Liquid Desires (3 page)

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.

“I mean nothing by it, except that it's the truth. I want nothing from you.” Flavia seemed to reconsider this, for she added, “Nothing but a photograph of my father.” She paused before adding, “Your husband, Alvise.”

Flavia was walking back and forth slowly until she reached a formerly overlooked easel portrait in a corner. It was of Alvise, from around the time of his marriage. Flavia stared at it for a few moments and gave a little sigh before turning back to the Contessa.

“My father was such a handsome man.”

Without missing a beat, the Contessa said, “That is my husband, the Conte Alvise Severino Falier da Capo-Zendrini,” wrapping Alvise's indisputable relationship to her, his names, and his title around her like a protective cloak.

Flavia turned from the portrait and picked up one of the hand-painted ceramic
fischietti
from the marble ormolu-mounted table. The whistle she was holding was in the shape of a sea horse. She seemed about to put it to her lips but returned it to the table with the other bird and animal whistles, and smiled. There was something actressy and calculated in her movements.

“My father—I mean the man who
says
he's my father—the man who
believes
he is,” she finally clarified with a trace of the violence that had been in her stride earlier, “would love your little collection here. Lorenzo collects things, too. He has a whole room filled with photographs and portraits of my mother.” Her face darkened as if at an unpleasant memory. “She was very beautiful, my mother, and Lorenzo always insisted on having her portrait painted and her picture taken. Perhaps one of her portraits ended up here at your villa, Contessa.”

Flavia looked around the room as if in search of a portrait of her mother that she had overlooked.

“My dear Signorina—Flavia,” the Contessa added almost reluctantly, “you are being insufferable. I'm afraid I'm going to have to—”

“Ask me to leave?” the woman completed the Contessa's sentence. “But I said I couldn't stay long in any case. You do have time to look at this photograph of me, though.”

Flavia reached into the pocket of her dress and took out a small, black-and-white photo, ragged around the edges. She handed it to the Contessa, who looked at it and gave it to Urbino. A pretty girl about ten smiled out at him.

“Yes, that's me, a long time ago,” Flavia said. Her voice had an echo of a dead girl's voice. She took the photograph back and returned it to her pocket.

She moved toward the door, pausing to dip her hand in an
acquasantiera
filled with holy water. She didn't so much bless herself, however, as rub her forehead with the water as if she were feverish. In fact, she did look flushed, no longer as infuriatingly aloof as before. Her green eyes now glittered. The dead, lifeless look had been replaced with something close to passion.

“Remember, Contessa, I would like a photograph of my father! I will be in touch with you about it!” She pushed her auburn hair away from her face. “I must have one from you—only from you! Good afternoon.”

Before the Contessa could say anything, Flavia hurried out into the hall. Catullus started to follow her.

“Catullus!” the Contessa called in a peremptory tone.

The dog paused and seemed to consider two desires—to follow the departing woman or to obey his mistress. After what seemed inordinately long seconds of indecisiveness, Catullus turned around and came to the Contessa's side. The Contessa, her face now etched with all the years of the decade she could usually deny having lived, breathed a sigh of relief completely disproportionate to the smallness of this victory over the beautiful young woman who had shattered the Watteau of her garden party.

3

It was sunday. Urbino and the Contessa were sitting on the terrace of the Caffè Centrale in the main square of Asolo. Usually they were content to enjoy the idyllic scene in Piazza Garibaldi—the liquid music of the fifteenth-century winged-lion fountain, the profusion of bright flowers hanging from the arcade windows, the arrival and departure of the jitney buses from the bottom of the hill, the people strolling on the pink and yellow marble pavements, and the view of the golden-stoned castle and the green hills beyond.

Today, however, not even the charms of this town so beloved by Browning that he had named his last volume of poems after it could soothe them, especially not the Contessa. To an even less discerning and affectionate eye than Urbino's own, she was very troubled.

“Even its name mocks me today,” she said wearily, staring with sleep-deprived eyes at the arcade opposite. The seafoam of her dress, usually a flattering shade for her, this afternoon drained her of color. Urbino knew what she meant. The town in whose rose gardens Giorgione had lingered with his lute and where the Venetian Queen of Cyprus had held fabled court had bequeathed its name to a verb. Pietro Bembo, the Renaissance humanist who had used Asolo as the setting for his dialogues on love, had coined the verb
asolare
to describe spending one's time in pleasurable inactivity.

One of the Contessa's favorite phrases during her summers here was
Asolo in Asolo
, whose meaning lost its wit when translated into any other language as “I'm doing sweet nothing in Asolo.”

“I won't have a peaceful moment until this is resolved, Urbino,” she said, abandoning her spoon beside her barely touched
Coppa Tartufo
and absently fingering her strand of freshwater pearls. “I'm devastated. She's not playing a prank, I assure you. She meant everything she was saying. I could see it in her eyes.”

Because Urbino had been struck with just how little Flavia's eyes had seemed to reveal—unless it was their very vacuousness that had been so voluble—he found the Contessa's comment puzzling.