Liquid Desires (35 page)

Dear dead women, with such hair too—what's become of all the gold.

Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

Eugene turned to stare at Urbino.

“Hold on there, boy!” Eugene said loudly. “Talkin' to yourself again, are you? That's what comes of livin' alone. If you only had someone besides that pussycat of yours—”

And Eugene now launched into a diatribe against Urbino's solitary existence, the point of which was that Urbino was going to have a wonderful reunion with the long-lost Evangeline.

10

Urbino spent the next morning under an umbrella on the Cipriani terrace gazing off at the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore and watching Eugene disporting in the pool. Every ten or fifteen minutes Eugene burst into a stream of raillery to induce Urbino to get out of his street clothes, put on a bathing suit, and join him in the pool. Urbino remained where he was, sipping his Bellinis. Although the exercise would be good for him, he was too distracted by thoughts about Flavia to want to do anything but stay where he was for a while longer.

After a buffet lunch Urbino took Eugene to the Scuola Grande di San Teodoro near the Rialto Bridge where there was an exhibit of Dalí's sculptures and illustrations. Urbino vaguely hoped that the exhibit might provide some insight into Flavia. Near the entrance was a sculpture of a huge flesh-colored tongue, a woman's lips, and a nose that was also a painted clock forever telling the hour of five to one.

Eugene pointed to a fire extinguisher nearby.

“Good idea that,” he said. “Must be quite a few people who end up settin' these kind of things on fire.”

Shaking his head, Eugene went over to a bronze sculpture of an extremely long-necked Venus with a small, pullout drawer for her bosom and a deeper drawer for her stomach, all resting on a U-shaped stand.

“I ask you, Urbino—what's the point? You're supposed to know about these things. I liked the
Liquid
picture at that Guggenheim gal's place—or I
think
I did—but these just leave me feelin' they're a joke I'll never understand even if I live as long as Sylvester!”

Fortunately Eugene didn't wait for Urbino to try to comment on the Venus but went over to a group of paintings.

“My God, Urbino, look at
this
one,” Eugene almost shouted. “Just listen to this here title:
My Nude Wife Contemplatin' Her Own Flesh Becomin' Stairs, Three Vertebrae of a Column, Sky and Architecture
. Now ain't
that
a mouthful!”

Several people turned in Eugene's direction. A woman's raspy voice said in Italian, “Why do people like that even bother to come to a Dalí exhibit?”

Urbino was surprised to find that the speaker was Violetta Volpi—and the recipient of her comment Bernardo, who was sitting in a wheelchair. Violetta must have brought her husband on an outing—one, Urbino assumed, of her own choosing.

Violetta and Bernardo were in front of Dalí's
Lady with Head of Roses
, a silk screen that reproduced an original 1935 painting. The woman with the flowers covering her head was immediately suggestive of the young woman in the white dress in
The Birth of Liquid Desires
, which had been painted several years before.

“Signor Macintyre,” Violetta Volpi said when she saw Urbino. Bernardo didn't even look in his direction. “What a surprise! Are you here to refine your appreciation for Dalí?” She nodded toward Eugene, who was bending over to get a better view of the painting he had just described so loudly. “Can you imagine such people!” She shook her head.

“Actually, Signora Volpi, the gentleman is with me,” Urbino said, feeling strangely gratified to admit his association with Eugene.

“I see. It seems that he has something in common with Bernardo. He's not enjoying the Dalís as much as we expected, are you, dear?” Bernardo made no response but continued to stare blankly at the
Lady with Head of Roses
.

Eugene came up and Urbino made the introductions.

“I don't take to any of these paintings here,” Eugene explained to Violetta, “but I kind of like the
Liquid
picture at the palazzo with the top chopped off. Do you know it, ma'am?”

“Yes, I do,” Violetta said, speaking in almost accentless English. “It's one of my favorites.”

“Wanted to buy it, but Urbino here said it wasn't for sale. Had to settle for a measly little postcard.”

“How interesting,” Violetta said.

Eugene started to talk to Bernardo about Dalí's “cockeyed view of things,” finding Bernardo the best audience possible since the man, as usual, made no response. Violetta drew Urbino to one side.

“My brother-in-law tells me that you've returned the scrapbook, Signor Macintyre. He said that you parted on fairly good terms.”

“With the strains of his Mozart sonata still in my ears.”

Violetta looked at Urbino sharply, as if to detect any irony in his response.

“He is a master, isn't he?” she said.

“Most definitely, Signora Volpi—just as you are.”

Once again Violetta looked at him as if in search of something beyond his words.

“A master, however, of a different art, of course,” Urbino went on. “But all the arts—whatever they are—are one.”

“Yes, they do say that. Well, we must be on our way, Signor Macintyre. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Hennepin,” she added in English. “I hope you continue to enjoy the exhibit.”

Urbino and Eugene watched Violetta Volpi wheel her husband to the exit where an attendant helped her.

“Maybe the woman was hopin' for a miracle cure, Urbino, her poor old husband bein' all crippled up the way he is. Maybe she thought he'd get up and start walkin' out on his own steam just to put some distance between himself and all this stuff. That's what I intend to do. Come on. Let's go have one of those beers that cost an arm and a leg.”

11

In early evening, after he had returned to the Palazzo Uccello for a rest, Urbino went to the dilapidated building in the Castello quarter where Ladislao Mirko had lived with his father, Vladimir. He had to ring only two doorbells in the building before he found someone who could tell him something. Venetians seldom moved. When they did, it was usually completely away from Venice.

“Oh, yes, signore, I remember the family very well,” the stout, elderly woman said as they stood in her front hallway. “More Yugoslavian than Italian, they were. My husband and I were friendly to them when they first arrived. That must be more than twenty years ago. How time flies! I could see right away that the mother had her eye on other men, always smiling at my Giovanni, and it was no surprise to me when she just up and ran away with some man or other. Never came back. Left her son and her husband just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “A husband needs a good woman and a son needs a good mother. The father ended up taking everything out on his son. The arguments we would hear!” She shook her head at the memory. “That poor boy was beat up real regular every week, it seemed. Alcohol and drugs were the devils. Well, they finally did the father in. He nearly burned down the whole building about ten or so years ago with his drug-taking. A noise as loud as anything, it was, in the dead of night. His apartment went up like a tinderbox. The firemen had a hard time saving our building.”

“Was his son home at the time?”

“He wasn't or he would have ended just as burned up! No, he went off hours before, after one of their arguments. Didn't even know what happened to his father until the next day when he came by with this real good-looking girl I saw him with from time to time. Didn't seem at all upset, and I didn't blame him. I took pity on him and let him stay in our spare room until he found a place of his own. Haven't seen him in years. From what I hear, he'll end up the same way. Not much better than his father and twice as ugly, though that's not any of his fault. Opened a pensione somewhere in Dorsoduro.”

The woman's telephone started to ring.

“Excuse me, signore, but that's all I know. Good-day.”

After talking with the woman, Urbino stopped at a nearby café for several soggy
tramezzini
sandwiches left over from lunch, trying to fit what he had just learned into the pattern of events swirling around the life and death of Flavia Brollo. Before leaving the café, he called the Questura, but was told that Commissario Gemelli had left for the day.

Urbino walked slowly back to the Palazzo Uccello, choosing a less frequented route. The temperature had dropped, and fog had started to creep into these relatively quiet alleys and empty squares. The fog transformed the few people he met into mysterious figures who might have been ghosts from a former era. Whatever sounds occasionally intruded seemed to come from far away even though they might be emanating from the building he was passing or the
campo
he had just left. It was one of the tricks of the city, this distortion of sound, and was as characteristic—and as disorienting—as the twinning of the stones in the waters below and the signs that pointed in two different directions for the same destination.

Urbino entered a dark passageway beneath a building. Above him were the wooden beams supporting someone's parlor or bedroom, but the
sottoportego
itself was a public passageway that connected the
campo
he had just left with the embankment of a canal twenty meters ahead. Fog curled up from the water of the canal and was drifting into the covered passageway in stealthy waves.

Occasionally Urbino would step into one of these passageways to find someone doing the same at the opposite end. It was as if he were looking into a mirror. For a few confusing moments, the details of the other person became his own. He was looking at himself, walking toward himself and wanting to turn around and flee. These moments were always brief but they were unsettling, leaving their ghostly imprint on his nerves long after he had passed the other person and had given what he suspected was an embarrassed smile.

And now it was all about to happen again. Turning into the other end of the
sottoportego
was a tall, slim figure. Whether a man or a woman, Urbino couldn't tell from the darkness and fog. Instead of continuing on through the passageway toward Urbino, the figure halted, stood still for several moments, and then turned quickly and disappeared around the corner it had just come from.

Urbino stopped. Because the other person's behavior had departed so drastically from what he had been expecting, he was taken aback. And there was something else. The figure had seemed vaguely familiar to him, and he couldn't shake the feeling that the other person had recognized him.

Urbino considered retracing his steps, as he couldn't help but remember what had happened in the deserted
calle
last week when he had been mugged by the two men in caps. But he advanced under the
sottoportego
, his step perhaps just a little less assured than it had been a few moments before. When he reached the canal end of the covered passageway beneath the building, he walked even more slowly and peered around the corner in the direction the figure had gone.

The fog was much thicker here, but Urbino could make out the tall, slim form standing next to a street shrine of the Virgin. Should he go ahead or turn around? He decided to continue along the canal embankment, but not without a feeling of apprehension. Lighted windows were open, but how long would it take for someone to respond to the sound of a scuffle or a cry for help?

As he drew nearer to the figure, it seemed to become more and more familiar until recognition came a few seconds before a pleasant, well-modulated voice said, “Urbino, it
is
you! I don't know whether I was hoping or dreading that it was.”

Madge Lennox's androgynous face gleamed whitely through the fog.

12

Fifteen minutes later Urbino and Madge Lennox were sitting in the parlor of the Palazzo Uccello. She had said little on the walk back from the canal embankment, telling him she would explain everything in the safety and comfort of his place.

“I was searching around for your little palazzo for an hour! I was afraid someone was following me,” Madge was now saying in her low, controlled voice as she sat in the Venetian baroque chair with a gin and tonic. She was wearing yet another turban, this one in tones of lavender and lilac. Urbino realized that he had never seen the retired actress's hair except, of course, in her films. And then it had seemed to vary from light brown to a deep auburn not unlike Flavia's. “With the dark and the fog I got completely lost and then when I saw you at the end of the passage I suddenly didn't think it was a good idea anymore and turned around. Maybe I should leave well enough alone, I thought. I might be putting myself in danger. I was trying to make up my mind when you came after me.” She took a sip of her drink. “You said that Flavia trusted me. You were right, but at first I thought that was why I shouldn't tell you anything more. Now I realize it's exactly why I should tell you what I know.”

Remembering her reaction when she had seen the Dalí reproduction, Urbino said, “It's about the Dalí, isn't it?”

She seemed almost offended, as if an actress shouldn't have been able to give anything away.

“Yes,” she said, looking at him unblinkingly with her dark eyes. “It's about the Dalí.”

Before Madge started to tell him exactly what it was, Urbino knew. What else could it be? Everything had been there, ready to fall into place: Flavia's fascination with the Dalí painting, her subsequent uneasiness when Tina Zuin even mentioned it, Nicolina Ricci's rape by a close friend of the family, Lorenzo's reaction to hearing that Flavia had torn Dalí's sexual tableau from her copy of the Guggenheim catalog, and what Urbino had learned from Zuin—that it was Lorenzo who had been bidding against Eugene for Flavia's nude portrait. Lorenzo would have had the painting for his own delectation in his private collection at the Palazzo Brollo. Once again the words from the Biennale flashed across his mind, “Fathers often use too much force.”