Deadly to the Sight (4 page)

He opened his sketchbook and started to capture some of his impressions, lamenting again that all he had were his pencils.

While Habib sketched near a covered wellhead, accompanied by two young boys and a little girl amused by his Italian, Urbino sat on the water steps of the little square, surrounded by fish traps, and took in the scene. A plump matron threw hot water against her steps. Steamy vapor drifted toward a woman in a wool cap speaking to her from a nearby window. She held a
tombolo
, a round cushion used in lace making. A swarthy man repaired a fishnet and joked with a companion applying caulk to his boat. A striped cat, its body low against the ground, started to move toward a sea bird perched on the wellhead. Urbino followed its movement until his eye returned to Habib. The rich darkness of his skin was a sharp contrast to the Venetian fairness of the children.

Habib laughed and waved to the little girl, who was now being led away by her father. The man scowled and kept throwing glances back at Habib as he gripped his daughter's hand tightly.

Anxiety coursed through Urbino as a rushed voice within him spoke of Moors and open natures and mistaken trust.

He got to his feet. He tried to dispel his mood by reminding himself of the pleasant surprise he was about to give Habib.

5

Ten minutes later, however, a sign with
CHIUSO
written on it in large black letters greeted them on the door of the Trattoria Da Romano in the Via Galuppi. Urbino couldn't restrain an expression of irritation.

“Don't be a foolish man,
sidi
. We won't starve to death! There are many restaurants to choke a horse!” Habib said, showing today a preference for idioms associated with that particular animal.

But the Trattoria Da Romano wasn't only a restaurant, and one of the best on Burano. Like the Montin in the Dorsoduro quarter, it was an art gallery as well, with paintings by Gino Rossi and other members of the Burano school, whose vivid colors and rough surfaces were similar to Habib's work. Urbino's little surprise would have to wait for another day.

A short distance down the street was Il Piccolo Nettuno. The Contessa had recommended it, but Urbino had never eaten there.

“Il Piccolo Nettuno, the Little Neptune,” Urbino translated automatically. “Neptune was the god of the sea.”

He sometimes felt like a nineteenth-century tutor engaged to accompany a young man on his grand tour or, more to the point, some ambiguous avuncular benefactor in the same role.

As they entered the restaurant, it appeared that they were in for another disappointment. Most of the chairs had been taken from the floor and turned upside down, their seats resting on the tabletops. The room had all modern appointments, from its tables, chairs, light fixtures, and a brightly tiled floor, to a multitude of mirrors that adorned the walls and even the pillar in the center. Urbino lamented all the old dark wood that must have been stripped away in a misguided desire to improve.

A bespectacled woman with white hair was sweeping the floor. She was dressed in a wrinkled gray dress that had a large stain on one arm and was ripped at the hem. Urbino immediately recognized her as the woman outside Florian's.

She looked up and pierced them with her gaze.

“You are closed?” Urbino asked in Italian.

“But no, signore. Not for you and your young friend.
Avanti
!” She leaned her broom against the wall. “Salvatore!” she called out in a strong voice.

A man in his early fifties, wearing a soiled red apron, emerged from the kitchen. He walked unsteadily.

“We are closed,” he said.

He showed the vestiges of a former handsomeness. Dark circles underscored his eyes and burst veins crept across his face.

“No! Do not be so unfriendly!” she said in a nasty tone. “We are always open for the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini and her friends.” Her voice now dripped with solicitude. “The cook has gone home, signore, but I can cook even better! The Contessa is with you?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“I thought I saw her
motorboat
. But my eyes …”

“We did come in her boat. She made it available to us.”

“Ah, so kind and generous of her. I know you are called Signor Urbino, yes?”

Her smile revealed large gaps and decayed teeth. Her foul breath struck Urbino's nostrils.

She raised her hand. With one finger extended she traced a pattern of some kind through the air, and then started to speak slowly in heavily accented English.

“I can speak a little of the English, but I must to write my finger before I speak. Me, I am called Nina Crivelli, and he is my son, Salvatore.” Then, addressing her son, she rasped out in Italian, “Don't stand there like a useless cucumber! Put down some chairs!”

Dutifully, silently, Salvatore started to remove chairs from one of the front tables. His mother went to a cupboard against the wall.

“We shouldn't eat here,
sidi
,” Habib said in a low voice, cradling the package of family gifts. “It is not clean.”

His head was down as if he were concentrating on one of the floor tiles.

This wasn't the first time he had shown fastidiousness in circumstances that Urbino, discriminating enough himself, had no complaint about. The restaurant looked and smelled clean, if a little damp. Urbino pointed this out. Nina riveted her eyes on them, eyes grossly magnified by her thick glasses.

“But the chairs on the table,
sidi
! People sit on the chairs, yes? And the chairs were kissing the table. We eat where people sit! Let's go somewhere else, please!”

Urbino detected an underlying note of fear. He was often puzzled by Habib's reactions, and sometimes by his lack of them. He ascribed it to the cultural gulf between them that could never be breached. It was, in fact, greater than the one created by their ages.

To try to josh Habib from his peculiar mood, Urbino said in a low voice, “the niece of your father's brother!”

It was a little game they enjoyed playing. Urbino had realized early in their friendship that Habib, like most Moroccans, had a keen sense of kinship. Urbino had got into the habit of throwing out complicated family relationships as a mental and verbal exercise for Habib, who sometimes became confused about the English words for these connections.

“My father's brother is my uncle, and his niece—his niece is my sister!”

He gave Urbino a strained smile.

“Good. That's one possibility.”

Nina took a lace tablecloth out of the cupboard. Salvatore finished arranging the chairs.

“Now wipe off the table!”

Nina's voice grated harshly. Salvatore shuffled off, not quite steadily.

He came back a few moments later with two cloths. He gave the tabletop several hard swipes, first with the wet cloth, then with the dry one.

Nina arranged the tablecloth. Even Urbino's untrained eye identified it as of superior quality to the one Habib had bought.

“Salvatore will bring you the menu. I can cook many things that are not on it.”

“Let's sit down,” Urbino said as the mother and son went into the kitchen.

“But,
sidi
, I feel something bad here. It is not a place to make a happy meal.”

“You'll see you're wrong.”

“I hope so.”

During the meal that followed—a delicious one of grilled shrimp and
coda di rospo
—Habib hardly said a word. He tried to be his usual open self, but he seemed under a shadow of some kind. He picked at his food in desultory fashion and kept his head down.

Urbino looked into one of the mirrors. He caught sight of the old lace maker, sitting in a corner with her eyes screwed in their direction. He could be mistaken, but he had the impression that Habib was avoiding her glance as if it were poisoned.

6

Half an hour later, their meal finished, Urbino and Habib were about to strike out down the Via Galuppi to return to the motorboat, when Nina emerged from the restaurant. She was dressed in her black shawl and fingerless gloves.

“If you are returning to Venice,” she said, “perhaps you could take me? If it isn't too much to ask you to do for a poor woman.”

“With pleasure, signora. We'll drop you wherever you wish.”

Habib fell in a few steps behind Urbino and the lace maker as they walked toward the boat landing.

They had gone only a short distance, however, when an attractive, slightly overweight woman of about thirty-five came striding toward them. She was stylishly dressed in a voluminous woolen cape of muted colors and shining leather boots. A bag from a San Marco shop weighed her down on one side. When she reached them, she took a cigarette out of her mouth and ground it beneath her boot.

“Everything is done?” she asked Nina.

“Salvatore will finish.”

The younger woman consulted her gold bracelet watch.

“But my friends will be here in an hour!”

“Do not worry, signorina. Nella will be returning soon.”

The signorina was about to say something but she checked herself. She gave Urbino a bland and slightly quizzical smile.

“This is Signor Macintyre,” Nina explained. “He is the friend of the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini.”

“My best client! I'm Regina Bella. Il Piccolo Nettuno is my restaurant.”

Nina made a little snorting sound that the younger woman ignored.

“We had an excellent lunch,” Urbino said, “and excellent service. The Contessa recommended your place.”

“We owe her much of our success.”

Urbino introduced Habib as his Moroccan friend. Habib was giving his attention to an edge of the tablecloth that was sticking out of his package.

“I love your country,” she said to him in Italian. “Does he understand Italian?” she asked Urbino, when she got no response.

“If you speak slowly.”

“Yes, well, I love your country,” she said again. “I've been there twice. You have very colorful customs. And delicious food. I should be a good judge of that, shouldn't I? It's my profession!” She laughed. “I hope you enjoy your visit.”

“I am not a tourist,” Habib said, pronouncing the words slowly and clearly.

“All the better for you. Have you immigrated here?”

She seemed to scrutinize Habib more closely.

“I am an artist.”

“But surely artists can be immigrants, and immigrants can be artists!”

This was too much for Habib to absorb. Urbino stepped in to clarify.

“He's a painter. I'm sponsoring him. He's studying Italian and getting a firsthand look at the art. We hope he'll show his work.”

“Marvelous! I'm sure that Signor Macintyre will be of great help to you, and the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini also. But excuse me. I must see if everything is in order.”

Her eyes flickered quickly over Nina's face before she picked up her shopping bag and continued up the Via Galuppi.

During the trip across the lagoon, Habib stayed outside with Giorgio despite the chill. In the cabin, Urbino praised Nina's cooking and tried to explain why Habib had left so much food on his plate. He laid the blame on his unfamiliarity with a different cuisine and not on his reluctance to eat at the restaurant at all. The old woman didn't seem particularly interested.

“Forgive me, Signor Urbino, but I feel I know you. The Contessa da Capo-Zendrini speaks well of you, as do others. Natalia Vinci, for example.”

Natalia was his housekeeper.

“You know Natalia?”

“Si, signore. Though it was her mother, may God rest her soul, who I knew best.” She peered at him sharply. “You are a man who respects mothers. You were a good son to your mother. She had Italian blood. She is dead.”

She rattled off these simple truths as if she had gained her knowledge from some source other than Natalia or the Contessa, neither of whom in any case had ever known his mother. There was nothing for him to say.

“That is why I know you will help me.”

“Help you, signora? In what way?”

“By speaking in the name of Nina Crivelli to the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini. She is not a mother but she has the heart of one. And the heart of a good mother is open to the world and all its pain, and all its needs.”

The old woman spoke in a somewhat fawning manner. The closed cabin had an unpleasant odor from her decaying teeth and unwashed garments.

“What is it that you want of the Contessa?”

She took a white lace handkerchief from beneath her shawl. It was tied at the corners.

“It is something she can give easily. Something she has given before. I do not want to name it. She knows. But she hesitates. Nina Crivelli has never asked for such a thing in my long, long life. The Contessa's name is Barbara. Santa Barbara appeared to me when I fell asleep in the Oratorio di Santa Barbara.” The oratorio was on Burano. “Holy Santa Barbara”—she crossed herself, with the handkerchief still in her hand—“told me that I could help the Contessa Barbara and the Contessa Barbara could help me.”

There was something unmistakably false and calculating in her words.

“What help does the Contessa need?”

The old woman shrugged.

“It is not my business, signore.” She gave him a sidewise glance, and then looked through the window at the front of the boat, where Giorgio was explaining something to Habib. “But all rich people need help, even more than the poor. You are not rich,” she added. “Not as rich as the Contessa. You understand what I am saying.”

Urbino was far from sure that he did.

“You will speak in the name of Nina Crivelli?”

“I'll tell the Contessa about our conversation,” was all that he promised.

But it appeared to be enough for the lace maker.

“You are a good man, signore,” she said, patting his hand.

She then withdrew completely into herself and stared out the window. Her gaze kept straying away from the lagoon, however, and fixing on Giorgio and Habib. The young Moroccan was now crouched down next to Giorgio to keep out of the wind.