The Pacific and Other Stories Read Online Free

wife.”
    Rosanna stormed off, laundress-style. I’m thoroughly used to it. I bear it. To this day, she’s responsible for half my income, and although she’s a lot of work, the work consists of choosing offers rather than begging for them, and there is a difference. Even were she struck dead by more cholesterol, the revenue from CDs and broadcasts would continue, though it would be reduced. Maybe I would find another great diva. Maybe not. What’s the difference? My children are grown. Neither Lucia nor I are anymore interested in living grandly. I like to fish, shoot, and read. She is content running the house and helping to take care of the grandchildren. In short, for me the age of Rosanna Cadorna could come to an end and I would not be unhappy.
    Still, because we are not quite ready to retire—perhaps in three or four years—and from long ingrained habit, I continue to serve Rosanna above and beyond my essential obligations. This is not because I want to, but as a reflexive defense learned after her three nonperformance suits. I am not required to find the tentlike clothing that fits her, arrange for special water filtration at her villa, or sit with her while she eats, but I do, solely to build immunity. Thus, when she came to me last summer (the summer of 2001), and more or less ordered me to Venice, I went.
    That I would go was not a certainty, not these days, when I am more and more able to take or leave her, and at first I resisted.
    “Cassati,” she said, putting a book in my hands, “look at this.” On its dark cover was a detail from a painting, a beautiful young girl who reminded me painfully of my daughters when they were young, before they had left home—
Il Colore Ritrovato: Bellini a Venezia.
“Color refound,” or, better, “rediscovered,” or, even better, “Color Restored: Bellini in Venice.”
    They had washed Bellini’s paintings until they glowed like jewels, and now these were exhibited in the Accademia in Venice, with this book the record of both his effortless genius and their ingenious efforts.
    “Beautiful,” I said.
    “And amazing,” she added.
    “Yes.”
    “To think! He was a great painter!”
    “He was.”
    “Too.”
    “‘Too’?”
    “As well as composer.”
    It took a moment for me to understand. “Bellini?” I asked.
    “What a genius!”
    “It was a different Bellini,” I told her. “There were two, you know. One was a painter. He came before. The other was a composer. He came after.”
    “Two?” She was skeptical.
    I nodded.
    “Are you sure?”
    “Positive.”
    “I didn’t know that, Cassati, but I still want you to go to Venice and check it out.”
    “Check what out?” I didn’t want to go to Venice. I had other plans.
    “Bellini.”
    “I told you, it’s a different one.”
    “Okay, check him out anyway.”
    “What do you want me to check?”
    “See how things are.”
    She saw the way I was looking at her. I had no idea what she was talking about. “What do you mean, ‘How things are’?”
    “See if you can buy some of the paintings. I like them, especially the one of Father Christmas taking the mummy.”
    “I assure you, Bellini painted no such scene.”
    “Yes, he did, it’s on page a hundred and six.”
    I turned to the page. “That’s not Father Christmas, Rosanna, it’s a priest of the temple, and that’s not a mummy, it’s the Baby Jesus in swaddling cloths.”
    “So much the better.”
    “You can’t buy these paintings, they’re the property of the state.”
    “Maybe for me they would make an exception. I’ll ask the president.”
    “He won’t do it.”
    “I’ll ask the Pope.”
    “Neither will he.”
    “Go, anyway.”
    “To Venice?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why don’t you go to Venice? Why do I have to go to Venice?”
    “Too many people would recognize me. Besides, I leave tomorrow, as you know, for Buenos Aires.”
    “What exactly do you want me to do?” (I had lost.)
    “Check out the paintings, in person, look