Death by Violin

“He watched her sitting quietly in a canvas chair, half in shadow, studying the Istrian Marble of the Palazzo Ducale. Pigeons fell like confetti into the piazza. He waited for a chair so he could watch her swan-like movements: her long graceful neck, her arms, white, like the Marble of the Palazzo. That night his wife asked him why he sat so long in front of that old building. “It’s peeling.” But he could not tell her about the beautiful young woman studying the delicate shadings in the marble, so he listened as she talked about the dirty water eroding the lower floors of buildings, letting his mind wander to the cafe where he sat long with the old men drinking coffee under the green awning, lulled by water lapping against the stones.”—from the book