“Tell the Senator that you did your best in an impossible task. What else could he expect?”

“I’m worried about Raven.”

“Don’t be. If we couldn’t find her, neither will Skinny and Davis.”

Susyn toyed with a piece of lettuce. “I need to call California. I can’t abandon the chase without talking to the Senator.”

While she was gone, I drank coffee and watched the gondolas and vaporettos slip past on the Grand Canal. Eventually, I stole one of her lamb chops.

When she returned, she was much subdued. She said, “The Senator asked me to get some more information from you before you disappear.”

“Sure.”

“Raven’s assailants – why do you call them by those names?”

“One called himself James Davis when he tried to strike up a conversation with Raven in Bermuda. We assume that it is an alias. The other one was skinny, so I call him Skinny. I don’t know him by any other name.”

“How many times did you see them?”

“Twice. Once when they were throwing Raven off the cruise ship . . .”

“You actually saw that!”

“Through binoculars. I was half a mile away. We talked about this before.”

“I want to get it absolutely straight to tell the Senator. Could you identify the two?”

“Yes.”

“From that far away.”

“No. But they came at us again in Marseilles, and I got a good look at them. They were closer to me than you are right now.”

“So you could pick them out of a line-up?”

“Yes.”

“Or a mug book?”

“Yes.”

Her brows had drawn together, and there was a strange intensity in her violet eyes. She sighed, then made a wry mouth and said, “I guess if you have to go, you have to go.”

“My train is leaving in an hour.”

“Then we’d better get back.”

She paid while I waited, then we stepped out. The streets were less crowded than before. Beyond the street, near the canal, all was inky darkness, and I could just see figures silhouetted against the light reflecting off the water.

“Let’s look at the canal one last time,” she said, and caught my right arm in a passionate grip. We moved into a patch of darkness, toward the water. A figure waiting there moved aside.

“Now!” Susyn hissed in a new and strident voice. Her grip on my arm tightened and she let her knees go slack. I was pulled off balance, and before I could jerk her upright, the figure who had moved aside, lunged forward and jammed the cold steel barrel of a pistol into my throat.

A stray flicker of light caught his face. It was Davis. more tomorrow

Raven was in danger, but I had no way to find her. No leads at all. The chances of her being in Venice were infinitesimal. Either Eric would have known that he couldn’t play here, or they would have found out immediately and left. Of course, Raven could have put her plastic to use and paid their way, but I couldn’t see Eric going for that. Nor did I think Raven would support a man for long.

I got up and paced the room. It was over. Susyn could do what she wanted, but she might as well go home and wait for a call from Raven.

Large changes were taking place in Europe that summer, especially in the Eastern bloc. By training and by passion, those events were my destiny. I had loved a woman and had lost her – nothing new in that. I had a life to get back to.

If I was out, I wanted all the way out. I took a ten minute walk to the Ferrol and a twenty minute wait in line to buy a ticket. The train was leaving at five minutes past midnight. 

I returned to the hotel. Susyn was still not back at the room. On impulse, I packed and left my backpack with the concierge.

It was past ten PM and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Now that I was financially on my own again, it was back to stand-up sandwiches. I went looking for one. The man behind the counter took a sandwich off the stack in the cooler and put it into one of those waffle iron heaters they only use in Venice. It came out crushed, with dark crisscross burns across the bread, and it tasted fine.

I walked back toward the hotel with a feeling of freedom. Susyn was sitting in the waiting room, angrily rolling my note back and forth between her fingers.

*       *       *

We went to an outdoor cafe where she ordered dinner and I had coffee. The note had told her I was leaving, but she had to hear it from me. 

“It’s a dead end, Susyn. They hustle street musician so fast there isn’t time for an echo. If you want to hire some local troops to sit in the train station with a photo of Raven, go ahead. But you might as well be in Munich or Copenhagen or Brussels. The only thing we know is that somebody said that Raven said that she wanted to come to Venice.”

“You said you could find her.”

“No. I said that I knew how to go about finding her. I didn’t guarantee success.”

The waiter moved in with a plate of food for her, but she only picked at it. I went on, “We did it right. We followed the only course of action that stood any chance of success. And we almost caught up with them in Montreaux. An hour earlier, and we would have made contact.”

“What am I going to tell Senator Cabral?” more tomorrow

Venice came into sight. She had lighted herself for the night. Gondoliers were hawking their services at the water side and the evening press of tourists filled the streets. I worked my way back to Plaza San Marcos, dodging pigeons in the square and looking for street musicians. There were none.

Twenty minutes later I found out why. A bearded youth with guitar set out his empty guitar case and began to play. Three bars into his first song, a police office tapped him on the shoulder and sent him on his way. Venice is not like the rest of Europe and it does not want its uniqueness diluted by such commonplaces as street musicians.

If Eric knew that – and Colin said he has been on the circuit for years – then he and Raven would never have come here. I was wasting my time.

*          *          *

I wanted to sit down to think about it, but you can’t sit down in Plaza San Marcos without paying a fee. Try any of the hundreds of chairs that line the edge of the Plaza and you will find a waiter insisting that you order or move on. 

Venice is a lovely old lady, slowly dying of inner rot. Tourist Venice is her defense against the hordes who invade her every year. From the time you step off the train, every restaurant, every boat ride, every souvenir shop is designed to move you swiftly from the Ferrol to Plaza San Marcos and back again, lighter of cash, and out into the real world again.

You must fight past her defenses to see the real Venice behind the merchant’s mask. Fortunately, it is easy. Find any well marked street, find a sign that says turn right, and turn left instead. You will be in another world.

The streets where the tourists are led are narrow and crowded; when you leave the beaten path, the streets give solitude. I sought that solitude now, weaving through back streets, crossing narrow bridges over narrower canals. Under clotheslines with dripping wash where stray cats nod benignly from their broken stone wall thrones. Where children play. There are children in Venice. You can see them if you leave the gaudy human snake that slithers from train station to Plaza San Marcos and back again.

*       *       *

The search was over. It had been a two week vacation from acknowledging the fact that I would never see Raven again. Now that reality had to be faced. And another reality – the sure knowledge that I did not want to repeat my bedding of Susyn. Not tonight – nor tomorrow, nor the day after. If there was a train out tonight, I would be on it. Not to Paris or Marseilles. Certainly not to Oslo, but to some place the two of us had never discussed or planned for. For Brendisi, perhaps, and then to Greece. Anywhere that was not associated with the name Raven.

When I got back to the hotel, Susyn was not there. She had left no message in the room and no message at the desk. I stretched out on my bed – still unused – and thought some more about my situation. Nothing changed. more tomorrow

Chapter Twenty-two

Her needs and desires were as fierce as mine. By afternoon we had explored each other from hairline to instep. Softened after passion, her face was even more childlike. Her fingers worked and nuzzled at my arm as she lay back in near sleep.

As I lay beside her, she became a stranger. In a manner I could scarcely understand, our lovemaking had built a wall between us. Something had gone subtly awry in the fall of her hair and the set of her half glazed eyes. 

I left her on the bed, showered and changed into fresh clothes. When I returned, she had pulled the sheet up to cover herself. She smiled and patted the bed beside her. I shook my head and said, “I am going out.”

“Let Raven wait.”

“No. I’ll see you this evening.”

“Where will you go.”

“First the youth hostel, then I’ll take a vaporetto out to the Lido to check out the campgrounds.”

“She’ll never be there.”

I shrugged. “You’re probably right. Still, it’s a way to proceed.”

“I’ll check the hotels here close to the train station.”

“Good.”

“Ian?”

I paused with my hand on the doorknob. She said, “What’s wrong?” I just shook my head and went on out.

*       *       *

Across the Grand Canal, you enter shadows where narrow passageways between the houses and shops cut out all but the high noon sun. It is a maze of interconnecting streets, interlaced with canals. An easy place to get lost, and a place that makes getting lost a pleasure. I moved in mazed confusion myself, in bittersweet afterglow.

If you follow the signs, you will eventually reach Plaza San Marcos. You will know you are getting close when every shop sells food or expensive trinkets. Then, just when you think all of Venice has turned to Rodeo Drive, you debouch into the vastness of San Marcos square. The Cathedral of St. Mark rises in enameled splendor, all domes and gold and mosaics. Neither eastern nor western, neither Roman nor Orthodox, but with a double helping of pretentiousness from each. I forgive its ugliness only because it is in Venice.

I wormed my way through the crowds, past the Doge’s Palace, and took a vaporetto across the lagoon to the Lido. Campgrounds and pensiones line the water for several miles; it took the rest of the day to canvass them, without success.

I reboarded the vaporetto and found a place at the rail. Locals commuting to Venice sat near the center of the open deck, reading their papers like the commuters on any bus or train anywhere in the world. The rest of us lined the rail for the unparalleled view of Venice that would soon be unfolding.

Five minutes later, something like one of Christ’s miracles repeated itself. It was a walking on the water. A whole village of locals appeared mirage-like, standing on the waters of the lagoon, miles from any shore or island. Only the boats that had brought them out, and were now aground, dispelled the fantasy. Here the waters of the lagoon were only inches deep at low tide, and locals had come to gather mussels. more tomorrow

Men and women were playing in kayaks, moving their arms rhythmically or simply coasting in the motionless water. Beneath the train, the soft clatter of ties was the only sound in the calm of morning. There was no horizon. The mist hid the distance. Immediately before me the water and the boats were crystal clear and perfectly focused, but within a quarter of a mile the air had thickened and turned translucent. It was impossible to say where the pale sea ended and the pale sky began. 

In the distance Venice waited, turning her backside toward the mainland, not yet looking like herself at all.

The train entered the station with a groaning of brakes and slowed imperceptibly to a halt. The crowds that were waiting to board her stood crouched at the doors, while those aboard struggled off. I returned to the compartment to find Susyn dressed and packed. I put on my backpack, picked up her suitcase, and let her squeeze ahead of me as we began the slow, belly-to-back walk down the corridor among the throng that had overfilled the coach.

The Ferrol station looks like any other station. But when you step out the front door, the whole world changes.

Suddenly, Venice. The Grand Canal runs by at the foot of the broad steps of the station. Water taxis and gondolas crowd the banks of the canal while powerful steel vaporettos tear its surface to froth. Beyond them the palazzios rise up in faded Renaissance splendor. The nearest bridge across the Grand Canal arched up so high above the water traffic that it seemed oriental.

Susyn said, “My God. This is really Europe. There is no trace of America here.”

That was the kernel in the nut. Venice was completely foreign. Any yet familiar. Not very different from the Venice Shakespeare wrote about.

We walked down past the stalls of fruit sellers and the lean black men up from Africa with their blankets of trinket treasures, up the steep steps of Ponte degli Scatzi to look down on it all from above. On the broad steps in front of the Ferrol, backpackers were sprawled on their sleeping bags, watching, talking, and letting Venice ooze into their pores.

“We need a place to sleep,” Susyn said.

“I don’t know anything about that. Venice was out of my price range when I was here before, so I camped on the Lido.”

“Is that in the city?”

“No. You take a vaporetto across the lagoon. I’ll have to check there for Raven.”

She took my arm and pressed it against her. “Let’s not split up, yet,” she said. “Come with me.”

We turned east from the Ferrol, where there were hotels to be had. Susyn paid with Senator Cabral’s money. The concierge took Susyn’s suitcase and led us to our room. Not a suite this time. Two beds in fingertip reach of one another. 

Susyn tipped the concierge and opened the window. Fruit-ripe air came in and swirled the lace curtains around her. I moved up beside her to look out; it was easy to see over her head. Twenty five feet away, our view was of a stone wall with bricked up windows, and forty feet below the dark waters of a cross canal glinted olive in the faint light.

I eased closer, pinning her against the window, and felt her take a sharp breath. I put my hands on her shoulders, feeling the firmness of her buttocks against me as I drew her upper body back hard against my chest. She leaned her head back against my shoulder and looked up at me out of one moist eye. Then I stepped back and she turned easily and naturally into my arms. Her lips came up, mine came down, and she melted against me. I put my palms flat on her rump and slipped them upward, under her blouse and into the small of her back. She moved against me, burrowing her hips into me. I unsnapped her bra. Then I eased her down onto the bed. more tomorrow

I picked my way through the bodies and back to our compartment. Susyn was awake. She said, “How long is the line?”

“Twenty minutes if you go now. It will get five minutes longer every minute you wait.”

She checked her watch, rolled over, and said, “Call me when we get to Venice.”

I left her there and closed the door. Down the corridor a dozen feet there was a space for me to stand. I lowered the window and leaned my arms on it. Power poles were swishing by so I didn’t lean out, but the morning air came in to me, mingling the sweetness of a country sunrise on damp croplands with the acrid smell of diesel welling up out of the streets. We were on the outskirts of Mestre, where the last of the fields are eaten up by industry, and Venice was only forty minutes ahead of us.

I put my chin on my arms and closed by eyes, lost in the vibration, the coolness, and the smells.

Why the hell was I here?

Raven had not merely left me, she had left me for Eric. For Eric! 

Ian Alisdair Gunn, don’t you have any pride at all?

I put myself on trial, spoke for the prosecution, spoke for the defense, and finally acquitted myself on a plea of partial disinterest. 

When I had wakened to find Raven gone from the Hotel St. Lazare, I would have followed her anywhere. Some of that feeling had disappeared when I found out she was with Eric. More of it had been abraded away in the days that followed. By Montreaux, or Salsburg at the latest, I would have given her up, if it had only been romantic attraction that was driving me.

But . . .

But it was not just that. She was in danger. I had only to open my eyes to the scar on the back of my hand to remember that. Sometime during the last week, I had stopped hoping for a reconciliation, but I owed her safety if I could give it to her.

So far, so good.

Now dig deeper. Go past the rational and find the real reasons for chasing a phantom halfway across Europe. Go down where decisions are really made. Go down into the sub-basements of the soul, and there confront an injured pride and a jealous, primeval sense of possession. Go talk to Grendel. Go to where the squatting, black monster mutters to himself in the darkness, “How dare she leave me!”

Enough. If she wasn’t in Venice, I would stop looking for her.

*       *       *

Ah, but Venice . . .

In all of Europe, there is no place where I feel less at home, or more enthralled. Venice is not like any place else.

The train moved slowly out of the lightly industrial area of Mestre and onto the Ponte della Libertà. The sun was well above the horizon, and there was a mist on the lagoon that hid the smaller, more distant islands. The surface of the water was like glass. Alongside the Ponte on the south another bridge carried automobiles to the parking garage in the northwestern corner of Venice. It was the only place on the island they were allowed. Out from the Ponte a hundred yards were a series of pole-pylons set in the mud of the lagoon that marked a highway for small boats going to and from Venice. A lean, low wooden launch was keeping speed with us, it front risen slightly from the still water in an unloaded condition, and leaving a rolling wake that ruffled the silicon smooth surface of the water. more tomorrow

Chapter Twenty-one

I woke early, becoming gradually aware of the rhythmic swaying of the railway coach. Beyond the curtain, the day was still gray and uncommitted. There was stale cigarette smoke in the corridor and stale sweat on my skin. I rubbed my eyes, pulled down a window and stuck my head out into the rushing cool morning air. The mixed smell of damp vegetation and polluted air swirled about me. In my stomach was an emptiness made up of one part morning hunger and nine parts loneliness.

The corridor was filled with sleeping forms. I stepped over them on my way to the toilet.

Every summer, the same pattern recurs. As June gives way to July and then to August, more and more passengers take to the trains, but the authorities make no attempt to provide space for them. Trains that were half empty in May and full in June, are packed in summer with twice as many passengers as there are seats. They sit on the seat-arms and in the aisles, in the corridors of the compartment cars, taking jump seats or sitting on suitcases, or sprawling on the floor, wedged against backpacks. Ragged backpackers and old Italian ladies in black, the youthful and the outworn, the poor and the middle class (the rich are in their reserved compartments, sleeping in their couchettes), having nothing in common but their humanity.

Crowded hip to hip, stepped on, pickled by cigarette smoke, jostled and sleepless – you would expect irritability and bitterness. It is not there. Instead, there is gentleness, kindness, politeness, and a warmth of underlying laughter at the absurdity of it all.

I made my way to the washroom at the end of the compartment. It was early. Most of the passengers were still trying to sleep, so the line was short. After ten minutes, I wedged the door shut behind me to dry shave and wash my face in the untreated water. I brushed my teeth, remembering not to dip the brush under the tap. Finally I lifted the lid on the toilet and spat toothpaste and saliva down onto the ties that were flashing by underneath.

I have always found something satisfying in the simplicity of that arrangement. A turd hitting the ties at fifty miles per hour will explode into a spray of material that dries and decomposes as naturally as a cow pie in a pasture. But try telling that to an American tourist.

Ah, Europe. With the most modern train system in the world and a hole in the floor to shit through. With two hundred mile per hour luxury trains running the same tracks with others that crowd their passengers like emigrants in steerage. The last time I was here, I had become tired of its foreignness after a couple of months. This time it was like a homecoming.

And today, Venice.

Any day that has Venice in it has to be glorious. more tomorrow

The local police hauled him away. Susyn explained, not entirely accurately, that the drunk had attacked me when I tried to stop him from harassing her. The drunk’s hundred proof breath went a long way toward supporting Susyn’s story. It helped even more that the officer had seen Susyn in daily conversation with his chief.

When they had gone, and we were settled in at the table, Susyn turned angrily and said, “What the hell was that all about?”

I didn’t have anything to say.

“I thought I knew you better than that. You didn’t have to beat up that bastard; he was harmless enough.”

“I know.”

“So why . . .?”

I put my hand over hers and said, “Please.”

Her eyes were inches from mine. I watched the fire die down in them, and watched sympathy replace it. She said, “You’re hurting.”

I shrugged.

She said, “Why? What did I miss?”

“I can’t tolerate drunks.”

“Why?”

I had told Raven about my drunken father, but I could not tell Susyn, so I did not reply. She chewed her lip, looking puzzled, and said, “You don’t drink, and you hate drunks. A lot. There has to be a reason.”

“A few of years ago,” I answered, “I woke up from a fourth of July spree and found out I couldn’t remember June.”

It was an exaggeration, but basically true. A small part of the larger truth that I could not share.

Susyn looked puzzled and angry. She could tell that was not the whole story. But it was all she was going to get.

*       *       *

We went down to Venice the next morning, to find Raven. It was a twenty hour journey that sent us through the eastern fringes of the Alps. We sat in desultory conversation, alternately reading and watching the scenery.

During the last week, I had begun reading newspapers again. When I was with Raven, there had been no time, and when she first left me I had had no interest. Now I read that East Germans by the thousands were going down to Hungary on summer vacation and not returning home. The Honecker government had sent protests to Hungary and some kind of international incident was in the offing. It didn’t seem like much to me, or to any western observer. Communist eastern Europe was falling apart before our eyes, and no one understood what was happening.

Including me. I had other things on my mind.

For the second time in a few months, I had been thrown into daily intimacy with a stranger. For the second time, that stranger moved me deeply. As we crossed the fields and forests of eastern Austria, Susyn went to sleep slumped against me. I shifted my arm around her and settled her into a more comfortable position. The miles slid by with the soft, warm weight of her against my side, and the smell of her hair in my nostrils.

Susyn had reserved a couchette compartment. After she was asleep in the upper berth, I lay awake a long time thinking. After a while, Susyn’s hand and arm slipped down to hang above my head. I wondered if she was asleep. Then her fingers twitched in a come-here motion. I reached up and took her hand in mine. We rode on that way for miles, silent, hand-clasped, saying nothing. Finally she gave a tug and pushed her tousled face over the edge of her bunk. I stood up. She put her arms around my shoulders and drew me closer. Her lips on mine were soft and undemanding. When we broke, there were tears in the corners of her eyes, but she put her hand on my mouth when I would have asked why. She simply said, “Good night, Ian,” and drew the covers up around her until only her violet eyes showed. more tomorrow

The next morning, I had made my rounds and was waiting in our favorite outdoor cafe for Susyn to return. For four days, we had made it our own, sitting through the early afternoon watching the tourists go by while we compared notes. From a table near the low stone wall that separates the patio from the narrow cobbled walk, I could see through a curtain of geraniums as I watched for Susyn’s return.

When I finally saw her, she was coming out of a cross street a block away, looking over her shoulder in conversation with a stranger. Something in her stance brought me fully alert. Her heels were tapping the cobblestones angrily. The stranger kept pace with her, but there was something wrong with his stride. His feet seemed to find the cobbles a bit sooner than his mind had anticipated. He did not exactly stagger, but he was by no means stable.

Not falling down drunk, but drunk nonetheless.

I rose and stepped over the low stone wall to wait on the sidewalk. Something black and old was rising up inside of me, compounded of remembered and half-remembered indignities.

When Susyn reached me, I turned her so that I stood between her and the stranger. Over my shoulder, I said, “Do you know him?”

“Not really. I met him an hour ago when I was showing Raven’s picture around. He has been following me since.”

His eyes met mine, and he tried to blink me into focus. He was further gone than I had thought. He said, “Wo sind sie?” and his breath would have taken paint off a wall.

Then he reached for me. It might have been an innocent move, but I don’t like to be touched by drunks.

I caught his right hand in my left, with my thumb in the cup of his palm, my fingers hard against the back of his hand, and rotated outward and downward. He winced. He should have cried out. Aikido locks are painful, but he was mostly anesthetized.

He jerked loose and I let him go. He staggered back a step and his face finally registered pain. He began to mutter obscenities, gradually growing louder, rocking from one foot to the other as he worked himself up to act.

I waited, letting the red haze build up inside me.

He threw a looping right. I stepped inside it, caught his collar with my left hand, broke his stance and dragged him forward in one rapid movement. At the same time I hit him in the side of the face. I caught his neck with that same hand and spun him in a tight circle. He lost what little balance he had and fell forward against the low stone wall. I stepped back and waited.

He rolled over on his hands and knees, and came up slowly, weaving and trying to find me with his unfocused eyes. I was aware of Susyn shouting at me, but it was distanced by my rage. He drew back his fist again. I hit him again as he threw his punch, a twisting blow to mid-sternum. He was coming in when I hit him. His ineffectual blow snapped the edge of my ear, and I felt the shock of my fist against his chest all the way to my shoulder.

His eyes rolled up and he sank bonelessly to the sidewalk. more tomorrow

By the fifth day I was restless and worried that Raven and Eric might have decided to skip Salzburg in favor of Venice. Susyn argued that we should spend one more day in Salzburg before we moved on.

Susyn had a sunny, open disposition. Every day was an adventure to her. When she made her rounds each morning, the head of the local police treated her with an avuncular familiarity that would probably have gotten steamy if she had let it. She described his antics every noon when we met to compare notes. Her mobile, comic’s face made him so real that I could almost see his moustache.

“You are very good with people,” I said.

“But, Ian, that’s easy if you like people.”

“You must be very valuable to Senator Cabral.”

She grinned. “He says so. But, of course, he is valuable to me, too. Without him, I would be secretary to some insurance salesman.”

“No. Not you.” It was not so much a compliment as an observation. Beneath her competence and friendliness, Susyn had a burning core of ambition. “How did you meet Senator Cabral?”

“I was working as a secretary – for an insurance salesman.” She grinned at me. “I didn’t like it and I was looking for a way out. The Senator was just running for his first term then. He looked like a winner, so I joined his team as a volunteer and worked my way up to a staff job. Six years later, here I am in Europe.”

“For the first time,” I said. She had told me early on that she had not been to Europe before.

“For the first time, and loving every minute of it. I want to find Raven, but I’ll miss this when I take her back. And I’ll miss you.”

“Tell me more about this drug dealer. I don’t understand why he is still after Raven. Surely he has figured out by now that she was not sent damaging information.”

“How could he be really sure? For a man like that, it would be better to act than to worry, and if that action includes murder, it wouldn’t bother him very much.”

“But a senator’s daughter? He should know that the Feds would never let him alone after killing her. Somehow, they would get him.”

“How could anyone know what happened to Raven if she simply disappeared in mid-ocean? After that, I can only speculate, but perhaps he is afraid to have her come back to California and testify. Anyway, why isn’t really important. It’s just important that we find her.”

I thought about the forces we were facing. They remained unreal in my mind. I had seen them through binoculars when they threw Raven into the sea. I had seen them up close on board the Wahini. Sitting now with Susyn, I stared at the livid scar across the back of my hand, trying to bring the skinny thug into focus. It was no use. My loss of Raven made them seem small and unimportant.

My mistake. more tomorrow