The Visitant: A Venetian Ghost Story (3 page)

The door to Samuel Farber’s room was open. I heard a woman’s laughter from within and my heart sank. I was not surprised, when I entered, to see Giulia sitting on the edge of his bed.

“Ah, Miss Spira.” Samuel Farber did not take his hands from where they rested at the housekeeper’s waist. He seemed completely unrepentant. Worse than that, challenging.

I ignored him for the moment and looked at Giulia. “I must ask you to leave.”

Giulia’s gaze went sly and dark. “Forgive me, mamzelle. I heard him calling, and no one answering, not even his nurse. He is in such pain. I thought only to relieve it.”

I felt a stab of alarm. “What have you given him?”

She smiled at him. “Nothing he did not want, mamzelle.”

Her meaning was obvious. It was only then that I noticed the disarray of her clothing. “Please, go,” I said, not bothering to temper my annoyance. “I’ve just spoken to your mistress. She has agreed that M’sieur Farber is to be my responsibility completely. You must leave his care to me. I want him to have nothing without my approval.”

She ran a caressing finger down his nightshirted chest and rose, and every part of that motion bounced and swayed. I saw how he appreciated it. “I was only trying to help, mamzelle. Should I have ignored his cries?”

“I would like you to go now,” I said, gesturing toward the door.

With a sigh, and those jiggling, twisting hips, a lingering look over her shoulder, she went to the door and disappeared.

He said, “A pity.”

“You should be resting,” I said. “Such things will only make it worse.”

“Such things?” he asked.

“You know what I mean.”

He regarded me blandly. In the morning light, the healing scars on his face were brightly pink. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

“You’re not to . . . you can’t . . . there’s to be no”—I searched uselessly for a word that wouldn’t have me blushing furiously, but already I felt the heat of it in my face—“congress.”

He snorted, and then winced. “The slightest movement causes me pain. If you would please give me the laudanum—”

“I’ve already told you. You’re to have no more of that. And you seem to be much better this morning.”

“What about wine? At least let me drink myself into oblivion.”

“No wine either. No spirits of any kind. You’re on a very strict regimen, Mr. Farber, as instructed by your doctor. I’m to give you bromide again starting today.”

“Bromide? There’s a reason I stopped taking it before.”

“What reason was that?”

“I felt mummified. And”—a half-lidded look that made me think of Giulia’s loosened clothing—“it impeded
congress
.”

I ignored my embarrassment. “It prevented your seizures.” I lowered my voice on the last word, worried that someone might overhear, but then I realized it didn’t matter. We were speaking English, which no one in this house apparently understood. “Which is worse?”

“That’s still up for debate.”

“Mr. Farber, my job is to help you.”

“Your job is to fatten me up like a lamb to the slaughter,” he corrected. “Miss Spira, perhaps you could tell me—as a woman—if you would appreciate marrying a man under false pretenses.”

So he knew the reason I was here. I had not been quite certain. “I don’t know what’s false about it. As I understand it, your intended bride is trading a respected family name for money. Everyone gets what they want.”

“But my parents aren’t telling her the truth, are they? You can’t tell me that you would want an epileptic husband.”

“If you can control your seizures—”

“By becoming a mindless, drooling idiot? Ah, so much better.”

“I think you exaggerate.” I reached for the bread I’d brought earlier and tore off a piece, handing it to him. “The bromide has helped you in the past.”

“But it’s only a sedative, and not a cure, isn’t it?” he asked. “The seizures still come.”

“Less often. My father has some other ideas as well. He’s done some research, and—”

“I’m sure it will all be quite pleasant. Just as every other treatment has been.” His sarcasm was blistering. He considered the bread, but before he took a bite, his breath hitched. He dropped the bread; his hand went to his chest.

“Do your ribs still pain you a great deal?” I asked.

“Everything pains me. My nose, my ribs, my knee. Fortunately, there is laudanum.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

He sighed; it turned into a breathless groan. “My parents are quite anxious that I begin breeding the Farber dynasty as soon as possible.”

I peeled an orange and poked his hand gently with a section to make him take it.

“They say it can pass through the blood,” he went on. “I understand that in England, they don’t let epileptics marry.”

“America is not England.”

“What woman would want to curse her children with such an affliction?”

I couldn’t answer him.

“You see?”

“It’s not my place to make judgments.”

“No, I suppose my parents are paying you very well not to. No doubt they’re pleased at all this.” He gestured to himself. “It gives them the opportunity they’re always hoping for.”

“What opportunity is that?”

“Getting their claws into me so they can throw me back into your father’s clutches.”

“You make him sound like
Dr. Frankenstein, and you know nothing is further from the truth. He wants only to see you stable. As he’s managed to make you before.”

“My parents believe he can cure me this time. Is that what he told them?”

“I don’t know what he’s said.” Not quite the truth, but close enough. There was no need for Samuel Farber to know the terms of his parents’ agreement with mine. Nor just how much we needed the things they’d promised.

“What about you, Miss Spira? Do you think I can be cured?”

“I shall certainly try.”

“You’ll fail. Better to just give me the laudanum and some wine and leave me to myself.”

“And have you end up as you did in Rome? The victim of thieves taking advantage of a man in convulsions?”

His expression darkened. “They should have killed me.”

“It looks as if they tried.”

“Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if they’d succeeded?”

“I doubt your parents think so.”

He made a sound of derision. “All they care about is their dynasty. A glorious future of Farbers cavorting with Astors and Van Cortlandts.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“You have no idea what I believe. Or what I am. Or what I’ll
do
.” The look he gave me was uncomfortably assessing. “How foolish they were to send you.”

“My father trained me for this himself, Mr. Farber. I’m very capable.”

He laughed slightly. “Oh, I’m certain you are.”

Derision, again, but something more than that too. Amusement and a
knowing
that made me feel soiled and prickly. “We’ll have you recovered in no time. But you must promise to do as I ask. Your regimen requires abstinence, which you know. Your parents expect your return at the end of January. If you want to be well by then, I must have your promise that you will send Giulia away when she visits.”

“Why?” he asked. “Why does it matter to you? It can hardly make an ounce of difference to you whether or not my parents can keep the secret of my affliction from my fiancée.”

I couldn’t tell him how much depended on it.

He must have seen it in my face. His expression tightened. “What have they promised you besides money?”

“The contract is between my father and your parents,” I said stiffly. “I cannot reveal—”

“What’s your stake in it?” he insisted. “There must be one. I can see it in your face. What are you, a friend of my fiancée’s? Does it matter so much to her?”

“I don’t know her at all. I don’t even know who she is.”

“Neither do I.” His expression was darkly resentful, and any hope I’d had for a quick resolution died abruptly.

Whatever other problems I had expected to encounter, I had not thought fighting Samuel Farber himself would be one of them. He had been at Glen Echo often enough over the years that I had assumed he wanted to gain control of his suffering; who would not? He was the only heir to his parents’ self-made fortune; why shouldn’t he want whatever normal life they might contract for him?

I had not realized he’d been admitted involuntarily. His file had not said it. The one time I’d met his parents, they had implied that he was desperate to control his seizures. But now I knew that when Papa said that Mr. Farber might be difficult, he was not just talking about how much Samuel Farber disliked the treatments, but of something more crucial still: the fact that he had no desire at all to change the way he lived his life. It meant that I would have to use no small amount of persuasion to win his cooperation. But I would not be dissuaded. I did have a stake in this. However Samuel Farber might wish to ruin his own life, I did not intend to let him ruin mine.

Chapter 3

It was one thing to make the resolution, and quite another to carry it out. Over the next few days, Samuel Farber was resentful and intractable. I knew what had helped him in the past, and my father and I had discussed every detail of the plan to help him now, but I could not start right away. Though his injuries were healing, his reliance on the laudanum had made him too sensitive. I had to wait until he had withdrawn enough from the drug that every touch didn’t cause him pain, which meant that I had a great deal of time on my hands. I was bored and restless, too many hours to think, to remember everything that had brought me here.

I had nearly memorized his file already; reading it again was no distraction. I’d thumbed so often through my Baedeker guides, imagining myself in each of the magical places they described, that my longing to be done with this, to have my reward, was uncomfortably constant, and delay only made me irritable and short. I found myself wandering the floor, going from room to empty, deteriorating room, trying to ignore that sense of enduring watchfulness. I did not like the hallways especially, with the plaster carvings whose empty eyes seemed to note and judge and measure. Sometimes I felt myself racing down the hall before I realized I was trying to escape the weight of that expectancy.

Casa Basilio was surrounded by canals on three sides: the wide canal the gondolier had named Rio de la Sensa fronting it; the narrow, stinking canal between it and its neighboring palazzo; and a wider one at the rear. I shuddered from looking at the sheer straight drop from the third floor, unrelieved by balconies or dormers but for those of the sala and Samuel’s room. After the first day, I tried not to look down at the water, nor to let my thoughts wander there. The canals were too reminiscent of the Hudson River at home, the constant lapping churn of current that only reminded me of how stagnant was my own life, how I had not been satisfied, no matter how I tried. And in that downward sweep too was the memory of what I’d almost done, of what did not, even now, seem distant enough to easily dismiss.

Instead, I strained to see beyond the walls of disintegrating buildings, hoping to see something of the Venice I’d read about. It was called the city of dreams, and I longed to see all of it. But more than that, I wanted the possibility of what I could become within it. Across the back canal was a church that blocked my sight line—brick and arched mullioned windows, a domed campanile—and I stared at its wall as if sheer will could show me the view inside. I searched for movement beyond its high windows, wondering, fashioning, losing myself in the promise of its mysteries. If I were to take a few hours and explore it, could it make me into something else entirely?

Somewhere beyond these walls was St. Mark’s. The Piazza. The Grand Canal and the Arsenal and . . . and . . . everything. A world that I hoped would change mine. My eagerness to step into it was almost nauseating.

But without Samuel Farber, I could have none of it.
Not yet
, I told myself.
Soon
. When Mr. Farber was better, when I had delivered him to his parents and he was standing at the altar with his new bride. Then . . . then I would have what I wanted, the only thing left to me. I turned away from the rooms with the view of the church, its temptation too troubling. All I had to do was be patient.

Although it was hard to be patient in a place so uncomfortable. No amount of coal in my brazier or in the plaster stove in his room seemed to make a dent against the chilly, dank decay of the Basilio, and my discomfort only grew when it became obvious that Giulia meant to do everything she could to work against me. I found her—not once, but many times—in the hall, either leaving his room or on her way there. I could hardly leave him alone without her trying to sneak in. “He was calling, mamzelle. How could I ignore him?” The way she looked at me, daring me to contradict her, to call her a liar, and even more than that, an insinuation that I was incompetent, or naïve. I felt like a fool beneath that look, helpless and immature.

But I told myself it was why I felt watched. It had to be her, hiding, waiting to sneak in to see him, though she seemed brazenly unconcerned about concealing her visits.

I’d been there seven days when I decided I had given him as much time as I could afford. Not just because of Giulia’s constant interference, but because I could not stand this house. I searched out Zuan, who was in the courtyard, knee-deep in a damp mist that floated ghostlike among the stones. Beside him stood the boy I’d seen before. He dodged behind Zuan’s legs shyly when I approached.

Zuan said something to him in Venetian, but the boy did not budge. Zuan laughed and said to me in French, “My nephew, Giovanni.”

I frowned. “Giulia’s son?”

Zuan shook his head, but before he could answer, the kitchen door opened, and a man I’d never seen before came striding out, followed by a woman. They were each holding a burlap bag, and tucked beneath the man’s arm was a wheel of cheese.

“Giovanni!” the man called, and the boy went running to him.

“My brother Tomas and his wife, Caterina,” Zuan said, without the least bit of sheepishness or embarrassment at the obvious pilfering of the Basilio pantry. He spattered off a stream of Venetian, and Tomas laughed and touched the cap covering his straight dark hair, sweeping me with an admiring glance. Then he and the rest of his family disappeared through the gate.

I hardly knew what to say. The kitchen door opened again, and Giulia came ambling out, a little girl on either side. She was jabbering away, smiling, until she saw me standing there with Zuan.

“Zuan!” she snapped, and then a string of words I didn’t understand, though their meaning was clear enough.
Stay away from her.

He frowned. “Ciao, mamzelle,” he said as he turned away, but I grabbed his sleeve.

“Please,” I said. “I came here to find you. Is there a bathing tub somewhere about? Even a hip bath would do. And I need some water brought up to the sala.”

He paused, glancing at his sister, who came sauntering over. The little girls ran to the wellhead, which was so shrouded in draping fog that it looked as if they sat suspended on a cloud to chew on their hunks of bread.

“Zuan is very busy,” Giulia said to me, and after he told her what I needed, “Oh, I am so sorry, mamzelle, but the stove is not working well today. No water can be heated.”

I glanced at the smoke coming from the chimney. The stove was working perfectly well. I had no doubt there was hot water.

“I don’t need much of it,” I told her. “It isn’t to be a warm bath.”

“There are public baths,” she said. “You can go there.”

“Unfortunately I cannot take M’sieur Farber to a public bath,” I said nastily and insistently. “I will need a bathtub in the third-floor salon, and water to fill it.”

She regarded me coolly. “Ah, but Zuan is far too busy to bring water. And you do not wish for us to be in the way, yes?”

“Giulia—” Zuan began.

She gave him a look that silenced him.

Zuan’s gaze dodged to me, and then away. He mumbled something beneath his breath and went off, disappearing into the receiving court wing before I could call him back.

“There is a tub in the storage room,” she said. “And buckets.”

Given how often I’d seen her flouting my directions, I was not inclined to release her so easily now. “I can hardly cart that to the third floor myself.”

“You have said you do not wish our help.”

“Yes, but surely you can see my difficulty. There must be someone else here to help me, as Zuan is so
busy
. Perhaps you. Or those girls. Or perhaps you could call back your brother and his wife, who I think owe you a favor given the amount of food they carried away. I see that the Farbers have been very generous. Perhaps more so than they wish to be.”

She regarded me coolly. “For only a few centimes, you can live very well in Venice.”

“I doubt the Farbers have been told that.”

“I am just the housekeeper,” Giulia said, not a flinch in those stony eyes, not a bit of surrender. “I do not decide such arrangements. If you have questions, you should speak with the
padrona
.”

“Perhaps I will.”

“As you wish, mamzelle.”

“Or I might be persuaded to ignore it. If someone can help me with M’sieur Farber’s bath.”

She shrugged. “I am so sorry, mamzelle, but I cannot just conjure up someone when no one is here. Perhaps tomorrow.”

Or the day after, or the day after that.
I understood the unspoken words. She turned away with a smug smile, spoke sharply to the two girls on the wellhead, and then the three of them headed off in the direction Zuan had gone.

I stared after them in angry frustration. It was all the more enraging because she was right; I had told her I’d wished for no help. I had half a mind to just let it go. There were other treatments, other things to try.

But my father’s instructions had been very clear, and I could not afford to fail. I went in search of the storage room and the bathtub.

It didn’t take long. The storage room’s door was open; within were barrels and small wine kegs, hanging garlic and onions, a few pumpkins. The smell of fish was strong; no doubt one of the barrels held anchovies or some fermenting something. There, in the corner, was the bathtub I’d been searching for.

I had no expectation that I would be able to lift it, but this wasn’t like the heavy tubs at Glen Echo. This had been made to move about, and so it was lighter. Not liftable by me, but with a combination of pushing and shoving, I could move it. I pushed and tugged it, scraping over the floor, down the hall, and into the courtyard. I had to pause now and then to move the fallen stones out of the way; it was astonishing that no one had done this before now. At the bottom of the stairs, I paused to catch my breath. I saw movement at a window on the second floor—Madame Basilio—and felt a wash of relief. No doubt she would see my difficulty and summon help. But as I raised my hand to wave to her, she disappeared.

I waited a moment, expecting her to come out, but as the minutes passed, and she didn’t, I began to wonder if seeing her had only been wishful thinking. Or perhaps she had merely been heeding my request for no interference. Resignedly, I looked up the stairs. They looked too narrow, the cast-iron railing in the way. And even if I managed it, there would be the water to bring. Buckets and buckets of it.

I cursed Giulia, Zuan, Samuel Farber, and the rest of the world as I lugged that miserable, godforsaken tub up those stairs. It fell upon my foot, cracked my shin, pinched my fingers between it and the cast-iron rail. Bits of plaster came off as the tub smashed into the wall—just let them try to complain about it! It would serve them all right if I destroyed the entire palazzo. And then, as if to emphasize the point, I lost my grip and the tub smacked hard enough on a step to crack it before I got hold of it again.

I never thought I would get it to the top, and when I did, I stood there disbelieving. And sore. With swollen fingers and a throbbing shin, and sweating so hard my bodice was sticking to me. But I had done it.

I scraped it over the floor to the middle of the sala, out of the way of a rat-bitten settee scattered with fraying pillows and a chair whose upholstery had split in the damp.

I heard a pattering sound from the doorway, and turned to see Samuel Farber standing there, holding on to the white marble pillar of the entry as if it were keeping him upright. He was barefoot, wearing only his nightshirt. “What the hell?”

I straightened. “I am fetching you a bath.”

“So I heard. Probably all of Cannaregio heard as well.”

“Your lovely Giulia declined to help.”

“You brought that up by yourself?” He looked vaguely impressed when I nodded. “You’re stronger than you look.”

“You’ll catch your death, standing barefoot on this floor.” It radiated cold; I felt it even through the soles of my boots. I moved past him to the hall. “It might take me a while to bring the water.”

He nodded, limping to the settee, where he sank as if the journey had exhausted him. I left him there, irritated all over again that he hadn’t offered his help either, though of course he was weak as a babe and just as incapable of hauling water up those stairs.

It took me another hour to draw water from the well and bring it up, two barrels at a time. Samuel Farber only watched impassively as I poured it into the bathtub. When it was nearly full, I brought up hot water from the kitchen—there was plenty of it, as I’d suspected—so the water was cool, but not cold. Then I stood back, took a deep breath, and gestured at it.

He eyed it dubiously. “It’s not steaming.”

“No. It’s supposed to be cool.”

“Cool?” Incredulously. “There’s no heat in here.”

“I’m not cold at all.”

“You’ve just lugged a bathtub and buckets of water up three flights,” he pointed out.

“Get in.”

“I’ll freeze.”

“You’re supposed to. It’s part of the treatment. You know this. You took cold baths at Glen Echo.”

“I hated them.”

“It quiets your raging humors.”

“There will be more than my humors raging if I get into a freezing bath in a cold room.”

“I’ll put coal on,” I said, glancing to the plaster stove, no doubt as decoratively ineffective as the one in his room. “Now get in.”

“No.”

I glared at him. “Mr. Farber, I have had a very trying morning. I have just spent two hours drawing you a bath. I have a bruise on my shin, and my fingers are crushed. If you don’t get in of your own accord, believe me, I shall make you.” A strand of hair fell over my forehead and into my eye, ruining whatever semithreatening stance I’d managed. I let it lie, still glaring at him, while he glared back at me. Truly, I was angry enough to try to make him get into the bath, though I had no real idea if I could budge him.

Thankfully, he rose and stepped over to the tub. He didn’t take his gaze from mine. And then, before I realized what he meant to do, he lifted his nightshirt over his head and pulled it off, dropping it to the floor.

I had never seen a fully naked man before. My charges at Glen Echo had all been women. My gaze moved involuntarily to the part of him I was curious about before I jerked my gaze upward again in embarrassment, and noticed the mottled brown bruises and contusions crisscrossing his ribs, a deep purple one wrapping around his hip—and then I realized his knee was so rainbow colored and swollen it did not look like a knee at all. Even after a month, the bruises were livid, deep-tissue tears and hematomas. I had not suspected such damage.