“Zuichini, meet Joly Maddox. A fellow connoisseur of the unusual. Including rare books.”
The man at the table had a hooked nose and small dark cruel eyes. His face resembled a carnival mask, with a plague doctor’s beak, long enough to keep disease at bay. He extended his hand. It was more like a claw, Joly thought. And it was trembling, although not from nerves – for his toothless smile conveyed a strange, almost malevolent glee. Zuichini must suffer from some form of palsy, perhaps Parkinson’s disease. Joly, young and fit, knew little of sickness.
“You wonder why I make specific mention of books, Joly?” Sanborn asked with a rhetorical flourish. “It is because my good friend here is the finest bookbinder in Italy. Zuichini is not a household name, not even here in Venice, but his mastery of his craft, I assure you, is second to none. As a collector of unique treasures, few appreciate his talents more than I.”
A simian waiter shuffled out from a doorway, bearing wine and three large glasses. He did not utter a word, but plainly Sanborn and Zuichini were familiar customers. Sanborn did not spare the man’s retreating back a glance as he poured.
“You will taste nothing finer in Italy, I assure you. Liquid silk.”
Joly took a sip and savoured the bouquet. Sanborn was right about the wine, but what did he want? Everyone wanted something.
“You are here as a tourist?” the American asked. “Who knows, you might follow my example. I first came to this city for a week. That was nineteen years ago and now I could not tear myself away if my life depended on it.”
Joly explained that he’d arrived in Venice a month earlier. He had no money, but he knew how to blag. For a few days he’d dressed himself up as Charlie Chaplin and become a living statue, miming for tourists in the vicinity of San Zaccaria and earning enough from the coins they threw into his tin to keep himself fed and watered. But he’d hated standing still and after a few hours even the narcissistic pleasure of posing for photographs began to pall. One afternoon, taking a break in a cheap pizzeria, he’d fallen into conversation with Lucia when she served him with a capuccino. She was a stranger in the city as well; she’d left her native Taormina after the death of her parents and drifted around the country ever since. What they had in common was that neither of them could settle to anything. That night she’d taken him to her room in Dorsoduro and he’d stayed with her ever since.
“Excellent!” Sanborn applauded as he refilled his new young friend’s glass. “What is your profession?”
Joly said he was still searching for something to which he would care to devote himself, body and soul. After uni, he’d drifted around. His degree was in English, but a career in teaching or the civil service struck him as akin to living death. He liked to think of himself as a free spirit, but he enjoyed working with his hands and for six months he’d amused himself as a puppeteer, performing for children’s parties and at municipal fun days. When that became wearisome, he’d drifted across the Channel. He’d spent three months in France, twice as long in Spain, soon he planned to try his luck in Rome.
“I wondered about learning a trade as a boat-builder, I spent a day in the squero talking to a man who builds gondolas.” He risked a cheeky glance at Zuichini’s profile. “I even thought about making masks…”
“An over-subscribed profession in this city,” Sanborn interrupted. “I understand why you didn’t pursue it.”
“Well, who knows? One of these days, I may come back here to try my luck.”
“You have family?”
“My parents are dead, my sister emigrated to Australia where she married some layabout who looked like a surf god. So I have no ties, I can please myself.”
“And your girlfriend?” Sanborn asked. “Any chance of wedding bells?”
Joly couldn’t help laughing. Not the effect of the wine, heady though it was, but the very idea that he and Lucia might have a future together. She was a pretty prima donna, only good for one thing, and although he didn’t say it, the contemplative look in Sanborn’s pale grey eyes made it clear that he’d got the message.
“You and she must join us for dinner, be my guests, it would be a pleasure.”
“Oh, no, really, we couldn’t impose…”
Sanborn dismissed the protestations with a flick of his hand. He was old and deliberate and yet Joly recognized this was a man accustomed to getting his own way. “Please. I insist. I know a little seafood restaurant, they serve food so wonderful you will never forget it. Am I right, Zuichini?”
The wizened man cackled and nodded. A wicked gleam lit his small eyes.
“Well, I’m not sure…”
But within a couple of minutes it was agreed and Joly stumbled out into the glare of the sun with the American’s good wishes ringing in his ears. Zuichini’s small, plague-mask head merely nodded farewell; he’d uttered no more than two dozen words in the space of half an hour. Joly blinked, unaccustomed to wine that hit so hard; but the pleasure was worth the pain.
When he met up with Lucia, she made a fuss about the dinner. It was in her nature to complain; she regarded it as a duty not to agree to anything he suggested without making him struggle.
“With two old men? Why would we wish to do this? After tomorrow we will be apart, perhaps for ever. Are you tired with me already?”
Exaggeration was her stock-in-trade, but he supposed she was right and that they would not see each other again after he left the city. The plan was for him to travel to Rome and for her to join him there in a fortnight’s time when she’d received her month’s pay from the restaurant. He’d arranged it like that so there was an opportunity for their relationship to die a natural death. He hated break-up scenes. It would be so easy for them not to get together again in the Eternal City. If he wanted to return to Venice, he would rather do so free from encumbrances; there were plenty more fish in the sea. As for their argument, in truth she found the prospect of a slap-up meal at a rich man’s expense as appealing as he did and after twenty minutes she stopped grumbling and started to deliberate about what she might wear.
They went back to her place and made love and by the time she’d dressed up for the evening, he could tell she was relishing the prospect of meeting someone new. Even if the men were old, she would love parading before them; admiration turned her on more than anything exotic he tried with her in bed. At first he’d found her delightful, he’d even managed to persuade himself that she might have hidden depths. But in truth Lucia was as shallow as the meanest canal in the city.
Against his expectations, the dinner was a success, early awkwardness and stilted conversation soon smoothed by a rich, full-blooded and frighteningly expensive red wine. Sanborn, in a fresh white suit, did most of the talking. Zuichini remained content to let his patron speak for him, occupying himself with a lascivious scrutiny of the ample stretches of flesh displayed by Lucia’s little black dress. Her ankle tattoo, a small blue heart, had caught the American’s eye.
“In honour of young Joly?” he asked, with an ostentatious twinkle.
Lucia tossed her head. “I had it done in Sicily, the day of my sixteenth birthday. The first time I fell in love.”
“It is as elegant and charming as the lady whom it adorns.” Sanborn had a habit of giving a little bow whenever he paid a compliment. “Take a look, Zuichini, do you not agree?”
The wizened man leaned over to study the tattoo. His beak twitched in approval; the gleam in his dark eyes was positively sly. Even Lucia blushed under his scrutiny.