Death in a Serene City (5 page)

On this late afternoon, however, despite the attractions of the Palazzo Uccello, he didn't turn down the Mercerie but went through the Piazzetta past the column with the winged lion to the Molo San Marco. He stood at the balustrade in front of the Royal Gardens, deserted now of painters and souvenir sellers. Only one other person was there, a thin old man beneath a battered umbrella standing next to the telescope and staring off toward the low line of the Lido.

With the broad expanse of the lagoon stretching from the Riva degli Schiavoni to the Giudecca, Urbino felt as if he were on the deck of a ship. The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore with its classical brick facade and tall bell tower floated in the near distance on its own island. To its right on the Giudecca rose the Redentore, chaste and dignified among the unimpressive scramble of buildings around it. At the mouth of the Grand Canal, beyond the Dogana di Mare and its golden ball on which Fortune perched, the baroque whiteness of the Salute gleamed with its oversized cupolas, little tower, and graceful flight of steps, its wide quay obscured by the landing stages along the Molo between Urbino and the church. Vaporetti, motorboats, yachts, and barges crossed the lagoon and slipped in and out of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca. Passing each other in the middle of the lagoon were a car ferry headed for the Lido and a dark tanker with the Greek flag plying toward Porto Marghera. The wakes from all this water traffic rocked the tarpaulin-covered gondolas and motorboats moored along the quay and slapped against the foundations of the balustrade and wooden walkway beneath him.

Between the balance and harmony of the two Palladian churches and the extravagance of the Salute, Urbino always felt at peace, as if the two sides of his nature were here externalized and shown to be compatible.

As he turned away from the lagoon, he was in a benevolent frame of mind that made him want to please. He would go to the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini tonight. Not only that but he would try to engage Clifford Voyd in a conversation that might set the Contessa's mind at ease.

There was no need to keep the Contessa wondering whether he would show up or not. He went back to the Piazza, to Florian's. The rain had driven many into its warm, comfortable rooms. Most of the tables and banquettes were taken by tourists drinking their mandatory Bellinis. A few Venetians had their teas and cognacs. Two elderly women in dark tweeds had taken the Contessa's place in the Chinese salon, a tray of sandwiches and pot of tea on the marble table next to a copy of
Casa Vogue
. They smiled at him hesitantly, as if they weren't sure if they knew him or not, but returned to their conversation when he went back into the foyer and on into the bar. He learned from their waiter that the Contessa had left shortly after he had.

As he was going out under the arcade, Angela Bellorini, Stefano's wife, came hurrying toward him from the Piazza. She was drenched and carrying a small black leather portfolio under her arm.

“He's still here then,” she said.

“I'm afraid not, Angela. He was here for only a few minutes. Barbara's gone now too.”

She frowned. It did nothing for her narrow face and close-set eyes.

“Did he go back to the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini?”

“I think he went back home to look for his sketches of the frames.”

“For these.” She held up the portfolio. “They were in here all along.” She shook her head with amusement and affection.

“Barbara said he should bring them over tonight.”

“Tonight?” There was a blank look on her face, then: “Of course, the party. I see I've rushed for nothing then.”

As Angela darted out into the Piazza, clutching the portfolio to her breast, Urbino wondered whether her haste in coming had been inspired by consideration for the Contessa or the generous commission her husband was getting. Yet Angela had never seemed anything but selfless to him. For more than thirty years she had been doing charity work in and around the Cannaregio quarter, spending her own money on the meals she brought from restaurants to the widowed and housebound. And certainly the childless couple had little reason to be concerned with money, having inherited a great deal from the elder Bellorini.

Urbino felt guilty enough to quicken his steps toward the Mercerie. Hadn't he been priding himself just a few minutes ago on his benevolent frame of mind? If he hurried, he might catch up with Angela and they could walk back to the Cannaregio together.

7

IN a little trattoria near the Church of the Madonna dell'Orto in the Cannaregio, Maria Galuppi stopped for a drink. She put down her basket of laundry and nodded to Bettino Tullio, the
padrone
.

Bettino brought her glass of anisette to her usual table next to the heater. There were five other people in the restaurant, all of them men and all sitting at the corner table playing cards silently and without much enthusiasm on this winter afternoon.

Bettino leaned against a chair back. He enjoyed chatting with Maria. There had been a time when he had thought her the most beautiful woman in the Cannaregio. Her daughter at the same age hadn't really held a candle to her. Now, of course, she was nothing like her former self. Over the years her poor eyesight had lent her face a perpetual squint that had hardened her features. Yet her dark eyes still had a warmth that could rekindle some of the feelings he used to have for her. He was glad she had always refused to dim their charm with glasses, however much they might have helped her vision.

“A little late today, aren't you?” He indicated the basket.

“With the rain everyone was using the machines.” She took a sip of the anisette and closed her eyes.

“How's Carlo?”

“The same. The death of the American signorina gives him bad dreams. I think he is remembering his sister—although that wasn't the same at all.” She opened her eyes and darted a look at him. “But what can I do? Last night I stayed up with him and spoke well of her. Ah,” she sighed, “
la poverina!
We had some good talks, the two of us, a stupid old woman like me, can you imagine! I only hope she got as much from the little I could tell her as I got from what she had to tell me. But I doubt it.” She smiled to herself, not looking at Bettino but down into the glass of anisette. “Yes, I doubt it. What I learned from that poor woman was as priceless as—as—” She groped for just the right expression. Then, the smile broadening into a grin: “As priceless as the body of Santa Teodora in her glass coffin!”

She drained the glass. Bettino picked it up to refill it but she stood up quickly.

“Only one, you know that well. It hasn't been any different all these years. Besides, it's time I was getting this back. I'll be helping out at the Contessa's party tonight.”

“Since Carlo isn't with you today, why not have one of the boys playing in front of the Madonna dell'Orto help you?”

She shook her head.

“My last weakness will begin when I depend too much on the strength of someone else. It's just me and Carlo. We can take care of each other.”

She rebuttoned her long black coat and picked up the basket, breathing heavily. Bettino wondered how much longer she would be able to push herself like this for her son's sake. The poor woman's needs were few but he knew that her son's uncertain future had started to trouble her deeply. Yes, it was all done for him now.

He watched her from the window as she walked slowly down the
calle
and up the steps of the bridge toward the Madonna dell'Orto. He hoped that her last weakness was a long, long way off.

8

AT eight-thirty that evening when Urbino reached the bridge that provided the only land access to the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini, he was beginning to feel as if he shouldn't have come after all.

He stopped on the bridge, delaying the moment when he would enter his friend's
salone
.

The
calle
that began on the other side of the bridge was empty. The intricately patterned globes flanking the iron door of the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini and the lighted windows of the
piano nobile
only made the alley seem all the more cold and forbidding. It was strange that no one was coming and going through the large iron door. Were most of the guests using the water entrance on the Grand Canal?

He heard a scratching sound behind him and then a little splash. Most likely a water rat, one of the city's nastier realities that he tried to ignore.

He stood looking up at the front of the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini—or rather its humble back, for most of the decorations on the eighteenth-century building were concentrated on the Grand Canal side where it presented a classical facade in Istrian stone with an elaborate attic frieze of lions. Like the Palazzo Labia farther up the Grand Canal, the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini had been designed by Cominelli, but unlike the much more sumptuous building it couldn't boast frescoes by Tiepolo or trompe l'oeil decor and certainly not that notorious palazzo's reputation for lavish entertainments. Instead there were some passable frescoes by Zugno and Cignaroli and the Contessa's subdued gatherings as the one this evening was sure to be.

Although the building was now known as the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini, the Contessa's husband's family had owned it for only the past seventy years, after having sold their smaller palazzo in the San Polo quarter near San Cassiano. By the time the Contessa—then simply Barbara Spencer of Cadogan Place—had married Alvise da Capo-Zendrini thirty years ago, the building had been denuded of many of its decorations and severely damaged by the recent war and industrial pollution from the mainland.

The Contessa had made it her mission—at least her first one—to restore the palazzo to its former glory. She had been so successful that she had received both the praise and the envy of many established Venetian families who had neither the money nor the imagination to do what should be done with their own buildings.

Before he had met the Contessa, Urbino had heard gossip about her hard line with the architects and restorers, her scrounging throughout Italy and Europe for the perfect pieces to fill in the gaps in the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini's furnishings, her physical and emotional exhaustion afterward and extended stay in a Swiss sanatorium. Although the gossipers had thought they were painting a picture of someone that the young American would never want to meet, their talk had had the opposite effect. His interest in the woman had only increased for he perceived in her passion for her adopted city something very similar to his own. And when they had met at a reception during the Biennale seven years ago they had discovered an instant rapport. Ever since they had been close friends and confidants. With much amusement the Contessa had told him that they were referred to as “that Anglo-American alliance.”

His thoughts about the Contessa having sharpened his sense of responsibility, he went down the steps of the bridge and along the
calle
to the iron door and rang the bell. The door was buzzed open and he walked through one of the palazzo's two gardens, this one small and formal. The inner door was opening as he approached it, giving its view of the impressive staircase sweeping up to the
piano nobile
. Mauro, the Contessa's majordomo, bade him good evening and closed the door behind him.

9

IT was proving much easier to talk to Clifford Voyd than he had thought it would be. The stout fellow was downright garrulous.

For half an hour they had been standing at the far end of the
salone
near the closed doors of the loggia that overlooked the Grand Canal. In front of them in the brightly illuminated room the Contessa and some of the most prominent men and women of the city formed small groups among whom the maid Lucia, Maria Galuppi, and two young men walked with trays of drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Maria looked uncharacteristically stern and severe, a result not only of her crisp black dress and white apron but of the set expression on her face that seemed close to disapproval.

The large room was dominated by several sixteenth-century tapestries of biblical and mythological scenes and an entire corner was devoted to icons and a portable altar of the Virgin, St. Ambrose, and St. Gregory. Urbino surveyed the scene as he talked with Voyd. The Contessa, although engaged in close conversation with Stefano Bellorini and the curator of the Glass Museum, kept sending anxious glances in their direction.

She might have spared herself, however, for things were moving along swimmingly.

“I hear you have a veritable passion for that old decadent Huysmans,” Voyd had said for openers after striding across the room as if he had been waiting for Urbino to arrive. He was a heavyset, good-looking man about the Contessa's age. “Your reputation has preceded you in more ways than one.”

“As has yours, Mr. Voyd.”

Somehow the man managed to look both sheepish and vain at the same time.

“Tell me,” he said, “if you love that book so much, do you go for all its ideas? Are your rooms in colors that look best by artificial light? Do you favor orange and a lot of episcopal violet and cardinal purple? Indigo moldings as well? And absolutely thousands and thousands of richly bound books and exotic flowers, preferably artificial ones that look real and real ones that look unmistakably artificial? And—and all the rest?”

“Not quite, Mr. Voyd. I have no gold-plated tortoise encrusted with jewels either and I certainly don't compel my maid Natalia to wear a costume of Flemish grogram with a medieval coif. But I take what suits my sensibility and character and leave all the rest.”

“But I'm still as much up in the air as before.”

“Let me put it this way, Mr. Voyd. If you were to come to the Palazzo Uccello you wouldn't find anything very strange.”

“Because there's nothing strange there or you keep it all well hidden? Pardon me if I josh you in this way, but I find your enthusiasm for Huysmans rather unusual. In my youth—my
first
youth, that is,” he added, smoothing down his bald spot with a wry smile, “I found him deliciously wicked but still could never understand how poor Dorian Gray could have been corrupted by him.”