Deadly to the Sight (2 page)

Urbino was intrigued. He didn't feel encouraged, however, to ask anything more about the woman, who was now shuffling past the windows. The Contessa followed her slow progress.

“I'll tell you about it later,
caro
, not now,” she said. “I know your detective instincts have been aroused.”

She gave him a strained smile.

“Dare I confess something?” she said, trying for a light air. “I've been afraid that you'd find me changed, physically, I mean.”

She bowed her head as if shy of his scrutiny.

“Fishing for compliments? You're
toujours jeune
. You haven't changed the slightest.”

“The same old Barbara, you mean? Well, I suppose I am. You've changed a wee bit yourself though. Oh, not for the worse! The desert sun didn't burn away your Bloomsbury and Brideshead look any more than the years have since we first met. But you look both older and somehow younger. Will it all fade with your bronzage and those sun streaks? We'll have to wait and see.”

She finally yielded to another petit four, this one with mauve-colored frosting that matched one of the colors in her dress.

“I can go on and on about you, you see! It's because I've missed you so much. I've become rather ridiculous even to myself. For example, the changes at the Ca' da Capo,” she said with a slightly deprecatory air that wasn't matched by the appreciation with which she took a bite. “You'd think it was a matter of each and every stone pulled out and put in a different place. Oh, I knew that Mauro was getting on and couldn't be with me much longer, and Giorgio is as good as Milo, or will be, when he knows the canals better. He cuts a much better figure, according to Oriana! But it hasn't been easy getting used to the changes, not with you being away. And as for Silvia, the girl leaves a lot to be desired, even without comparing her with dear, lost Lucia.”

This lament referred to Mauro, her former majordomo, now replaced by a younger man, and to Giorgio, her handsome new boatman, obviously the object of Oriana's roving eye, and to Silvia, her troublesome personal maid.

“I just know that my ball is going to be a complete failure this year with all of these changes, and I so want it to be the best ever!”

The Contessa was planning a
ballo in maschera
at the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini on Shrove Tuesday to celebrate the end of Carnevale. Inspired by Urbino's recent stay in Morocco, the theme was to be
The Arabian Nights
.

“Mauro knew how to help make things run smoothly. And Lucia could see a problem brewing long before I could. As for Silvia, the poor girl—”

The Contessa broke off nervously as someone approached the entrance of the salon. It was an attractive, middle-aged woman in a long black coat.

“Listen to me!” she continued with evident relief. “Here I am going on about my silly ball and the Ca' da Capo when you have more serious problems at the Palazzo Uccello. I cry every time I think of the Bronzino! And that poor chandelier!”

The Palazzo Uccello was the grandiose name for Urbino's humble building in the Cannaregio quarter. He had returned from Morocco to find a great deal of damage done to the interior and to some of his most prized possessions, by an American couple engaged to look after the place. The Contessa had managed to have them vacate and to replace them with a German woman, who had turned out to be an ideal tenant.

“Pignatti examined the chandelier.” Carlo Pignatti was a glass maestro from Murano. “He shouldn't have much trouble matching the broken pieces. It will never be the same,” he added, “but what can I do? I'm more concerned about the Bronzino.”

The Bronzino, a gift of the Contessa, was a portrait of a pearl-and-brocaded Florentine lady. The American couple had removed it from the wall of the parlor and leaned it beside an open window, where it had been saturated during a storm.

“Someone's coming from Florence to assess the damage. It's beyond anything I can do for it.”

Urbino had taken courses in art restoration in Venice and Florence to prepare for a biography he had been writing on the Minolfis, a Venetian family of restorers.

“You did an excellent job on the Bartolomeo Veneto.”

“A competent job.” The engagement portrait of a young lady, also a gift of the generous Contessa, had only suffered from yellow varnish and grime. “The Bronzino needs the attentions of a professional. And so do the manuscripts, but I can manage with the confessional, perhaps with the mirror, as well.”

He watched the Contessa out of the tail of his eye as he added, “Habib will be a lot of help.” Habib was a promising Moroccan painter pursuing his art in Venice with Urbino's financial help and encouragement. “He's a real handyman.”

The Contessa showed no reaction unless it was a barely perceptible inclination toward the plate of petit fours.

“I'm pleased to hear that,” she said, with nothing in her voice to indicate that she wasn't. “Sebastian would have been of no use. He can't hang up a curtain rod.” Sebastian Neville, her second cousin, had been Urbino's traveling companion in Morocco until their falling out. “It makes it convenient for Habib—or should I say for you?—that he's staying right in the midst of the things that need his attention. But I hope you're letting the poor boy out of the house. Perhaps you've been so intent on scanning the Piazza to see if he's escaped from his duties?”

Almost against his will, he glanced into the Piazza again. A few people had reclaimed the open space. None of them was Habib.

“He has language classes this afternoon.”

“If his Italian ends up being even half as good as his English, he'll be able to charm the rest of Italy.”

“And Spain and France as well,” Urbino observed.

“A veritable Tower of Babel!” the Contessa enthused. “And at such a young age. Twenty-two, isn't he?”

“Twenty-four.”

Urbino had done all the computations before. He was about to point out that the difference between Habib's age and his own wasn't much more than what separated the Contessa and himself, but he held his tongue. His silence was a signal that any further pursuit of the topic would be an assault on her part.

The Contessa, who knew the script of their special friendship well, since she had fashioned much of it herself, let the matter drop. As if to make up for her surrender, she captured another petit four, this one chocolate with a sliver of almond.

“For the rest of our time here today,
caro
, why don't we forget about the Ca' da Capo and the Palazzo Uccello.” Her eye strayed to the entrance again as someone came in. “Let's enjoy our still point. Because, you see, I'm blissfully glad you're back, as blissful as—as one of the angels of the Basilica dome! The rest will take care of itself.”

Having delivered these last encouraging words with all the aplomb of a well-rehearsed actress, she then showed how well she could take care of her third petit four.

Urbino sipped his sherry and looked at the plate of cakes. A colorful, dainty phalanx remained. He was sure, however, that she would polish it off in good order with all the energy and appetite of her frustrated aggression.

Yes, he said to himself, casting an eye out into the Piazza and then back at his self-indulgent Contessa. He was most definitely back.

PART ONE

HANDKERCHIEF

1

It had begun from their first moments together in Venice three weeks earlier.

The train had just pulled in from Rome. Urbino and his young companion, Habib Laroussi, stepped down from their carriage. Habib was of medium height, with close-cropped black hair and dark olive skin. But his most striking feature was his expressive dark eyes, which had been hungrily devouring everything since they had arrived from Morocco.

“Go out to the steps and see,” Urbino said.

“But our bags,” the young man halfheartedly protested.

“I'll find someone. Go.”

Ten minutes later Urbino, followed by a porter and their extravagance of bags, joined Habib. The young man was standing motionless, looking at the scene. Urbino hadn't seen it for eighteen months. He drank it in himself: the bridges and domes, the sparkling water and the dancing light, the boats of various kinds and even the dampness that in winter, against all logic, somehow registered not only as a smell but also as the color gray.

“It's beautiful,” Habib said. “It's better than you said.”

“I was afraid you'd be disappointed.”

Habib gave a radiant smile.

“You are a foolish man! And now we must take one of those old-style boats.”

Habib pointed toward a moored gondola, rocking in the Grand Canal from the wake of the water traffic.

“My friend said she'd have her own boat waiting.”

“
La comtesse
? She has an old-style boat?”

“A new-style one,” Urbino said with a smile. “That's it.”

He indicated the Contessa's sleek
motoscafo
a short distance away. An unfamiliar man, dressed in a white cap and dark blue suit and tie, descended from the boat and walked toward them. He limped slightly on his left leg.

“But please,
sidi
!” Habib said, using the term of respect with playful urgency. “Let us ride in an old-style one.”

The man in the white cap approached them.

“Signor Macintyre? I am Giorgio, the Contessa da CapoZendrini's boatman,” he said in Italian. He was much younger and seemed more fit than Milo.

“We've decided to take a gondola.”

“A gondola, signore? As you wish. And your baggage?”

“You can take it to the Palazzo Uccello. Do you know where it is?”

“Yes.” He hesitated for a brief moment. “The Contessa is expecting you.”

“Please tell her we'll see her in an hour. No,” he corrected himself, “an hour and a half.”

Several minutes later Urbino and Habib glided out into the Grand Canal. At first the young man was silent as they passed beneath the stone bridge of the Scalzi and made their way between the palaces and churches on either side of the waterway.

And then the questions began, coming as thick and fast as those of a child. What is that tower? Those striped poles? Is that a mosque,
sidi
? And why are there Moorish windows? What is that porch made of wood on the top of the palace? Look! There's another! Why do the chimneys have funny shapes?

“There's plenty of time to ask all the questions you want. Just lie back and look.”

Slowly, silently, first down the Grand Canal, then through a maze of small canals and beneath narrow stony spans, they were floated toward the Palazzo Uccello. Habib's dark glance moved in all directions as he fed his artist's eye with images.

“It is like
The Arabian Nights
!” he had cried out on that first day as they approached the landing of the Palazzo Uccello. “And this is our magic carpet!”

2

Urbino threw open the library shutters and looked straight into the silent night.

A short while before, as the church bells were ringing the second hour, he had awakened from a peculiar dream that still had him in its grip.

Actually, it had been less a dream than a persistent feeling that had wound itself through his thoughts that, even in sleep, seldom were completely still.

The Ca' da Capo-Zendrini was in danger.

It would have been more appropriate, given the damage done to the Palazzo Uccello, if he had been awakened by the urgency of its own, all-too-real problems.

Perhaps, he thought, this mild panic—for that was what it felt like—was simply a matter of displacement, for he had, in fact, been worrying about the Palazzo Uccello before dropping off to sleep.

And yet it was vivid, this sense that the Contessa's own home was threatened in some way. He remembered her uneasiness at Florian's the other afternoon.

He pulled on his clothes and threw his Austrian cape over his shoulders. He would take a walk. He would go to the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini.

He scribbled a brief note for Habib in case he awoke to find him gone, and then slipped out into the night.

Wisps of fog were brushing the bridge and drifting into the alley. He had a quick, sharp inward vision of the snowy domes of the Church of the Salute and the oriental cupolas of the Basilica floating above the mist as it performed its conjuring tricks of levitation and disappearance.

He breathed the air in gratefully. A realization, as strong as the concern that had set him in motion, struck him.

He would be turning his back to the Palazzo Uccello just as he was now, even if he hadn't been seized by this notion about the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini.

For Urbino's preference for the night had only increased since his return. While in the hot sun of Morocco, he had yearned for the damp, fog-filled nights of Venice when he could wander through the watery city as if he were its only occupant—or at least its only privileged one.

Nights in Morocco had been vibrant and spice-scented, filled with flutes and keening songs, and almost always crowded with people who had the gift of turning the most routine of experiences into an occasion for celebration.

To be alone the way he wanted to be, he had sought out the most remote spots beyond the cities, or, on two or three occasions, had sat musing on one of the flat medina roofs until the morning prayer. The desert had brought him solitude, and a restorative kind of peace that healed some wounds he didn't even know he had, but it was a solitude that was—paradoxically perhaps—too absolute. There had been no place in it for the Urbino who both loved and hated sociability.

His commitment to Venice, made almost twenty years ago upon inheriting the rundown building in the Cannaregio, had been largely because he could be splendidly alone, and alone on his own terms. Behind the walls of the Palazzo Uccello, which was like some stationary, elaborately appointed ark, he was far from the crowds and the distracting beauties of the museum city, and yet also in their midst.