Brunetti said nothing in reply; he was busy studying the lines where the boards were invisibly caulked together, the hull’s gentle curves, the floor planking that showed no sign of moisture or dirt.
‘Complimenti,’ Brunetti said, turning away to face forward. He heard noises from behind, then Casati asked him to haul in the parabordo that served as a fender between the side of the boat and the stone wall. When Brunetti turned again, he saw Casati pull in a second parabordo and set it in the bottom of the boat, next to a piece of iron grating standing upright against the side. Brunetti faced forward again and heard the slap of the mooring rope tossed into the bottom of the boat, and then the smooth noise of the oar slipping into the fórcola. A sudden motion pushed them away from the wall, and then he thought he heard Casati’s oar slide into the water, and they were off.
All he heard after that was the soft rubbing of the oar in the curve of the fórcola, the hiss of water along the sides of the boat, and the occasional squeak of one of Casati’s shoes as his weight shifted forwards or backwards. Brunetti gave himself to motion, glad of the passing breeze that tempered the savagery of the heat. He hadn’t thought to bring a hat, and he had scoffed at Paola’s insistence that he bring sunscreen. Real men?
Brunetti had rowed since he was a boy, but he knew he had little to contribute to the smoothness of this passage. There was not the slightest suggestion of stop and go, of a point where the thrust of the oar changed force: it was a single forward motion, like a bird soaring on rising draughts of air, or a pair of skis descending a slope. It was a whish or a shuuh, as hard to describe as to hear, even in the midst of the silence of the laguna.
Brunetti turned his head to one side, then to the other, but there was only the soft, low hiss. He wanted to turn and look at Casati, as though by watching him row, he might store the motions away and copy them later, but he didn’t want to shift his weight and thus change the balance of the boat, however minimally.
A fisherman stood on the riva, looking both bored and impatient. When he saw the puparìn, he raised his pole in salutation to Casati, but the heat rendered him silent as a fish.
They reached the end of the island and turned eastward, following the shoreline past houses and abandoned fields. Even the turning had been effortless. Brunetti watched houses and trees glide past and only then did he realize how fast they were moving. He turned, then, to watch Casati row.
Seeing the perfect balance of his motion, back and forth, back and forth, hands effortlessly in control of the oar, Brunetti thought that no man his own age or younger would be able to row like this because he would spoil it by showing off. The drops from the blade hit the water almost invisibly before the oar dipped in and moved towards the back. His father had rowed like this.
It was perfection, Brunetti realized, as beautiful as any painting he had ever seen or voice he had ever heard. He turned himself forward and looked to the right as they entered what seemed to be a wider canal.
‘It’s just up there,’ Casati said from behind him. Brunetti saw a tangled mass of vines that had managed to crawl over and repossess a brick sea wall, and behind it sick, desiccated trees, their lower parts moss-spattered and apparently fruitless. Like bones tossed to dogs under the table, dull orange fragments of the wall lay scattered among the tin cans and plastic bottles on the tidal beach that had washed up against it.
‘No, farther ahead,’ Casati said. Brunetti saw that the colour of the bricks lightened as the wall grew straight and more solidly made. Behind it he saw the tops of trees, each a vernal Lazarus, sickness cast aside, peaches and apricots rich on the branches, leaves as brightly polished as the boat they rode in. And amidst them the multi-chimneyed tiled roof of a countryside villa. From so low, he could see only the top floor and roof, but he noticed that the white paint on the plastered walls was fresh, as were the copper gutters and drainpipes.
Casati steered them towards an opening in the wall in front of the house, where three moss-covered steps led down to the water. He passed the steps and pulled close to the sea wall. As the boat slowed, Brunetti, without being asked, tossed the parabordo over the side and put out his hand to slow them by grabbing a metal ring in the wall. When they came to a full stop, he moved forward and tied the rope lying at the front of the boat to the ring.
Brunetti turned towards the back of the boat, and saw another rope already tied to a second metal ring, the second parabordo already over the side to protect the boat. Casati clambered up the three steps, suitcase in hand. In ordinary circumstances, with a friend, Brunetti would have made a joke about hoping the other man did not expect a tip, but he didn’t want to risk offending Casati.
When he climbed up, Brunetti saw the villa standing fifty metres back from the brick wall. It looked like a square box covered with a four-segment tiled roof that peaked in the centre. A thick wooden door stood in the middle of the fa?ade, three large windows on either side of it. A wide stone pavement led to the private mooring.
Casati had already started towards the villa, and Brunetti followed him. The man opened the door, prompting Brunetti to ask, ‘You don’t lock it?’
Casati looked at him as if he’d spoken in some language other than Veneziano, then answered, ‘No. Not out here.’
‘Just like when I was a boy,’ Brunetti answered, hoping it was the right thing to say.
Apparently it was, for Casati smiled. ‘Come in, Signore.’
It took about fifteen minutes for him to show Brunetti around the house. He started with the ground floor with a central staircase leading to the upper floor. In a large sitting room stood a random selection of easy chairs that had in common with the single sofa only the look of being comfortable and well worn; the library – Brunetti sighed with relief at the sight – had four walls of books. The dining room held a long walnut table scarred by centuries of use, and another, smaller sitting room had walls filled with fragments of ancient Venetian pottery that must have been rescued from the underwater dumps of the old pottery workshops on Murano. An enormous kitchen spanned the back part of the building and had what appeared to be the original brick floor and six French windows giving out to a walled-in garden.