“No? And who knows that? When someone steps forward and claims title to this, how do we know he’s telling the truth? Why this charade in the first place? There’s some funny business going on here, I’ll bet. Don’t assume it’ll pan out the way our anonymous joker hopes. Why shouldn’t I see what it looks like with my name on the cover? I could have been a musician, too, if it wasn’t for this damn claw. There were plenty of corrections needed to that scrappy script that came through the door. Do I get no credit for that?”
Speechless, I left the house abruptly and sat for a while in the parish church, refusing to tell the priest my news for fear of how my temper might receive his predictable show of sympathy.
Instead I crouched silent on a pew for an hour or more, as if in meditation. These ramblings have lost their purpose. There is no pretty hand in Seville to receive them. I am no longer the amiable, fraternal chronicler, sanitising the truth for my distant sister. Instead these thoughts may work their way inwards to my soul with all their truth, as harsh and bitter as it may be.
So let me admit this to myself now. My sister was not uppermost in my thoughts for long. My head rebelled at the injustice, the impossibility of her death. So I sat in the church of San Cassian and stared at that ancient painting which I once described to Lucia: the schoolmaster being martyred by his pupils. In the darkness I allowed my imagination to rise up, like Lucifer ascending from damnation. Leo was the master, I was the pupil. In my right hand the adze, in my left a sharp pen, the nib cut as sharp as the finest dagger.
How many men are murdered daily in the mind’s eye? Millions, I believe, and the next morning they rise and go about their business, oblivious to the agonising fate their midnight selves suffered in another’s mind a few hours before. The penknife and the adze. The sword and the scalpel. If Leo could peer into my head and see what wonders I worked upon his scrawny frame that night, he would faint away dead in horror. But no man knows what thoughts run through another’s brain. The following day, over breakfast, Leo bestowed upon me quite a fetching smile, then said, “It’s off to Ca’ Dario and a word with that Gobbo chum of yours. I must keep Delapole in my power, boy. I must have him tight within my grasp.”
29
A forced sale
Rizzo cursed his luck. Englishmen seemed to haunt him. The fellow Scacchi had sent seemed at first little more than a youth. Rizzo soon changed his opinion. “Daniel” was not cowed by his threats or concerned about losing the damned instrument. It was as if he recognised Rizzo’s urgent need to get rid of the fiddle and was determined to mark the price down accordingly. That scarcely mattered now. Rizzo had listened to him playing the thing and felt like screaming till his eyes popped out. It was then that he decided he would never touch the cursed instrument again. The only question was how much money he might glean from its immediate sale.
“You say you can talk business,” he grunted. “Well, talk.”
Daniel ceased offering him the violin case and chose instead to place it on the floor between them. “It’s of uncertain value. I don’t know.”
He was, Rizzo thought, not bad at lying, nor as good as he believed. “If you don’t know that, then what do we have to talk about?”
Daniel placed a long, pale hand on his chin, a gesture that reminded Rizzo of Massiter. “I’ve no idea how we might dispose of it.”
Rizzo waved his cigarette in the air. “Your problem, my friend. All I want to know is what you have to offer. Here and now. If we agree a price between us and walk away together? How much will you place in my hand for this thing?”
The young Englishman blinked, clearly thinking. Rizzo wanted rid of the violin at any price, but he wanted his money in hard cash.
“We don’t carry large sums out of habit,” Daniel replied, lying again.
Rizzo took him by the arm, leaned into his face, and breathed a thick cloud of cigarette smoke between them. “Hey. Let’s cut the crap. This isn’t my kind of merchandise, right? But it’s got a value. You said so yourself. Maybe it’s a fake. Maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. Seems to me some clever guy like you could make it look real if you wanted to, anyway. Then what would it be worth?”
“True. But then we take all the risk.”
Rizzo said nothing.
“Say, twenty thousand U.S. dollars,” Daniel suggested. “In cash. This afternoon.”
“No deal. You want to insult me?”
“Not at all. I’d just like us both to win.”
“Yeah.” He even talked like Massiter.
“So what do you want?”
“Gimme fifty grand. Cash. We go pick it up now.”
Daniel grimaced. “We don’t have that kind of money just lying around.”
“So?”
“Let’s say forty thousand. I think we could scrape that together. If you come with me, we could conclude this within the hour.”
Forty thousand dollars. It was still a huge amount. It could set him up in a bar, if he wanted. “That’s a real lot of money for a fake, don’t you think? Daniel?” He wanted the English kid to understand he knew he was being rolled.
“It’s a lot of money,” he agreed. “Do you want it?”
Rizzo scowled at the case on the ground. “We get it now? I come with you?”
“Sure.”
“You carry it,” Rizzo grunted. “I’m sick of the damned thing.”
They walked to the Arsenale stop and caught the first vaporetto to come along. It was, for a change, half-empty. The two men sat on the hard blue seats in the stern, out in the open air. Rizzo let him have the right-hand place, closer to the waterfront of San Marco. Some note of caution sounded in his head saying that he didn’t want to be seen with this odd, devious English kid. But it made no sense. Daniel was the one carrying the violin case, having left the nylon bag in the warehouse. Still, they did not speak. No one could place the two of them together.
Then the boat pulled past La Pietà, and Rizzo’s heart briefly stopped. There was some kind of media gathering outside the church, with photographers and reporters and a crowd of young musicians holding their instruments. This was Massiter’s show; he should have remembered that. His figure was there, in the middle of the crowd. He could so easily have seen the two of them together. And thought what? That his chosen thief and errand boy was sitting in the back of a vaporetto next to some pale-faced kid who happened to have a violin case on his lap. He wasn’t going to worry about it. Massiter had his back to them. If he’d seen something, then those icy grey eyes would surely be bearing down on the stern of the vaporetto that instant. All the same, Rizzo mumbled something about the heat and went to sit inside, between the kid and the exit. It was crazy to multiply the risks.
They got off at San Stae and walked back towards the Rialto. Rizzo had no idea where the old man lived, though it would be easy to find out. The one time they dealt with each other, it happened through an intermediary too. The English kid had indicated Rizzo was to stay out of Scacchi’s house. That was fair enough. But he still wanted to know.
The two of them shared a beer in the tiny bar that sat on the San Cassian campo, opposite the church. He ordered a second. Daniel refused. The place was empty.
“I’ll go and get the money,” the English kid said. “I’ll leave the fiddle here with you. Then come back with the cash. You can go check it in the toilet if you like.”
Rizzo laughed. There was something faintly amusing about Daniel, as if this were all a piece of amateur dramatics.
“Take the thing. Then come back with what you owe me.”
Daniel smiled. “Thanks. It’s nice to be trusted.”
Rizzo took off his sunglasses for the first time since leaving home that morning. He stared at Daniel. “What’s this got to do with trust? If you rip me off, I come and kill you. Don’t you get that?”