Farewell to the Flesh (32 page)

Firpo had just time to give him the address of the person who had, unknowingly, contributed to Xenia Campi's anger that afternoon when a doctor required Firpo's attention.

Urbino walked from the hospital toward the Calle Santa Scolastica. The shops were starting to open again after the midday break. People were waiting to get in and creating even more confusion in the narrow passageways. In the middle of a bridge a group was gathered around a Cleopatra with a boa constrictor around her shoulders—or rather
his
shoulders, because beneath the kohl-rimmed eyes and other heavy makeup, it was obviously a man. A Pharaoh standing next to her was playing a reed flute. As she gently cradled the head of the snake, Cleopatra recited in Italian-accented English:

“Dost thou not see my baby at my breast
,

That sucks the nurse asleep?”

As Urbino left the scene behind, he heard a man make a lewd comment. The crowd laughed loudly, drowning out the sound of the flute.

The mask shop Urbino was looking for was already open. The proprietor, Matteo, a genial, broad-faced man in his mid-thirties, was explaining commedia dell'arte masks to two young women. He smiled in greeting.

The relatively recent revival of
Carnevale
in Venice had brought with it a renewed interest in masks and the art of mask making, and every quarter of the city had its mask shops and artisans.

Matteo had pulled out a large well-worn book from under his counter to illustrate his little lecture.

“Arlecchino—perhaps you know him as Harlequin—is the servant of the miser Pantalone,” Matteo said. “Arlecchino loves love and loves his polenta. You see his costume is made of red, orange, and green patches that remind us of his poverty. This is his mask.” He held up a small dark-brown mask with a misshapen nose jutting out above a bushy moustache. “Columbine, the woman he pursues, who doesn't have sense enough to resist him, usually doesn't wear a mask, but you see from this picture how lavishly she is dressed in her bright-colored skirts. Sometimes she wears an apron, too, since she's a servant like Arlecchino. And then, completing the eternal triangle, is sad-faced Pierrot with his black skullcap and floppy white suit. He seldom wears a mask either, but why does he need one, ladies? His face is itself a mask.” He pointed to the face of Pierrot in the book. “It is painted white, sometimes with one tear to show his sorrow at losing his beloved Columbine to the more crafty and sensual Arlecchino. Let me show you one of my Pierrot masks.” He went to the wall and took down a simple white-faced mask with a large black tear on its cheek.

“You will see many people in the
Carnevale
crowd dressed like Harlequin, Columbine, and Pierrot, sometimes in groups of three, sometimes just two of them, sometimes one alone. But there are also the Harlequins, Columbines, and Pierrots who wear no costume, ladies, for remember that the commedia dell'arte characters are ones we see around us every day. I myself am the brokenhearted Pierrot who sees all you lovely ladies come into my life only to leave a few minutes later.”

The two young women giggled, thanked him, and said they might come back to buy a mask before they left Venice. Matteo went out into the
calle
to direct them to the Piazza San Marco although his parting words—“Just follow the crowd”—were the best directions he could give them.

“How can I help you, signor?”

When Urbino mentioned Giovanni Firpo and one of the masks he had worn that afternoon last week in the Piazza, Matteo nodded. “Yes, I make all of Vanni's masks for him. He's even more of a perfectionist than I am! Of course I remember that particular one. I had a lot of fun doing it.” He laughed as he remembered. “A man who spoke Italian with an English accent—or maybe it was an American accent—asked me to make one of them for him, too. Maybe Vanni Firpo recommended me, but this man wanted it in a hurry and I couldn't do it. I suggested he see Pierina. She just got started as a mask maker and is looking for business. She has a very good eye and steady hand.”

“Where can I find her?”

“She doesn't have her own shop yet. She shares a space near Santa Maria Formosa with a cousin in the secondhand-clothing business, but until the end of
Carnevale
she has a booth in the Campo San Maurizio. She's there almost all the time when she isn't strolling around the Piazza, trying to do business there.”

Urbino thanked him and set off for the Campo San Maurizio. It was slow going as he moved against the current of the crowd, but he soon entered the maze of back alleys where there were only a few masqueraders and local residents going about their business. As he neared the Campo San Maurizio, however, he was once again in the thick of things.

The square not far from the Accademia Bridge had rows of canopied booths selling masks, hats, and costumes as well as books, calendars, and posters of the Venetian Carnival. A couple dressed as Beauty and the Beast were performing a pantomime in one of the aisles. Laughing tourists were trying on bizarre and fanciful cloaks, robes, pants, dresses, and headgear; others were carefully considering between two or three masks as if the one they chose would make the difference between a completely successful
Carnevale
experience or a fiasco. Three Gypsy children ran up and down the aisles, distracting the proprietors and their clients.

Urbino had to ask at several booths before someone pointed out Pierina's booth.

It wasn't until he was only a few feet away that he recognized Pierina. She was the young woman who had been painting faces in the Piazza on the day he had spoken with the boys from Naples. He was also fairly certain that it was the same girl who had been in the restaurant in the Calle degli Albanesi when he had spoken with Lupo. Without her face paint, he saw that she was a little older than he had first thought, perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six. She was small and birdlike, with short dark hair feathering around her face and dark expressive eyes. Her face was very pale and she looked like a porcelain doll—a slightly damaged doll, however, for a small scar marred her right cheek.

She was just finishing a sale of one of the many masks that glared, grimaced, and laughed from the counter and the support beams.

Pierina's eyes widened when she saw him.

He didn't indicate that he recognized her. Before he asked her any questions, he examined some of the masks and bought a black velvet oval
moretta
. He would give it to the Contessa.

While Pierina was wrapping it in pages from
Il
Gazzettino
, she looked at Urbino warily. He said that Matteo near the Campo San Filippo e Giacomo had told him where he could find her. He asked her about the man Matteo had mentioned.

She busied herself with a piece of cellophane tape before answering.

“I remember him. He came to the shop I share with my cousin. He paid me a lot but it wasn't easy. You have to go from something flat to something three-dimensional. I saw many flaws in it myself but he was pleased.”

She handed him the package. He had the impression she wanted to end their conversation. She looked over his shoulder at the shoppers milling around.

“Was he American or English?” Urbino persisted.

“He wasn't French or German. I could tell that. As for the other man, he was very handsome, but I don't know what nationality he was, of course.”

“Have you seen either of them since two weeks ago?”

She tried to look at him steadily as she answered but the eye over the scar twitched slightly.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded her head but Urbino wasn't convinced.

“You know Xenia Campi, don't you?”

“Most people know her. She's a real character.”

“But you know her better than most. You've known her for ten years. You were close to her dead son.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“No. Giuseppe, the boy from Naples, did.”

She made an annoyed face.

“Yes, I know her. And I knew Marco.” A sad look came over her face. “I was almost killed in that accident, too.”

“Does Xenia Campi bother you?”

“Bother me! She watches me all the time! You would think I had been married to Marco. I was only a kid at the time. She thinks she has to watch out for me. I've got a mother of my own!”

“Did she bother you about Signor Gibbon, the English photoggrapher who was murdered in the Calle Santa Scolastica?”

Pierina paled and her scar stood out more.

“I don't know what you're talking about, Signor Macintyre! Yes, I know who you are! Xenia Campi pointed you out to me in the Piazza. You like to poke your nose into everything. She said I would have trouble because of you.”

“Trouble from her if you spoke with me?”

“Excuse me, Signor Macintyre, I have work to do.”

She started to straighten some of her masks but he had one more question.

“Do you have any inexpensive plastic masks, a yellow one, perhaps?”

She seemed surprised, looking at him with disbelief.

“Only what you see. I make and sell only quality masks. Good day.”

The next moment she was shouting angrily at the three Gypsy children who had come up to the booth and were eying a row of small porcelain masks. Urbino left.

6

By the time Urbino was approaching the Palazzo Uccello a chill wind was blowing through the dark alleys. He could sense an abrupt change coming in the weather. The last day of
Carnevale
might see not only confetti and streamers flying through the air but snowflakes as well. He hoped so. Cloaks of snow covering the domes, bridges, and gondolas of the city would only add to the festive air. Venice would seem even more enchanted. He wished he were in a better position to be able to enjoy this year's celebration.

His walk back to the Palazzo Uccello was at many times like moving against an incoming tide. Crowds flooded the main
calli
, shouts poured out of café's, and dancers eddied madly within the larger human maelstroms of the squares as music played loudly over speakers.

So difficult was it to make his way that once again he left the main route. He was happy to reach his neighborhood where the noise and activity were replaced by an almost funereal stillness. Occasionally the quiet was broken by the waxing and waning of voices and other sounds, sometimes loud and other times muted, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Where only a few moments before he had encountered crowds of merrymakers, he now met only an occasional neighbor with whom he exchanged a quick greeting.

Was it his imagination or did everyone he met now seem just a little eager to get to their destination? Fortunately, he didn't have far to go.

He had only to turn the corner at the end of the
calle
, go over the bridge, and apply the key to the lock. He quickened his steps.

As he walked up the steps of the humpbacked bridge next to the Palazzo Uccello, he looked up at the lights Natalia had put on. They gave him a warm, secure feeling. He paused in the middle of the bridge to look down at the narrow melancholy canal. He never tired of peering into it from here or from the windows of the palazzo.

Sometimes on overcast days or evenings like these, with the building reflected in its murky waters, he was reminded of how Poe's House of Usher had been mirrored in the tarn that ultimately claimed it. As on these other occasions, he now found himself searching the walls of the Palazzo Uccello for some barely perceptible crack that might eventually bring the building to the same fate. It was clearly an irrational fear, considering all the work that had gone into the building's restoration ten years ago when he had inherited it through his mother.

The thought of a drink and Serena's greeting after not having seen him all day pulled him out of his reverie. He went down the steps and bent to fit his key in the lock.

“Everything is going to come crashing down around you, Signor Macintyre.”

The voice—a woman's—seemed disembodied, as if it had been whispered urgently in his ear and yet projected from an impossibly long distance. The effect was all the more eerie because, only a moment ago, the
calle
that stretched from the bridge past the Palazzo Uccello and beyond had seemed deserted. Surely his mind was playing malicious tricks on him. These words, spoken in Italian, were too close to the unreasonable fear that had just visited him on the bridge to be anything but a figment of his imagination.

He was wrong, however.

A tall figure dressed in a dark knee-length cloak stepped slowly from the shadows of the building next to the Palazzo Uccello. He didn't recognize the figure, although the resonance of the voice in his mind sounded familiar. A quick laugh preceded another step forward into a dim pool of lamplight.

It was Xenia Campi, her face looking like stone.

“You're in danger, Signor Macintyre. I've brought you a warning of danger,” she intoned. “A red aura bleeds around your head. And tell your friend the Contessa to stay in her palazzo until it's all over.”

“Until what's all over?”

It was more a startled, automatic response than a question. In any case Xenia Campi didn't answer but instead smiled without mirth or apparent meaning. It was an indication of Urbino's confusion and uneasiness that, as he watched her go over the bridge and turn the corner, he could think of nothing more to say to her.

7

“Whatever did the poor deluded woman mean, Urbino?” the Contessa said over the phone ten minutes later. “Stay here in the Ca' da Capo until
what's
over?”

“I asked her the same question. She only smiled and went away. I assume she meant
Carnevale.”

“Carnevale?
I'd be most content to stay here until Ash Wednesday, but it just isn't possible. I have my obligations, you know,” she said as if a long list of social, personal, and charitable missions kept her in perpetual and exhausted motion. “And unfortunately—because of your own insistence—tomorrow the Ca' da Capo will be in the mad middle of
Carnevale
itself. Like Mephistopheles in that play I'll be able to say, ‘This is hell nor am I out of it'! But, seriously, Urbino, do you think there was anything behind Xenia Campi's warnings?”