Night Journey Read Online Free Page B

sterner preoccupations should not hure them away.
    At the Café Florian I ordered coffee, but the waiter said coffee was not obtainable and brought a substitute. I sipped it, and it was not good, so I drank the ice-cold Dolomite water that came with it. War, I thought, was exposed as the ludicrous thing it was when it enforced rationing and blackout curtains in the square where Tintoretto and Tital had walked—or, equally, I suppose, gas-masks at a Buckingham Palace levée.
    But not this war. There could never really be anything ludicrous about this war, however it manifested itself.
    The mori swung back their hammers to strike nine o’clock on the Torre dell’ Orologio , and then the great mellow bell of the Campanile took up the note, to be followed by all other clocks of ther city having their moment’s chatter before silence was imposed again.
    I got up. Time to go.
    I left the square by the Piazzetta, but after crossing the Rio di Palazzo turned sharply into the town by way of a narrow street lined with wine shops. Here the Venetians and the less well-off come to sit and drink and gossip in the narrow alleys and behind darkned windows filled with gaudy bottles and fiascos of chianti. In a few minutes I came to a square empty and quiet. I crossed it and the humped bridge beyond, where dark green viscous water lapped bits of refuse against the edges of the steps.
    As always Venice was quiet away from the hubbub of the Piazza. An occasional figure passed me, boots clattering on the stone flags. A cat, angular and nervous, stared at me from empty tin. Two children, pale and bony-legged, marched past whistling “ Sibella”.
    I had had no reason on earlier visits to seek out the Campiello di Giovanni, but I had bought a map in the hotel, and in another three minutes I stood at the corner of the square. It was flanked with tall old houses and with a café on the corner, from which came the amplified music of a radio. The square was stone-flagged right across, and in the centre was an old stone well-head from which the inhabitants had once drawn their water supply.
    Dim light came through the blinds of the café, but I passed it and made a slow circuit. An old crone whispered at me from a doorway. Five lire changed hands and her complaints died away. In an upper room of a house nearby someone was playing a piano.
    I went to the centre and sat on the stone wall of the well. The sky was clearing again, and the night breeze as it came in from the sea had a chill in it. Grotesque statues, moon silhouetted, peered over the roofs from a church near by. The pianist lived on the opposite side from the café, about four storeys up.
    He was playing “ Tales from the Vienna Woods”. A couple of sailors walking across the square took up the refrain and could be heard whistling it as they disappeared down a narrow alley. He played quite well—some foreigner, probably come to Vienna on slender means to study and to enlarge his spiritual horizon. So on would have thought.
    A piece by Handel or Bach was begun, but half way it faltered as it inspiration was lacking, changed to Chopin. One of the waltzes. A Flat Major, was it?
    I walked over towards the corner to hear it better. It was third floor after all, not fourth. The window was open and chinks of light could be seen as the breeze stirred the curtain.
    A door without number or name. Turn and go in. A small dingy hall: the low-powered electric bulb shielded with brown paper showed doors, a telephone, a pot fern, stairs. I went up them.
    On the second floor a door was open and light striped the worn linoleum of the landing. A child in a white muslin nightdress was sitting in the open door trying to mend a doll. I did not offer help, though she looked as if she expected it. Four doors on the third floor, but light under only one. I trapped.
    Chopin went on. Exuberant trills and octaves were leading up to the finale, I tapped more loudly.
    The music