The Last Gondola (27 page)

Urbino contemplated it now, hoping to chase away the dark mood that had descended on him in the last few minutes. He thought about the legend of the madwoman associated with Possle's building, a legend that could be said to have a contemporary equivalent in the person of Elvira, with her singing, laughter, and curses that seemed to come from within the walls of the Ca' Pozza.

Possle's hearing was too weak to allow him to hear Elvira, but if he could have, he might have been reminded of Adriana and her voice. But would it have been a welcome reminder?

The same could apply to Armando. Urbino assumed that he often did hear Elvira singing from next door, but it wouldn't necessarily make him feel positively disposed toward her. Although his commemorative masses for Adriana indicated that he hadn't forgotten her, it was logical that he would want to remember her on his own terms. Elvira's voice, so close to him all the time, could even be a form of torment.

Urbino had become so lost in his thoughts that he didn't realize that the Contessa had been staring at him. She had a distressed look on her face. “It's not over yet,
caro
, is it?”

“I'm afraid not.”

The Contessa drew the blanket more securely over her knees and shivered as she had on the island of the dead.

PART FOUR

WE'LL GO NO MORE A–ROVING

58

At ten-thirty the next morning, Tuesday, March 19, Urbino was on San Lazzaro degli Armeni off the Lido. To his silent exasperation, the old bearded monk seemed determined to tell him everything about the island, including the specific dimensions of its onion-shaped cupola and the names of most of the fifty relics in the reliquary given to the Armenian fathers by the Patriarch of Venice.

Under other circumstances Urbino would have been more fascinated, for when he had visited the monastery island in the past, he had been a member of the island's guided tour. This morning Father Nazar was conducting him around privately and giving him access to areas and collections usually unavailable to the public.

He owed this special treatment to the Contessa, who was a generous benefactor to the Armenian monks. She had made phone calls as soon as they had returned from San Michele after he had told her he needed to make a visit.

Father Nazar was taking his mission seriously. He had already run through an entire history of the island from its days as a leper colony to the establishment of the monastery by the abbot Mechitar in 1715. And then he had described the events of all the years since then, not only in loving detail, but also in a bravado of five languages with hardly a breath between. The Mechitarist fathers were famous for their multilingualism and not a little proud of it, as Urbino's enthusiastic guide could not quite conceal.

Urbino dutifully read the plaque to Byron in the courtyard, admired the Tiepolo ceiling, viewed the illuminated manuscripts, Coptic Korans, and Armenian Bibles, commented on the nobility of Mechitar's bust, and asked questions about scraps of medieval tapestries, carved wooden chairs, and Buddhist papyrus inscriptions. He poked into every nook and cranny of the Byron Room with its paintings and memorabilia, all under the proud eye of Father Nazar who kept up a running commentary on the poet's habits and program of study.

If all this wasn't enough, he also peered at an Egyptian mummy in its sarcophagus and feigned curiosity about a collection of scientific instruments. Then he spent a good half hour examining the printing and typesetting hall. There he paged through a book on Armenian national costume, plate after plate of women with embroidered and ornamented dresses, silver belts, and headdresses.

Having shown such remarkable patience, Urbino hoped that Father Nazar, when they were out in the cloister, forgave him when he didn't ask about the old cedar of Lebanon tree looking so noble against the gray sky, but instead broke out with, “I meant to ask you earlier, Father. Has the monastery ever heard about any unpublished poems by Byron?”

A look of interest sharpened the monk's face.

“Wouldn't that be a find?” he responded in colloquial English, holding his hands against the skirt of his black cassock, which was blowing in the wind. “But it's strange that you should ask,” he continued, now in excellent, though accented Italian. “Years ago there was talk of unpublished Byron poems. As many as half a dozen, maybe more.”

“When was this?”

“Twenty, twenty-five years ago.”

“What kind of rumor?”

Father Nazar gave Urbino a narrow, glinting glance.

“I call it a rumor even though a man swore to me up and down that he had poems written by our Lord Byron.”

“Did you examine them?” Urbino asked, suppressing a smile at Father Nazar's use of the title and the pronoun to refer to the poet.

“I never saw them, if there were any to see,” he responded in English, which he continued to use for the rest of their conversation. “Although one day when I came into the library, this man was sitting at a table with sheets of paper. They had handwriting on them and looked old. He put them away quickly. I wasn't close enough to see the language, but it wasn't Armenian. The writing wasn't like what you'd find in a letter or a story, but in a poem. Maybe
they
were the Byron poems he was always talking about. All the monks know about your books, Signor Macintyre. We have copies in our library. Is that your interest in these poems?”

“Call it curiosity. Tell me, Father, who was this man?”

“His name was Mechitar.”

“Mechitar?” Urbino repeated. “The same name as your founder?”

“The same. Mechitar Dilsizian. Dilsizian means the son of the tongueless one. Many years ago an ancestor must have had his tongue cut out by the Turks for speaking Armenian.”

Urbino couldn't help but think of Armando who was unable to speak, he assumed, for less gruesome reasons.

“Was he from Venice?” he asked.

“Vienna. There are many Armenians there.”

Urbino waited for Father Nazar to give him more details. The monk stroked his beard and looked thoughtful, gazing off toward the Roman statue on the far wall of the cloister.

“His son Zakariya was one of our students.”

San Lazzaro had about a dozen students in addition to the same number of seminarians.

“His father wanted him to study Armenian culture.”

“He could have done it in Vienna.”

“True, but his father had a love for Venice. And Lord Byron. And for Armenian poetry, too. He had a good memory. Always quoting lines of poetry.”

“What was his son like?”

“An intelligent boy and an excellent pianist. But he was worldly. He had a passion for cardplaying that he got from his father. Mechitar was a real gambler. He lost a lot of money. Zakariya was headed in the same direction, I could see. Well, it all came to a bad end, may God have mercy on their souls.”

Urbino's interest quickened even more.

“What happened?”

“About twenty years ago, maybe a little less, they drowned in a boating accident off the Lido—a young Italian woman did, too—during a pleasure trip arranged by one of your countrymen. Such a sad funeral at Santa Croce. Two coffins, father and son. It was the end of that branch of the Dilsizians.”

59

The wind whipped the gondola and Gildo's lithe figure on the poop as Gildo rowed it past the island of San Servolo, once the site of a psychiatric hospital. Soon the gondola was moving parallel to the broad embankment that eventually became the Riva degli Schiavoni. Everything around them was suffused with cold color, except for the rosy bricks of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Doge's Palace, which captured the gray light and somehow transformed it into something almost phosphorescent.

Sheltered in the cabin, Urbino went over what he had learned from Father Nazar. It had been more than he had expected. Now he had the task of trying to make sense of it.

On an impulse, as they were approaching the Church of La Pietà, its doors closed to preserve the warmth for the evening concert, Urbino asked Gildo to make a detour. He wanted to see the old street of the Armenians had.

Gildo steered the black craft out of the lagoon and away from the mouth of the Canalazzo into a small waterway. The temperature dropped several degrees as they passed through the shadows of buildings and under the vaults of bridges that threw back the plash of their movement and the strokes of the oar. Soon Gildo was bringing them to a gentle stop at a little square behind the Piazza San Marco.

Urbino got out.

He crossed over a bridge and entered the first
calle
on his right. Narrow, dark, and short, this was the Calle degli Armeni. It had once been busy with Armenians who had established the first foreign community in Venice and had built the small church under the
sottoportico
ahead.

In the covered passageway he stopped in front of the unassuming church wedged in among the other buildings. A simple cross marked the door. Mechitar and Zakariya had been buried from the church. Nowadays it was closed indefinitely.

He continued to the end of the
calle
and retraced his steps back to the larger street. No sooner did he do this, however, then he turned around and went back again, pausing as he had a few moments before in front of the church.

He encountered perhaps half a dozen people, some of them advanced in age. He was tempted to stop two or three of them who had a distinctly non-Venetian look and ask if they were Armenian and, if they were, whether they had ever heard of a man named Mechitar Dilsizian and his son, Zakariya.

But he kept his distance, having already drawn attention as he paced up and down the small street. He leaned against one of the buildings, wondering how often Mechitar and Zakariya might have passed this way and if they might not have even stayed in one of the houses. He imagined Mechitar sitting in a room above all the street activity, taking out the Byron poems, and reading them over and over again.

That is, if he had indeed
had
any Byron poems.

Father Nazar said that Mechitar had never shown any of the poems to him or the other monks. This could be because they didn't exist or because Mechitar might have been afraid that his precious poems were vulnerable. He had shuffled sheets of handwritten poetry out of sight in the library as soon as Father Nazar had come in.

But Mechitar no longer had the poems. He was dead, and so was his son. And Possle said that he was in possession of them. Possle had been on the boat off the Lido when Mechitar and his son had drowned, and along with them, Adriana Abdon, if Urbino were to make the obvious connection between what he had learned from Cipri and from the monk.

Urbino headed back to where Gildo was waiting with the gondola. He was preoccupied with thoughts of Mechitar and Zakariya, Samuel Possle and Adriana, Hilda and Armando, and of the connection that each of them had, in life or in death, with the poems that might be hidden away in the Ca' Pozza. Three of them were still alive; three were long dead.

Perhaps he would learn something about Armando and Adriana this evening from Demetrio Emo at Harry's Bar that might shed light on the question of the Byron poems and how they had come into Possle's hands.

60

When Urbino came through the swinging doors of Harry's Bar that evening at eight-fifteen, he almost expected to find Emo running up a tab but the locksmith was nowhere in the crowded, smoke-filled room. Urbino ordered a drink and started to read the copy of today's
International Herald Tribune
, which someone had left at the bar.

He kept glancing at the entrance and the large round clock over the bar. When half an hour had passed and Emo hadn't come, Urbino went upstairs to the dining room. Almost all the tables were taken. Urbino was glad he had made reservations. The maitre d' escorted Urbino to a table by the windows with a splendid nighttime view of the Basin of San Marco and the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

Urbino ordered another drink and a plate of antipasti as he waited for Emo to arrive. When another half hour had passed, Urbino assumed he was being stood up. Although he didn't have much of an appetite, he couldn't very well leave after having reserved a table at such a busy time. He ordered several items and did his best to enjoy them, all the while trying to figure out what Emo's absence might mean.

As he stared absently out at the evening scene beyond the window, his mind wandered without focus over his last visit to Possle and the prospect of his visit tomorrow. He knew that his meeting with Possle tomorrow would be crucial, and he tried to work out the strategy he would use. But he kept glancing at the door for Emo and becoming more and more distracted.

“Excuse me, signore,” the waiter said, after Urbino had managed to get through a plate of pasta and a chicken dish. Under any other circumstances it would have been delicious. “There's a young man downstairs who's asking for you. I asked him to come up, but he prefers to stay in the bar.”

Urbino went downstairs.

Gildo was standing by the entrance, his cap in his hands, his tousled head of curls bowed.

“What's the matter?” Urbino asked him.

The gondolier's handsome face was tense. “My Uncle Demetrio had an accident. He was attacked in San Polo. He was hit on the head and knocked to the ground.”

“How terrible. Is he in the hospital?”

“At home. He wasn't hurt badly, thank God.”

“Are you sure?”

“He'll be all right. He wants you to make another reservation.”

Urbino was disturbed by this turn of affairs, but he didn't want to show it any more than he already had. He asked Gildo if he would like some dinner.

“No thank you,” he said quickly.

“Very well. I'll be back in a few minutes.”

Urbino went upstairs and settled the bill. When he returned to the ground floor, Gildo was outside in the Calle Vallaresso. They boarded the
vaporetto
.