Page 19 of Portrait of an Unknown Woman

9

Bar Dogale

After entrusting Irene and Raphael to Signora Antonelli, their environmentally conscious and reliably democratic socialist teacher, Gabriel made his way through empty streets to the Campo dei Frari. The square remained in morning shadow, but a benevolent sun had established dominion over the red-tile rooftops of the mighty Gothic basilica. At the foot of the bell tower, the second-tallest in Venice, stood eight chrome tables covered in blue, the property of Bar Dogale, one of the better tourist cafés in San Polo.

At one of the tables sat General Ferrari. He had forsaken his blue uniform, with its many medals and insignia, and was wearing a business suit and overcoat instead. The hand he offered in greeting was missing two fingers, the result of a letter bomb he received in 1988 while serving as chief of the Carabinieri’s Naples division. Nevertheless, his grip was viselike.

“Something wrong?” he asked as Gabriel sat down.

“Too many years holding a paintbrush.”

“Consider yourself lucky. I had to learn how to do almost everything with my left hand. And then, of course, there’s this.” The general pointed toward his prosthetic right eye. “You, however, appear to have come through your most recent brush with death with scarcely a scratch.”

“Hardly.”

“How close did we come to losing you in Washington?”

“I flatlined twice. The second time, I was clinically dead for nearly ten minutes.”

“Did you happen to see anything?”

“Like what?”

“A brilliant white light? The face of the Almighty?”

“Not that I can recall.”

The general seemed disappointed by Gabriel’s answer. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a life after this one, Cesare. It just means that I have no memory of anything that happened after I lost consciousness.”

“Have you given the matter any thought yourself?”

“The existence of God? An afterlife?”

The general nodded.

“The Holocaust robbed my parents of their belief in God. The religion of my childhood home was Zionism.”

“You’re entirely secular?”

“My faith comes and goes.”

“And your wife?”

“She’s a rabbi’s daughter.”

“I have it on the highest authority that the cultural and artistic guardians of Venice are quite smitten with her. It appears the two of you have a bright future here.” The general’s prosthetic eye contemplated Gabriel sightlessly for a moment. “Which makes your recent behavior all the more difficult to explain.”

He entered the passcode into his smartphone and laid it on thetabletop. Gabriel lowered his eyes briefly to the screen. The bruised and swollen face depicted there bore little resemblance to the one he had seen the previous evening.

“His jaw had to be wired shut,” said General Ferrari. “For an Italian, a fate worse than death.”

“He’d be sitting down to a nice long lunch later today if only he’d identified himself.”

“He says you didn’t give him much of a chance.”

“Why was he following me in the first place?”