The Lying Tongue Read online

  “I’m pleased that you understand, Adam,” she said. “It’s so kind of you. Niccolò and I were so worried about what to say to you. We felt so responsible.”

  Niccolò’s large hand reached inside his jacket and pulled out his wallet. “We will pay you your first month—that’s the least we can do,” he said. “And if there’s anything else you need, just let us know.”

  I took the three hundred euros. I knew that wouldn’t get me very far, but I smiled anyway and thanked him.

  “What will you do?” asked Signora Gondolini. “Will you go back to London? We could also pay your flight, don’t you think, Niccolò?”

  “Sì, sì, of course,” he replied. “Have a little holiday and then just tell us when you are ready. We’ll get the ticket for you.”

  But what had Britain to offer? A broken relationship and the prospect of a summer at home with my parents in Hertfordshire. And I had to write my novel. When I had told my father of my ambitions to write, he had just sneered at me. No, I had to stay.

  “I think I’ll stick around in Venice a little while,” I said. “I suppose I’ll try and find another job. I’m not in the mood to go back home just yet and—”

  Signora Gondolini jumped up from the chair, her perfect black bob swinging around her face as she did so. As she spoke, her tiny hands flapped in the air like a pair of butterflies. “Niccolò—Niccolò—,” she said with delight. “I’ve got it!”

  “Cosa?” Her husband looked at her with slight irritation.

  “The perfect job—for Adam,” she said, turning toward me. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.” She took a couple of breaths and started again. “You remember the old English gentleman Maria used to do errands for?”

  Her husband looked at her blankly.

  “You know—the one who never goes out. The writer—what is he called?—Gordon, Gordon… Crace. That’s it. The one who wrote that book years ago and then—nothing.”

  I could see that Niccolò still didn’t really understand what his excitable wife was twittering about and that as far as he was concerned, he had fulfilled his side of the bargain. He was a rich man who had eased his conscience by paying me and offering me a flight. Now he just wanted to get rid of me. No doubt my shabbiness was beginning to annoy him in his elegant surroundings.

  “Have we ever met him?” he asked.

  “No—I told you, he hasn’t been out for years,” she replied. “But Maria had said that he’s getting a little…old…and needs a companion. Someone who will get his shopping, do the odd errand for him, tidy the place up. Is that something you might do, Adam?”

  To be honest, anything that would let me stay in Venice would have appealed, and I was intrigued.

  “Yes, of course. That sounds great,” I said.

  But then her expression changed.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked.

  “Well, there could be,” she said. “The best way to get hold of him would, of course, be through Maria. But now it’s a little awkward between us. She’s not so friendly to us, as you can imagine, and I doubt she’ll come back.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “But I’ll give you his address. Maria wrote it down for me once as a reference, although do you remember if we ever received a reply?”

  Niccolò shook his head.

  “Maybe you should write to him anyway. I don’t think he has a telephone.”

  She walked across the room and into the hallway and came back with a piece of paper and a fountain pen. Ink flowed onto the blank sheet in great big loops. She passed it to me and I read the address. Palazzo Pellico, Calle delle Celle. I must have looked confused because the next thing I knew, Signora Gondolini took out a map.

  “Let’s see if we can find it for you,” she said.

  Perhaps it was just my imagination, but I was convinced that as her finger moved over the map, it traced the form of a question mark across the city.

  I couldn’t bear to check back into that dive of a hotel, so, on the Gondolinis’ recommendation, I walked to a cheap but clean pensione in Castello. They had a room—nothing special, but at least I didn’t feel as though my skin was creeping off me. After unpacking, I asked for a sheet of writing paper and an envelope and, in the small bar, I wrote a letter asking the reclusive Gordon Crace for a job.

  Before leaving the Gondolinis’, the Signora had filled me in on his short-lived but nevertheless quite spectacular literary career. His first and only novel, The Debating Society, published in the sixties, was a sensation. It had been greeted with enormous critical acclaim and translated into all the major languages. His publishers and readers all around the world had waited for another book—he was nothing less than una stella, she said—but he had never produced, or at least never published, another novel. Apparently, with the money from the film rights Crace was rich enough never to need to write again, but for someone of such passion, of such drive, it was strange never to want to see your name in print again. Perhaps he had nothing else to write about, she surmised. Maybe he was burned out. Or could it have something to do with affairs of the heart? Signora Gondolini’s black eyes twinkled as she said this; her husband turned his head and pretended not to hear.

  I had already heard enough to be intrigued. In the letter I told him how I had heard about the job and went on to outline my background—my degree in art history at London University (results pending), a basic grounding in Italian, and a need to stay for at least three to six months so I could start writing my novel. I said that although I liked to think I could be good company, noting what Signora Gondolini had told me about Crace, I also added that I appreciated silence and the need for privacy. It wasn’t a masterpiece of a letter by any means, but it was succinct and, I hoped, without pretension. I folded it carefully, eased it into the envelope and sealed it. I wrote the address of the hotel on the back and checked my map. Crace’s palazzo was only a ten or fifteen-minute walk away. I decided that instead of posting it, I’d deliver the letter personally. I gathered my things together and walked out into the night.

  Although teeming with tourists during the day, when the sun dipped over the lagoon, Venice transformed itself into another city altogether. As I wandered down unmarked streets, catching fragments of the moon’s reflection in the waters, I felt myself slipping away. I had no thoughts about finding a job, Eliza or the situation back home. No one knew me here and I was free.

  I walked through Campo Santa Maria Formosa, where the Virgin, in a shapely guise, was supposed to have appeared to St. Magnus, past the church built in her name, and carried on down one of the calles off the square. I wandered around the tangle of alleyways that all seemed to lead down to the same dark canal, but I still couldn’t find the address. Then, near the Calle degli Orbi, I passed a narrow passageway that didn’t seem to have a name.

  At the end of the gloomy alleyway, I came to a slightly wider calle—Calle delle Celle, “the street of the cells”—at the bottom of which stood Crace’s palazzo. The only entrance was a tiny bridge that ran from the street over the water to an imposing doorway that was illuminated by an outside light. Behind the door it looked as though there was a courtyard. Running down the center of the large, three-story, perfectly symmetrical building, like a spine of a long-dead monster, was a series of arched windows, four on each level, the extrados sculpted out of white marble. In one of the rooms on the first floor, candles flickered, illuminating patches of the darkened interior and casting strange shadows onto the ceiling. There was no sound except for the gentle lapping of the water.

  I took the envelope out of my bag and walked as quietly as possible across the bridge. The letter box was on the left side of the door, carved into the marble gate in the shape of a dragon’s head. As I pushed the letter into the creature’s mouth, my hand brushing against its worn-down teeth, I stepped into a circle of light. Back over the bridge, I looked up once more to see a shadow crossing the room before melting into the dark.

  The next afternoon
I returned from a day of sightseeing to find a letter waiting for me at the pensione. The man at the front desk told me that it had been delivered by messenger just after lunch. I ran up to my room and ripped open the envelope.

  Palazzo Pellico

  Calle delle Celle

  30122 Venezia

  Dear Mr. Woods,

  Thank you so much for your letter. I cannot tell you how pleased I was to receive it, coming as it did at so opportune a time. My previous employee, whom I had just taken on, left only a few days ago, and I’ve been at a loss as to what to do.

  As a result, I wondered whether you might be interested in coming here to discuss the matter further. Of course, at this stage I cannot promise you the job. Certain aspects of my life will need to be discussed, and your suitability for the position will have to be investigated. However, your qualifications do seem, on the surface at least, quite impressive.

  If you do wish to take this further, please write to me to arrange a suitable date and time. I do not have a telephone, and I dislike stepping outside my home.

  Yours sincerely,

  Gordon Crace

  I wrote back to Crace suggesting a day and time and, again, hand-delivered the note so as to speed up the process. Crace sent a letter back to the pensione by messenger to say that was acceptable and that he looked forward to our meeting. My future was being mapped out before me.

  I stood outside Crace’s palazzo. It was the morning of my interview and my palms were damp with sweat. I had dressed in the only smart clothes I had—a cream-colored linen suit and a white shirt. Just before I left the hotel I checked myself in the mirror. Sunlight streamed through the window, bleaching out my blond hair, making it so difficult to see my features that I had to draw the blind and examine myself in the room’s half light.

  I was a couple of minutes early for my appointment with Crace, but I didn’t feel like strolling around in the heat any longer. I took a deep breath and walked across the bridge. As I pushed the bell on the side of the door, I stared into the unseeing eyes of the marble dragon that guarded the letter box and smiled to myself. It was obvious that Crace had a sense of humor, even if it was a black one. I knew that from reading his book, which I’d finished in the early hours of that morning.

  The Debating Society centers on a group of sixth-form boys at a minor English public school who meet each week to discuss a certain pressing issue or topic. After talking about the usual subjects—capital punishment, animal rights, the advantages and disadvantages of socialism, oligarchy versus democracy—the leader of the society, Charles Jennings, puts forward a motion to debate, in secret, the merits of murdering their respectable classics master, Mr. Dudley Reeve. The boys pass the motion, thinking it all a hoot until one day Jennings lures the teacher into a forest and bludgeons him to death. There is no reason given for the murder—the master is neither an abuser nor a sadist; in fact, he is a rather gentle and kind man—and it seems the only motivation lies with the passing of the motion in the debating society. At the end of the book, Jennings is not caught and he, together with the rest of the boys in the debating society, leave school, go to university, and take up respectable professions with the secret buried in their past. On the back of my paperback edition, which I had found in a second-hand bookshop in Dorsoduro, there were a selection of quotes from critics raving about the novel’s sardonic humor, how it cleverly used the framework of the crime to expose the dark heart of British society. There was a lot Crace could teach me.

  I pressed the bell again. Crace was in his early seventies and perhaps it took him a while to get down the stairs to the door. But then, just as I released my finger, the door edged open.

  In front of me stood a man who seemed much, much older than I had imagined. He was stooped, nearly bent double, and as he slowly raised his head upward to look at me, I saw that the flesh on his neck had lost all definition. His tiny gray-green eyes narrowed as he squinted into the sunlight, and instead of moving forward to greet me, he took one step back into the shade.

  “Adam Woods?” he said. His voice was crisp and sharp, distinctly upper class and authoritative.

  “Yes. Sorry I’m a little early,” I said.

  “Never mind,” he said, slowly lifting his right hand to shake mine. It felt like the lifeless body of a tiny bird.

  “Come on in. This way,” he said, leading the way into a portico-lined courtyard.

  The walls of the yard were crawling with vines, snaking up the columns and the staircase that led to the entrance on the first floor. Dotted around the outside space were a number of large pots containing overgrown bay trees or pink hydrangeas. In the center of the courtyard there was what looked like the top of a Corinthian column, its capital decorated with acanthus leaves, on which stood the figure of a naked cherub, darkened by green-black moss.

  “As you can see, I’ve let things get a little out of hand,” said Crace. “That’s one of the reasons I’m obliged to employ someone such as yourself, Mr. Woods. Now, let’s go upstairs and have a drink.”

  As he slowly climbed the stone steps, his right hand grasped the metal banister for support, a tendril of a vine caressing his fingers. I noticed that his yellowing skin, discolored and speckled with liver spots, looked like thinning, ancient parchment. The linen suit that hung from his emaciated frame, once cream, now sallow and jaundiced, seemed like the loose, decaying flesh of a dead man.

  At the top of the stairs, he stepped directly into the portego, a grand central hall that ran the length of the building. The mullioned windows at each end of the vast space were so dirty that they not only obscured the light, but forced me to question whether I had really seen a form walk across the room when I had delivered my letter the other night. The etchings and prints that lined the walls were thick with cobwebs; the elaborate stucco work and the decorative touches of the ceiling and cornices had long lost any touch of splendor, and the cloudy white marble floor was covered with balls of dust and fluff. Behind me I noticed that there was another staircase, an internal one, that led to a door secured by a padlock.

  “Oh, I never go up there,” he said, meeting my gaze. “I haven’t in years. It’s completely empty. I never bother with the floor below either, as it’s damp and always flooding out. Follow me.”

  He led me down the central hall, with its wonderful display of drawings, etchings and prints, and through some double doors into the drawing room. Its walls were covered with a rich red fabric across which were displayed an array of Renaissance paintings in elaborate gilt frames. The windows on the street side of the palazzo were shrouded in heavy red velvet curtains, and the only light came from the two lamps that stood on either side of the marble fireplace, over which was a large antique mirror. An enormous chandelier hung from the ceiling, its shards of glass occasionally ringing above us.

  Crace shuffled across a large Persian rug and eased himself down into one of the two red velvet chairs by the fireplace and gestured for me to sit in the other.

  “Oh what a silly fool,” he said, just as he was settling down into the chair. “I’ve forgotten to get you a drink.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Please, let me.”

  “That’s really very kind of you, Mr. Woods. What would you like? Gin? Whiskey? Dry sherry?”

  Although it was only eleven in the morning, coffee, water or other nonalcoholic drinks did not seem to be on the menu.

  “A sherry would be lovely, but I’ll get it,” I said. “And you?”

  “Yes, I’ll join you. You can find everything in that cabinet over there.” He raised a bony finger and pointed toward a side of the room that was in shadow. “Most kind of you, most kind.”

  I spotted another lamp positioned near the drinks cabinet, but as I was about to switch it on, Crace barked, “No—no more light. I think we have enough.”

  I withdrew my hand from the switch and bent down to get the drinks. Crace had already set aside two glasses, both of which were exquisite—one a cristallo funnel-shaped gl
ass with a baluster stem, the other a goblet with a fine vetro a retorti filigree decoration—yet sticky to the touch, covered with dust and coated with smudges, perhaps even hair. I poured the clear, sweet-smelling liquid into the two glasses, handed one to Crace, placed the other on a little side table by my chair, and sat down.

  “Now, Mr. Woods, I know something about you from your letter, but can you tell me a little more about yourself?”

  Rather like a reptile, Crace fixed me with his eyes. They were small and seemed to flit about the room while at the same time never leaving mine. I cleared my throat.

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “I’ve been in Venice now for just over a week, and as I’d said, I’m here to try and write.”

  Crace nodded but remained silent.

  “I’ve just finished an art history degree at London University, and before I get distracted, I think it would be a good idea to try, to give it a go, at least.”

  “Have you written anything before?”

  “Nothing you would call proper writing—a couple of fragments of short stories. Nothing that I could show anybody, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Have you always wanted to be a writer?”

  “Well, yes, for as long as I can remember,” I said. “But I haven’t really had very much encouragement from my family. My father is a banker—I grew up in Hertfordshire—and he wanted me to do something useful. I think he thought art history a decadent choice for a degree. But I want to prove to him, and to myself, that I can actually write. I want to set the novel in Venice, which is why it’s so important for me to stay here.”

  “Yes, I see,” Crace replied.

  Another pause.

  “And which is why I think this job, working with you, would be perfect for me,” I continued. “I can help you around the house, do your shopping, a bit of cooking, some cleaning. I can sort out your post and settle bills and such like. It looks as though your courtyard might need a bit of a clear out, and I could do that, if you like. Really, anything to make your life more comfortable, to give you more time to write.”