Death in a Serene City (38 page)

Two screams from the
calle
interrupted the “Valse noble” and Urbino went to the window again. The alley and the bridge seemed deserted. He was about to turn away when a form detached itself from the shadows near the bridge and crept along the
calle
past the Palazzo Uccello. Whether a man or a woman he couldn't tell any more than with Death and the Lady of Veils a little while ago.

The form was swathed in long dark robes, its face covered with an equally dark hood. When it neared the opening of a courtyard, a second form bounded from the shadows and, with another of the screams that had caught his attention, ran down the
calle
and beyond Urbino's sight. The first figure quickened its pace in pursuit as a cry floated back and up to the closed window.

What had he seen? A playful game of hide and seek? One person pursuing another with evil intent? An argument between friends that might end with them kissing each other?

The appearances could cover any of these realities.

Urbino went back to the sofa. The fifth movement had begun. Reaching out to stroke the cat, Urbino smiled to himself.

If Barbara could only see me now, he thought. This was almost as good as a cork-lined room, and he was more than content—at least for the time being.

3

Schumann's
Carnaval
ended. Urbino poured himself another glass of Corvo and picked up the Proust, opening it to where a postcard reproduction of Man Ray's photograph of Proust's death profile marked his place.

He had read
Remembrance of Things Past
several times before but he was reading it now because of the book on Proust he was adding to his
Venetian Lives
series.
Proust and Venice
would focus on the role the city had played in the writer's life and art. It would have reproductions of paintings by Carpaccio, Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto and photographs of Venetian scenes and buildings by the city's premier photographer, Porfirio.

Urbino had reached the point where Proust's narrator finally gets to Venice after years of expectation and postponement and after the sudden death of his beloved Albertine. Inevitably, despite Marcel's appreciation of the beauty and secrecy of the city, he finds himself somewhat disillusioned, and by the time he is about to leave, Venice is no longer an enchanted labyrinth out of the
Arabian Nights
but something sinister and deceptive that seems to have little to do with Doges and Turner. It doesn't even seem to be Venice any longer, but a mendacious fiction where the palaces are nothing but lifeless marble and the water that makes the city unique only a combination of hydrogen and oxygen.

Urbino read for a while and then put the book down again, finding it difficult to concentrate tonight on the subjunctive and the imperfect, on the essential melancholia at the lime-blossom heart of Proust's style and story.

Followed by Serena, who had been sleeping on one of the maroon velvet seats of the mahogany confessional on the other side of the room, he went to the study and put
Children of Paradise
in the video machine.

Urbino didn't know how much of the long movie he would be able to watch before dropping off to sleep, but he knew the tragic story of a mime's love for a beautiful actress so well that he could start it at any point without any problem. With its retelling of the story of Pierrot, Harlequin, and Columbine and its great final scene in which the mime Baptiste is separated forever from his beloved Garance by the mad Carnival crowd, it was particularly suited to the season.

He settled himself in his favorite armchair, Serena nestled against him, as the story started to unfold. Garance, the voluptuous yet tenderly maternal woman for whom love was
“terriblement simple,”
was watching a performance in front of the Funambules. In just a few moments Baptiste would fall in love with her forever.

Urbino found himself almost holding his breath. Serena purred. The childlike Baptiste, dressed as a clown all in white, turned in Garance's direction and looked at her with his soulful eyes.

Ah, there, it had happened! The rest—passion, yearning, jealousy, death, and separation—they all were fated now.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1990 by Edward Sklepowich

Cover design by Elizabeth Connor

ISBN: 978-1-5040-0129-8

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