The Bellini Card

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Book: Read The Bellini Card for Free Online
Authors: Jason Goodwin
Tags: Historical Mystery, 19th c, Byzantium
landing stage. Ruggerio looked annoyed, but his spirits soon recovered. “No matter. We will take another.”
    “But where?” Palewski asked. “Where are we going?”
    The little Venetian amused him, he had to admit. Ruggerio was transparently a fraud, but he was engaging company and he was determined to show him around the city. He was a cicerone: a guide, a paid companion, and Palewski was not without means, with Yashim’s commission.
    “Where we are going?” Ruggerio looked surprised. “We are going to find you somewhere to live, Signor Brett. Nobody,” he added, with emphasis, “nobody lives in a hotel in Venice for a month.”

 
    T WO days later, gazing down upon the Grand Canal from the vestibule window of his apartment, a glass of prosecco in one hand and a telescope in the other, Palewski reflected that life, indeed, was good.
    He owed his present sense of good fortune to Antonio Ruggerio, which offered little scope for complacency. Ruggerio was, in many ways, an absurd pest; contentment that rested on his infinitely mobile shoulders could scarcely be supposed secure. But there it was: he had spent a day with the able cicerone, reviewing apartments to rent for the month.
    There had seemed no end to them, each one larger, darker, more dilapidated, and more expensive than the one before, each one entangled in some way with families of title—the titles, it seemed, growing longer and more sonorous and hollow, until Palewski had prodded his guide in the other direction and stipulated something modest.
    And Ruggerio, finally swallowing the blow to pride, and pocket, had brought him to this perfectly serviceable little
casa
on the banks of the Grand Canal, not far from the ruined bulk of the Fondaco dei Turchi: an apartment on the second floor sandwiched between the pleasant Greek landlady and her Venetian husband above, and a renowned but aging opera singer below. The ground floor, lapped by the canal itself, was given over to a quiet and unfashionable café, where watermen sometimes ate their lunch and where Palewski was sure of a dish of rice and a bottle of black wine in the evening.
    He wondered what Yashim would make of these risottos, which bore a family resemblance to pilaff, only the rice was thicker. Yashim believed Italians had learned to cook in Istanbul. And certainly the Venetians, whohad lived, fought, and traded so much in and around the fringes of the Ottoman world, ate very like the Turks. They had the same particular preferences, Palewski observed, for dozens of little dishes, like mezes, though the locals called them
cicchetti
instead, and they were as finicky as any Ottoman about the provenance of certain fruits and vegetables. In Istanbul, one ate cucumbers from Karaköy, or mussels from Therapia. In Venice, Ruggerio insisted that the bitter leaves called radicchio should come from Treviso, the artichokes from Chioggia, and the fresh beans from a little town called Lamon, on the mainland. Neither the Turks nor the Venetians seemed to value fish.
    Ruggerio had given him a whirlwind tour of the city’s treasures and marvels simply, as he said, to help Signor Brett familiarize himself with the disposition of the city, its churches, palazzi, and artworks, although Palewski had begun to suspect that the cicerone was disappointed in him and was looking for more valuable
clienti
. Some days Ruggerio arrived late; once, not at all; other times he often seemed distracted.
    The idea that Ruggerio might, at last, begin to leave him alone was a relief to Palewski. It contributed to his sense of well-being as he trained his telescope on the landing stage opposite and watched a gondolier handing up a large packet of a woman onto dry land, along with her tiny dog.
    He laid the telescope aside with a smile and took a printed card from his pocket.
    Mr. S. B RETT
DE N EW Y ORK
connoisseur
     
    For the first time since his arrival in Venice, he felt he was being useful to Yashim.
    Ruggerio would deliver the

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