The Undrowned Child Read Online Free PDF

daughter wore. Maria’s father was highly competitive, and talked out of the corner of his mouth like a robber, and wore shiny suits like one too. Aurelia Naccaro barely spoke to her daughter. If Maria wanted their attention she would need to come home with an essay marked A.
    And that—given that Maria’s head seemed to Teo like an empty church where dust streamed in the sunlight—was not likely to happen in the conceivable future.
    at the hospital, the evening of June 1, 1899
    “Warm as blood,” Teo murmured. She was awake, she thought, but she could not open her eyes. She smelt carbolic soap, heard the brisk tap of shoes on a polished stone floor. Distant voices echoed down long corridors. Teo felt oddly separate from her own body, as if she hovered a few inches above herself.
    The last thing she remembered was tucking the old book into her pinafore before the doctor picked her up from the hotel bed and carried her down to his boat. Later, much later, she would recall shreds of the journey, the long black boat rocking under the stars, the moonlit windows above as they passed through the looming canyons of floating palaces, her mother’s frightened eyes gazing down on her, the rain falling quietly and persistently, a tall gray fin following them all the way down one canal, the back of a shop hung with sinister white masks like skulls, each with a single black spot by the nose.
    Then a gondola stacked with ivory tusks and black wood had sidled past them, followed by another, draped in black crêpe, bearing a tiny coffin covered in white flowers. Her mother had clutched her father’s arm and pointed at the coffin.
    “The mayor promised this city was safe for children, Alberto,” she had whispered. “Is it really? Is it?”
    Teo came slowly back to consciousness in a brightly lit room with a high ceiling, a porcelain stove and a grated window, down which the rain continued to cascade. She was lying fully dressed on a simple iron bed. When she finally opened her eyes, an ugly nurse in a blue cap was looking down on her with ferocious disapproval.
    The doctor was trying to persuade Teo’s parents that they should go back to their hotel. “She’s in the best possible hands,” he added firmly.
    “And that’s a fact,” added the nurse, thin-lipped, as if to say, “There shall be no mollycoddling of little girls here.”
    To hurry everyone out, Teo obediently swallowed the hot tisana that the nurse held up to her lips. It left a bitter, chalky rime on her tongue.
    “Now I’m so sleepy.” She yawned hugely at her mother, who finally seemed to be on the point of leaving, though with many anxious looks back.
    “Do turn off the gas-lamp as you leave, Mamma.” Teo forced out another yawn.
    The moment her parents’ footsteps had faded, Teo leant over and relit the lamp beside her bed.
    She climbed down and walked unsteadily to the door. Peering around it, Teo had a glimpse of endless corridors, nurses passing with lamps from room to room, from which came the faint sounds of children moaning. A little girl cried out, “Leave my hair alone, you brute!”
    All the nurses had their backs to Teo. She closed the door and wedged the handle with fire-tongs from the porcelain stove.
    Returning to the iron bed, Teo stumbled. She was still a little dizzy. And how long before the tisana started working? Quickly, she pulled the book from her pinafore.
    The beautiful sad girl on the cover had changed her position. She was now gazing down intently with her head a little on one side, as if encouraging Teo to open the book and read its contents.
    The thick paper inside was a dark cream color, like milky breakfast coffee, but with a pearly sheen. The inscription to Teodora-of-Sad-Memory was still there. She told herself, “But of course, it could be another Teodora. There must be thousands of Teodoras. And I’m from Naples. No one in Venice remembers me, do they?”
    How could they?
    She turned the page. There was an