Liquid Desires (31 page)

“And Ladislao Mirko? Did you like him, Tina?”

The question seemed to take her by surprise.

“Like him?” She looked quickly at Novembrini and then away. “Why I—I never disliked him. I suppose I felt sorry for him, considering the hard life he had. He's trying to turn over a new leaf now with his pensione. He has a good side. I went out with him for a while when I was sixteen. It was so strange. It made Flavia jealous even though she didn't want him as a boyfriend.”

“I can't imagine you going out with that creep,” Novembrini interjected, an edge to his smooth voice.

“Well, I did,” Tina responded almost defiantly. “He's not attractive, that's for sure, but he could be charming in his own way, and he was an older guy and all. But he tried to pressure me to go too fast. I wasn't ready. In any case I wouldn't have wanted anything to come between me and Flavia. Even though we weren't as close as before, she still considered me as her best girlfriend. Why, just a few weeks before she died, right before she got some crazy idea and slashed Bruno's painting, she gave me a whole lot of money. I decided to move into a place of my own. My father was against it, and I needed money. Flavia gave me two million lire,” Tina said, naming a sum close to two thousand dollars. “She said it was mine, and she laughed in such a strange way that it frightened me. I didn't want to take it but she said she had more from where it came from.”

This was the first Urbino had heard about Flavia having had a lot of money. What became of it? Was it possible that he was dealing with a case of a mugging gone wrong? Could she have left the money somewhere for safekeeping?

“Tina, would you tell him about the Dalí painting so we can leave? I need a cigarette.”

“Oh, yes, the Dalí. Flavia loved that painting. Her aunt Violetta introduced her to it. We used to go to the Guggenheim every couple of weeks. I'm afraid we were silly, running around giggling at the crazy paintings, especially the ones with nude men and women. We got a big charge out of the nude man on the horse on the terrace next to the Grand Canal and—”

This obviously awakened an unpleasant association and Tina Zuin stopped short.

“But the Dalí was Flavia's favorite,” she went on. “We laughed over it even more than we did any of the other paintings. We were just kids. All we saw in the painting was sex! Two naked men, and the older one even had a woman's breast and a very large—” Tina blushed and didn't finish the sentence. “I think she eventually outgrew the painting, though. She hardly mentioned it after her mother died. When I brought it up recently to cheer her up and remind her of old times, it seemed to do the opposite, so I let it drop. You see, Signor Macintyre, there's not that much that I can tell you, but I want you to know that Flavia was a good girl. I never would have done anything to hurt her and neither would Bruno.”

Urbino asked Tina if Flavia had been taking any medication. To her knowledge she hadn't. One of the last things Tina said was that Flavia had been very careful about taking even aspirin and that she seldom, if ever, drank.

After they left, Urbino took out the postcard of Dalí's
The Birth of Liquid Desires
. Aside from what the painting might “mean” or what it had “meant” to Dalf, it had obviously fascinated Flavia with its sexuality. This Urbino could understand.

But was it true that Flavia had “outgrown” it, as Tina Zuin had suggested? If she had, then why did she tear the page with the Dalí color plate out of the catalog? Violetta had given her the catalog only five years ago for her twenty-first birthday. Had she torn out the page to put on her wall or in her scrapbook, or had she done something else with it?

When Tina had brought up the Dalí painting with Flavia recently, Flavia didn't seem to find it a pleasant reminder. If Urbino could only find out why Flavia had reacted this way, he might be closer to understanding what had happened to her the night she had been murdered.

Tina Zuin had ended up telling him much more than she seemed to realize. Arranging it with everything he already knew, Urbino was trying to see a pattern. He believed that he was close to seeing one, but there was still too much getting in the way. He needed more time and more information to clear away the debris.

3

At ten the next morning, a Friday, the air was heavy and damp when Urbino left the Palazzo Uccello. He had been kept up almost all night, tormented by his speculations and by a squadron of the
laguna morta
's most persistent mosquitoes. Urbino was on his way to the Palazzo Brollo on the other side of the Grand Canal to return Flavia's scrapbook and to ask Lorenzo Brollo some more questions.

As Urbino was ferried across the Grand Canal in a gondola that had given its best years to the tourist trade, he was more oppressed than relieved by the fetid breeze that stirred the slightly oily waters of the canal. Even the sea gulls and pigeons seemed to be in a torpor. The thunderstorm on the night Flavia was murdered hadn't broken the heat wave, but perhaps another one would. Only something violent could make a change. The city might then enjoy a few days of comfort before it once again became trapped under a glass bell of heat and humidity.

Urbino got off the gondola and walked slowly through San Polo toward the Palazzo Brollo. The canals were low, exposing the understructures of the buildings and giving glimpses of debris embedded in the sludge of the canal beds. Only flat-bottomed boats like gondolas and sandolos could negotiate these canals at low tide.

Several years ago the canal by the Palazzo Uccello had been drained, revealing all the refuse on the bottom. The odor had been unbearable, and Urbino had stayed at the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini until the work was finished. His housekeeper Natalia had covered her nose and mouth almost constantly with a scented handkerchief.

Annabella Brollo, smelling of stale sweat and anisette and with purple rings of fatigue beneath her eyes, showed Urbino up to the dark
sala
with its Oriental carpets, portraits in heavy wooden frames, and profusion of plants and flowers. This morning the long, narrow room seemed even more like an aqueous tomb than it had two days ago. The air, heavy with the scent of flowers, was even staler, as if the balcony doors hadn't been opened since then. Brollo must have finished
Little Dorrit
, for on the small, round table next to a fresh arrangement of crimson Cattleya orchids and the photograph of Brollo, Regina, and ten-year-old Flavia was
The Old Curiosity Shop
.

“I believe you have something that belongs to me, Signor Macintyre,” Brollo said without preliminary. Dressed in his English blazer, cravat, and flannel slacks, he was seated on the Louis Seize banquette near his wife's portrait. Urbino handed him the scrapbook and sat down in one of the armchairs.

“More than a little belated,” Brollo said in his precise British English, running a palm over his bald crown. “I wonder what pleasure you get invading my daughter's privacy like that. Well, you might be relieved to know that I blame mainly Ladislao Mirko for this impropriety. It wasn't his business to give the scrapbook to you. He hasn't made a clear-minded decision in decades.” Brollo tossed the scrapbook on the low table in front of the sofa. “I've also heard that you've been showing around some kind of postcard. Yes, Violetta told me. She might be only a sister-in-law but she has a devotion to the Brollos. And we Brollos still
are
a family—Annabella and I, sadly reduced though we are.”

As delicately as possible, Urbino mentioned what Graziella Gnocato had said in reference to Regina Brollo's confidences to Flavia about Alvise da Capo-Zendrini.

“Mirko said that Flavia told him the same thing.”

An effort at control was visible along Brollo's jawline.

“So this is what you were getting at the other day! I don't believe for a second that my wife said such a thing! You shouldn't trust the memory of an old woman, Signor Macintyre. She should be more careful than to malign a dead woman, a woman who, I might add, was always good to her and even provided for her in her will. As for that poor excuse for a man, Ladislao Mirko, it is beneath me to speculate about the possible motives of someone who is always high on one substance or another! He's ruined every business he's turned his hand to! He'll lose that pensione sooner or later and end up just like his father. As the French say,
‘Tel père, tel
—'” Brollo declined to complete the adage, so similar to the one he had used two days ago about Flavia and her mother. He frowned. “Let me assure you of something, Signor Macintyre,” he said, raising his voice slightly. “If you bother me anymore with questions such as these, I will inform the police. This is harassment. You are meddling in affairs that are no concern of yours. This is an affront, an invasion of our privacy!”

“The Contessa da Capo-Zendrini—”

“I don't care a fig for the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini and any crazy notions my poor daughter might have passed on to her or any fantasies either of you have about my daughter having been murdered! Now Violetta tells me that the two of you think that you've got proof of some kind just because none of that medication was found in my Flavia's body! You aren't seeing things clearly because you don't
want
to! Tell your friend that she will be much happier if she just accepts the truth—that my daughter was a disturbed young woman who ended up hurting people who loved her.”

Brollo shook his head sadly.

“My daughter said many things that weren't true. I hesitate to call them lies only out of respect for her now that she's gone. Children can be very cruel to their parents. You are trying to find some silly intrigue here, Signor Macintyre. I tell you there is none. All this talk about Salvador Dalí and Yves Tanguy and tape recordings and pages ripped out of books! What do they have to do with me? Nothing! I'm not interested in looking for answers to every question that might trouble me in any one day. I'm not a stranger to grief and I know that—at least for
me
—when someone dies you have to let go of a great deal.” His eyes flicked in the direction of his wife's portrait. “Guilt, the baggage of the past, suspicions, unanswered questions—they all have to go when you lose someone you love. Best to close the door on everything but the good memories and the things you know for sure. Regina was a good wife to me, the best she could be. If she ever hurt me, it was because of her illness—but she never hurt me in
that
way!”

Brollo sat back. But his eyes were softer now and, with his neat gray fringe of hair, for a moment he struck Urbino as a lapsed monk, as someone who remembered and regretted a better life. Involuntarily, Urbino's heart went out to this man who had lost his wife and his daughter—if Flavia had been, in fact, any flesh of his.

Brollo sighed deeply.

“I'll satisfy you on one score, Signor Macintyre. I'll tell you what I think of this Dalí painting. Violetta described it for me in more detail than I cared to hear. I've never seen it. My tastes are more traditional,” he said, turning down his mouth in almost a parody of distaste. “My sister-in-law is an intelligent and talented woman, but perhaps she made a mistake in exposing my daughter to that kind of art at a vulnerable age. I would have preferred that Violetta had encouraged her along different lines. The Accademia Gallery is where she should have brought her. Why not give her a catalog of their Tintorettos and Giorgiones and Veroneses! The mind and the soul are inspired by great art!”

Urbino, who couldn't have agreed with Brollo more, once again felt a surge of understanding for the man, but it didn't deter him from posing another question that was bound to disturb him.

“Did your sister-in-law also tell you that I asked her about Lago di Garda—about an argument Mirko says he heard between you and Violetta in your wife's bedroom?”

Urbino asked the question just as Annabella entered the
sala
without a sound. He was happy to see that her tray didn't hold coffee and anisette on this sweltering day, but just two
spremute di limone
.

Brollo stiffened, but Annabella showed no response. She moved Flavia's scrapbook aside to make room for the tray and left as soundlessly as she had entered.

“Yes, Violetta told me, but no such argument ever took place, at Lago di Garda or anywhere else. Ladislao Mirko is always hearing voices, and when he isn't, he's spreading lies for his own advantage. Just ask yourself this question, Signor Macintyre: If you had a lovely, intelligent daughter with her life all before her, would you want her hanging around the likes of a Ladislao Mirko, someone just waiting to pull her down to his level, just waiting for his chance to do with her as he wanted? No!”

Beads of perspiration stood out on Brollo's slightly quivering upper lip. Urbino had just been given another example of the anger that Brollo was able to keep in check most of the time. Brollo took out a handkerchief and patted his lip.

“Your inquiries are an insult to me and my wife—and to our daughter,” Brollo said, his voice now back under control.

Urbino expected to be asked to leave, without even having a chance to touch his lemonade, but Brollo, perhaps wanting him to go away only with the best impression of him, pulled his mouth into a thin-lipped smile.

“There's no need for all this quibbling,” Brollo said in his clipped voice, with a transparent effort at downplaying the hostility that he obviously felt for Urbino. “Why don't we just sit here and drink our lemonades in a civilized manner, Signor Macintyre? Then I'll play something on the piano for you.”

Brollo, with no attempt at transition, then began a quietly controlled tirade against the Biennale, making conversation unnecessary. He passed from this year's Biennale to the one two years ago, reserving most of his scorn for that exhibit's United States Pavilion.

“All those lights flashing those absolutely ridiculous statements. So pathetically American, excuse me, Signor Macintyre. I can still remember some of them. ‘Romantic love was invented to manipulate women' and ‘An elite is inevitable' and ‘Expiring for love is beautiful but stupid'! I ask you, Signor Macintyre, are such things art?”