Liquid Desires (5 page)

“While I was away I got two strange phone calls. One was from Silvestro. Alvise was lost without me, he said, and when was I planning to put the poor man out of his misery? The other call was from Oriana.” Oriana Borelli was a friend of the Contessa's who lived in Venice on the Island of Giudecca. “Oriana said that as a friend she advised me to come back immediately. When I asked her what she meant, she paused and said that people were talking, ‘people who mattered,' she emphasized. You can imagine how puzzled I was. Oriana worrying about what people thought, when she and Filippo conduct their extramarital affairs like an opera buffa! But I assumed she was concerned about my reputation even if she never seemed to be about hers. I left England within forty-eight hours. Tommaso stayed on for another week.

“Alvise came back from Lago di Garda and hardly ever mentioned my trip to England with Tommaso. He had a gift waiting for me—the nymph that's now at the center of the maze.” Her face clouded. “Not having children puts a tremendous strain on a relationship when the two people want to have them, but I never felt that Alvise blamed me.”

“Surely it wasn't a question of blame.”

“You know what I mean. He never made me feel that it was because of me that he—that
we
,” she emphasized, “were being denied something. But I've felt it as just that,
caro
—a denial, a deprivation. I thought it would get better as the years went by but it's become worse since Alvise died.”

Urbino had always believed that the Contessa's not having children had been the only real deficiency in her otherwise idyllic marriage, one that she and Alvise had adjusted to down through the years. But now Flavia had come into the picture—had, in fact, rudely intruded herself into it. How drastic an adjustment might the Contessa have to make in the way she viewed her marriage?

The Contessa was nearing the end of her story, speaking more quickly, as if eager to get her part over with so that Urbino could begin his.

“After that low point, we seemed to grow even closer. For a while, though, I couldn't help but have negative feelings about the maze, but when I thought of the nymph, I saw the maze as almost symbolic of what we had gone through—a difficult time that was now behind us. I've never had any reason to think differently.”

The Contessa's unspoken words—“until now”—hung over them as they sat there on the terrace of the Caffè Centrale. Neither of them said anything. They watched the scene in front of them, so different from the hurly-burly of high-season Venice to which Urbino would be returning this evening. The Contessa absently greeted an acquaintance as the woman walked past the winged-lion fountain.

“So that's the story,
caro
. Make what you can of it. I'm no fool and I don't expect you to pretend to be one—for my sake or anyone else's. This young lady was obviously born around the time of the maze. Find out what you can, but be discreet. I'd prefer not to give you a list of Alvise's friends and business acquaintances unless it becomes absolutely necessary. And forget about what's left of his family. That's all I need! Oriana might be of help, though. We knew her and Filippo from the start. But you might not have to talk with anyone but Silvestro.”

“But wouldn't he be inclined to protect Alvise?”

The Contessa's wounded look made Urbino realize anew how difficult and delicate this was all going to be.

“Yes, he would, but he's grown especially fond of me, sometimes I think too fond. He may very well feel that he owes me the truth whatever it is.”

But if Occhipinti was so fond of the Contessa, what if the truth were a painful one? Perhaps the best and only way for Occhipinti to reconcile the dual claims of his old, dead friend and of the widow he had come to care so much about would be to protect them both by blithely and benevolently lying. And how would he take to Urbino's poking around in not only the da Capo-Zendrinis' past but his own as well?

Urbino hadn't even begun his inquiry yet into the possible truth behind Flavia's claim, but he could already see what was in store for him.

5

An hour later Urbino was approaching Occhipinti's building on the Via Browning, when he saw the elderly man, a straw hat perched on his bald head, walking toward him under the arcade. There was a briskness in his stride that belied his years. His cocker spaniel, Pompilia, named after a character in Browning's
The Ring and the Book
, was at his side on a leash.

“Ah, it's you, Signor Macintyre.” The birdlike man's high-pitched voice expressed surprise, as if it were unusual to see someone you knew in a small town the size of Asolo. “Out for a stroll?”

“Actually I wanted to see you, Signor Occhipinti.”

Even though Urbino had met Occhipinti on many occasions, they remained formal with each other. The man seemed in many ways from another era. It wasn't just his age or his preference for Browning, that consummately Victorian poet, but something that seemed to go to the core of this eccentric little man.

“Please come up then,” Occhipinti said, continuing in English.

He unfastened Pompilia's leash. The cocker spaniel was the latest of the dogs his sister had bought him so that people wouldn't think he was talking to himself when he went out on his walks.

Urbino followed Occhipinti and Pompilia up the dark stairs to the second-floor apartment where the man had moved fifteen years ago when he began to lease his Villa Pippa. The fact that the apartment was in the building next to the one where Browning had lived was its main attraction for him.

Occhipinti's
salotto
was crammed with Browning memorabilia. An entire wall behind a heavily upholstered chair was filled with English and Italian editions of Browning's poetry and correspondence, and biographies and critical studies of the poet. Another wall was given over to framed photographs of the poet, his home here in Asolo, the Ca' Rezzonico in Venice where he had died, and his grave at Westminster. Also displayed were an original letter from Browning to his solicitor and a program of
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
from a long-ago London production. On shelves and little tables were various objects—among them a fountain pen, a page cutter, and a chipped plaster Tower of Pisa that had supposedly once been the possessions of the poet. Occhipinti had a larger collection of Browning memorabilia than the local museum. On the sofa was an embroidered silk pillow with the lines: “Open my heart and you will see/'Graved inside of it ‘Italy.'”

“Please sit down, Signor Macintyre.” Occhipinti took his own place in the chair in front of the books. “What was it that you wanted to see me about?”

Urbino sat down on the sofa next to Pompilia.

“It's the Contessa who sent me, Signor Occhipinti.”

“Ah, yes, our beautiful Barbara. It was a lovely party yesterday, wasn't it? ‘Summer redundant, blueness abundant' and all in the Contessa's incomparable gardens.”

Occhipinti's tiny round eyes twinkled behind his even rounder, rimless spectacles.

“Yes, it was lovely,” Urbino agreed, “but not completely carefree for Barbara.”

“One's parties never are. I remember when my sister and I used to give parties at Villa Pippa. She had to have at least two glasses of Prosecco before they began. But I've never found that to be the case with
la bella
Barbara. She's always the soul of serenity.”

“It doesn't mean that she's never troubled. And she was troubled yesterday. You were there when the young woman came up to her under the pergola.”

“How could I forget? ‘A face to lose youth for, to occupy age with the dream of, meet death with'! Not only beautiful but familiar. The kind of face one seems to have seen before—perhaps in one's dreams.
La bellezza
is always both familiar and strange, don't you think, Signor Macintyre?”

“And you heard what the young woman said, didn't you, Signor Occhipinti?” Urbino asked, perhaps too abruptly, not wanting to encourage the old man's tendency to ramble, however poetically.

“Yes, I heard. ‘Any nose may ravage with impunity a rose,'” he recited, nodding his little head slowly, “but the ear is forced to hear what it would prefer not to. That is how it was yesterday afternoon.”

“Do you think there's any truth in what the woman said?”

Occhipinti threw back his little head and let out a sharp peal of laughter.

“So that is why Barbara sent you! She wants me to set your mind at ease! How foolish of her to give it a thought! The young woman is beautiful, but she was speaking nonsense.” He seemed to think for a moment before adding, “That is why I wish I had heard nothing. To upset the beautiful Barbara with such silliness! Alvise was the most faithful, devoted man.”

“Barbara is asking for your help, Signor Occhipinti. She's very upset—what woman wouldn't be?—but she needs to know the truth, and she's counting on you to help her.”

“I can only help her by telling the truth. The young woman has a father like us all, but he wasn't Alvise da Capo-Zendrini!” Pompilia, drifting off to sleep, perked up and looked at her master. “How do I know Barbara sent you here to ask these questions? I know you ask questions all the time! That's your job, isn't it?” He gestured at the wall of books. “Like some of these writers with all those crazy ideas about Browning! I can hardly read some of the things they say! Lies! Good people should be protected from such things once they're gone. But excuse me. I know you're her good friend, too. Unfortunately, though, we can't always protect the people we love from the cruelty of others, can we?”

“Is that what you think? That this young woman was being cruel?”

“Cruel or mischievous! Sometimes it's the same thing to these young people today.” Occhipinti stood up. “I'd like a glass of wine. Would you join me?”

Occhipinti got them two glasses of white wine. After they had taken a few sips, Occhipinti, staring at the embroidered pillow next to Urbino on the sofa, said in a disembodied voice, “‘Flower o' the broom, take away love, and our earth is a tomb.' Alvise loved Barbara, loved her until the day he died. Their marriage was the best, my friend! This doesn't mean that they didn't have their little problems, their sorrows—what is life without them?—but their life together was—was just like the Brownings'!”

Occhipinti, having uttered this superlative, sat back and nodded with satisfaction. Urbino regretted having to act as devil's advocate, but he wasn't going to get anywhere unless he did.

“You mentioned ‘sorrows.' What sorrows were you referring to?”

Suspicion gleamed in Occhipinti's round eyes.

“Are you still so young, Signor Macintyre, that you don't think of death—the ‘pale priest of the mute people,' as Browning called him? Death is surely the greatest sorrow. ‘Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.'”

“But before Alvise's death were there any lesser sorrows?”

“‘Lesser sorrows'? Perhaps, but married people keep many sorrows to themselves. But they had the usual ones.”

“Like what?”

Impatience hardened the man's birdlike face.

“Just what you would expect! They didn't have any children, did they?” Occhipinti seemed upset at having said this. “That's all there was to it. They faced what they had to face and went on with their life. There might have been talk but that doesn't mean there was any truth to it.”

“When was there talk?”

“I don't remember exactly. Sometime before the flood.”

The flood Occhipinti was referring to was the one of November 1966 that had ravaged Venice and Florence.

“That must have been about the time the maze was being built at La Muta. When Barbara and Tommaso Beni went to England together.”

“‘First of the first, such I pronounce her, then as now perfect in whiteness'! What are you suggesting? I said that there was no truth to any of that talk!”

“And what about Alvise during the same time?”

“He was with me at Lago di Garda. He was sad—what man wouldn't be? He wanted a child, and the wife he loved wasn't there with him.” Might this be the strongest criticism Occhipinti would ever give of the Contessa? “Our friends were staying all around Lago di Garda but he hardly showed any interest in seeing them.”

“Barbara says that you phoned her when she was in England and asked her to come home.”

Occhipinti seemed surprised.

“Yes, I phoned her,” Occhipinti admitted, “but Alvise didn't ask me to.” He immediately seemed to realize that this didn't put his friend in the best light, for he added, only making it worse, “He didn't want me to.” Then, in evident exasperation, he said, “He didn't know I called! I thought it would be best for poor Alvise—so sad and lonely—if Barbara came back to La Muta as soon as possible. Alvise was only with me at Lago di Garda because he didn't want to be alone at La Muta. Don't think that he was happy to be free. Yes, he was handsome, and women were always trying to get his attention, but he was faithful to Barbara.” Anger mottled his face. “And this beautiful young woman yesterday! She should know better than to say such things. It's not just Barbara we have to think about, but it's Alvise's memory—his reputation! ‘We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, made him our pattern to live and to die!'”

Occhipinti then reminisced about his and Alvise's youth between the two world wars, revealing just how deep the bonds of friendship and loyalty had been between the two men long before the Contessa came into the picture.

6

Eugene Hennepin, Urbino's former brother-in-law, was a stout, balding man in his early forties who had made millions of dollars in sugar cane. Back in Louisiana he was known as the “Sugar Cane Prince” only because his father, Emile, was still very much alive and indisputably the “King.” When he descended from the train on Monday morning, Urbino was relieved not to see him accompanied by Evangeline, who used to be known, before her married days, as the “Princess.”