Deadly to the Sight (15 page)

“There is plenty to paint everywhere else,
sidi.
”

“Does that mean you weren't there?”

“You make it sound like I would go there for a bad reason. I would never do that. You will not be disappointed in me. I swear to you.”

There was an appeal and sincerity in his words.

But he hadn't said whether he had been there or not.

Urbino weighed his own desire to know with the need to trust him, his concern for Habib with his determination not to interfere where it wasn't appropriate. What had the Contessa said while he was recuperating? That he would strike the proper balance between encouraging Habib's independence and looking after him? At least she had faith that he would be eventually able to accomplish what didn't seem at all easy at the moment.

Habib looked weary.

“I'm only trying to look out for you. You know what that means, don't you?”

Habib nodded.

“Protect me.”

“Right. Well, it's late.” Urbino paused at the door. “I'll give you an easy one this time. The daughter of your brother's wife.”

“My niece,” Habib said with a smile. “But if his wife was married before, she is my stair-niece. No, my step-niece! Did you think of that?”

Urbino admitted he hadn't.

8

“To think this is the first place you want to see as soon as you're well enough to get out,” the Contessa said as she stepped along the leaf-strewn path on Urbino's arm.

“It restores my sense of proportion,” he responded.

It was three days after the Contessa had visited him at the Palazzo Uccello. They were in the Protestant graveyard on the cemetery island of San Michele. Old markers, eaten away by time and weather, were scattered in the unkempt grass beneath the twisted trees. Some of their surfaces were as smooth as the wall that separated the area from the lagoon.

They approached an oval of grass and ivy with a squat urn of fresh-cut flowers. It was the grave of Ezra Pound.

“How sad that Olga Rudge has gone too,” the Contessa observed. “She could have been of help with your new book.”

“If I could have believed what she told me. Tea with Olga, from what I understand, involved listening to all of the reasons why Pound hadn't been anti-Semitic, beginning with the fact that his first name was the good old Hebrew one of
Ezra.
”

“But isn't that your job,
carol
? To sort out the lies from the truth?”

This wasn't the first time this morning that she had reminded him indirectly of his promise to try to get to the bottom of the Nina Crivelli affair as soon as he had recuperated. She also kept hinting about one or two things she wanted to tell him, but he had so far succeeded in putting her off.

They continued in silence as they went out the door and passed beneath rows of burial niches. Another door, this one in a brick wall, brought them into the Orthodox section. It was simpler and more ordered than the Protestant graveyard, and not as overgrown with vegetation.

The Contessa proceeded down the path to Diaghilev's grave by the far wall. Beyond the wall was a marshy waste, and beyond that stretched the lagoon.

A ballet slipper lay on top of the tombstone, like an offering on an altar. It was moldy and misshapen, and resembled a miniature coffin filled with decayed leaves and withered flower petals.

“There's always a new one,” the Contessa said. “Just once I'd like to see who leaves them.”

“No, you wouldn't. It would destroy the romantic mystery.”

She contemplated the slipper in silence, then turned to him.

“I do like romantic mysteries. But what we have is one that's not at all romantic, not like a slipper on a grave, and I
do
want to know. I
need
to know. You haven't even mentioned her name this morning. I've felt like screaming.
Nina Crivelli
!”

Her voice drew the attention of a lone woman in a large fur hat, who was a few feet away at the grave of Stravinsky and his wife.

“I've been trying to find out a few more things,” she went on in a lower voice. “I went to Il Piccolo Nettuno for lunch the day after I spoke with Gabriela and Lidia. Salvatore was working. He didn't say a word that he didn't need to. I had really gone to see Regina Bella, but the cook said she went to Milan for a few days. Salvatore runs the place in her absence, so I assume she must trust him.”

She linked her arm through Urbino's as they followed a path beside a wall. They were surrounded by tombs with Russian and Greek names, of princesses and various assorted aristocrats.

“I asked some questions of the women at the lace stalls. Oh, I was very careful, or I think I was. I could only get scattered information, since I didn't want to be obvious, but two women said exactly what Gabriela and Lidia said.” She gave him a quick look to see if she had all his attention. “Nina wanted Salvatore all to herself. Her kind of love made his life a misery. She drove away her daughter-in-law and grandson twenty years ago, to Germany, they insisted. The two of them never came back to Burano.”

“Or were never seen
if
they did.”

She looked at him with a smile and patted his arm.

“Good boy! You haven't deserted me. You're thinking!”

He had been, indeed, but he wasn't ready to give her the benefit of what were, so far, unformed thoughts and vague suspicions. Yet he was sure of one thing. The mystery surrounding Nina Crivelli, which, before her death, he had feared would turn out to be banal, was surely anything but that.

When they left the Orthodox section, they took one of the paths that would eventually get them to the Da Capo-Zendrini mausoleum. January was a time when the Conte Alvise was on the Contessa's mind even more than usual, for it was the month they had married.

On their way to the mausoleum, the Contessa greeted some of the women and men looking after the graves of their loved ones. She stopped to have a conversation with a black-garbed old woman accompanied by a young girl of six or seven.

Urbino only half-listened. He was thinking about Frieda and Beatrix. He hadn't yet told the Contessa about their visit. There were one or two things about it that he needed to mull over in his own mind.

They resumed their slow pace in silence. The Contessa frowned when she caught sight of a field of graves in the grim process of being exhumed now that the dead's twelve-year tenancy was over. Many families only rented burial space for this relatively brief period of time.

Soon the impressive Da Capo-Zendrini mausoleum with its statues of weeping angels, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Nicholas of Bari rose before them. The statues and the building itself had recently been cleaned and had a strange glow in the winter light. Urbino preferred them the way they used to be, but said nothing.

The Contessa seemed more abstracted than before. She must have been thinking of the recent November when she had come face to face with death and taken refuge in the mausoleum.

But when she broke the silence, it was to show that something else was on her mind.

“Seeing the signora's little granddaughter a few minutes ago reminds me of something I forgot to tell you. There was a girl about her age at one of the lace shops the other day. She heard her mother and me talking about Nina Crivelli. Nina had the
mal' occhio
, the little girl piped up. Remember what Lidia said. Children always kept their distance from her. She might have been a mother, but not the kind that had children running to her bosom! Quite the opposite!”

The Contessa took a large key from her purse and approached the iron doors. She paused at the steps and turned to him.

“That's also what Habib said. She had the evil eye,” she reminded him.

9

That afternoon Urbino and Habib went into the Basilica San Marco. Habib had arranged to meet two friends to examine the bronze horses.

The Basilica had quickly become one of Habib's favorite buildings, as soon as Urbino had assured him that there weren't any bodies of saints displayed for public view. Urbino thought it had something to do with the vaguely mosque-like quality of the building, despite all of its gems, gold leaf, and brightly colored mosaics representing the human figure. In fact, Habib loved the mosaics, and he had a special preference for the animals and fish. He enjoyed walking up in the stone balconies for a closer look.

“I'll wait until your friends arrive,” Urbino said on this occasion. They were in the portico of the church. “Then I'll go to Florian's. When you're finished, you can all come over, and we can have something to eat. How's that?”

“Okay,” Habib said.

“Maybe they're inside,” Urbino said after a few minutes.

They went into the large domed and niched space of the church and started to walk slowly around. There were only a few other people.

“I don't see them anywhere,” Habib said. After a few minutes, however, he stopped searching for his friends and began to examine the mosaics.

Urbino seated himself in one of the chairs. He would let Habib make a circuit on his own. Urbino sometimes found it difficult not to give in to the temptation of an informative, but intrusive commentary.

The Basilica invariably put Urbino in a meditative frame of mind, and this afternoon was no exception. He stared up at the dome above him, and started to think about Nina Crivelli.

He hadn't proceeded far when his thoughts were broken into by raised voices coming from the direction of the Pala D'Oro. One of the voices was Habib's. Urbino rushed over. A well dressed, elderly man with a walking stick was berating Habib.

“A disgrace!” he said. “Begging in a Catholic church. The Basilica no less! Go to your own kind of church! And go back to your own country! The Cardinal is right!”

He was referring to the conservative archbishop of Bologna, who had singled out Muslim immigrants as a distinct threat to Italy. He began to spout some of the Cardinal's racist ideas in an outraged tone.

Fortunately, all of this was in Italian, and Habib couldn't understand most of it. But the man's venom didn't need to be translated. It was all too evident.

“What's going on?” Urbino said to Habib.

“This man is barking at me,
sidi
. I don't know why. I was praying, minding my own affairs. Can't a Muslim pray in your church?”

Urbino immediately understood. Habib had been offering his prayers with his palms upturned, in the Muslim manner.

The man now addressed Urbino.

“You know this person?”

“He's my friend.”

The man gave a look that swept Urbino from head to toe, then back again.

“Indeed! Then take your friend out of here. It is disgraceful.”

“It is you, sir, who are disgraceful. We leave you to your own prayers.”

He put his arm around Habib's shoulder, and they walked away.

“Let's look for your friends.”

“They are too late,” Habib said in a low voice. “Let's go home.”

10

As midnight neared, Urbino stood in sole possession of the Accademia Bridge.

He had left a morose Habib at the Palazzo Uccello. The episode in the Basilica that afternoon had depressed Habib, and then something Urbino had said that evening had somehow precipitated an even darker mood.

They had been reminiscing about a trip to Tangier, when Urbino had tried to get Habib to go swimming, and had started to pull him into the sea. Habib, who had once said that he knew how to swim, had fought back furiously. He hadn't spoken to Urbino for the rest of the day. Urbino had attributed it to Habib's remarkably strong will, which seldom asserted itself, but when it did, it did so with a surprising power.

When Urbino mentioned the episode tonight, Habib had started to tremble, with what might have been either fear or anger. Urbino had dropped the topic.

Urbino breathed in the cold air. It was a clear night. Stars, scattered above him all the way down the Grand Canal, seemed to find companions in the lights sparkling from the windows in the palazzi.

The resumption of his night walks was the best proof he could give himself that he was well. Although he had walked briskly, he was not out of breath, nor did he feel weak. When Habib had protested that he shouldn't go out tonight, he had assured him that he was up to it.

He looked out at the quiet scene. Hardly a building was without an association for him, whether it was historical, personal, or professional—or amateur, he reminded himself, since one or two of them had been related to his sleuthing.

He had gone to several receptions with the Contessa at the Palazzo Barbaro on the left. Browning, Sargent, and James had all been either guests or residents at the Gothic building. James had not only written a Venetian tale of greed and loneliness within its sumptuously decorated walls, but had also used it as a setting for a haunting chronicle of betrayal and undying love.

Beyond the Palazzo Barbaro, and standing in slight retirement from the edge of the Grand Canal, was a much smaller and far more humble structure, the Casetta delle Rose. The controversial poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, had lived there. It carried Urbino back to an autumn when he had done a bit of delicate sleuthing that involved two brutal murders on the Rialto and an aristocrat under the spell of d'Annunzio. This had been when the Contessa had scrambled for her life into the family tomb, as he had recalled that morning.

On the opposite side of the canal was the imposing Palazzo Contarini-Polignac, whose landing stage was being washed by the wake of a
vaporetto
making its way to Santa Lucia. He had spent many hours gazing at its Renaissance facade while writing his biography of Proust, who had been a guest of the Polignacs.

Further down was the eighteenth-century Palazzo Venier dai Leoni, known to Venetians as the Palazzo Incompiuto, or the
unfinished palace
, because nothing beyond a ground floor had ever been completed, giving it a decidedly odd look. Peggy Guggenheim had bought it after the Second World War to house her pioneering collection of modern art.