Farewell to the Flesh (41 page)

“When I saw the villa ten years ago,” she was explaining in her lovely, exquisitely controlled voice, “I was certain it was by Palladio. Do you know something of its history?”

Urbino accommodated Madge Lennox by beginning with the villa's name—
La Muta
, or “The Mute Woman”—telling her how it came from a seventeenth-century woman who had retired to Asolo after witnessing a murder in Florence and who had never spoken again in public. The Contessa had been disquieted by this somewhat Gothic association. After several unsuccessful attempts to establish a new name—among them
La Barbara
—she had eventually found a way around the problem by commissioning a copy of Raphael's painting of a gentlewoman, known as
La Muta
. The painting now hung prominently on the stone staircase in the front hall.

“Yes, I've seen it,” Madge Lennox said. “Wasn't the original stolen?”

“Back in seventy-five. The art police came and examined the Contessa's copy.”

“I've heard the Conte da Capo-Zendrini was flattered that they bothered to come here to look at it,” Lennox said in her soft, clear voice, showing that she knew something about
La Muta
—or at least the Conte—herself. “He was an unusual man. The people here still hold him in high regard.”

“I never met him. He died before I met the Contessa.”

“Oh, I see.” She seemed vaguely disappointed. She searched his face with her bold, black eyes. “I was wondering, Mr. Macintyre,” she said, slipping her sunglasses back on and smiling at him, “if you wouldn't mind venturing into the maze with me. I must say you're most appropriately dressed for that kind of thing.”

Lennox's dark eyes ran over Urbino's boater, red bow tie, blazer, and flannels. The Contessa had pronounced him perfectly “delightful,” but Urbino wasn't so sure himself.

“I regret to say that I don't know my way through,” Urbino said, “but there are covered signs you can lift whenever you're lost.”

“But that's no fun! I'd prefer being lost completely or being led through by someone who knows his own way.” She took a sip of her punch. “Do you live here, too? I've seen you at the Caffè Centrale with the Contessa.”

“No. I live in Venice, but I come here often.”

“Oh, you must be the American friend with the palazzo that I heard someone in town talking about!”

“I suppose so. I inherited a small building through my mother. She was American but her family was Italian. Venice has been my home for more than ten years now.”

“How interesting! I've never had the courage to live completely as an expatriate myself—to cut all the ties that bind me to home. I admire you, but isn't there a danger you're going to lose touch—with your past, your origins, I mean? Or have I read too many Henry James novels? To live in Venice all the time!” Madge Lennox shook her head slowly. “‘Venice the impossible' is how I think of it, especially during this time of the year. It's a smelly, slippery trap ready to catch you one way or another! Just look at that poor girl who was raped and murdered! You can't convince me that it had nothing to do with all the heat and madness in Venice this summer. I was there last week for two days, and it was more than enough! I got caught in the middle of a sweaty mob pushing and shoving for a view of the Bridge of Sighs. I almost passed out. ‘The living are just the dead on holiday.' That's what Maeterlinck—an impossible dramatist—said, and he could have been describing Venice in high season. But Asolo!” she came close to sighing. “I've been here since April and I don't ever want to leave.”

At this point they were joined by Silvestro Occhipinti, a bald, birdlike man who had had the ill fortune to outlive most of his family and friends, among them the Contessa's husband. He was all turned out in a white suit and cravat.

“I hope you never do leave, my dear,” Occhipinti said in accented English in a high-pitched, reedy voice. “Villa Pippa is yours for as long as you like. ‘God's in his heaven—all's right with the world!' I couldn't be more pleased!”

Occhipinti often sprinkled his conversation with quotations from Robert Browning, who had lived in Asolo with his wife on what was now the Via Browning, where Occhipinti had his own rooms. Sometimes the quotations were apt, at other times inappropriate or enigmatic. What they always were, however, was precise, age having done nothing to dim the memory of the old friend of Alvise da Capo-Zendrini.

“I'll have to leave in October as I've told you, Signor Occhipinti. The affairs of the world call me, I'm afraid.”

Occhipinti frowned. Looking up at the woman with his round little eyes from behind thick spectacles, he said, “‘Where the apple reddens never pry, lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I.'”

Madge Lennox, like the cited apple of Eden, somehow managed to redden beneath her heavy makeup. Her color deepened when Occhipinti added, “Perhaps you are planning to return to films. Wouldn't that be a happy day! How I remember you in
Dark Lady
! My heart was in your hands. But that was long ago. You've had a great career. Perhaps Signor Macintyre will write a book about you.”

“You're a writer, Mr. Macintyre?” the actress said, turning to Urbino with evident relief.

“A biographer. I write about people who have some connection with Venice. Not complete biographies but only their lives in relationship to the city.”

“He's written one on Robert Browning! ‘What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop'!”

“You must know Venice like the back of your hand, Mr. Macintyre. You probably found me foolish, running on the way I was. Why don't you stop by Villa Pippa sometime? I have an open mind. I would love to love Venice.”

Occhipinti nodded as if he knew exactly what she meant and recited, with a thin-lipped smile, “‘Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.'”

Madge Lennox's brows knitted in perplexity and annoyance.

“Consider it an open invitation, Mr. Macintyre,” she said, holding her head a little higher. “I'm leaving Wednesday for a few days in Milan. Anytime before or after that would be fine.”

Urbino said he would stop by. Excusing himself, he went over to the Contessa who was near the blue and white marquee.

“How are things going, Barbara?”

“Swimmingly!”

The Contessa's eyes were shining with pleasure. Dressed in flowing fawn and cream with a wide-brimmed hat slightly angled on her head, she looked especially attractive this afternoon.

“So you've finally made the desired acquaintance of La Lennox. What do you think of her? No, you don't have to say! I can see that you like her. Beware! She's an actress down to her fingertips.” Just in case Urbino might have interpreted this as a compliment, she added, “Not that
I
have ever even heard of anything the woman has done. I notice that she decided against a turban today. But excuse me,
caro
, I see that the Rienzis would like to make their usual early exit.”

After the Contessa left, Urbino made his way up to the terrace near the conservatory to chat with Tommaso Beni, the landscape architect who had designed the maze. Beni soon got on one of his hobbyhorses—the eighteenth-century landscape gardener Capability Brown—and Urbino made the appropriate responses as he surveyed the party.

His eye was caught by a woman about twenty-five coming through the frescoed atrium from the front of the house. The Contessa's Doberman, Catullus, was striding beside her. Gervasio, the majordomo, was behind her, keeping pace with a man and placing a hand on his shoulder. The man—small, wiry, and unattractive to the point of homeliness—stopped and called something to the woman. She continued walking. Gervasio hurried after her.

Here were two people Urbino didn't recognize. Catullus, however—usually feisty with strangers—was acting as if he knew the young woman or, uncharacteristic of him, had immediately taken to her. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but Urbino doubted that he had ever seen her before. He would have remembered.

Slim, with a slightly elongated neck and abundant auburn hair that drifted behind her like a thick cloud, she had a Pre-Raphaelite look that Urbino found attractive. Her features weren't perfect but they were close to it. Urbino had a good opportunity to take them in as the young woman passed beneath the terrace and turned her face up toward him. Deep-green eyes and generously curved lips were what immediately struck him and he knew he would find it impossible soon to forget them—along with her hair, bronze and gold in the sun and slightly wild.

But something seemed to be missing from the eyes. He didn't expect to find recognition there or interest or even curiosity, but he did expect something. Oddly blank, they gave her striking face a lifeless look. Yet, as she strode across the parterre, oblivious of the other guests, there was force, even violence, in her movements. Heads turned, but no one seemed to recognize her.

The auburn-haired woman went directly to the box garden enclosed by the stone pergola where the Contessa was now talking with Occhipinti. She stood in front of them for a few moments, Catullus docile at her side like a unicorn in medieval paintings of the Virgin. Gervasio went over to the Contessa and bent close to her ear. The Contessa shook her head, and Gervasio left. He rejoined the ugly man, who was still standing at the end of the atrium, and led him to the front of the house.

Occhipinti peered through his spectacles at the young woman, who was now saying something to the Contessa. An angry look transformed Occhipinti's features. The woman was smiling and had an unmistakable expression of triumph on her face.

But the Contessa's expression spoke the loudest. It was as if something had collapsed inside her and she was doing all she could to put the best face on it. Her attempts at concealment might have fooled almost anyone but not Urbino. She was in distress. Urbino was already making his way down the terrace steps before the Contessa looked at him across the heads of her guests with what was a silent cry for help.

Urbino was at her side in time to hear the Burne-Jones woman say in low, soft Italian, “Yes, Contessa, I'm your daughter.” She paused, looking briefly at Urbino with her green eyes. “Or I should say that I'm your husband Alvise's daughter. Didn't he ever tell you?”

She reached down to pat Catullus on the head. The dog seemed in ecstasy.

2

Urbino And The young woman were waiting for the Contessa in the
salotto verde
. Catullus lay on the Aubusson, his eyes following the woman as she ran her slim hand along the carved and gilded Brustolon and Corradini furniture and glanced at the pastels and miniatures by Rosalba Carriera.

“I know I upset the Contessa,” she said in Italian in a voice that seemed to come from a long way off. “I'm sorry. It's a terrible thing when someone you love and trust betrays you. Your soul shrivels up. Do you think hers is all shriveled now? But the Conte Alvise da Capo-Zendrini
was
my father. Don't you think I look like him?”

She turned more directly toward Urbino. On closer view her jaw was far from as square nor were her lips as wide as one of Burne-Jones's languid maidens, but there was nonetheless a resemblance to the painter's women, perhaps mainly in the abundance of auburn hair. Was this why she had seemed familiar earlier?

“Well, signore, do I look like him or not?”

Urbino had never known Alvise, but photographs, portraits, and reputation told him that he had been blue-eyed and handsome in his first and second youths. Urbino could trace no resemblance between him and this young woman, but perhaps he might have if he had known Alvise in the flesh.

The woman smiled, the smile never quite reaching her green eyes. Perspiration beaded her forehead.

“Never mind. I wouldn't want you to risk endangering your relationship with the Contessa. My name is Flavia. And you are—?”

“Urbino Macintyre.”

“Of course. I've heard of you. The American. Older women are a European tradition, yes? Is that why you came to Italy?”

Flavia laughed. Once again Urbino was struck by how aloof her eyes were from any humor. Flavia took in his blazer and flannels and bow tie, the boater now in his hands. Urbino had always found people like her disconcerting—people who might burst out and say whatever might be in their heads with little regard for the consequences.

As they waited for the Contessa, Flavia spoke to Catullus in soothing tones that made the Doberman look even more devotedly at his new—or possibly his old?—friend.

When the Contessa joined them, Flavia introduced herself, giving only her first name as she had a few minutes before to Urbino.

“Please sit down, my dear.”

“No, thank you, Contessa. I won't be staying long. I can see that I've upset you and that isn't my intention.”

Flavia was scrutinizing the Contessa's face and seemed to get some satisfaction from the bewildered look touched with pique that she found there.

“But surely, signorina, you don't intend to descend on me like this and then just sweep away again. Of course I'm upset at what you said!” the Contessa said with passion, almost turning candor into a pose now that she realized she hadn't succeeded in concealing her feelings. “And in such a manner—in front of my guests! Whatever do you mean by it?”

Two spots of color, almost as bright as anything artifice could have painted, appeared on the Contessa's cheeks. She looked quickly at Urbino and then away again. It was almost as if she were embarrassed at being put in this situation, at having to say such things. But a second later Urbino revised his impression. It wasn't so much embarrassment the Contessa seemed to be feeling, an embarrassment that sent the blood to her cheeks and put a tremor in her voice. It was something much colder. It was fear.