The Venetian Read Online Free PDF Page B

were led silently through a small door in the façade, the seams of which were invisible. They openly share their secrets with us . Perhaps we will never leave this place.
    The narrow passageway was dark and soggy underfoot, Paolo keeping one hand on the dank stone wall, the other on Tomaso’s arm. They followed not with sight, but by the sound of the footsteps ahead. At once airless and yet filled with the smell of the lagoon, the passage seemed to engulf the men, assaulting them in turns, depriving them of their senses or flooding them with too much.
    The passage turned this way and that, meandering up before plunging back down. Paolo had lost all sense of direction almost immediately, yet their escort moved through the endless stone fissure with a quick confidence. Paolo wondered how many times this man had led others like he and his father through this wet maze in the middle of the night.
    They finally emerged into a more formal, yet not much larger corridor. Paolo, while not being able to see much more, could sense the change. This was a place frequented by people, a place the light was allowed to enter. The flicker of a low flame illuminated a small portion of the hall ahead.
    “This way.”
    The voice startled Paolo, a loud bark after the confining silence of the passageway. Moving toward the light, he heard the sound of rustling papers.
    “Ah,” said a small man once they had arrived at the doorway. He was seated behind a comically large desk, smiling warmly. He turned to their escort, raised his thin eyebrows, and the man quietly removed himself.
    Looking about, Paolo saw that the room was covered in cupboards, filled to bursting with yellowed documents in rolls and folios, sheets loosely spilling from an army of drawers and cabinets. Following Paolo’s eyes, the man inclined his head and smiled proudly as though to suggest the worth of a man can be derived from the amount of paper he has accumulated.
    “Welcome, gentlemen.” Still seated, he spread his arms wide in greeting. For a moment Paolo feared he might rise to embrace them. He smiled again. This man was accustomed to bearing his teeth. It was a practiced smile Paolo noticed however, one without warmth or compassion. It was a smile that did not extend to the eyes, one meant to deceive. His teeth were too large for his mouth in much the same way his eyes were too small for his head. They were two hard, almost black little pebbles that seemed to have been pressed into his face with so much force that they simply stayed there. They sat, embedded below a wispy receding hairline. A small pink hand gestured to two hard chairs in front of the desk.
    With the cheerful greeting out of the way, he exhaled deeply, as though to get down to the real business at hand. He straightened his face, rearranging all the bends and curves that come with emotion into sharp geometric patterns.
    “Gentlemen,” he began more seriously, “I’m very sorry to bring you here at this late hour.” He smiled. “And so soon after such a horrific…incident.” He winced as if feeling a portion of their pain. “Do you know who I am?” he asked suddenly as though the thought had only just occurred to him.
    “Yes,” answered Paolo cautiously. His father, sitting motionless beside him, said nothing. “You are the Deputato alla Segreta del Consiglio dei Dieci ,” the Deputy of the Secret Works of the Council of Ten.
    The deputy opened his mouth silently, a look of amused surprise rippling across his face, a reaction that happened all at once on most, but seemed to occur sequentially on this man.
    “You know me?”
    Paolo silently pointed at the title on the door, undecided whether this was mere oversight on the deputy’s part or a piece of sinister theater, the whole of which he was unable to divine.
    The man clapped his hands together with a loud bark of laughter that sounded too deep for his delicate frame. This man is dangerous thought Paolo.
    “Of course!” He smiled.