?  Why is that?”

“What does a psychiatrist do?  He gets you to tell him something you’re ashamed of and then makes you pay him large sums of money to keep it to yourself.”

They both laughed.  “But a psychiatrist can never tell anyone what he found out,” Dubin said.

“Neither can a blackmailer, Mr. Dubin.  As soon as a blackmailer reveals the secret, it’s not a secret anymore.  So, like a psychiatrist, he makes you pay an amount you can just barely afford—not all at once, but on a regular basis—for an indefinite period of time stretching far into the future.  And you pay it, hoping that someday, if you’re lucky, your tormentor will go away and you can get on with your life.”

Dubin started the car and raced the engine, forcing Bartolli back from the window.  “Then being a psychiatrist must be a dangerous profession.”

“Oh, it is, Mr. Dubin.  It’
s a very dangerous profession. Almost as dangerous as being a blackmailer.”

Chapter
26

It was nearly ten o’clock by the time Julietta and Gottlieb, arm in arm, swayed across the terrace to board the gondola that would carry them to the Casino.  They were dressed to kill, Julietta
in a black evening gown, Gottlieb stuffed into his white tie and tails like a penguin on an eating binge.  Together they moved in stately pomp down to the boat landing, without so much as a glance at the desolate figure huddled beneath his umbrella on the windy terrace.  Having fortified myself with an entire bottle of wine, I caught the next vaporetto toward the Casino.  And I wondered as I watched the boat’s lights carve their way through the fog:  Did Gottlieb realize that a rival waited for him at the Casino?  That in that playground of desire, where money is the soul of a soulless world, his fate would be decided?

My reverie was interrupted
by a familiar voice behind me.

“Dr. Hoffmann!  Do you
know where she’s leading you?”

I spun around and came face to face with Nicole.  Beautiful, bedeviled Nicole, who in another lifetime I might have made my own.  “Nicole,” I stammered.  “What are you doing here?”

“I followed you,” she said.  “That day you left the Institute with your suitcase.  I figured out where you were going and followed you.”

“You should go back,” I said, trying to sound professional.  “There’s no reason for you to be here.  We can talk again at your next session.”   I clung to the rail as the wake from another vaporetto lifted the boat and made me stagger.

“You’ve been drinking.”

“It’s the boat.”  

“No, it’s you.  You can hardly stand up.”

We found a pair of seats across from each other near the back of the boat.  Nicole pleaded with me to give up my quest for Julietta. 

“Does Dr. Gottlieb know you’re here?”

“Not yet,” I smiled, enjoying the prospect of a confrontation at the Casino.

“Don’t let him see you, then.  You’ll lose your job if they find out you followed her here.”

It was touching, as Nicole almost always is.  She was caring, persuasive and absolutely right, as I must have known even then.  But she was, after all, a mental patient.  I wasn’t about to have her directing my life.

The Casino was a gloomy, fantastic structure overhanging the canal.  When our boat stopped I jumped off without looking back to see if Nicole was behind me and hurried through a series of narrow alleyways to the entrance.  A large crowd stood milling on a terrace that extended over the Grand Canal.  “Richard Wagner died in this palazzo in 1883,” I heard a man telling his wife.  And it was as if Wagner’s worst nightmares had been left behind as guests of the Casino—overstuffed blondes who looked like they might be named Brünnhilde, crazed Dutchmen, vixens and valkyries, even a dwarf, all dressed like characters in a 1930s musical.  They circulated around the foyer and the terrace and up the stairs to the gaming rooms, ignoring each other in a dozen languages.

At the top of the stairs I was greeted by Julietta’s sinister admirer, who held out his spindly hand and welcomed me as if he owned the palazzo.  “Dr.
Hoffmann,” he crooned in his syrupy voice.  “Very pleased that you could be here tonight.”

I must have shown my alarm.  “How did you know my name?”

“Oh, I know all Julietta’s friends,” he replied, smiling his lizard smile.

I walked away without asking his name and sidled over to the bar, where I ordered a double scotch.  My eyes ranged over the crowd, hoping for a glimpse of Gottlieb.  I was done playing hide and seek.

Suddenly Julietta appeared at my side.  “Hi, Ned!”

“Julietta!”  I bolted down my sco
tch.  “Funny meeting you here.”

She giggled.  “You came all the way to Venice to see me.  I kind of like that.”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing.  I turned and met her dark glistening eyes.  “I’m crazy about you,” I murmured.

Her smile was as bright as the jewels on her necklace.  “You’ve got to help me get rid of Gottlieb,” she said.  “He won’t leave me alone.”

I slammed my glass down on the bar and lurched into the crowd like the drunk that I was.  “Where is that swine?” I bellowed.  “He’d better stay the hell away from you!”

“No, it’s not that simple,” she frowned, pulling me back.  “He’s got the key to my room.  They only gave us one.  He’s got it dangling on a chain around his fat neck.  It’s like a symbol of his power.  He thinks he owns me.”

“I’ll get it back for you.”

She leaned forward and whispered in my ear.  “Whoever has that key, that’s who I’ll be spending the night with.”

I plunged into the crowd and into the gaming room.  There was a tug on my sleeve and I turned to find Nicole dogging my steps.  “Don’t go in there,” she pleaded.  “Please don’t go in there!”

I shook her off and ran my eyes over the crowd to a long bar with an enormous mirror behind it that multiplied the room and everything in it.  I quickly found Gottlieb, hunched over the craps table with a fevered look on his face.  The harsh light streaming down from overhead seemed to pass through him without casting a shadow on the table.

“Gottlieb!” I called out.

“What the hell?”

“I want that key.”

He stopped playing and stared at me incredulously.  “Hoffmann, I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here but as
you can see I’m busy with something.  So chill out until I’m done here and I’ll talk to you later.”

“No.  I want that key now.”

“What key?”

“The key to Julietta’s room.”

“That’s my room.  Are you crazy?”

Two security guards had swooped in when we raised our voices and shoved their way between us.  “Gentlemen,” one of them said, “we must ask you to come with us, please.”

“Come on!” Gottlieb protested.  “I’m in the middle of a game here.”

One of the guards grabbed his arm and marched him across the room and down the stairs.  The other one glared at me and I followed without resisting. They took us to what must have been a side door, away from both the main entrance and the Grand Canal, and shoved us out into a narrow, dimly-lit alleyway.

Gottlieb lurched toward me with his fists raised.  “Hoffmann, this really pisses me off!  You really piss me off!”

“I want that key!”  I jumped on his neck like a pit bull and tore his collar open as he staggered backwards.  There was a gold chain around his neck and I tried to get my fingers around it.  He pushed me away and ran into the shadows trying to escape, but I caught up with him at the edge of a small canal.  The place was deserted except for a boy of about twelve who sat on a balcony playing the mandolin.

Gottlieb dodged away and leaped onto an arching footbridge.  I threw my arms around his neck and pulled him down onto the parapet, tugging at the gold chain until I had the room key in my grasp.  Cursing and gasping for breath, he wrapped his hamlike hands around my throat and choked me while he tried to roll me over the parapet into the canal.

I panicked.  I panicked because I knew Gottlieb was either going to strangle me or drown me if I couldn’t get away from him.  I was fighting for my life.  I yanked my hands away from his throat but he still didn’t stop choking me.  I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t
even beg for my life.  Somehow I managed to get one hand into my jacket pocket and pulled out my knife.

I jammed it into his lower back, which was the only spot I could reach.  Hot blood spurted out all over my hand.  He cried out and released his grip, staring at me with the astonished look of the dead.  I pulled the key off the chain and rolled him into the canal. 

A sardonic voice sang out from the darkness beyond the end of the bridge. “And so the fool beloved of God rejoins his shadow.”

Julietta’s sinister admirer stepped into the light, puffing a cigarette.  The man was everywhere, a collector of souls come to claim his trophy.  And there too, I realized, stood Julietta, smiling triumphantly.  The boy with the mandolin had stopped playing; he stood watching from the balcony.

“Julietta!” I said, moving toward her.  “I’ve got the key.”

She pulled back and clutched the old man’s arm.  Her smile twisted into a sneer.

“
Polizia
!” the man cried out.  “Help!  Police!  Murder!”  He flicked his cigarette onto the spot in the canal where Gottlieb had gone down.

I heard a muffled sound behind me.  It was Nicole, sobbing as she crouched on the pavement to wipe the blood off my knife.  Her movements seemed to be in slow motion.

“Help!  Police!”

The keening of sirens circled in from all sides as police boats sped toward the canal.  The old man stepped over and snatched the key out of my hand, slipping it into his breast pocket with a contemptuous smile.  Then he led Julietta down a flight of stone steps to a landing beneath the bridge, where a gondola waited to carry them away.  I watched in stunned silence as they climbed into the boat, laughing and chatterin
g as if nothing had happened.

Laughing!  They were laughing at me for stupidly walking into their trap!  I leaped down the steps and into the gondola before they could pull away and threw myself on Julietta, choking off her
laughter with my hands clenched around her bare white throat.  She struggled violently as the old man and the gondolier beat me from behind and tried to pull me off, but I lowered my head and held on until the screaming stopped and her body went limp.  In a frenzy I fought off the two men and jumped back on the landing.

Nicole stood on the footbridge holding the knife.  “Give me that!” I demanded.  I thought about throwing the knife into the canal but instead dropped it back into my pocket.  “Now get out of here!”

She was still sobbing.  “Where are you going?”

“Never mind where I’m going!
And don’t follow me!”

“You killed him in self defense!” she moaned, as if she hadn’t noticed what I did t
o Julietta.  “If you run away—”

“No!  I was trying to kill him.”

I pushed her out of my way and ran back up the alleyway toward the Casino.  The sirens suddenly wailed louder as the police boats began to arrive.  I stepped on the vaporetto and in a few minutes found myself strolling toward the parking lot near the train station.  A tiny car sped past me with lights flashing.  It skidded to a halt and five or six policemen tumbled out, one after another, like mimes in a circus.  By this time I should have been feeling guilt or remorse or, at the very least, fear.  But all I could think about was the absurdity of the whole thing.  They were coming after me in a clown car.