With the death of the old king my heart began to dwell on Jerusalem and the days I had travelled there to offer tithes. It came to my mind then that we had been punished by the Lord God for our failure to do as He had commanded: we had not kept faith with the law, the rituals and the rites–therefore we had been taken into exile. Yet all around me I watched our people forgetting the law of the book, the prayers, the observances, the dietary requirements, alms-giving, the warning words of the prophets. And for us the observances of death are strict; it is sacrilegious that one of our own should lie breeding maggot-flies in the sun. Therefore, when I came across one of my kin murdered by the king or his officers, I would make it my business to take the corpse into our own house until sundown, away from the mouths of the yellow dog pack. When the sun dropped, lone-handed I would bury the body.
It is a business, digging the ground in these parts. The dragging and the heaving are enough to tire you out. And then the flies, and the vile stink if the corpse has been exposed long. No, it was not a task to take on lightly, especially since the royal guard were on alert to catch the corpse-snatcher. And in the end a certain one of our tribe in Nineveh, doubtless seeking advancement or immunity for his own family, went and informed on me. With the news that I was a wanted man and that I would be hunted to be put to death I left the city in haste and went into hiding. My house was entered, my possessions stripped from me, all that we had worked to acquire, the chased silverware I had bought from the Aramaean traders, the linen from Egypt, the bolts of dyed cloth from Tyre, the carved boxes and furniture of sandal- and cedar-wood from the caravan traders, even the worked crimson slippers my wife wore on feast days, were all seized; there was nothing which was not taken off to the Royal Treasury; only the lives of my wife, Anna, and my son were spared.
But before long this king got himself killed by two of his sons–I praise the Lord for my own son, Tobias, for surely there can be no worse sorrow than to have a son turn against his father, as Absalom did against his father David. There came a time when I recalled the words of King David as he wept for his son. ‘O my son Absalom, O Absalom my son, my son!’
The Wednesday after her alarming slide into the bath Julia met Nicco on his way home from school. He smiled appeasingly and the thought came to her: He has been trying to find some excuse for not visiting me.
‘I go for my cousin to glass…’ he flapped his hands, ‘to make the glass fit.’
After the disaster Julia Garnet had replaced the red-robed Virgin Mary back on the bedroom wall. ‘The glass-cutters, Nicco?’ Julia made the consonants explicit for him. ‘Cutters.’
‘I see you later?’ Nicco was looking anxious.
Thinking of her words about him to Carlo, Julia felt remorse. She should reassure the boy–she did not want him to feel that to study English with her was so horrible. Their visit to the man with the red hat and the lunch afterwards rested warmly in her thoughts. Nicco had helped her then. ‘May I come with you?’ she volunteered.
‘Please,’ Nicco gave one of his smiles. Not for the first time it reminded her of Carlo and her heart jumped. And there, as if on cue, was Carlo, all smiles too and waving at her.
‘Ciao!’ she called across the rio, relief flooding through her that she had not, after all, alienated him. And what if Nicco were there? She was not ashamed of her friendship with the boy. ‘We’re off for a walk, come and join us!’ And he came across the bridge with his long stride.
Gravely, Carlo bowed at the pair of them, the slight grey-haired woman and the gold-skinned youth at her side.
‘This is my friend Nicco,’ Julia Garnet explained, proud that she was the one whose position demanded introductions, ‘and this,’ she turned towards the tall, silver-haired man, ‘is my friend Carlo.’
Julia Garnet’s natural diffidence had not fostered in her habits of perspicacity but now, looking at Nicco. she saw that he had an awkward look on his face. And looking back at Carlo she observed that he also looked different.
‘The glass-cutters,’ she explained brightly, ‘we are off to the glass-cutters, Nicco and I,’ and not knowing why she flushed.
But Nicco surprised her. ‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘I go later,’ and pushing behind her, rather rudely she couldn’t help feeling, he ran off along the water-side.
‘Well, whatever was that about?’ Julia Garnet turned to her friend, ready to share an adult’s humorous incomprehension at the doings of a quixotic child; but Carlo was watching the boy intently as he ran over the bridge.
When intuition finally strikes the unintuitive it can be blinding: Julia Garnet had been taken, during one of her visits to the Accademia, by a painting from one of the many minor masters whose works fill the art collections of Italy. The painting was of St Paul on the road to Damascus and what had forced itself onto her newly awakened sensibilities was the look of puzzlement and fear on the savagely enlightened face of the tentmaker. Had she been in a position to observe herself, she might have seen just such a look on her own face now. But only the Angel Raphael, looking down from his position on the chiesa, could have seen the corresponding flash of terror across her heart.
Intuition is also a prompt of memory. Out of her memory, clear and unprocessed, came the recollection of the day she had gone with Nicco to the glass-cutters. A man. A man had come out as she had been worrying about paying for the picture, fussing with the Italian currency. The man and Nicco had collided and there had been a moment when Nicco had spoken with agitation, as she heard it now in memory, before the man had walked away. The man, tall and silver-haired, she suddenly perceived was Carlo, and in a moment of painful understanding she saw, watching his hungry, yearning look after the retreating Nicco, that she had been the unwitting dupe of his wish to find the boy who had accompanied her that day. It was not her whom Carlo had wanted to befriend–it was Nicco.
She stood, dumbly unprepared by anything in her previous life for the awful moment of negative intimacy which the recognition brought. And Carlo stood too, aware, as the high red spots on his cheekbones signalled, that something momentous had occurred to his companion. But they were civilised people, Carlo and Julia Garnet, and the sharp rent which had appeared in the fabric of their acquaintance was left unremarked between them.
Carlo spoke first. ‘A concert tonight…they are playing Albinoni?’ His eyes did not look at her directly.
‘Thanks, I think I’ll stay in. I’m a bit tired.’ So lame the words came out; it was all she could do to refrain from crying aloud.
He walked back with her to the apartment, full of the usual courtesies. But his smile was strained. At the door of the apartment he dropped her with a pleasantry–his eyes cold and repelling; she had to stop herself from calling after him.
She did not, however, call after him. Instead she sat at the kitchen table until it grew dark.
Many years ago Julia Garnet, who was blessed with a retentive memory, read somewhere these lines.
Remember this: those who give you life may take it back, and in the taking take from you more than they gave.
She did not recall the source but she recalled, quite distinctly, the sensation with which she read the words. She had known that she did not understand them but, obscurely, they had frightened her.
During the days after what she termed to herself ‘the discovery’ the forgotten author’s words came back to her, relentlessly keeping pace with her steps as she walked the streets of Venice.
She had lived most of her life alone. Her mother had borne her late in life and Julia believed that that, and the strain of trying to please her tyrannical father, had probably contributed to her mother’s early death. When