The Last Gondola (32 page)

Urbino made no response. In any case, the Contessa was far from finished.

“So find some way to put back the key you stole—yes, stole!” she went on, doing all she could to keep her voice down. “Find some way to put it back where it belongs and throw the copy into the Canalazzo. I'll do it for you. What do they call it? Incriminating evidence?”

It was now that he told her how he had put the key to use late last night and how he had discovered the clipping of her in her Fortuny dress.

The Contessa merely stared for a few moments, and then said, “But I don't understand. What does it mean?”

“It's what I've been trying to sort out.”

“Perhaps Elvira gave Armando that clipping and other ones,” the Contessa ventured. “Unless…”

She trailed off.

“Unless what?”

“Unless Armando was giving them to
her
. But why,
caro?
Why in either case?”

“I don't know. And we shouldn't be too quick to assume that those are the only two possibilities. Have you checked to see if you're missing one of your snakeskin belts?”

“They all seem to be there. But I didn't do as thorough a search as I could have. Now that I'm finished with my
conversazioni
, I'll go through everything again very carefully, if only to know what we'll have to get back from Elvira. You still do think she has everything, don't you?”

“Be sure that you have all your snakeskin belts. And what about your Fortuny dress?”

“Of course I have my Fortuny! I just saw it in the closet this morning. But you're not answering my question.”

“Because I can't answer it without having some doubt in my own mind, one way or another. Maybe with a few more pieces of information and after reconsidering what we already know, things will be different.”

“I hope so. But really,
caro!
Whatever have you been thinking of with these late-night forays? Be careful! Someone was following you last night, you say. Well, maybe it was Gildo looking out for you,” she said, lowering her voice even more. “Maybe it was a mugger and maybe not! Maybe it was Armando, who wants to discourage your snooping! Maybe Possle himself. For all we know, Possle might be as spry as you are, and Armando could sing the role of Figaro without taking a breath!”

Despite her exaggeration, much of what the Contessa was saying was true. And yet if she came to the Ca' Pozza with him, she might be able to do something with Possle that he couldn't. He feared that he was coming close to losing much of his treasured objectivity when it came to Possle. The Contessa might be able to prevail upon Possle to be more honest about the poems, to tell the whole story about them. It was a wild shot.

“In case you have any doubts remaining,” the Contessa said, showing that she still hadn't finished, “I have no intention of compromising either of us for those poems. And I'll be pleased to tell your Samuel Possle the way I feel in person!”

Urbino turned toward her.

“So you'll come? Not to make him an offer—”

“But not to say that I won't either, is that what you're thinking?” she broke in, throwing him a defiant look before glancing out. “For a clever person you're transparent. But our discussion might be moot,
caro
. Considering Possle's seizure, or whatever it was, he might not be in a position to hear anything from you or me on April Fool's Day or any other day. Yes, Possle could—”

The Contessa stopped speaking. Her eyes were looking at an upward angle. He followed the direction of her gaze. Up above them was the Ca' Pozza. The old building loomed against the dusky sky as they drifted past its unused water entrance. No light showed behind any of the windows. Most of them were shuttered, except for a small square one on the attic story.

Urbino had not said anything to Gildo about avoiding the Ca' Pozza. Given the gondolier's warnings to Urbino, however, he wondered why the young man had taken a route that passed by it. But hadn't Gildo also expressed, albeit indirectly, a wish that Urbino might get to the bottom of whatever role, if any, the Ca' Pozza had played in Marco's death? The young man might very well be as conflicted as Urbino was himself.

“No sooner does one speak of the devil, or rather the devil's house,” the Contessa amended, “than it appears. Gildo!” she called out. “Draw up by the embankment, please.”

“What are you doing?” Urbino asked her in a hoarse whisper.

“I'm getting out and I'm going to ring the bell. What your Samuel Possle needs is a little bit of spontaneity!”

Gildo had hardly brought the gondola to the water steps beside the bridge than the Contessa, with Urbino's help and under Gildo's silent, nervous stare, was stepping onto the embankment.

She went up to the large grim door of the building and pushed the bell. She waited, then pushed it again. When there was still no response, she stepped away from the building and looked at its upper stories.

Urbino did, too. The building looked back.

“Did you see that?” she called down to Urbino.

“See what?”

“I can swear there was someone at the attic window. It was just a flash.”

She came back to the gondola. She was shivering. When she had seated herself again in the
felze
, Urbino arranged a blanket around her shoulders, another around her knees. Her face was pale.

“Are you all right, Barbara?”

“Did you see anything?” she asked in a weak voice.

“No. Did you?”

“No,” she said after a few moments.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, but I'd like to go home. I feel tired—tired and old.”

As Gildo pushed and then rowed the gondola away from the Ca' Pozza, the Contessa continued to look back at the building until it passed from view.

71

When they reached the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini, Vitale informed the Contessa that the Conte's cousin Clementina had suffered a relapse and that her daughter would appreciate it if the Contessa could come as soon as possible. She made arrangements for Pasquale to have the Bentley ready to take her to Bologna early the next morning.

“I'm going upstairs,” she told Urbino. “I'll just have Silvia bring me something to eat. But stay as long as you want. They can fix you dinner. I want to get a good night's rest before I leave tomorrow.”

She avoided his eyes and hurried upstairs.

Urbino went to the library where he poured himself a drink. He sat in an armchair that gave a view of one of Habib's paintings of Morocco. The Contessa had honored it by hanging it in the corner devoted to her collection of travel books, some of them dating back to the seventeenth century. The painting showed an alley in the Fez Medina, re-created last winter from Habib's nostalgic imagination. Its swirl of primary colors, movement, and emotion made no distinction between the human figures and the cafés, shops, and houses that seemed alive themselves. Urbino sat staring at it, considering the way it erased any line between the public and the private and how different this was from Possle and the Ca' Pozza or, for that matter, from Urbino himself and his own Palazzo Uccello.

He then went over what had just happened in front of the Ca' Pozza. The Contessa had been shaken. He wished he had told her that he had seen something, but he had only seen the empty windows staring back at him. If he had lied to her, she would feel better now. He drank the rest of his drink and left the library.

He climbed the broad staircase to the next floor and knocked on the door of the Contessa's boudoir. “Barbara,” he called out quietly. “Are you there?”

“Yes, what is it?”

Her voice sounded very far away.

“Would you like some tea?”

“No thank you. I'll need to rest if I'm going to be any use at Clementina's. The performance took everything out of me.”

“I think you saw something in one of the windows. What was it?”

The silence was so long that he thought that she wasn't going to respond. When she did, it was in a firmer voice. “I wish I had seen something,
caro
, that's the problem. I didn't see a single solitary thing. And you didn't either. I don't want to talk about it anymore. Not tonight. Never. Excuse me,
caro
. I want to get as much rest as I can before I go to Bologna tomorrow. Good night.”

72

At two o'clock the next afternoon, a Friday, Urbino rang the Cipris' doorbell on the Lido.

The artist appeared, his thick white hair in disarray, but otherwise looking as dapper as usual in a bright blue cravat and tweed sport jacket. He couldn't conceal his surprise at seeing Urbino.

“It's you, Signor Urbino. It was a pleasure to see you yesterday at the Contessa's concert. Brilliant, it was! Most brilliant!”

“Yes, it was,” Urbino agreed.

He looked over the painter's shoulder into the parlor. Hilda's chair was empty.

“I'm sorry to disturb you. I had some business today on the Lido. I thought I'd stop by and ask your wife to autograph her book. The poems are very good, and I'm sure that if my German were better, I'd be even more impressed. She carried me back to the time of Byron in Venice.”

He took Hilda's collection of Byron-inspired poems from his pocket.

“I had it with me at the concert yesterday, but she wasn't there. I do hope she is all right.”

“She was feeling poorly.”

“I'm sorry. Perhaps I'll come back some other time. Give her my good wishes.”

Urbino started to put the book back into his pocket. He sensed that Cipri was aware that Hilda's autograph was only a pretext for his visit.

“No, it's all right,” the painter said. “I'll take it to her. She's resting but I'm sure she wouldn't mind being disturbed for a second. Would—would you like to come in?”

“That's kind of you, but I don't want to intrude. If you're sure it wouldn't trouble your wife, I'll be gratified to have her autograph, and then I'll leave and not take up anymore of your time.”

“As you wish. She'll regret not being able to see you today. Perhaps some other time when she's feeling up to it. Please make yourself comfortable.”

Cipri indicated a chair beside the door and left.

As soon as Cipri was out of sight, Urbino went over to the table where he had noticed the sketches of Hilda. They were still there, as well as the pens and pencils and the Italian-German dictionary. The keys, however, were nowhere in sight. Urbino wondered how significant it might be that the table held everything that it had held not much more than a week ago, everything except the keys.

He seated himself in the chair by the door.

Cipri returned a few minutes later with Hilda's book. The painter opened it.
Hilda Krippe
was written in bright blue ink on the title page.

“She was most pleased,” Cipri said.

Urbino thanked him and put the book in his pocket. What he probably had was an excellent forgery of Hilda's signature.

“By the way,” Urbino said, as he was about to leave, “since my last visit I've become interested in someone you mentioned. It's the foreign gentleman who used to stay at the Ca' Pozza. He was Armenian. There's an interesting relationship between Venice and Armenia. I thought I might write a short book about it.”

“I see. I suppose that would be interesting.”

Cipri's smooth, pink face became impassive.

“Did you know that he drowned with his son in the same accident that Adriana drowned in?”

“He did? I didn't know. I never had much to do with him except for the few times I saw him at the Ca' Pozza.”

Urbino would have expected Cipri to show more shock and surprise at learning about Dilsizian's death in the same accident that had killed Adriana.

“That's too bad. But when you did see him there, did you notice what kind of relationship he had with Armando? Were they friendly?”

“As I said last time, Armando is devoted only to Possle.”

“And the memory of his sister.”

“If you say so. I wouldn't know. I never see him.”

73

After leaving the Cipris' apartment, Urbino hired a water taxi to take him the short distance to San Lazzaro degli Armeni. He hadn't set up an appointment with Father Nazar or any of the other friars, and there was no scheduled tour today.

As he climbed on to the pier of the monastery island, where the driver would wait for his return, the stillness around him was comforting. He went down the empty path and across the silent courtyard in front of the low, brick buildings. Not even the cry of one of the island's peacocks broke the quiet.

The friar who answered the door was very accommodating. He recognized Urbino's name and spent a few moments praising his book on the Minolfis, a family of restorers. Urbino explained that he needed one of the books printed by the monks for his research and hoped he might buy it at the bookstore even if it might be closed. The friar conducted him past the printing and typesetting hall, inactive at this hour, to the bookstore. Father Nazar was nowhere in sight.

The friar tried to interest Urbino in some large, colored photographs of the Ca' Zenobio degli Armeni that he said he had taken himself many years ago. The building had formerly been the seat of the Armenian College and was now used for commercial and private functions. To please the man, Urbino selected three of the photographs, and then searched for the book on Armenian national costumes that he had glanced through on his last visit.

“I'll take this, too,” he said, when he found it.

“An excellent choice.”

Ten minutes later as the motorboat was taking him across the lagoon to the quay in front of the Piazza San Marco, Urbino paged through the book until he found the color plate he was interested in. It was a photograph of a pretty woman in an embroidered and ornamented dress, silver belt, and headdress and veil.