A Noble Radiance Read Free Page A

a woman would
wear that.'
    The ring he handed
Litfin was a thick gold band that flared out into a round, flat surface. Litfin
put the ring on to the palm of his left hand and turned
    it over with the
index finger of his right The design was so worn away that at first he could
distinguish nothing, but then it slowly came into focus: carved in low relief
was an intricate design of an eagle rampant holding a flag in its left claw, a
sword in its right. ‘I forget the Italian word’ Litfin said as he looked at the
ring. 'A family crest?'
    'Stemma’   Bortot supplied.
    'Si, stemma’   Litfin
repeated and then asked, 'Do you recognize it?'
    Bortot nodded.
    'What is it?'
    If s the crest of the
Lorenzoni family.'
    Litfin shook his
head. He'd never heard of them. 'Are they from around here?'
    This time Bortot
shook his head.
    As he handed back the
ring, Litfin asked, 'Where are they from?'
    'Venice.'
     
     
    3
     
     
    Not only Doctor
Bortot, but just about anyone in the Veneto region, would recognize the name
Lorenzoni. Students of history would recall the Count of that name who
accompanied the blind Doge Dandolo at the sack of Constantinople in 1204; legend
has it that it was Lorenzoni who handed the old man his sword as they scrambled
over the wall of the city. Musicians would recall that the principal
contributor to the building of the first opera theatre in Venice bore the name
of Lorenzoni. Bibliophiles recognized the name as that of the man who had lent
Aldus Manutius the money to set up his first printing press in the city in
1495. But these are the memories of specialists and historians, people who have
reason to recall the glories of the city and of the family. Ordinary Venetians
recall it as the name of the man who, in 1944, provided the SS with the chance
to discover the names and addresses of the Jews living in the city.
    Of the 256 Venetian
Jews who had been living in the city, eight survived the war. But that is only
one way of looking at the fact and at the numbers. More crudely put, it means
that 248 people, citizens of Italy and residents of what had once been the Most
Serene Republic of Venice, were taken forcibly from their homes and eventually
murdered.
    Italians are nothing
if not pragmatic, so many people believed that, if it had not been Pietro
Lorenzoni, the father of the present count, it would have been someone else who
revealed the hiding place of the head of the Jewish community to the SS. Others
suggested that he must have been threatened into doing it: after all, since the
end of the war the members of the various branches of the family had certainly
devoted themselves to the good of the city, not only by their many acts of charity
and generosity to public and private institutions, but by their having filled
various civic posts - once even that of mayor, though for only six months - and
having served with distinction, as the phrase has it, in many public
capacities. One Lorenzoni had been the Rector of the University; another
organized the Biennale for a period of time in the Sixties; and yet another
had, upon his death, left his collection of Islamic miniatures to the Correr
Museum.
    Even if they didn't
remember any of these things, much of the population of the city recalled the
name as that of the young man who had been kidnapped two years ago, taken by
two masked men from beside his girlfriend while they were parked in front of
the gates of the family villa outside Treviso. The girl had first called the
police, not the family, and so the Lorenzonis' assets had been frozen
immediately, even before the family learned of the crime. The first ransom
note, when it came, demanded seven billion lire, and at the time there was much
speculation about whether the Lorenzonis could find that much money. The next
note, which came three days after the first, lowered the sum to five billion.
    But by then the
forces of order, though making no evident signs of progress in finding the men
responsible, had