“Scusi, it’s Signora,” I told him.
“As, Signora, so young! Carlo and me, we take you far and fast.” Carlo was one of the less Adonis-like loiterers, young and tall but wiry rather than muscular.
“Not too far, and not that fast, but I’ll need you to wait. Um, aspettare? While I am talking to someone?”
“Si si, no problem. We go now?”
“We go now. And your name?”
“Madame, I am Giovanni Govesi, at your humble service.”
And with that noble declaration, he and his comrade-in-oars bowed me onto my cushions in his shiny black gondola, and we pulled away from a set of handsome faces wearing the sour expressions of men who realise they have missed out on something.
“You wan’ the Lido?”
“In that general direction,” I replied, unwilling to be specific while ears were still nearby. When we had wound our way out of the city “streets” and into the highway of the Grand Canal, I turned about in my seat to tell my driver where we were actually going.
“Signor Govesi, I would like—”
“Please, Signora: Giovanni. I am Giovanni.”
I inclined my head by way of acknowledgment. “Signor Giovanni, I need to go and speak with the people on San Clemente.”
The oars drifted to a halt.
“Is that a problem?”
Carlo and Giovanni exchanged a troubled look, then resumed their grip and their rhythm, with considerably less enthusiasm than before. I studied the older man’s face, then decided to ask. “Signor Giovanni, I know what is on the island, and I do not want to cause you distress. Dolore, yes?”
“No, Signora, is no problem. Is only, the island, it is a sad place, capite?”
“Yes, I understand. I won’t be there very long.”
“It is fine, Madame. Fine.”
I settled back into my seat, allowing the two men to get on with their rowing. As I’d hoped, my clearly demonstrated lack of their language encouraged them to talk easily together over my head. And although much of what they said was Venetian rather than Italian, there was enough of an overlap that I could make sense of portions.
“Do we really have to go there?” the younger, Carlo, asked.
“The pay will be good, think of that. And we’ll be gone before dark.”
“What if she is there?”
“Why would she be there, at the landing? Hot day like this, she’ll be inside, or under a tree in the garden. Just don’t tell her on Sunday that we came by without seeing her, it’ll be fine.”
I took care to keep all awareness from my face, staring off at the palazzos and waterborne craft.
“Just so he isn’t there.”
“When does he ever go to see her?”
In a chorus, both men hawked and spat over the side. I allowed my gaze to come up, with a vague smile, then went back to watching the movement around me.
But neither man continued with his thoughts about either the loathed him or the worrisome her. Instead they talked about one of their fellows who had been kicked out of his house by an irate wife when she’d discovered his second family—a story that gave me quite a few new vocabulary words and helpful insight into how a Venetian held secrets (namely, by storing them over on the mainland in Mestre) but which had nothing to do with San Clemente or its inmates.
The gondola skimmed past the Salute and across the San Marco Basin, ducking into the canal that crossed the Giudecca and into open water again, then straightening for a run at one of the larger islands ahead of us.
The Isola di San Clemente was (according to the maps) a teardrop-shaped piece of land with (according to the guide-book) a varied history: monastic community, pilgrim hospice, then quarantine island during various plagues, which supplied it with both hospital and burial grounds. After Napoleon, the island’s religious were kicked off to make room for a military garrison, until finally, the hospital was converted to a place for the area’s lunatic women.
We put in among the marking pillars, and I let Carlo help me out. A man appeared from one of the buildings, bare-headed and jacket unbuttoned. His arm came up as if in friendly greeting—but a swift motion at the corner of my vision cut him off sharply. The upraised arm descended; the man came to a halt. As I approached, I saw him look doubtfully between me and the two gondolieri behind me.
“Buongiorno, Signora.”
I returned his greeting, established that he spoke enough English for my purposes, and continued in slow and simple phrases. “Signore, my name is Mrs Russell.”
“Amadeo Albanesi, Signora.” We shook hands.
“Signor Albanesi, I have a friend. She came to Venice in the last one or two weeks. She has spent time in a lunatic hospital in England. You understand?”
“Un manicomio, si.”
“Right, thank you. My friend travels with a woman, a nurse, who may be from here—from Venice, I mean—who is not quite so tall as me.” I held my hand up on my forehead to indicate Nurse Trevisan’s remembered height. “Brown hair, brown eyes, small…er, mole? Here?” I touched my jaw-bone.
“Il neo? Si. No, Signora, I have not seen one like that.”
“What about my friend? She is small.” Again the hand came out, this time at my chin. “Light hair.”
“Bianchi?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call—that is, I don’t know if it is white. Pale blonde.”
“Biondi? No, we have no new patient con i capelli biondi. Hairs of the blonde.”
“But you do have one with white hair? A new patient with white hairs—hair, I mean?”
“Six, seven days new, si. Not English. Or, maybe. Not…anything. Non parla, capisce?”
“Lei non parla affatto? Neanche un po’?”
Signor Albanesi looked relieved at this shift into something resembling his own tongue, and proceeded to inform me that although, yes, they had a new patient, she wasn’t blonde, but white-haired, and that they didn’t know if she was English or German or what, since she hadn’t spoken a word since she was brought in nearly a week ago.
I glanced at the doorway behind him. “Signore, may I be permitted to meet this patient?” I hurried on as I saw refusal on his face. “Or just to see her, for a moment. I could solve your problem, of who she is. Her family has money,” I offered.
His dark eyes studied mine, then looked behind me towards the lagoon and city beyond. I could see him consider my request—which offered not only the solution to a puzzle, but a possible relief of some financial burdens, institutional or personal. He seemed about to speak—and then his face shifted, drawing in with what looked like dread, or even fear. I started to turn, but before I could see what attracted him he grabbed my arm, dragging me out of the light and towards the depths of the building. “Venga, Signora—presto presto!”
His urgency was such that I went along with him. Once inside, he by-passed the first door to yank open the second, trying to shove me within. That I resisted. “Why? What is wrong?”
“Signora, please, cinque minuti only, maybe ten is all, of silence. Here. Then I will take you to see your friend. But per favore la prego, silenzio!”
The door shut in my face, but did not lock. I heard him scuttle into the adjoining office, then hurry out again. When I edged the door open, I saw him walking briskly down to the manicomio’s pier, adjusting his official hat and doing up the buttons of his uniform.
I also saw my two companions scrambling to row away before the fast-approaching motor-launch smashed their delicate craft into the boards.
At the sight of the man who stepped off the launch, I drew back my head like a threatened turtle.