Death in a Serene City (15 page)

In some kind of ironic compensation, however, her voice was that of a young woman. She had just finished telling him, interrupted periodically by the other women, what he already knew about Maria: that she had been a hard worker, a devout woman, and a true daughter of the Cannaregio, having been born, married, and widowed there. “And murdered too,” one of the women farthest from the stove cackled. She had snow-white hair but the blackest and bushiest eyebrows Urbino had ever seen. Nina shot her a glance and the woman looked away. It was evident that Nina, perhaps because it was her apartment, exerted an influence over the others. They had deferred to her earlier when Urbino had asked about Maria.

“Don't be disrespectful, Eleonora. Death will come to us all, even you, my dear.”

“We all have to die but we won't all be murdered,” another of them said. She had a black lace cap pulled down over her head and a rather pronounced moustache.

“It's bad luck to say such things,” a refined-looking woman replied. She had an abstracted air, as if she wondered what she was doing in the midst of these vulgar old women. She was sitting closest to the fire and took an occasional sip from what looked like a small medicine bottle she kept in the pocket of her robe. She didn't do it furtively, but rather with hauteur, and when she did, the faint odor of anisette wafted to Urbino.

“I don't think you ladies need fear any bad luck of that kind. The Questura is satisfied that Carlo killed his mother.”

He threw it out to get their reaction. They hadn't said anything yet about Carlo except that he had lived with his mother on the top floor in the back.

“The Questura is satisfied with very little,” Nina said with a sniff. “We knew Carlo since he was a little boy. He could never have done such a terrible thing, never.”

“He was ugly is all,
un gobbo
like that statue on the other side of the Ponte di Rialto—if it's still there. I haven't left this house in years.” Eleonora shook her head regretfully.

“He loved his mother,” the woman with the medicine bottle said in a dreamy voice as if she were thinking of loves from her own past.

“And she loved him, don't forget that, Marietta,” the woman in the lace cap said.

“Yes, Dorotea, she loved him,” Nina agreed, “but she loved her daughter more.”

“You can't compare love, it can't even be measured,” Marietta said in her dreamy voice, looking off into a far corner of the room. “It's not someone's fault if they love you more, or less, or if they can't love you at all. In my time there were three men all courting me, as different as could be, one of them was from Verona, the home of Romeo—”

“I don't think the
signore americano
is interested in the story of your life, Marietta,” Nina interrupted. “He came here about Maria. We don't want him to leave with the impression that old women wander from one topic to another.”

“Her daughter's name, I believe, was Beatrice,” Urbino prompted.

“Beatrice, like Dante's love,” said Marietta.

“Yes, her name was Beatrice,” Nina said matter-of-factly. “I doubt, however, if her name had anything to do with Dante. I think it was Maria's mother's name.”

“Perhaps her mother was named after Dante's heroine,” suggested Dorotea with a little smile at Marietta. Marietta ignored her and took a sip from her medicine bottle.

“Whoever she was named after,” Eleonora of the eyebrows said, “she was her mother's shining light. Maria would have followed her anywhere.” Urbino wondered if Eleonora's image was merely fortuitous or if she actually knew who Dante's Beatrice was. She left the question no longer in doubt when she added, “Unfortunately
her
Beatrice led her down to an inferno, not up to Paradise.”

“You exaggerate as usual,” Nina said. “Beatrice loved her mother.”

“But she loved someone else much more, I think,” said Marietta, who by now held the bottle openly on her knee.

Nina looked at Urbino steadily and said in her little girl voice, “Marietta is right. Beatrice was most certainly in love. Oh, she was a beautiful young girl, fair, fair skin and bright blue eyes. Her hair was a marvelous black, like ebony. She was as different from her brother as you could imagine two children could be, not just in her beauty and slimness but in her quickness of mind. She was bright, very bright. She could have married well. That's what Maria hoped, that's what all mothers hope.”

“What happened?” All he knew about the daughter was the little the Contessa had told him when he had hired Maria: that she had died very young, that she had been in love, nothing much more than that. Maria had never told her anything more, it seemed, nor had anyone else.

“What happened?” Marietta echoed him. “She fell in love.”

“Love frequently leads to marriage. Did she marry the man?”

“Love sometimes leads to marriage,” Marietta corrected with the air of someone who should know, taking a sip of her anisette.

“In the case of Beatrice, this love could never have led to marriage, I'm sure.” It was Dorotea. She pulled her lace cap down more snugly and looked at Nina. “Am I not right, Nina?” She seemed to want to pacify the woman.

Nina nodded with a frown, then turned to Urbino and sighed. “My dear Signor Macintyre, please don't think ill of a group of old women. Maybe it's wrong to talk as we've been doing but it's one of our few pastimes and we mean no harm. It's only the truth we're telling. Haven't you noticed how the old usually tell the truth, no matter what? Yes, we tell the truth as we understand it. That's what we're trying to do, all of us, even Dorotea here.”

“But what did she mean, Signora? Was the man married?”

She shrugged.

“We spoke of love, Signor Macintyre, but did we speak of love for a man who could or would marry her?”

“Who was he?”

She shrugged again.

“We never knew. Seventeen-year-old girls can keep a secret. I don't think her own mother knew. Beatrice took the man's name to her grave.”

“Did Maria confide in you?”

“She never said a word about it, either before or after her daughter died, but we knew.”

“I was the first to know,” Marietta said. “I told the others.”

“We would have heard too if we had been home at the time,” Nina said. “Come here, Signor Macintyre.” She got up and led him across to the window. It was covered with transparent plastic taped messily to the frame. “Do you see that?”

He looked out the window. All he saw was a small courtyard and the backs of three other buildings. Before he could answer Nina continued, “When all the windows are open we can hear almost everything because of the way the buildings come together, even if there's no shouting. But that afternoon more than thirty years ago there was a great deal of shouting.”

“Yes,” Marietta said, “and
I
heard it. You always talk as if you were the one to be home that afternoon.”

“What did she hear?” The quickest way to get information would be to treat Nina as the source of it all. The woman beamed.

“An argument between Maria and her daughter. Maria wanted to know where she'd been. Beatrice laughed. ‘Wouldn't you like to know!' she answered as sassy as you please. Then there was a slap.”

“A loud one,” Marietta added. “My cheek smarts to think of it.”

“A sad situation,” Nina continued. “That girl gave Maria sorrow but like most mothers she forgave her. Once Beatrice was gone she spoke only well of her.”

“How did she die?”

Nina didn't seem as eager to answer this question as the other ones. Eleonora and Dorotea acted as if they hadn't heard it. Even Marietta, who might have been expected to take advantage of Nina's silence, said nothing. Then, with obvious reluctance, Nina said, “Three months later Maria found her dead upstairs.” She nodded toward the floor above. “In the toilet.”

“What happened?”

Again a silence until Marietta said, the bottle poised at her lips, “Just like Carlo except that she took poison. They say it runs in families.” Then, after a sip: “But Beatrice did it for love.”

2

AS Urbino was making his way down the dark stairway a few minutes later, there were footsteps behind him on the landing above, then a voice called down:

“Excuse me, Signor Macintyre, could you help me to my apartment?”

It was Marietta.

“Of course, Signora.” He went up to her. “Where is it?”

“Down on the next floor. I know it makes little sense,” she said as she put her thin arm through his, “but it's more difficult going down. I pull myself up little by little but when I go down I get dizzy.”

He guided her down to her door which was slightly ajar. She pushed it open, revealing a sparsely furnished vestibule and room.

“Thank you very much, you are most kind.” The odor of anisette was strong as she leaned closer to him. “You deserve something for your kindness but unfortunately I have nothing to give you.” She inclined her head toward her apartment and rubbed the pocket of her robe. From the way she had tipped the bottle the last time he knew it must be almost empty. “Virtue they say should be its own reward but I've never believed it. Just one of those things they tell you when you're a child to get you to do what you otherwise wouldn't.” She smiled up at him, her face breaking into a thousand lines and wrinkles. “Are you shocked?”

“Do you want me to be?”

She laughed.

“I think you know the answer to that or you wouldn't ask. Old age would be no fun if we couldn't shock people from time to time.”

“Then Signora, I'm exceedingly shocked. I've never heard such cynicism from anyone, old or young.”

“Then let me tell you something else. I'm afraid it's nothing shocking but it might help repay you for your kindness. I said nothing upstairs because it's better that Nina thinks she knows everything. Otherwise she'll know my little smile is often at her expense—and then where would I be? Her rooms are the warmest in the building!”

“What is it that you want to tell me, Signora?”

“Just this: Maria always went to Murano the first week of every November. I don't think she missed a November in more than twenty-five years. Don't you find it strange?”

“Not so strange, Signora, if you'll pardon me,” he said, realizing he might hurt her feelings. “Murano isn't far and it's a popular place.”

“Maria had no interest in popular places! She hadn't been to the Piazza for years, she was proud of it! No, Signor Macintyre, it's very, very strange, especially since her daughter died in November.”

She turned to go into her apartment but stopped.

“And another thing,” she said, leaning against the door frame. “Maybe you'll find it of as little interest as what I've just told you. It's about a
cocorita
, a lovebird, a parakeet, whatever you want to call it. I heard Beatrice tell her mother as they went down these stairs here that her little
cocorita
had disappeared, couldn't be found anywhere. About two months after their argument it was, several weeks before she—she died. Maria said real sharp, ‘Maybe she'll give you another one, your friend.' I said nothing of this to either that one”—she lifted her chin in a vigorous gesture to the floor above—“or anyone else. I'm not a eavesdropper and that's what Nina would have called me, she would have said I'm always listening outside doors and windows as if I don't have better things to do with my time!”

“Did Beatrice keep a lovebird?”

Birds were popular pets in Venice where space was so scarce. Perhaps the Venetians got pleasure out of seeing creatures more confined than they were themselves but ones which they could pamper. In a few months, with the coming of the good weather, cages would festoon the sides and sills of buildings throughout the city.

“Oh, no, I would have known, we all would have.”

“Are you sure Maria mentioned a woman?”

“A woman, a girl, that I don't know, but a female, yes. Domenica was what Maria called her. But excuse me, it's almost time for my nap.”

Before she closed her door, Urbino reached into his pocket. He took out a ten-thousand
lira
note and tucked it into the pocket of her robe.

“For some anisette, Signora.”

She didn't thank him but lifted her head a little higher as she closed the door. There was a faint smile on her lips, however, probably the same kind of smile Nina saw so often and wondered about.

3

TEN minutes later Urbino was at the rectory of San Gabriele. Sister Giuseppina showed him into the small parlor and went to summon Don Marcantonio and get some tea.

The room reflected Don Marcantonio's well-known austerity. There was a worn sofa, two chairs with high backs, a threadbare carpet, several lithographs of martyrdoms, and a small dark-wood table and matching sideboard with an old candelabra and two stuffed, mounted ducks.

A few minutes after Sister Giuseppina brought in the tea, Don Marcantonio, looking frailer than usual, came shambling down the hall from his private quarters. Urbino stood up.

“Please sit down, Signor Macintyre. Forgive me if I see you for only a short time but I'm not feeling well. All this sadness and confusion.” He sighed. “It takes me twice as long and three times the energy to do everything. My new assistant was supposed to be here before Christmas but he has to look after his father in Rimini until some other arrangement can be made.” He went to the sideboard and came back with a bottle of brandy and two glasses. “Well have some of this, it'll do us both good on a cold afternoon, better than that stuff there.” He sat down in the other chair and poured out two generous portions of the brandy. After taking a sip, he said, “Now what can I do for you?”

“I have some questions about Maria Galuppi.”