Liquid Desires (25 page)

Urbino set out for the Guggenheim, hardly noticing the noisy crowds or registering the heat that had clamped back down on the city after the respite last night. As he walked, he kept seeing Flavia's face in front of him and thinking how much she had resembled her mother, how she had seemed to have very little of Lorenzo Brollo in her. Urbino wished he had known Alvise. If he had, would he have seen any traces of him in Flavia? Urbino had seen many photographs of Alvise but, unlike the portrait and the photograph of Regina Brollo, they didn't help him one way or another. If the Contessa had noticed any likeness, she was keeping it to herself—perhaps even
from
herself.

It was a few minutes past eleven and the Guggenheim was just opening. Urbino bought postcard reproductions of Tanguy's
The Sun in Its Casket
and Dalí's
The Birth of Liquid Desires
at the counter and asked the young man if he could see the director. While he was waiting, he went to look at the Tanguy and the Dalí, studying their bizarre and disturbing images.

Although Urbino knew the dangers of being literal-minded when it came to art, he suspected that the young Flavia Brollo—and perhaps even the mature one—might have “read” the two paintings as if they were a story. Urbino contemplated the Tanguy landscape with its peculiar forms that seemed to inhabit a shadowland between things living and things dead. What had someone once said about Tanguy? That “he painted the most tragic landscapes the mind has never seen.” What interest had the painting held for Flavia?

Urbino turned his attentions to the Dalí with its naked men and white-gowned women, one of whom had her arms around the older, sinister-looking man. This was the one with a woman's breast visible as well as an erect penis, covered by a scarf.

A few minutes later the director, a tall man in his early forties wearing an Ermenegildo Zegna suit, joined him. Urbino introduced himself, saying he was considering writing a biography of Peggy Guggenheim in Venice and had some questions about the Tanguy and the Dalí.

“Ah, yes,
The Sun in Its Jewel Case
or
Le Soleil dans son écrin
. Many people like to translate
écrin
as ‘casket.' It gives the painting an extra fillip, induces
un certain frisson
. But the painting is quite disturbing with any title, I'm sure you would agree. It was painted in 1937. Miss Guggenheim first saw it in 1938 at the Tanguy exhibition in London. It frightened her, but she eventually overcame her fear and bought it. There are four other Tanguys in the collection. As for
La nascita di desideri liquidi
,” the director said in an Italian as faultless as his French as they moved over to the Dalí, “it's one of our two Dalí's. Gala, Dalí's wife, chose the painting for Miss Guggenheim in the winter of 1940 when Miss Guggenheim had decided to buy a ‘picture a day.' Miss Guggenheim—”

The director continued with more details about the painting's provenance. When he finished, having seemed to bow his head every time he mentioned Peggy Guggenheim's name, Urbino asked if anyone had ever tried to harm them. The director stiffened.

“The Guggenheim Collection has never had any problems of that kind, sir.”

“I'm glad to hear it. Have you ever seen this woman here?”

Urbino showed him the obituary photograph of Regina Brollo from the scrapbook. It wasn't Regina he was interested in knowing about, of course, but in the absence of a photograph of Flavia, this might serve the purpose.

The director frowned when he looked at the photograph and quickly handed it back.

“I can see that you have less interest in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection than in the young woman whose body was found in the Grand Canal. We have already made our statements to the police. Good-day.”

The director nodded stiffly and hurried away.

“Sure I recognize her,” the young man behind the counter said a few minutes later. “Beautiful red hair, right?”

Urbino would have found it amusing if so much wasn't at stake. No more than the director had, the young man didn't seem to realize that he wasn't looking at a photograph of the young woman he remembered so well, although he squinted down at it again with a puzzled frown.

“She usually comes on Saturday evenings when there's no charge—sometimes two or three Saturdays in a row. I've been on vacation for the last two weeks. Today's my first day back. Maybe she'll be in this Saturday. Do you want me to give her a message?”

“Was she interested in any school of painting or any particular artist?” Urbino asked, ignoring the question.

“Certainly was. She loved the Dalí over there—
The Birth of Liquid Desires
—one of the ones you bought a card of. She used to come in just to look at it. It isn't as strange as it sounds, though. We get a lot of people who study one or two paintings, sometimes for weeks. I tried to become friendly with her about two months ago. I was working the floor and started to talk about the painting—more or less a one-sided conversation. I said I liked it, too. She asked me why, and I started to talk about Dalí's use of collage and color and the water symbolism—all in Italian. I was proud of myself. She just laughed and said in almost perfect English, ‘You read all that in a book, didn't you?' She was mocking me. I guess she's a bitch but she's a real looker.”

“Was she interested in Tanguy's
The Sun in Its Casket
?”

“I can't say that she paid a whole lot of attention to it—not the way she did to the Dalí, but they're usually hung in the same room, so I might not have noticed.”

4

Forty-five minutes later Urbino found Eugene waiting for him at the Caffè Paradiso outside the gates of the Biennale exhibition grounds. They had sandwiches and beer on the crowded terrace. Judgments and opinions about the art in the pavilions were thick in the air, and deals were being made at many of the tables. Hectic though it was today, it was nothing compared to the way it had been before the late-June opening. Urbino had gone to several cocktail parties at the time, all of which the Contessa had declined to attend. After her disorienting experience during the last Biennale, when she almost passed out at the United States Pavilion in the room with the electronic lines of colored text, she had steered clear of the modern art show.

Eugene stared at Urbino's face, putting down his now empty beer mug. He shook his head.

“That dead girl's heavy on your mind, Urbino. You still get that scrunched-up look when you're thinkin' hard. Evie would say, ‘I can tell he's thinkin' something and he's thinkin' something bad, Genie.' Used to worry the dickens out of the poor girl with your moods, especially toward the end when she knew you were lookin' for another reason why you couldn't go into sugar cane. And you
still
worry her! I know I'm tellin' tales out of school, but what the heck! I talked to Evie this morning and told her you're pokin' your nose into other people's business—a dead girl's business, I said. Didn't breathe a word about murder. Evie of course wanted to know what the dead girl looked like. Had to tell her I
heard
she was a beauty but she was dead by the time I got to see her, and she wasn't lookin' so good then. I had to imagine real hard what she must have looked like, I told her, but I'm about to change all that now. Come on. Let's go to the Italy Pavilion.”

Eugene wouldn't give any further explanation as they went into the Biennale grounds. As Urbino caught sight of the neoclassical United States Pavilion, straight ahead, something tugged at his mind. Once again, as had happened when he was with the Contessa on the Ponte degli Alpini, words of some kind were trying to intrude on his consciousness.

When Urbino and Eugene entered the Italy Pavilion, Eugene strode ahead into the room with Novembrini's paintings. Both Bruno Novembrini, dressed as usual in commanding black, and Massimo Zuin seemed to be expecting Eugene, but were surprised to see Urbino entering behind him.

“Here it is,” Eugene said, throwing his arm out.

On the wall was
Nude in a Funeral Gondola
. Flavia stared directly and provocatively at Urbino, her hand nestled between her legs like Titian's naked Venus. Nothing seemed damaged about the painting—not Flavia's pearl-colored skin, her green eyes, the ebony funeral gondola, or the lion weeping into a black handkerchief.

“It's repaired already?” he asked Zuin and Novembrini.

“Certainly is,” Massimo Zuin responded, rubbing his hand beneath the long gray hair at the nape of his neck. Today he wore a mauve pocket square with his light blue suit. “It wasn't all that damaged.”

“So what do you think, Urbino?” Eugene said with a big smile. “I can see why you're hung up on the dead girl.”

Eugene took in Flavia's exposed flesh and seductive position in the black gondola.

“She was certainly a looker, but what's that angel with a beard supposed to mean? And that lion with a handkerchief? It's almost as strange as that
Liquid
picture at the Peggy that Urbino and I took a gander at last week—the one with buck-naked men lurkin' around some rocks. Do you know the painting I'm talkin' about, fellows? Oh, yes, I have to admit I've seen some very peculiar pictures in this town. No offense to you, Mr. November. Your painting of this naked girl might be strange but I bought it, didn't I?”

“You bought it?” Urbino said.

“Yessiree! Told Mr. Zuin if he could get it fixed up quick I'd be mighty happy. He wants to keep it here until the big show's over. Seems I was biddin' against someone almost as eager to get it as me. Thought it might be you at first, Urbino. Ha, ha! Just the kind of thing you would do. But Mr. Zuin said it wasn't. Somebody who wanted to remain anonymous. Couldn't offer you a bit more, could I, Mr. Zuin, so that Urbino can take it home right now?”

Novembrini and Zuin looked stunned. Urbino wondered who the other bidder could have been. Perhaps there hadn't been one. Dealers were known to drive up the price of a painting by even more devious methods than that.

“But Mr. Hennepin, I thought you would be taking it back to the States with you,” Zuin said.

“With me? Ha, ha! I'd just like to see what May-Foy would do if I brought something like that home with me! No offense, but May-Foy doesn't take to naked ladies.”

“Eugene, I couldn't possibly accept it,” Urbino said, turning to his ex—brother-in-law.

“Now don't tell me you don't like it. I know you do. My thinkin' is this. If you have the picture, then maybe you'll get this dead girl out of your system. After a while you won't even notice she's in the room. That happens all the time to me with our stuff back home. I'm always sayin' to May-Foy, ‘Lookee here, dear, wherever did this come from?' Seems most of it's been there for years!”

Novembrini said something under his breath to Zuin, who colored and looked nervously at Urbino.

“We'll talk about it later, Eugene.”

“You can talk as much as you want, Urbino, but you ain't goin' to refuse a gift given from the bottom of my heart. Don't worry. I didn't pay as much as I expected. I can see from the look on your face, Mr. Zuin, that you're surprised about that! Well, the deal's over and done with. The painting's mine, and now it's Urbino's.”

Eugene started to make a circuit of the room—“My last chance to see Mr. November's paintings,” he said—and left Urbino in uncomfortable silence with Novembrini and Zuin. Urbino took out the Dalí postcard.

“Does this mean anything to you, Signor Novembrini?” he asked, handing it to the artist.

Novembrini stared at it for a few seconds.

“Does it mean anything to me?” Novembrini repeated in his melodious voice, handing back the postcard. “It certainly does! The height of charlatanism! The work of a showman, not an artist. What's the anagram that Breton made of Dalí's name? ‘Avida Dollars,' right? Suited him perfectly.
The Birth of Liquid Desires
, indeed! More like
The Desire for Liquid Cash
!”

“Come, come, Bruno!” Zuin said, putting a hand on Novembrini's shoulder but quickly removing it when the artist moved almost imperceptibly away. “You owe something to the Surrealists, as you well know, and a bit of showmanship in an artist isn't necessarily a bad thing. What's the good of an artist who has no sense of his own worth?”

“You won't get me to say much good about that painting or about Dalí himself,” Novembrini said, irritated. “He's far from a favorite of mine.”

“Was he a favorite of Flavia Brollo's?”

“She had better taste than that,” Novembrini said. “I used to rant and rave against Dalí from time to time but she never said anything. She just listened. What's this all about, Macintyre?”

“It's just that Flavia used to visit the Guggenheim to see the painting. An attendant there says she liked it very much.”

“It's the first I ever heard of it.”

“And there's another thing. Flavia ripped out the page in her Guggenheim catalog that had the Dalí reproduction. On the other side was this Yves Tanguy.”

He handed Novembrini the other card. The artist looked at it silently and gave it back with a disinterested shrug.

“Means nothing to me as far as Flavia is concerned.”

“Maybe she didn't like the Tanguy and didn't want it in her book even if it was on the other side of the Dalí,” Zuin suggested. “She seems to have been in the habit of stabbing at things she didn't like. I guess I shouldn't have said that, should I?” He gave Novembrini a nervous glance. “Let me see the Dalf card, Signor Macintyre.”

Zuin stared down at the reproduction.

“Flavia used to rip things out of books and magazines,” Novembrini said. “She would put them on the wall of my studio. She ruined a lot of books but it didn't seem to bother her. By the way, Macintyre, I told Massimo about our conversation in Campo Santa Margherita. He's just as skeptical as I am that Flavia might have been murdered. And as for the Conte da Capo-Zendrini, Massimo knows no more about that business than I do.”