Death in a Serene City (21 page)

“Would you get me my coat, Christian, before Clifford embarrasses me any more?” She put her hand out to Urbino. “It's a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Macintyre. Perhaps before I return to Vienna we can meet for tea or drinks away from this teaser, magnificent though he is.”

After Kobke helped her into her coat, she bent down and kissed Voyd on the cheek.

As Kobke was showing her to the door, Voyd stared at Urbino with an amused expression. Urbino felt it was probably time for him to leave, too, but it was difficult with Margaret Quinton's notebook lying there on the floor within reach. He wouldn't know if there was anything of importance in it until Voyd read through the whole thing and told him, if he were so inclined. For perfectly selfish reasons he now wished that the writer would stay in Venice longer. Wouldn't it be an unlucky stroke if he didn't finish the notebook until he had returned to London? The man must have any number of things that were of greater urgency or at least more profitable to him.

“You can pick it up again, you know,” the writer said. “No alarm went off before and I don't think there's any need to fear one now.”

Urbino reached for the notebook, leaving the loose sheets on the floor.

“You're welcome to take it back to the comforts of your palazzo. Read it there.”

Kobke had returned in time to hear Voyd's offer.

“Clifford! We just started to read it ourselves. Don't you think—”

“As you well know, Christian, we have plenty to occupy us. Besides, you have that business to tend to for me at the Palazzo Pitti. I'm sure Mr. Macintyre will be done long before you get back from Florence.”

“But Clifford,” Kobke said in gentler tones that Urbino found more irritating than his previous strident ones, “isn't it your responsibility to see that nothing untoward happens to any of Quinton's manuscripts?”

“‘Untoward'! As I've said many times before, my boy, I would love to meet your English tutor! Yes, I do have a responsibility, and I don't take it lightly, but I have faith in Mr. Macintyre. Take it and enjoy it, Mr. Macintyre. I hope it answers some of your questions.”

Kobke seemed about to say something else but then turned and went back into the room he had entertained Adele Carstairs in. Voyd waited for him to shut the door before continuing.

“I must confess that lending you the notebook is also a way of making sure I see you again. Christian will be down in Florence and I'll be feeling very much alone, especially if I have to suffer through this indignity much longer. I would be very happy for the company and we might even get into a discussion of that Des Esseintes of yours, the recluse you admire so much. Sitting here like this today I couldn't help but wonder if he didn't have a marvelous idea after all. To have everything he needed or wanted right there around him at all times. It's a self-sufficient and reassuring existence for a person, even if one isn't bedridden—or should I say ‘sofa-ridden'? I wouldn't mind having that invention of his, that row of little liqueur casks with interconnected spigots that can all be opened at the same time. Called it a mouth organ, didn't he? I'd like to have it rigged up right over my sofa here so that I could take a drop of one liqueur after another, or make unusual combinations—chartreuse verte, chartreuse jaune, Benedictine, Drambuie, Cointreau, pernod, absinthe, Grand Marnier, Amaretto! Tell me, Mr. Macintyre, do you have such a mouth organ in your little palazzo?”

“I'm more inclined to follow the spirit of Des Esseintes than the letter.”

“Ah, yes, as I recall, you did tell me that you don't have any turtle carrying its jewel-encrusted carapace across your Oriental carpet.”

“Tortoise,” Urbino corrected. “And the tortoise died, if you remember.”

“I certainly do. The poor creature was unable to bear all that beauty on its back! There's a lesson for all us aesthetes in that! And a lesson for Venice as well, I suppose! You see, Mr. Macintyre, we have a great many things we can talk about besides two dead women, no matter how interesting and endearing they were, but I realize they're what you're concerned about now. So take the Venice notebook, take it with my blessing and read it, and when you return it, we can get on to other things. Can I expect you back in a few days? Certainly before Christian returns from Florence, if you don't mind. I hope so. You'll have to show yourself out, I'm afraid. It would be best not to disturb Christian. These visits from Adele can put him in the strangest moods.”

14

WHAT Voyd had said about the lesson in Des Esseintes's tortoise—that all the blazing beauty set on its back had led to its death—echoed through Urbino's mind as he walked back to the Cannaregio to make his next visit. When he had been in the Protestant graveyard with the Contessa the morning of Quinton's funeral, he had pointed out to her, in his ironic way and with the help of some ill-sung lines from Wagner's
Tristan und Isolde
, that love and death embraced in this watery city. Voyd's words had reminded him, however, of yet another embrace—between beauty and death.

He took a slight detour and stood on the Rialto Bridge looking at the marble wall of Gothic and Renaissance palazzi on both sides of the Grand Canal as far as the Ca' Foscari, where there was a bend in the broad waterway. The frescoes that had once adorned the facades of the palazzi had faded and disappeared and the buildings themselves, resting on thousands of weakening, wooden stakes, were still sinking—or so many people, with little faith in all the hydraulic and architectural efforts being made, strongly believed. The weight of all the stone staircases and Murano chandeliers, all the paintings in heavy frames and the ornate period furniture, all the altarpieces and the mosaics, all the belltowers and humpbacked bridges, all the statues and fountains, all the stones of Ruskin's Venice—the weight of all this beauty could only be hastening the end if the end were to come At Quinton's service Voyd had read some lines from the dead woman's work, something about Venice having been born to die like all beauty and perhaps being destined to become even more beautiful in its passing.

As he resumed his walk to the Cannaregio, Urbino tried to shake off these thoughts which were, at best, self-indulgently romantic and, at worst, enervating, for they undermined the anger one should feel in the face of any kind of death.

When he got to the Strada Nuova his thoughts had turned to Maria, Carlo, and Beatrice. A few moments later, however, as he considered how Beatrice's beauty hadn't saved her but might in fact have been her undoing, he realized that he was still thinking of the same thing but in a different guise.

He quickened his pace. He hoped the Tullios at the trattoria near the Madonna dell'Orto would be able to give him some clear-cut facts. He had had enough of something else ever since he had left Voyd.

15

NETTA was in the kitchen next to the bar preparing one of the simple meals the Tullios offered as Bettino poured out some grappas. A group of laborers was sitting at a large table by the stove, playing cards and joking. After Bettino brought them their grappas, he came back to the bar and poured a red wine for Urbino. Although not a regular, Urbino was familiar to the Tullios. He sometimes came in midafternoon for one of Netta's meals when it was Natalia's day off.

“Yes, Maria was here,” Bettino said. “She took her midday meal here maybe two, three times a week, usually about two o'clock. It was the same that day, wasn't it, Netta?”

His wife nodded as she went on chopping.

“Did she seem any different from usual?”

“Not to me, the same as she always was, but Netta, well, Netta thinks there might have been something different.”

Netta came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.

“You say ‘thinks,' Bettino, but I
know
there was something different. Excuse me for saying this, Signor Macintyre, but sometimes you men don't notice what you should.” She nodded toward the group at the table as if they could be taken as representative of their sex. They seemed oblivious to everything but their card game and drinks. “A man's attention isn't to be relied on, sometimes he doesn't even see what's most important even if it's right under his nose.”

It was almost the same thing Angela Bellorini had said yesterday.

“What was different about her, Signora Tullio?”

“In one word, excited. She said nothing strange, she talked about the usual things—the weather, her work, the food, Santa Teodora—but underneath it all, I tell you, she was excited.”

Bettino shook his head, the only expression of doubt he allowed himself. His wife glared at him.

“Believe me, Signor Macintyre, she was excited about something.”

“In a happy way or an anxious way?”

“She didn't seem nervous or upset—as I said, excited.” She went back into the kitchen, but a few moments later put her head through the little window to look at him. “Excited, Signor Macintyre, and I don't think it was in a bad way at all. But her excitement, it made me feel a little uncomfortable. She was usually a quiet woman, calm. That day she almost seemed like a little girl squirming in church on Sunday.”

Bettino said nothing until there were sounds of pans being moved around. Then, quietly: “Take what she says with a grain of salt, Signor Macintyre. I noticed nothing. Everything seemed the way it usually was. When she finished her meal, Carlo came by and they left for the Rio della Sensa to get the laundry.”

As Urbino was leaving, Netta waved from the kitchen.

“Excited, Signor Macintyre, remember that, like a little girl.”

She said something to her husband that set him moving briskly behind the bar.

16

FIFTEEN minutes later Urbino was at the tenement on the Rio della Sensa, knocking on the door of one of the apartments on the first floor. Children were screaming behind it. A wide-eyed little girl with thick, curly black hair opened it slowly. He was about to ask for her mother when a haggard woman appeared with an infant in her arms.

“Giulietta Pagano?”

“Yes?” A look of fear came over her face. “It's about my husband, isn't it? He's had an accident.”

She said it in a resigned way. When he assured her this wasn't the case, that he didn't even know her husband, she showed no sign of relief but only stood staring at him.

“Excuse me for disturbing you but this will take only a few minutes.” He had to raise his voice as a child started to cry from the back of the apartment. “I would like to ask about Maria Galuppi. My name is Urbino Macintyre and I'm—I'm conducting an inquiry into her death.”

Well, that was true enough. As long as she didn't ask for any credentials.

She handed the infant to the little girl and told her to wait in the kitchen.

“There's little to tell. We've been here for only a year. She was a good woman, God rest her soul. She stayed with the children once or twice but they didn't like her because of her son, they said he gave them the
maloccbio
. They would tease him from the window with that song from “I due gobbi,” the one the old women sing around the tree. I read that story to them all the time.” Urbino nodded. He was familiar with the folktale. Two hunchbacks overhear a song of the days of the week sung by a group of old women who then remove the hump from one's back and put it on the chest of the other. “It would make Maria even angrier than him but he probably didn't even understand what it was all about. I doubt if she ever told him that particular story.”

“You saw her the day she died.”

“We were both doing the laundry that morning in the
lavanderia
downstairs. There was nothing unusual about her. You can't help thinking of the last time you see a person before they—they die, how they look, what they say. If anything she was more herself than usual.”

There was a crash from the apartment and she called several names out sharply. There was silence but it wasn't likely to last long.

When Signora Pagano turned back to him, it was with a weary, blank look, almost as if she didn't quite remember who he was or why he was there.

“You were saying that Maria was more herself than usual.”

“It was nothing much,” she said hurriedly. “When I went back about three to collect my detergent, she had her arm around Carlo, she was saying they wouldn't have to be doing this forever, that after Sunday it would be different, something like that, I'm not really sure. I wasn't trying to listen. She looked embarrassed when I came in. I think sometimes she didn't want people to see how tender she was with Carlo. Maybe they would blame her for his condition, I don't know. They always seem to blame the mothers.” She gave him a wry smile that only brought out her weariness more. Another crash came from somewhere behind her, as well as the cries of a child. She excused herself abruptly and closed the door.

The other tenants of the building confirmed what Signora Pagano had told him. Maria Galuppi hadn't seemed any different on the day of her death.

17

THE widower Rodolfo Tasso lived in a tiny apartment overlooking the Calle dell'Arcanzolo just a stone's throw from the Campo San Gabriele and not far from Cavatorta's mask shop. He was a retired chemist from a factory in Porto Marghera, who had managed to avoid working for the war effort under Mussolini by feigning the kind of chronic illness he had eventually contracted. In good weather he could be found at his window reading the paper, chatting with passersby, and in general conducting the diminished business of a man in his eighties. Because the amputation of several toes made it almost impossible for him to go out, he had a basket on a rope that he lowered for provisions, the morning's
Il Gazzettino
, and the mail.

Urbino could hear Tasso cursing and talking to himself as he came to answer the door.