No one moved. I saw the spittle gleam on his cheek, the stunned faces around us, Claudia heaving, a hysterical intake of breath. She looked at me, her eyes filling with tears, and then around, aware for the first time of the rest of the room, the appalled guests. Gianni hadn’t moved. “Assassino,” she whispered one last time. Then she let out a sound, a kind of whimper, and turned to the stairs. She started to run, the darting movement like a signal to everyone else to come back to life, out of the stopped moment, the room noisy all at once with talk.

“What in god’s name—?”

“But what were they saying?”

My mother was daubing Gianni’s face with a handkerchief. “Adam, I don’t understand. Your friend—”

“She’s your friend?” Gianni said to me. “She’s a crazy woman.”

“My god, look at you,” my mother said. “Does it hurt?”

“No, no.”

I looked toward the stairs, but the crowd had swallowed her up, cutting me off.

“It’s a Jewish matter,” an Italian said, translating for another guest.

“What Jewish matter? Why Gianni?”

“Her father. It’s a confusion.”

“Well, yes, it must be, I suppose.”

But what confusion? I looked at Gianni, now surrounded, then started pushing through the crowd. “Adam,” I heard my mother say, but I was moving frantically now, down the stairs.

“Claudia!” I shouted, but when I got to the bottom no one was in the hall except one of the maids, standing in front of the makeshift cloakroom with Claudia’s coat over her arm. She glanced at me, alarmed, then toward the open door. I raced down the hall and grabbed the coat.

Outside, there was no sign of her, just the dark back calles of Dorsoduro. But she wouldn’t go to Salute, a dead end. I headed toward the Accademia, trying to pick up the sound of heels, anything, going faster at the corners, where there were little pools of light. At Foscarini I looked left, toward the Zattere. Then I saw a figure in the other direction, running past the Accademia to the vaporetto stop.

“Claudia!” I yelled, but she didn’t even turn around, determined simply to get away. I ran toward the lights of the floating dock, the coat flapping in my arms. The boat was loading, almost done, but it was going in the wrong direction, up the canal, not down to San Marco and home. She’d wait for the right one. But she didn’t. She looked over her shoulder and ran up the gangplank, the last one on before the crew pulled it back and caught the ropes. I could see her take a seat in the glassed-in section, hunching into herself.

Now what? She’d get off on the other side of the canal and head back. But the next stop was still on this side, not far, just past San Barnaba at Ca’ Rezzonico. Impossible to outrun a boat, but the vaporettos were slow and lumbering, even slower in the dark, and this was the part of Venice I knew best, my sleepwalking streets. And what was the alternative? I ran to the end of the campo.

The calles here were fairly direct—no long detours to go around dead ends. I raced across the bridge over the Rio San Trovaso, heading to San Barnaba. No one was out, and my shoes echoed in the empty street, the sound of a chase, desperate, so that when I did pass one old woman she moved to the side, frightened, and I realized that what she saw was a thief running with a stolen coat. My lungs began to hurt a little, gulping in cold air, but it would be only minutes—all the time in the world later to catch my breath. Calle Toletta—shops closed, sealed off with grates. Another bridge, even a few steps now an effort. Finally the open space of San Barnaba, a yellow light slanting out of a bar window.

I swerved right and down the calle to the landing. The boat was already there, motor idling noisily as passengers got off. One of the ropes was tossed back. I was going to miss it again. No, one more passenger, a woman with a string bag, taking her time. I was running so fast now that if they pulled away I might actually hit the water, unable to stop. But here was the gangplank, clanging under my feet. I grabbed at a pole to break my momentum and took a few deep breaths. One of the uniformed boatmen said something to me in Italian, which I assumed meant there’s always another boat.

She was huddled at the far end of one of the benches, looking out at the canal, so she didn’t see me come into the passenger area, didn’t even turn until she felt the coat on her shoulders. She started, then hunched back into herself.

“Go away,” she said.

“Don’t be silly. You’ll freeze.” I sat next to her, draping the coat around her. The boat moved away from the dock. “What the hell was that?” I said, still breathing heavily. The scene, pushed out of mind during the run, now came back in a blur.

“Go away,” she said again. “That’s who you want me to meet? People like that?”

“Like what? Why murderer? Who did he murder?”

“My father. With a nod of his head. ‘That one.’ A nod.”

“Gianni?”

“Gianni,” she repeated, drawing it out. “Yes, Gianni. I saw him do it. Him. You didn’t know? No, how would you know? You don’t know anything, any of you. You come with your money—ah, Venice. Why? To look at pictures. So how would you know? A man like him. That’s who your mother meets? A murderer. But that’s all over, yes? Let’s give a ball, like the old days. Ha. Did I ruin the party? No, have some champagne. Let’s just go on like before. Such a nice man. A doctor. Who cares what he did?” All in a rush, snatching at the air for words, trying to keep up with herself.

“Stop it,” I said, taking her by the shoulders. Behind us a few passengers looked up, curious. A lovers’ quarrel. A thief with a coat. Nothing was what it was.

She twisted away. “Leave me alone. Go back to America. Take him. A souvenir of Venice. No one will know him there. Ha. He thought no one would know him here. We’re supposed to be dead. And then one comes back. They say that, you know? When you least expect it. A party. And here comes death, pointing the finger. So that’s me now. Brava. Oh, look at your face. You think I’m crazy. You don’t know anything about it. For you it’s all nice—kisses, La Fenice, Mama and her nice friend. Maybe it’s better not to know. To be so lucky—”

“Stop it,” I said calmly, holding her still.

She shook my hand off and gathered her coat. “I’m getting off.”

We had rounded the lower bend in the canal and were pulling into San Toma, the Rialto lights up ahead in the distance. I took her hand, holding it down.

“Sit. I want to know.”

“What?”

“What happened. Tell me about the nod.”

She looked at me, slightly puzzled.

“You said with a nod of his head. How?”

“In the hospital.”

“Your father was sick?”

“Yes, sick. Dying. But they didn’t want to wait. Why wait for God when you are God? The Jews weren’t dying fast enough for them.”

“Who?”

“Who. The Germans, their friends. They searched the hospitals. Sometimes there was an informer. Grini—you’ve heard of him? No. He used to help the SS. In the nursing home, even. They took them out on stretchers. But not this time. This time there was only your friend. He pointed out my father to them. ‘That one,’ he said, with the nod. ‘Over there.’ So the SS took him. You know how he knew? My father told me later. From medical school. They were both at medical school, so he knew him.”

“And you were there?”

She nodded.

“Did he point you out too?”

“No, I did. Myself. My father told them I was a neighbor, to protect me.” She paused. “Not his daughter. A visitor. Maybe they believed him, I don’t know. Maybe I could have walked out, hidden somewhere. But how could I do that? Just leave him? Sick. And they find you. In the end, always.”

“So you went with him.”

She nodded. “And all for nothing. When we got there, they looked at him—who wants a sick Jew? Let the Germans take care of him. So, another train. And I said—imagine how foolish—I’ll go too, someone has to take care of him. And they laughed. Don’t worry, you’ll go later. At that time the head would send only the hopeless cases. And the children. The Germans wanted everyone, but he kept the workers back. To save them, maybe to bargain later, I don’t know. Later everyone went. Unless you were special.” She stopped, then looked up. “So you see, it was for nothing. They just put him on another train. I always wondered, did he die on the train? He was so sick. He’s on the list at Auschwitz, but maybe he was dead when he got there, who knows? Nobody can tell me for sure. Nobody came back, not from that train. No one. That’s what he thought, none of us would come back. No one would know. But I know.”