Death in a Serene City (3 page)

As Urbino walked up the aisle, these thoughts of Carlo Galuppi inevitably led back to his previous ones about Margaret Quinton, for the sexton had watched over her Pomeranian in the vestiary whenever she had come to Mass, being sure it made as little noise as possible. The poor man had become frantic only the week before the novelist's death when Dandolo had started barking—almost diabolically—during the Consecration. Margaret Quinton had hurried from her pew to comfort the animal but told the Contessa after Mass that the hunchback had required almost as much attention as had her Dandolo.

4

AS Urbino came out into the chill January air, Maria Galuppi, Carlo's mother, was walking up the steps of the church. Although close to eighty she had a vitality that, if you didn't look too closely at her heavily lined face and thinning white hair beneath which her scalp gleamed pinkly, might lead you to believe she was much younger.

Five years ago he had almost decided against having her do his laundry when the Contessa suggested it. How could he impose such a physical burden on a woman her age? Surely there were many younger women who could do the job.

“That's just the point,” his friend had said. “There are too many younger ones who can, and all of them from the mainland. Maria is losing a lot of her clientele to them. What will become of her and Carlo? She would never accept charity.”

And so Urbino had agreed although he still felt uncomfortable whenever she, instead of Carlo, picked up and delivered his laundry. Never in the past five years had the woman complained or accepted anything but the rather modest amount—modest at least from his point of view—that he gave her every month.

“Good morning, Maria.”

“
Buondì
, Signor Urbino. You are up and about early this morning.”

She squinted a smile up at him.

“I'm taking an early train to Padua.”

“Two already left”

Obviously she had a completely different idea of earliness.

“I'm taking the
rapido.
”

“The
rapido!
” She shook her head in disapproval but there was an unmistakable amusement in it. “How much faster? Five minutes? Ten? And for that you pay thousands of
lire
more!” She reached her hand out to touch his sleeve. “Listen to me, Signor Urbino, you must slow down, yes, you must slow down.” Then she added something in the Venetian dialect that he didn't catch but was sure addressed in homely fashion the dangers of always being in a rush.

Her advice was at odds not only with his temperament but also with her own active life so that Urbino had a hard time suppressing a smile.

“I'll try, Maria. I should know after living here that Venice is no city to rush around in—or away from, for that matter.”

She nodded her head.

“And remember, Signor Urbino, no matter how we rush it all comes to us in the end. Yes, with time it comes to us all.”

With this sobering comment she went into the church as he held the door. He was about to strike out across the
campo
for the train station when the door opened. It was Maria again. She put her hand in the pocket of her old black coat and took out a ten-thousand
lira
note.

“Here, Signor Urbino.”

He was so surprised that he took the money without any hesitation.

“When you go to the Basilica, you must do me a favor. Get a candle for my daughter Beatrice, put it with the others near the altar of Il Santo so the priests will light it.”

How could he tell her he would be on a tight schedule in Padua and that he was going to be nowhere near the Basilica? His business in Padua was for his
Venetian Lives
series. There was a man near the Scrovegni Chapel who had known Ezra Pound during the poet's years in Venice.

“God bless you, Signor Urbino. You make an old woman very happy.”

5

THE Contessa da Capo-Zendrini leaned back against the maroon banquette in the Chinese salon at Florian's. Outside was what Napoleon had called the finest drawing room in Europe although on this afternoon its charm was compromised by a chill, damp wind and pools of water reflecting a dull, leaden sky.

“
La poverina,
” she said with a sigh.

She put a languid hand to her nape in a habitual gesture. As usual there were no derelict locks. She was an attractive woman in her mid-fifties who looked a decade younger, not so much because of the subtle art which only a close scrutiny would have detected but because of the generous stamp that nature had given to her cheekbones and upward-slanted gray eyes.

“To be so plain, poor thing, so gauche, and to come to such an end.”

She sighed again and took a tea cake from the tray, looking at it from various angles before taking a bite. Everything about the woman—her aristocratic bearing, her stylish coiffure, her gleaming string of pearls, her subdued makeup, her tasteful suit and hat—made it clear that she was in no way the kind of person who could ever be either plain or gauche herself. She was displayed in one of her best settings here at Florian's with all its mirrors and paintings under glass, its velvet, walnut, and marble, its bronze lamps and intricately patterned ceilings—and she knew it.

“She also had a talent. Don't forget that, Barbara.”

“A talent, you say? Was it such a very great one?”

Her intonation implied that only its greatness might compensate for the dead woman's appearance and manner. She took a last bite of the cake and picked up another. As he watched her, Urbino sensed something other than hunger was responsible for her uncharacteristic appetite this afternoon.

“Great enough,
cara
, to make me want to read some more of her books. I've read only one of her novels,
A Green Paris.
”

“It was about Paris?” She seemed mildly surprised. “And to think she was writing another one about Venice when she died. You Americans are quite voracious, aren't you!” she said, unaware that the adjective might just as well apply to her this afternoon. “She might have gone on to all the cities in Baedeker, Michelin, or whatever your poor American equivalent is. I'm convinced it's partly because you Americans never had an empire. Look at the way you keep adding people to your
Venetian Lives
!”

“How do you know she was working on a novel about Venice?” As usual he ignored her reference to his biographies, which she alternately accused of being dilettantish and voyeuristic. Now she seemed to have found another basis for criticism. He took a sip of Bardolino, tea not being his idea of a suitable drink at five in the afternoon despite the chill outside.

“How do I know? You would have known yourself if you had spent more time with her. I know because I spent hours and hours with her, just the two of us. I also know because she borrowed books from my library.”

“You never told me that.”

“My dear Urbino, do you assume I tell you everything about my life?” She looked at him flirtatiously from beneath the long lashes that he still, after all these years, couldn't be sure were false or not. “We women must have some secrets from even the best of you.”

“I'm pleased to fall into that category, Barbara.”

“You do—despite your youth and rather lamentable American origins.”

“Thirty-six isn't all that young, and I haven't been in the States for almost eight years now.”

She waved a much-beringed hand in the air. He was surprised to see that it didn't hold another tea cake.

“It doesn't matter,
caro
. American you were born and American you'll stay. You can live in the Palazzo Uccello for the next forty years and not change that. It's indelible! In fact it's the reason you've become so Italian—or should I say a veritable
americano venezianizzato?
You did it much more quickly than I—and I married into it! As for thirty-six being old, I take that as a distinct insult.”

As she turned to look out at the Piazza San Marco, her face went slack and Urbino could see, even in profile, the tiny lines of concern.

He followed her gaze. The sleet that had been coming down since he had returned from Padua an hour ago had stopped. The Piazza nonetheless still had a deserted look, even for early January. Only a few people were walking across the square or under the arcades, quite obviously native Venetians from their look and manner. On the opposite side of the Piazza an old waiter was cleaning the pavement in front of the café Quadri with a little broom and shovel while a group of expectant pigeons followed close behind. One of them perched on his shoulder and he seemed to be talking to it as he went about his work. A tall, thin young man muffled in several scarfs was pushing a cart of postcards, flags, and guidebooks toward the Molo San Marco.

It was hard to imagine that in little more than a month
carnevale
would turn this whole placid scene into something more suited to the old days on San Clemente, the former island of the insane. All the more reason to appreciate the city now in its deepest serenity, a calm that might have been monastic except that even in fog and silence every stone spoke to the senses.

When he took his eyes away from the scene beyond the windows of Florian's, he saw that the Contessa was no longer looking at the Piazza. She was looking at him.

“You look a little tired today,
caro
. Why not change your mind and come tonight?”

“If I were tired—which I'm not, I assure you—shouldn't I stay in and rest? It would be the best thing for me, I would think.”

She gave him an exasperated look and picked up another tea cake.

“Except that you wouldn't really rest, would you? You would probably spend half the night poking around in other people's lives or watching movies on that abominable machine of yours.”

“They're old films, classics, as you well know. A dozen were just sent from Milan yesterday. If there were such ‘abominable machines,' as you call them, a hundred years ago, you can be sure Des Esseintes would have had one.”

“Des Esseintes, Des Esseintes!” she came close to shouting. The waiter, tending to a nearby table, looked in their direction. “Am I never going to hear the end of that—that disreputable Duke of yours! The way you refer to him you would think he was a living, breathing person instead of some outdated character in a novel.”

The Contessa was referring to Huysmans's
Against Nature
, a French novel about a reclusive bachelor, after which, purged of its many decadent excesses, Urbino had patterned his own secluded life in Venice. When she had returned his gift copy during the first year of their friendship, she had said, “A better title would have been
Pervasion.
” She had refused to add it to her library or to keep it anywhere in the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini.

“Well, my friend,” she was saying now, “don't you think it's about time you laid the poor man to rest?”

“Never! Since he's one of the main reasons, in a manner of speaking, that we two are here with each other at Florian's, it would be rather inconsiderate of me, don't you think?”

“No, I don't!” She took a big bite of another cake. “I think it would be good sense. You're too old for such things.”

He laughed. “Ah, then you do admit my age. That's some improvement.”

“I admit nothing except that there are things one might be too old or too young for, and your—your obsession with this disreputable character is definitely one of them.”

“To each our obsessions. I know of a respectable British woman—an
inglese venezianizzata
, to use her own expression—who makes it a point to collect every book she can find on Venice.”

Perhaps he could get the conversation back to Margaret Quinton and her Venice novel.

The Contessa stared at him blankly for a few moments and put down the tea cake. She didn't defend herself by pointing out that her book collection had been started a long time ago by the da Capo-Zendrini family and was one of the best in the city. Instead the lines of worry came again.

“Something seems to be bothering you today,” he said.

She shrugged.

From his seven years of friendship with her he knew that she liked to be coaxed. Almost a game between them, it seemed to have less of sexual coyness in it than a reluctance to commit herself to something that might give her too much pleasure or someone else too much discomfort.

He reached for her hand.

“What's the matter, Barbara? You don't seem yourself today. You're a bit on edge. Are you upset with me about anything? If you are—”

“Don't be silly,
caro
. It has nothing to do with you. It's my party tonight.”

She was giving a party to celebrate the anniversary of her marriage, a date she kept religiously even though her husband had been dead for more than ten years. Not being a person who felt comfortable at large gatherings, Urbino had declined the invitation as he sometimes did.

“Are you sure it's not because of me?”

“Don't be so self-centered. It's because of Clifford Voyd. He's coming.”

“But you've been singing his praises ever since you met him. I thought you liked him.”

“I do—or at least I
did
. I still do, it's just that …”

“It's Margaret Quinton, isn't it?”

“Yes! He's responsible—and don't try to tell me any different.”

“But she committed suicide.”

“Suicide,
caro
, can be prevented—and it can be caused.”

Two things about the Contessa that Urbino had never doubted were her intelligence and her morality. If her morality sometimes seemed inflexible, it wasn't reserved only for others. She conducted herself in accordance with the strictest principles. Urbino would have been shocked to learn otherwise. He never listened to any of the gossip that circulated within the insular, suspicious society of long-established Venetians who still considered her an interloper after thirty years.