Death in a Serene City (8 page)

Voyd paused after finishing, bowing his head for what seemed much longer than necessary. Then, slowly putting away his glasses and the paper, he looked out over the heads of the small gathering to the back of the church where Maria was standing and said in a stage whisper, “And let us all say, let her rest in peace, this woman who brought us all such light and joy, this woman who had the soul to perceive beauty and the talent to create it herself. Amen.”

Urbino had the impression that Voyd, as he stepped gravely down from the pulpit, considered the rest of the service nothing but anticlimax.

He wondered what the Contessa felt about the writer's performance. A quick glance at her face showed that it was—if possible—even more expressionless than it had been before.

13

FOR most tourists the cemetery island is only a stop on the way from Venice proper to Murano but for Urbino it was someplace special, its tombs and graves more curious and interesting than anything on the glass island could ever be.

“Would you think me strange, Barbara, if I told you that I find this part of San Michele among the loveliest places in all of Venice?”

He knew he was being perverse, for the Protestant graveyard was overgrown with unkempt grass beaten down by the rain that had only recently let up. The older grave markers, most crowded beneath massive trees that themselves looked half dead at this time of year, were eaten away by time and weather, their surfaces sometimes as smooth as the wall that set the area off from the lagoon and the rest of the cemetery. Where letters and dates could be traced, they frequently spelled out the melancholy story of those foreigners who had probably been surprised to meet their deaths in Venice so far from home.

“Since I thought you strange,
caro
, from the first time I laid eyes on you admiring that abominable painting at the Biennale, I've grown accustomed to such things.”

She looked around them. The graveyard was empty of everyone else except two attendants filling in the grave. Even fewer people had come to the burial than to the church service. The American consul and his wife had hurried from the church to their waiting boat and Maria and Sister Veronica had gone about their duties. The Contessa's boat had dropped Stefano and Angela off in the Cannaregio before continuing across the lagoon to San Michele.

There had been one graveside mourner, however, who hadn't been at St. George's. This was Kobke, Voyd's young friend. Urbino had noticed him idling on the other side of the Campo San Vio when they came out of the church. Kobke had joined Voyd, Adele Carstairs, and the nurse in the same funeral boat to San Michele.

“You know,” the Contessa said as they walked down one of the leaf-strewn paths to the gate that led into the rest of the cemetery, “I've never been able to decide if this is a good city to die in since we must all die somewhere in the end or if it might not be a bit—oh, I don't know—redundant. But obviously Clifford Voyd thinks it a marvelous place for dying, considering the lineage he gave.”

“Such melancholy thoughts, Barbara. You surprise me—you with your love for Venice.”

“It's Venice I love, not dying.” She shot him a vulnerable, troubled look that went straight to his heart. “I can't say that I care for all its associations with death. It's impossible to escape them.”

“But didn't one of your countrywomen—I don't remember who it was—say a long time ago that there was no other city better for the retreat of old age?”

“That's hardly more consoling.”

They walked in silence for a few moments. Urbino assumed they were on their way to the boat landing until the Contessa said, “Indulge me for a few moments. I'd like to visit the Orthodox section.”

He didn't have to ask why. It was to visit Diaghilev's grave. Her mother had been a close friend of Diaghilev's and had always regretted not having been at his funeral, not because she had missed Diaghilev's friend jumping into the grave but because she had been unable to pay her last respects to a man she had loved and admired. As they made their way into the Orthodox compound and down to the wall to Diaghilev's simple stone, Urbino even knew what his friend would say.

“There's another one.” She pointed to the ballet slipper on the top of the tombstone. It had lost its shape and color. It was filled with decayed leaves, and a spider had spun a web across its opening. “I wonder who leaves them. In all the times I've been here I've never seen anyone even looking at the grave.”

“It's one of Venice's romantic mysteries. After all, Venice is a city of love as well as death—and they're not too far apart. Remember that Wagner not only died here, as Voyd reminded us, but he also wrote the “Liebestod” of
Tristan und Isolde
in his palazzo on the Grand Canal. Love-death, death-in-love, love-in-death, love's death,” he reeled off with an inappropriate grin.

Then, right there in the corner of the Orthodox section against the wall by Diaghilev's grave, he startled the Contessa—and in fact himself—by breaking out into his weak, uneven tenor:

“
Nun banne das Bangen
,

bolder Tod
,

sebnend verlangter

Liebestod!
”

And then, fearing his friend might have missed his point, he started over in English:

“
Let fear now be banished
,

gracious death
,

yearningly longed-for

love-in-death!
”

“That's more than enough, thank you! Come, I think we'd better go. You have the most peculiar sensibility for an intelligent man!”

Once again arm in arm, they left Diaghilev's grave with its lone, mysterious slipper and walked slowly back to the boat landing.

Part Two

BLESSED REMAINS

1

EVERYTHING had gone well at the Glass Museum despite spite Sister Veronica's preoccupation with Margaret Quinton's death last week and her less than keen interest in glass. Although the daughter of a glassblower, she had little appreciation for the art. What she now knew about it had been learned long after her adolescent rejection of her father's profession and because of her tours of Murano for the guests at the hospice. Even now she still had large, almost willful gaps in her knowledge, something that couldn't be said of her knowledge of Tintoretto, her grand, if chaste passion.

At one point this afternoon Sister Veronica had thought there might be a problem when the chubby little boy from Perugia started to slide himself across the floor in the room of the Wedding Cup. His momentum had almost carried him into the showcase with reliquaries but fortunately his mother had stopped him at the critical moment. She had just shrugged at Sister Veronica as if to say, Well, what can we do? He's a boy!

Now, two hours later as they stood in the Church of San Gabriele, the boy was being so quiet that Sister Veronica was getting nervous. She knew, from her own nephews down in Naples, enough about the silence of children to realize that it usually boded no good.

And the boy wasn't just quiet. He was as still as one of the sculpted figures of death looming behind him on the mausoleum of a prominent Cannaregio family.

The reason soon became evident as she followed the direction of his wide-eyed stare. It was the body of Santa Teodora in her glass coffin.

Wouldn't it be best to mention the precious relic before he said anything irreverent that would reverberate through the church with its eerie acoustics?

“And that,” she said with almost indecorous haste, not having yet mentioned the disputed Tiepolo ceiling and the Cima painting, “is the body of Santa Teodora.”

The boy went up to the coffin, knelt on the catafalque among the wilted bouquets, and pressed his face against the glass.

“But I thought it was Biancaneve!”

His mother and the three other guests started to laugh at his confusion of the saint's body with Snow White but quickly restrained themselves. Laughter didn't seem appropriate in these Gothic surroundings. But Sister Veronica saw no need for restraint. Her own laughter rang out clearly.

“Very good,
piccolino
. She does look like Snow White in a way. When I saw Santa Teodora when I was a little girl, I thought the same thing.”

The boy took his hands away from the case, leaving behind smudges that Don Marcantonio would be sure to notice later. He turned to Sister Veronica.

“Does she have a handsome prince to wake her up?”

This time they all laughed heartily. The sound of their laughter echoed from the vault and came back strangely distorted. Sister Veronica thought she heard a mutter of disapproval from somewhere in the back of the church.

She turned to the boy, put her hands together, and looked over his head at the glass coffin.

“Many years ago,” she began in the same tone of voice she used when telling fairy tales to her nephews, “there lived a little girl named Teodora of Syracuse. She had many brothers and sisters and was a good girl, a
very, very
good girl,” she emphasized with a glance down at the boy. “She made a promise to God that she would never marry but instead would give all her time and devotion to Him and only to Him. But there was a young prince from far away”—at this the boy's face lit up—“a young prince who wasn't at all good, not one bit. He loved Teodora. Everyone loved Teodora, of course, but the prince loved her in a different way. He asked her to marry him and to go away with him to his kingdom. Teodora thanked him very sweetly but said she couldn't marry him or anyone else because of her promise to the good Lord. So what did the prince do but go to the governor and tell him that Teodora refused to marry him because she was a servant of the Christian God and not of anyone else. You see, this was during the time when good Christian souls were severely punished for their faith. The powerful governor couldn't accept such behavior and so his soldiers killed Teodora.” Sister Veronica paused and then added, “With a
very big
sword. She became a saint and now she's with us here in Venice.”

The boy didn't say anything for several moments. He seemed to be thinking.

“But Syracuse is in Sicily and Sicily is a long way from here,” he eventually said. “How did she get all the way up here? We had to take a bus and a train and we came only from Perugia.”

“She was brought here by two Venetian merchants who thought she would be happier in Venice.”

There was a puzzled frown on the boy's face as he went over to the glass coffin again and looked in.

“You mean they just took her? And why would she be happier here? I don't think anybody ever knew if she was happy or not because she was dead. And besides, she was wearing a mask. Did she always wear one?”

There were so many things she might explain that she wasn't sure which to take up first. Obviously this afternoon she wasn't going to deliver the neat lecture she had perfected over the years on the legend of the blessed Santa Teodora. It was probably just as well. The boy's questions were the ones most people wanted to ask but were too embarrassed to.

“But you see,
piccolino
, they didn't just take her. The Doge, the ruler of Venice in those days, was interested in Santa Teodora, very interested. He thought that his city—with all its money and beauty and power—was a better place for such a wonderful saint. And there was another thing: one of the first saints of the city was San Teodoro—you can see a statue of him with his crocodile on a column near the Doge's Palace—and the Doge thought it would be nice if Venice could bring Santa Teodora here too and he had this special case built for her on Murano where we just came from.”

When she looked at the adults, she saw that they were more absorbed in her story than her listeners usually were. Perhaps inadvertently, with the help of the boy from Perugia, she had discovered a better way to tell the story of Santa Teodora.

The boy, however, wasn't satisfied.

“The mask,” her reminded her.

“Ah yes, the mask. The mask came later, much, much later. It was made in Florence in 1839 so that her head wouldn't fall off.”

The boy edged slowly away from the glass coffin. He turned around and looked up at the arches of the church, at the stained-glass window of the Virgin and the Archangel Gabriel, at the Cima. He seemed to be looking for something to focus his attention on instead of the body of Santa Teodora.

He found it. He pointed to the other side of the church.

“That old woman there looks scary. I think she's a
strega
. Yes, she's a wicked witch, the Mala Regina, and I want to know why she's here!”

Sister Veronica, though patient before, was now upset. Without waiting for the mother to calm or reprimand him, she knelt down and said, “Be quiet, you mustn't say such things! She's a very good woman. Her name is Maria, like the mother of Jesus. She loves Santa Teodora.”

“I don't care who she loves,” he cried. “I think she's ugly and a witch! I want to go home!”

He ran to his mother and buried his face in her coat.

2

HALF an hour later a young British couple were examining the masks in Cavatorta's shop in the Calle dell'Arcanzolo a few steps from the Campo San Gabriele.

“That one is Arlecchino, Harlequin,” the mask maker said, “the buffoon.” He started to explain the character when the wife, an attractive blonde, interrupted him.

“You speak English very well but your accent isn't by any chance…?”

“Yes, Australian. My teacher was from Perth.” He scratched his beard. “And I have cousins in Australia who visit from time to time.”

“How interesting. And this?” She took another leather mask from the wall and put it in front of her pale face.

“That's Pantalone.”

“Pantalone?” said the husband. “I'm afraid I'm not familiar with these characters.”