The Last Gondola (8 page)

Urbino restrained himself from contacting the Contessa, who was preparing for her opening
conversazione
. He had no doubt that she was doing what she could for his benefit, and he wondered what had come of the plans she had hinted at. Her own silence, unusual in itself and dispiriting, indicated that she had nothing encouraging to tell him yet.

Whenever he went for a walk, he kept himself clear of the Ca' Pozza, and Gildo didn't, by design or accident, guide the gondola in that direction either. His avoidance of the Ca' Pozza was perhaps harder than anything else Urbino had to endure during this period, for the old building seemed to be beckoning him from afar with what seemed a promise, at other times a threat.

To make matters worse, the dream of Possle and the fire haunted him with even greater intensity.

Urbino, who had tried whatever he could over the past month short of breaking into the Ca' Pozza, waited, and while he waited, he put his trust in the Contessa—in her and in something he sometimes called fate.

Then, at eight-fifteen in the morning on Thursday, March 7, the day before the Contessa's first
conversazione
, the doorbell of the Palazzo Uccello awoke Urbino from a fitful, troubled sleep and everything started to change.

16

“It's a gentleman to see you, Signor Urbino,” Natalia said through the closed door of his bedroom.

“Have him wait in the parlor.”

Urbino pulled on his dressing gown and dashed water on his face. When he went down to the parlor it was empty. Natalia bustled in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.

“I asked him to come in, but he just stood where he was,” she whispered. She looked toward the hallway with a puzzled frown on her round face. “He's a very strange-looking man. And he didn't speak one word. Not one. All he did was point at an envelope with your name on it. But he wouldn't give it to me.”

She shook her gray head. She had seen a lot of strange things since she had been working for him, she seemed to be saying, but this was the strangest.

When he went into the hallway, he understood her reaction.

“I'll take care of it. Thank you.”

Standing in front of the entrance was a long, lean man with a hard-featured and forbidding face. Black hair streaked with gray was combed back from his forehead. Urbino estimated his age to be in the early sixties. His eyes were large, black, and shining. Something in their look filled Urbino with a vague dread and discomfort. He was dressed from top to toe in black. It accentuated the extreme pallor of his skin and the small white envelope he held out to Urbino. His hand was gnarled with scar tissue as if from a severe burn many years ago. Urbino glanced at his other hand. It, too, was scarred. A stale, unwashed odor struck his nostrils as he moved closer to the man.

Urbino took the envelope with distaste. It did not go unnoticed.

His full name, Raphael Urbino Macintyre, was scrawled in dark purple ink on the envelope. He was surprised. Very few people knew that he went by his middle name or that he even had any other.

“Would you please come into the parlor?”

The man remained silent. A faint smile crept across his thin lips. It did nothing to dispel his gloomy and menacing air. Before Urbino could say or do anything else, the stranger, piercing him with one last look, opened the door, without having said a word, and left, closing it behind him.

Urbino wasted no time in opening the envelope. Inside was a sheet of white paper of good quality, but yellowed with age. His eyes raced to the signature.

“Samuel Possle”

The entire message consisted of the day's date and one sentence:

“Be at the Ca' Pozza at four-thirty this afternoon.”

17

It was a summons, not an invitation. But this made little difference to Urbino at the moment. He was about to achieve his goal. And he had the Contessa to thank for it.

He was reaching for the telephone to dial her number when the doorbell rang. It was such an unusual circumstance to have one visitor, let alone two, at this early hour, that when he went down to open the door, he expected to find himself confronted by the same grave man in black.

Instead, the morning fog swirled around the painter Lino Cipri with his painter's kit and a black leather portfolio. He gave Urbino an apologetic look. It shaded into keen embarrassment when he took in Urbino's dressing gown.

“Excuse me, Signor Macintyre. I hope I didn't awake you,” Cipri said in Italian. He was a good-looking man with a smooth face despite his close to seventy years. “I'm always forgetting how early it is.” He looked down at his watch in a nervous gesture. “And I should have made an appointment.”

“Not at all. Come in.”

“Are you sure you don't mind? I have something to give you.”

“Of course not.”

Urbino glanced outside. Fog curled over the surface of the canal and drifted across the quay and the bridge. Possle's dark messenger was nowhere in sight, but Gildo suddenly emerged from the side of the building near the water steps. He seemed surprised to see Urbino in the open doorway and gave him a silent nod before bending over to tie his shoe.

“I'm usually up before the seven o'clock bells,” Urbino said, as he closed the door. “Would you like some coffee?”

“No thank you.”

Cipri was sweating as if he had been walking quickly. Or perhaps he was ill. His eyes had a somewhat feverish sheen. Urbino took his coat.

Cipri's heavy woolen cardigan, unraveling at one sleeve, and his flowing tie made the appropriate artistic impression, aided by an impressive head of thick, white hair.

Urbino led him into the cramped parlor. Cipri put down his kit but held on to his portfolio. He looked at the Bronzino portrait of a pearled-and-brocaded Florentine lady over the fireplace.

“Lovely,” he said. He went closer to the painting. “It's been repaired, I know, but you would never be able to tell.”

When Urbino had been in Morocco, he had engaged an American couple to look after the Palazzo Uccello. They had managed to do a great deal of damage to the interior and to some of his most prized possessions. For some unknown reason they had removed the Bronzino from the wall and leaned it next to an open window, where it had become saturated during a storm.

“Unfortunately, I can tell you exactly where the damage is,” Urbino said. “I can see it even now.”

“It's not always good to be such a connoisseur if it interferes with your enjoyment of a painting as beautiful as this one. I assure you there's no trace of the damage, and that's a professional opinion.”

Cipri balanced his portfolio on an ottoman in front of the sofa. He opened it. “I've finished the two Longhis for Signor Hennepin. I thought it would be best to bring them here. My apartment gets smaller every week between my paintings and my wife's books and magazines.”

Urbino and the Contessa had never met Cipri's wife. They had heard that she was ailing and kept to their apartment on the Lido.

Cipri withdrew two small, unframed paintings from the case. They were both copies of works from the Longhi Room at the Ca' Rezzonico on the Grand Canal. One depicted masked ladies and gentlemen peering at a black rhinoceros, and the other was a fortune-teller reading the palm of a masked woman.

“Excellent,” Urbino said. “Eugene will be pleased. You remember how much he liked the originals.”

Cipri smiled. He was probably as pleased at the prospect of soon receiving some more money from Eugene as he was by the praise. He was said to be often in need of money, possibly because of his wife's illness. He occasionally set up his easel in front of the Giardini Pubblici near the Piazza San Marco or on the Riva degli Schiavoni to do quick portraits of tourists or what were actually something closer to caricatures.

“The Molière of painters,” Cipri said, referring not to himself but to Pietro Longhi. “That's what my wife says he's called.”

“And you do him excellent justice. I'll see that they're sent off in the most secure way possible,” Urbino assured him. He placed the two paintings side by side against the back cushions of the sofa. He made some more enthusiastic comments, not wanting Cipri to feel that he was eager to have him leave.

“I have the documents all ready,” Cipri said.

He withdrew a large manila envelope from his case.

“You'll find the commission order, an invoice, and a verification that the paintings are copies. Everything is all filled out and stamped and certified.”

Urbino took the envelope.

The two men stood looking at each other in an awkward silence.

“Are you sure you wouldn't like some coffee?” Urbino hoped that he sounded more hospitable than he felt. “Perhaps some breakfast?” his guilty conscience made him add. “I haven't had mine yet, and Natalia could have it ready in just a few minutes. It would give you time to take a closer look at the Bronzino and to see if your first opinion holds up.”

“Oh, I'm sure it does! But thank you kindly. I must be on my way. As you Americans like to say, time is money, and I want to get to the Accademia to do some work for Signor Hennepin. If you're ever on the Lido, please feel free to stop by for a visit. I'm almost always home in the afternoon. My wife will be pleased to meet you. She's heard a lot about you.”

He put on his coat and collected his kit and portfolio. Urbino accompanied him downstairs. Before he closed the front door, he watched the man until he vanished into the fog on the other side of the bridge. Gildo was no longer on the embankment.

18

Urbino drank down the tiny cup of espresso that Natalia pressed on him as if it were medicine and took a few bites of Madeira cake. He promised her that he would have a proper breakfast shortly. He had to make a telephone call first.

He dialed the Contessa's number from the library as he looked from the window down at the empty, fog-wreathed quay. He usually didn't call her before nine-thirty, but this was a special occasion.

The Contessa picked up after only two rings.

“Whatever's the matter,
caro?”
She sounded worried.

“As if you don't know, you wonder worker. If I hadn't found out today—in fact, it was only a few minutes ago—I was going to break down and beg you to tell me what you've been up to. I can't wait to give you a great big kiss and hug. It worked.”

“What worked?”

“Whatever it was you did, whatever strings you pulled, whatever promises you made, whatever spell you cast. I love you and I love your Madeira cake! I'm in. I'm in the Ca' Pozza, or I will be at precisely four-thirty this afternoon!”

There was silence at the other end of the line.

“But I didn't do a thing, Urbino!” the Contessa cried out, after a few moments. “Not one single solitary thing. I had to leave for Bologna on Saturday evening right after I saw you. Poor Clementina is desperately ill.” Clementina was the Conte's elderly cousin. “I was afraid I would have to postpone my first
conversazione
. I was at her house until last night. She's out of danger now, thank God. I was going to call you later and apologize.” The Contessa drew in her breath, then added, “So you see, you've done it all on your own, you clever boy.”

“But how did I do that?”

PART TWO

THE GONDOLA ROOM

19

At a few minutes before four-thirty that afternoon Urbino approached the Ca' Pozza on foot, as puzzled now as he had been this morning. No matter how he thought about the situation and whom he had contacted, the reason for his good luck eluded him. The fruit had fallen into his lap, it appeared, without anyone having had to shake the tree.

He had decided against arriving in the gondola. It would have compounded his uncomfortable passivity. Now, after his long, meandering walk from the Palazzo Uccello through a thickening fog, he could at least say that his own steps had carried him from his door to the one that now stood temptingly in front of him, ready to open for him at last.

As he paused on the narrow bridge, a warning thought insinuated itself.
More tears are shed because of answered prayers than unanswered ones
.

As a child, he had heard these words over and over again from his mother on various occasions. For years he had thought they were hers. By the time he had learned that their true source was Saint Theresa, he had also learned their truth. He feared learning this bitter lesson all over again in the Ca' Pozza.

He cast his eyes up at the silent building. The lower floors were wreathed in fog. The attic story seemed to float above them with a life of its own, its gray-and-pink stones glowing with a strange intensity as if they had absorbed all the available dying light.

The moment had come. If Urbino had been a smoker, it would have been the time to toss his cigarette into the canal and make his way to the building. What he did, instead, was to toss away or rather press down into the dark waters of his consciousness all his misgivings. Now was the time for positive thinking. He walked down the steps of the bridge and pushed the rusty bell.

20

The door was opened almost as soon as he took his finger off the button.

The uncanny messenger of that morning stared at him with his piercing eyes. A stone staircase rose behind him. To one side a partly open door revealed the worn arm of a sofa.

“I've come to see Signor Possle,” Urbino said in Italian.

All he got in return was stony silence.

“At his request,” he added, although the man must already know this. The Ca' Pozza was all too obviously a house where no one was admitted unless invited and where a stranger at the door was spied out from some concealed perch.

The man moved to one side. Urbino stepped across the threshold. A faint smile crossed the man's stern face. He pushed the heavy door closed behind them.

Urbino breathed a sigh of relief. He was in. This would not be the only time, he swore to himself.