Death in a Serene City (6 page)

After a few moments of silence Urbino thought that the man was finished teasing him, but then the writer said, “I've also heard that you're one of those men most to be feared.” He paused for a few beats for Urbino to suffer whatever response had been sought. Fear? Confusion? Amusement? It was difficult to tell. He smiled broadly. “I mean, of course, that you write biographies. Tell me, do you really believe we gain anything by seeing the naked man—or the naked woman, as the case might be?”

“Such biographies have their place. What you call nakedness is sometimes nothing more than the person stripped of myths and distortions, frequently of his own creation. My own books, I like to think, make a small contribution to a more balanced perspective.”

“Be assured I was speaking only generically,” Voyd said with the air of soothing a tender ego. “I regret to say I haven't read any of your little lives.” He shrugged apologetically—not, it seemed, for the slight of the “
little lives
” but for the neglect of an unfortunately busy man. “I do seem to remember a review of one or two of them, though.”

He smiled broadly again.

“But don't take what I say personally. I know many intelligent people who wouldn't be caught dead with fiction in their hands, no matter who the author. It's just that I have a mortal dread of the biographer. I do all I can to thwart him. I feel as if I am always making moves against an opponent perhaps not even born yet, someone who will want to reveal what should be kept in the dark and who will make up all the rest.” He gave Urbino an exaggeratedly judicious look. “Who knows, Mr. Macintyre? It might even be you.”

“I doubt it. I'm committed to my
Venetian Lives
. If I do anyone who isn't Venetian, he must have some close relationship to the city, like Browning or Wagner.”

“I like your choice of words. ‘Do'! We Americans living abroad sometimes end up using the most unusual expressions. But you may be tempted yet to ‘do' me one of these days. I've always wanted to have a
pied-à-terre
here in Venice the way you do.”

“It's much more than that. It's my only home.”

“So much the better for you.”

At this point Voyd launched into a monologue on Venice that had Urbino wondering why he even wanted to visit a city he seemed to have so much disdain for. He had little good to say, pointing out that it had been a long time since there had been any real life in the city and lamenting that today it wasn't much more than a tomb and a vast museum, a cross between an Oriental bazaar and a sideshow.

“The Philistines are everywhere. A vulgarizing mob has taken hold of this once great city—and they're not all foreigners either but Venetians themselves. One of these fine days I won't be surprised at all to have to buy a ticket before I'll even be able to step out of Santa Lucia.”

Urbino didn't feel like rising to Voyd's bait and defending the city. Instead he changed the topic to Rome. From Rome they soon passed on to Paris and London and eventually to their mutual expatriate existence.

“It isn't at all what it used to be,” Voyd said several times.

Whether he was referring to his own long experience as an expatriate or to the twenties and earlier, Urbino couldn't decide and didn't get an immediate opportunity to ask, so expansive and fast-talking was the man.

Then, just when Urbino had begun to despair of introducing Margaret Quinton into the conversation, Voyd brought the dead woman up himself.

“My friend Quinton told me last year that she felt in many ways the Bedouin during her years abroad, taking up and pulling down the same old tent in different places. Only the thought of a room back in Schenectady gave her the strength to stay. Schenectady! Can you imagine! She doubted if she'd ever see that room again. She described it down to the wallpaper pattern and windowpanes. I could almost see it myself. She said she was going to make one last try here in Venice this winter, not the most auspicious of places for such things. Well,” he sighed, raising his glass of wine to his thin lips, “we all see how that worked out, don't we?” He drained the last of the wine and stared at the empty glass.

“Poor, poor Quinton,” he went on after a moment. “I liked to think she had no idea what she was doing, that she must have been in a daze. She had the influenza, there was all that medication, fever, who knows what came over her? The last time I saw her, the day before she—she died, she looked older by a decade than her fifty years. She was sitting up in bed in the same room she threw herself from the next night, and you'll never guess what she was doing. She had one of my early books propped up on her knees and was copying the whole damn thing out in longhand! She was up to the fifth chapter,
Passing into the Picture
it was. She said that she was beginning to understand how I had managed to bring it off. She was certainly an unusual woman.” He lifted his empty glass in tribute to her memory, then added, “She was deaf, you know.”

Urbino had been so taken aback by Voyd's unsolicited flow about the dead woman that it was a few seconds before he realized that the last comment, unlike the others, expected an answer. Voyd was waiting and seemed amused, as if he had caught Urbino out in being either too much or too little interested in what he had to say about Margaret Quinton.

“No, I didn't know.”

This seemed enough for Voyd who, after exchanging his empty glass for a full one from Maria's tray, went on to explain. “Not completely deaf, you understand, but with seriously impaired hearing. Well, with whatever problems she had or thought she had, big or small, she's gone from us now, and there's much that needs to be done because of it.”

While Voyd had been talking, a man in his mid-twenties came up to them in time to hear the last words. He was dressed in a dark-brown velvet suit and had a shock of unruly blond hair over his smooth forehead. It was the man Bellorini had collided with earlier at Florian's.

“As usual you exaggerate, Clifford,” he said with a slight accent that sounded vaguely Germanic. “There's not that much to do, is there? You're almost finished, in fact. You work fast.” He looked at Urbino. “Excuse me, my name is Kobke, Christian Kobke.” He extended his hand.

“Urbino Macintyre.”

The good-looking young man turned again to Voyd, who was looking at him with a mixture of amusement and irritation.

“You do go on, Clifford. You give the impression that you are absolutely inundated with things. But the truth of the matter is, Mr. Macintyre, that everything has been done that needs to be done. My friend here is most efficient when it comes to these things. He brought everything out this afternoon in several large boxes. I was staggering under their weight.”

“Now who is exaggerating?”

“Nonetheless—”

“Yes, nonetheless, my dear boy,” Voyd interrupted, “it's a disturbing duty I must perform. I'm Quinton's literary executor, Mr. Macintyre. And in addition to all her writing, her niece has asked me to help go through her other things and kindly said I might take what I want.”

“Which was about twenty or thirty letters he'd written her—or were there even more?”

“They fall within the domain of my literary executorship, Christian, as you well know. This is a duty I would most gladly relinquish, believe me. As for poor Quinton's
objets
, I've limited myself to a painting, a few books, and a trinket here and there, none of them worth much. The painting's a Riva degli Schiavoni in the manner of Sargent, a bit heavy-handed but the two of us found it on one of our many forays together.”

“It has what you might call sentimental value,” Kobke said with a little smile.

“Sentimental value can often make up for a lot of mediocre art,” Urbino said, thinking of some of his own favorite pieces at the Palazzo Uccello.

Kobke looked at him sharply.

“You aren't an art critic, are you, Mr. Macintyre?”

“Not at all.”

“I'll leave the explaining to Clifford. Meanwhile, I'm off in search of that glowering old woman with the tray, the one who looks like the witch in ‘Hansel and Gretel.' I wonder if she'd let me do a sketch of her.”

“You'll have to excuse Christian,” Voyd said when the young man had left. “He's rather out of sorts at the moment. He just learned about a poor review back in Copenhagen. He's an illustrator. Believe me, his work is absolutely of a charm. Perhaps if you come by some time he'll be in a better mood and show you what he has with him. We'd be delighted to see you.”

“Where are you staying?”

“The Europa e Regina. We can almost see right through the doors of the Salute from our balcony when we're brave enough to venture out in this weather. You'll have to visit us. Perhaps we can continue our conversation about my friend Quinton if you'll allow an old man to indulge himself. You seem a sympathetic listener, so rare to find in any man. And I would be interested in your own impressions of her. Give me a ring but don't wait too long. We leave before carnival.”

“I thought that might have been why you came.”

“You amuse me, Mr. Macintyre, you really do. We have a great deal to learn about each other. Carnival! Never! But excuse me,” he said as he looked at his watch, “I must And our dear hostess and say good night. I won't be able to stay for dinner. Eating late has never agreed with me, recently less than ever. And it seems my best writing here is done between midnight and three—although tonight this might make a great deal of difference.” He held up his empty wineglass. “Good-bye, my new young friend. Don't forget to stop by. The Europa e Regina.”

No, Urbino said to himself as he watched Voyd join the Contessa, he wouldn't forget. Hadn't Voyd implied that he would like to tell him more about Margaret Quinton? It was as if the writer needed someone to talk to about the unfortunate woman, someone more receptive than the ironic Kobke. Or was it that Voyd had sensed Urbino's eagerness for information about her and was tempting him with the prospect of future revelations?

Whatever it was, Urbino was sure of one thing. The great Clifford Voyd felt more than a little guilty about the death of his friend. He wondered how the Contessa was going to take the news.

10

“BUT just a few opals, Barbara,
ti prego
” Stefano Bellorini was saying when Urbino joined him and the Contessa in one of the side alcoves with windows looking out over the water. Urbino had waited until Voyd had made his farewell to the Contessa. The writer, however, had not yet slipped away but, with an impatient Kobke, was talking with a professor from Ca' Foscari and his wife who was handing him a book and a pen. “Not for all of them, you understand,” Stefano continued after greeting Urbino. “No, not at all, but for your lovely
nonna.
” He was referring to the photograph of the Contessa's grandmother. “And it might even be less expensive.
Per esempio
, we could—”

The Contessa shook her head impatiently.

“I am not concerned with saving money on this little project, Stefano dear, as you well know, and neither should you be. You will never be able to convince me by arguing expense when it's a matter of opals. They're bad luck, aren't they, Urbino?”

“Some people think so but—”

“That's quite good enough for me. And it will have to be the same for you, Stefano, even if you aren't superstitious. Not that I am myself but—but I believe my grandmother was,” she finished somewhat lamely.

“You are more difficult to deal with than my father was,” Stefano said, making one of his well-known jokes, “except that he
was
always trying to save money!” His father, dead for thirty years, was still remembered in the Cannaregio for his miserly ways and domination of his wife and only child with a fortune made in the shipping trade. “I will say this for you, Barbara, you know what you like.” He took several sheets of paper from a small table and handed them to Urbino. “Here they are.”

They were the sketches he had misplaced earlier in the day. It was difficult to tell exactly what the finished frames would look like but Urbino was impressed as he knew he would be. The designs, each ornate and decorative in its own distinct way, were striking.

“Lovely,” he said, handing the sheets back to Stefano. “They remind me of Art Nouveau, with a touch of the Pala d'Oro, but yet they're very much your own.”

The artist beamed behind his thick round glasses.

“Art Nouveau! Exactly! That's why I wanted opals. But don't worry, Barbara. We artists have almost always listened to our Popes and other patrons! But you must excuse me. Cavatorta is monopolizing Angela disgracefully and even after all these years I'm still a bit of an Othello. One good thing my father did was see to it that I didn't lose Angela to someone else.”

He frowned in the direction of his wife and Cavatorta, an ex-priest and now a mask maker in the Cannaregio. The Bellorinis had a strained relationship with Cavatorta that was said to go back to the time of their marriage, when there had been a disagreement of some kind over a gift given by Cavatorta's father. Those who disliked Angela spread the story that she had acted in a haughty manner that went with the Candiani blood and the Bellorini money. Equally vociferous were those who couldn't abide Cavatorta. Surely a man who had never been known even in his youth to pass by an opportunity to make others look worse than himself had enjoyed taking malicious advantage of a mild misunderstanding and fanning the flames over the years.

Urbino had always found all this rather amusing than otherwise. Venice, a small, inbred place, was rife with such gossip, petty jealousies, and rivalries.

If Angela had a condescending side—something that he didn't necessarily discount despite, perhaps even because of, all her charity work—she had never shown it to him or to the Contessa whose good friend she was. Through the Contessa, Angela and Stefano had become, if not his friends, then his close acquaintances and had been particularly helpful during the second stage of his renovation of the Palazzo Uccello. Often they had known better than the restorers where to find matching marble for the fireplace and the best terracotta bricks and tiles for the
andron
.