Deadly to the Sight (10 page)

“Someday, perhaps. But now I'm working on something that will interest you even more.”

Her eyes flickered in the direction of Habib, who still stood beside Polidoro.

Urbino had read two of her books out of curiosity when the Contessa had written him about his new tenant. One,
Der Zauberkünstler
, had been in the original German, and the other,
Open Sesame
, in English. Both were collections of stories, many of them only a few pages long and one of them barely of novella length.

His less than perfect German had been able to provide him with an adequate enough sense of the untranslated volume whose tales did seem the work of a conjurer, as the title stated. Also, if he could judge by these two works—Frieda had written five others—she retold folktales and legends from a satiric—at times, even sadistic—perspective.

The blurb on
Open Sesame
had said, “Hensel is a necromancer who transforms the familiar into the fearful, and creates a lot of fun in the process.”

Although Urbino found the familiar often fearful enough, he had enjoyed most of the tales, especially the more cynical ones.

“What I'm struck by in your stories,” he said to Frieda, “is how much they show your hatred of lies.”

She gave him a surprised look.

“Do you disapprove? Although I don't know you well, your own books tell me that you yourself don't hate lies.”

“My, my!” cried out Polidoro. “Urbino is very honest and sincere. Does he not unmask the liars and unveil the complete truth? In his books and in his inspections?”

“Please, Marino”—and Frieda held up her hand as if to fend off any further defenses of Urbino on the part of the gallery owner—“you misunderstand. That is not what I meant.”

Before she might explain exactly what it was that she did mean, the Contessa roused herself from her abstraction to try to set things straight.

“Urbino believes that some lies are benevolent. Without them, so much,
too
much,” she corrected herself, “would come crashing down.” She looked a bit sadly and even fearfully around the room as if to assess the damage that might be done in its small, crowded perimeters by some unthinking truth telling. “There can be a high brutality in good intentions. I wish the thought was original to me, but I read it somewhere a long time ago. That's the way Urbino feels about stripping away some of the lies we all need.” She gave him a weak smile. “But he can defend himself.”

There was a silence. The Contessa's little speech seemed to have impressed itself on the gathering all the more because of her relative muteness since her arrival.

When conversation started up again, it did so suddenly and with an almost desperate air, as if everyone was making an effort to seem at ease. Words, phrases, and sentences were tossed through the heavy air from different corners of the parlor, negotiating their way above and around all the objects much more easily than the furniture-locked speakers.

“What a pleasant evening,” Rebecca said.

“Your champagne, Urbino!” Frieda said. “Drink it all down in celebration of health and good company! My little party is not as grand as Barbara's ball will be, but we must do our best, yes!”

“I wonder if the fog has lifted,” was Beatrix's offering as she looked in the direction of one of the closed windows.

“Just a little more,” entreated Oriana to no one in particular as she held out her empty glass.

“Is there a draft?” Marie asked.

“A current of air carries to the grave,” Polidoro intoned.

“I hope no one minds my cigarette,” Regina Bella said from her cramped position between a little table and Silvia's elbow.

All the while, Dietrich sang, “Falling in love again what am I to do can't help it,” as Oriana, her eyes closed now, moved her head slowly back and forth to the words.

15

“Are you all right, Urbino?” Rebecca Mondador asked. “You look flushed.”

“I'm all right, I think.” Urbino had been feeling rather warm, and even a little dizzy, during the past ten minutes. “How can I tell? It's hot in here, don't you think? The Casa Verde wasn't made for so many people. Not in one room, anyway. And I can't say that I appreciate the cigarette smoke.”

He turned his head in Regina Bella's direction. She was puffing away at another cigarette near the door. Their eyes caught briefly, and she looked away.

Rebecca gave Urbino a concerned look but didn't press him on the point. Instead she asked about the repairs on the Palazzo Uccello. He brought her up to date. Rebecca had been the first professional he had consulted about the damages when he had returned. Their friendship went back to the time of the Palazzo Uccello's original renovations when she had been starting her career.

Rebecca launched into some professional observations about the Palazzo Uccello's zoomorphically carved Gothic cornerstones. Urbino was beginning to feel more hot and dizzy.

Someone tugged at his sleeve. It was Habib. He had somehow managed to maneuver himself from the other side of the room, but not from the company of the tiny Polidoro. The gallery owner was still only a few inches away from him, lodged against an elbow chair and wearing a pained expression.

“
Sidi
,” Habib said in a loud whisper, “may we leave?”

“You're not enjoying the party?” Rebecca asked in a warm voice. She had become fond of Habib. They often went on outings together. “Where are your laughing eyes? Where is your smile?”

Habib ducked his head.

“It is a very nice party.”

“And you've made a good connection, so you shouldn't be looking so sad. Do you realize what a talented young man you've been talking to, Marino?”

“You embarrass me,” Habib said.

“That is too bad!” Rebecca scolded. “You are going to have to learn to sing your own praises, Habib, or you'll be left behind. And you mustn't squirm when people praise you. He's just like a child, Marino. He sees and feels things very clearly, and very intensely. Just a glance at one of his paintings will prove it. He has a marvelous talent. I said he's like a child, and that's true, but he also has force and vision. It's the most marvelous combination. Urbino and I find it a little like the Burano school, but much, much—”

“The Burano school was the Burano school,” Polidoro interrupted. “It was almost a century ago;
last
century. And no amount of painting in the bright light and with the bright palette of Burano will turn yesterday into today, or today into yesterday, however I can say it!
Via col vento
, Rebecca! It is ‘gone with the wind,' young man,” he said putting a claw-like hand on Habib's sleeve.

Habib drew his arm away slightly. Urbino, knowing his superstitions all too well, assumed that he was disturbed by the man's unusual appearance.

“But I trust your opinion, dear Rebecca,” Polidoro was saying, a little more subdued now. “I'd like to see some of this young man's work. We will arrange that, will we not, my boy? I agree with Rebecca. You must toot your own horn.”

“What does it mean,
sidi
, to toot my own horn?” Habib asked anxiously in one of his stage whispers.

Mondador and Polidoro laughed as Urbino explained. His head had become increasingly stuffy during the past few minutes. He made an effort at a smile, but it froze the next moment when he caught the alarmed expression on the Contessa's face.

Inconsequential pieces of her conversation with Frieda, Beatrix, and Marie had been drifting over to him, and weaving themselves into what Rebecca, Polidoro, and Habib had been saying. Now, however, he registered that the words
lace
and
lace maker
had occurred with some regularity in the last few minutes.

Marie was waving a lace handkerchief in front of her face.

“I can't breathe with all this smoke,” she said.

But it wasn't her distress that was the focus of the women's attention but the lace handkerchief.

“Yes, it's a lovely handkerchief. You say that the old woman has one with the same design?” Frieda said. “The woman with thick glasses and very white hair? She wears gloves with the fingers cut off.”

Marie nodded.

“She showed it to me when I was looking for one at a shop by the boat landing. I bought this one just to get away. She's frightful looking.”

“You are a child,” Beatrix said, but in a consoling tone. She touched her friend's wrist. “Put it away,
liebling.
”

Marie stuffed the handkerchief in her pocket as Frieda was saying, “The old woman is harmless. It's not her fault that she looks the way she does. I tell you that she has a good imagination. That is what is important, yes!”

“What do you mean?” asked the Contessa.

Her voice sounded weak and somewhat tremulous.

“She tells strange tales,” Frieda said. “Perhaps not as strange as mine. Ha, ha! But she could have been a writer, if all that is needed is the imagination. Regina must agree. She knows her better than any of us.” She craned her head around the room, but Regina was now nowhere in sight. “Perhaps she's gone outside this time to smoke her cigarette,” she said with a smile for Marie. “I am sure she saw you waving your handkerchief against the smoke!”

The tall Beatrix had a pensive look on her face. She stared at Frieda for a few moments.

“You must tell me something,” she said. “Will you use her imagination?”

“Oh, you are speaking of the old lace maker! I have more than enough of my own, thank you!”

Her slightly protruding eyes regarded the Austrian woman without even a faint glint of humor.

“But other writers would steal,” she added, “or pay much money for a good story! Artists are always sketching faces in secret. It is a kind of theft. And for a writer, everything becomes—how do you say it, Contessa?—meal for the mill?”

The Contessa nodded, her eyes locked with Urbino's. Any desire to supply the correct idiom was driven out by the discomfort so clearly reflected in her face.

“But I do not steal,” Frieda went on. “I use what someone else tells me or something I read, and when I am finished with it, it is one hundred percent Frieda Hensel, yes!”

She then gave a colorful narrative of what she called the romance of lace that she seemed to be spinning out as she spoke. It was about a handsome fisherman from Burano who became shipwrecked, and was rescued and comforted by beautiful mermaids in a castle of coral. When the mermaids conveyed him back to Burano after many happy months, his pockets were full of the mermaids' seaweed. His wife, seeing the sad state of her husband, went to a wise old woman, who told fortunes and gave advice. The wife hurried home and started to copy the pattern of the seaweed with her needle and thread. And in this fashion lace making was born, and was forever associated with danger, seduction, melancholy, and love.

Urbino's mind had become less and less focussed as Frieda went on. He recognized some familiar elements in her tale from something he had read at one time or another, but, as she had just said, she had made them her own.

“Please,
sidi
, are you dreaming? You aren't listening to me!” came Habib's impatient voice. “I need good air! I do not feel well. We must go!”

Making his apologies to Frieda and arranging with the Contessa to meet her at the dock in half an hour, Urbino managed to extricate himself and Habib, both socially and physically, from the overcrowded parlor.

16

But once they were outside for a few minutes it was Urbino who didn't feel well.

It was a warmish night. Habib insisted on taking a walk. The fog drifting in from the lagoon soon swallowed the little green house behind them.

“This is better, yes,
sidi
?” Habib said after taking a deep breath.

He was wearing a dark brown burnoose, the capacious hood falling beneath his shoulders. It suited him, and in fact suited the damp, wind-swept
calli
of wintry Venice as it did the narrow street they were walking down now. Urbino, seized with a sudden chill, envied it. He drew the lapels of his tweed sport jacket against his chest and readjusted his scarf.

They were walking away from where Giorgio would be waiting with the
motoscafo
, but Urbino knew Burano well enough to take the proper turns that would eventually get them to their destination. As they moved closer to the open lagoon, the fog became thicker. At one point they had to grope their way for several feet.

Habib appeared to have regained whatever strength he had momentarily lost in the parlor. He began a spirited monologue about the deserted streets, the fog, the boots outside the entrances, the tolling of the church bell and the distant
put-put-put
of a boat's engine. He seemed seized with a nervous excitement and his English came fluently as it usually did when he was alone with Urbino.

Urbino made only an occasional comment as they walked slowly past the shuttered houses, with the illumination leaking through the slats. The more Habib spoke, the less Urbino felt like saying anything himself, or needed to. And the more energized his burnoosed friend became, the weaker he felt.

They had been walking for about ten minutes when Urbino was seized with a violent fit of shivering. He stopped. Habib, caught up in a description now of the painting he was working on, walked a few paces ahead before he realized that Urbino had fallen behind.

“What is it,
sidi
?” he asked, retracing his steps.

Urbino was standing, or rather leaning, against the corner of a building beneath the feeble glare of a lamp.

“Oh, my good God, you do not look good.”

“I don't feel very good, either.”

“Is your stomach running away? You should not have eaten the sausages,
sidi
. It was pork!”

Urbino didn't feel like arguing that the sausages hadn't been made of pork. In any case, he doubted it had been anything he had eaten at Frieda's. He had been feeling a bit fatigued for the past week or two, and especially today. From his first months in Morocco he had occasionally been laid low by what he and his doctors referred to as a stomach virus. He feared that he was in for another bout.