Liquid Desires (6 page)

Before Urbino mentioned Evangeline, Eugene said, “Evie's in Florence, but we'll talk about her later”—an assurance that made Urbino uneasy. Was Eugene going to try, once again, to effect a reconciliation? Eugene had always tried to be a peacemaker between Urbino and Evangeline and between Urbino and the Hennepin family. But none of his strenuous efforts had been able to help save a marriage that, though well-intentioned, had been a mismatch from the start.

“A gondola, that's what I want,” Eugene said within the first hour of his arrival. “Put it on that lake behind the old house—wouldn't
that
be fine!”

And so here Urbino and Eugene were at the
squero
on the Rio di San Trovaso, one of the few boatyards where gondolas were made to order. The fact that the gondola maker frequently had to repeat Urbino's translation had nothing to do with the quality of Urbino's Italian but everything to do with what Eugene was saying.

“Red, white, and blue?”

“Like the American flag,” Urbino said unnecessarily.

“Tell him I want room for an outboard motor—and one of these doohickeys on it, too.” He jabbed a stubby finger at an illustration ripped from a book, indicating the enclosed cabin, or
felze
, that used to be part of the gondola. “I want stars on it—white ones on a blue background.”

Urbino duly translated all this. The gondola maker raised his eyes to the old wooden balcony covered with geraniums that looked down on the beached gondolas.

“Tell him I'll pay extra if he can have it done so Evangeline and I can bring it back in a few weeks.”

“
Impossibile!
” the man said.

Eugene had no trouble understanding this expletive.

“Why's he bein' so difficult?” Eugene mopped his brow with his handkerchief. “He should be able to knock off two or three of these things a week! He's got a pretty shabby outfit here. His competitors must be gettin' all the business.”

Urbino explained again that the Squero di San Trovaso was the best in Venice.

“They make only three or four a year.”

“
A year
!” Eugene shouted so loudly that the gondola maker cringed. “What kind of a way to run a business is that? This guy probably has something else goin' for him.” Eugene looked at the man with a mixture of pity and contempt. “Tell him I want to be next on the list.”

As it turned out, Eugene had to settle for a four-month wait before his gondola could be shipped. When Urbino started to translate the man's explanation about the two hundred and eighty pieces of mahogany, cherry, elm, and five other kinds of wood that had to be specially chosen and carved, Eugene waved his hand and said to tell him to stop making excuses. As long as the thing was in Louisiana by Christmas, he would be satisfied, but why it took so long to make a simple little boat like that was beyond him.

After leaving the
squero
, Urbino and Eugene walked along the crowded Zattere embankment, a favorite promenade for Venetians, even during winter since it faced south. On the other side of the canal was the Island of Giudecca, which only a week ago had been connected to the Zattere by a temporary pontoon bridge in celebration of the Feast of the Redeemer. This floating bridge allowed Venetians to make their annual pilgrimage across the Giudecca Canal to the Palladian Church of the Redeemer, which had been built to thank the Lord for delivering Venice from the plague in the sixteenth century. The feast was one of fireworks and mulberry eating and bathing at the Lido at dawn. Urbino loved it, but the Contessa avoided it like the plague itself.

Urbino slowed his usually brisk pace for Eugene, who was feeling the effects of the heat and dabbing his forehead and the back of his neck with a handkerchief. Ahead was Ristorante Da Gianni. It might be a good idea for them to lunch there at an umbrellaed table on the terrace.

“I still don't understand why you don't have a gondola of your own,” Eugene said, eyeing one of the coffinlike boats gliding by. “What's the point of livin' in Venice if you don't? I know you can't be hurtin' much for money. You inherited the place here, sold the house on Prytania, got all your momma and poppa's money when they died in that car crash, plus have bucks from your books—and I know you never had to give Evie a penny. So why not invest in a gondola?” Eugene pressed, once again accenting the word heavily on the second syllable instead of the first. “Does that Countess friend of yours have one?”

“The last person to have her own was Peggy Guggenheim.”

“That's the lady I was readin' about on the train. She led quite a merry life! Had a pile of money—one of those rich Guggenheims. Bought a picture a day, didn't she?”

“Right,” Urbino said. “During the Second World War—Kandinsky, Klee, Dalí, Miró—all the modern masters. She eventually brought her collection here to Venice. It's open to the public at her palazzo.”

“Quite a woman!” Eugene said with such enthusiasm that Urbino wondered if he were commenting on Peggy Guggenheim's scandalous life or her commitment to modern art. Eugene went on to say that he would like to do just what Guggenheim had done while he was here in Venice—buy something “arty” every day. He made it clear that he expected Urbino's help. “I've already bought something today and I've only been here a few hours. We won't have to worry until tomorrow.”

Urbino was happy to hear it. He was even less prepared to entertain Eugene than he had been before Flavia showed up at the Contessa's garden party. He was much too preoccupied with what he had learned from the Contessa and Occhipinti and with trying to understand why the young woman had seemed familiar. Hadn't Occhipinti said the same thing? Urbino planned to see Oriana Borelli later today. He glanced across the canal to the Island of Giudecca where Oriana and Filippo lived.

“And you'll have to take me to this Guggenheim gal's palace,” Eugene was now saying, “and I want to go to that big art show. They had a piece in the
Times-Picayune
about it a few weeks back. Then there's that island of glass—what's it called?—I hear I can find a nice big chandelier there. And the place where those little old ladies make lace. Remember, Urbino, I'm not goin' to be here much more than a week. There's all the other things I gotta see.”

Urbino inwardly groaned as they sat at a table on the Da Gianni raft terrace. Eugene examined the gray-haired waiter balancing a tray of ice cream sodas and mineral water.

“This country's got the
oldest
waiters I've seen anywhere. Is it something Italians do when they retire? I have to admit they're pretty spry, though. Maybe they take blackstrap molasses! Hennepin might be able to do a big deal with the Italians.”

During lunch, as Eugene complained about the problems he and Evangeline had encountered in Rome and Florence, where “we didn't have anyone to guide us around, of course,” Urbino's mind drifted back to Flavia. He was beginning to understand why she had looked familiar. Surely he had seen her before, hadn't he? And the Contessa would have, too, if she hadn't kept herself disdainful up in Asolo, removed from the kind of art that Eugene's admired Peggy Guggenheim had bought up as if it were so many pieces of candy.

7

“A pile of junk!” Eugene said contemptuously as he surveyed the arrangement of gray rocks, worn army boots, and rusted rifles and sabers. “I wouldn't give a cent for any of it! Who are they tryin' to kid?”

Urbino and Eugene were at the Biennale exhibition. So far, his ex-brother-in-law's responses were, in spirit if not in language, so close to the Contessa's that Urbino was beginning to think the two were destined to become fast friends.

“It's not
this
kind of stuff I'm interested in bringin' back. Not by a long shot! I want some pretty stuff.”

Eugene, eager to return to the air-conditioned Danieli, could have quit now without a regret, but Urbino persuaded him to go to one more pavilion.

It was the Italy Pavilion, set back against the Giardini Canal. Urbino left Eugene in one of the front rooms while he sought out the paintings of Bruno Novembrini. He didn't go directly to the empty space on the wall where one painting was missing, but moved slowly from painting to painting. Most of them were Venetian scenes in which the standard tourist images of the city—gondolas, the Bridge of Sighs, the Basilica, the Doge's Palace, Piazza San Marco—were fantastically juxtaposed or were floating or sailing as if in a dream or hallucination.

Immediately before the empty space was a large canvas with a naked man and woman embracing as marble eagles and columns melted around them, the liquid flowing into a golden river in the foreground.
Let Rome in Tiber Melt
, it was called, the quotation identifying the passionate couple as Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.

Next to this painting in the empty space was a hand-lettered sign:

NUDE IN A FUNERAL GONDOLA has temporarily been removed from exhibition. It is hoped that it will be exhibited again before the end of the Biennale.

Urbino had just finished reading the sign when a man behind him said, “It should be back soon. It wasn't as damaged as we thought at first.”

The speaker was a man in his sixties of medium height with long gray hair and beard and a prominent nose. He was dressed in a subdued charcoal-gray suit given a calculated touch of color by a loosely folded blood-red pocket square. Urbino recognized Massimo Zuin, a prominent art dealer and owner of a gallery in the arty Dorsoduro quarter.

“Signor Zuin, I'm Urbino Macintyre. Perhaps you can help me. I'd like to see a reproduction of
Nude in a Funeral Gondola
. You're Bruno Novembrini's dealer, aren't you?”

Zuin said he was and told Urbino to wait while he got a catalog. Eugene sauntered into the room and went over to look at a painting of a funeral of gondolas going up the Grand Canal carrying pieces of Venetian monuments. Zuin returned with the catalog.

“You'll find a color reproduction of the painting here,” he said in his courteous but patronizing voice, opening the catalog and handing it to Urbino.

The painting was as Urbino remembered it. Floating in a flooded Piazza San Marco, with the Basilica in the background, was a funeral gondola, an even deeper shade of black than the customary color. Hovering in the left-hand corner, as if they might have detached themselves from the facade of the Basilica, were a lion weeping into a black handkerchief and a bearded angel. Both were looking at the figure reclining in the gondola—a beautiful nude woman, her hair obscured in an Oriental turban and her bright green, eerily vacant eyes looking directly at the viewer.

Urbino now had no doubt that underneath that turban must be Titian hair and that the model was the young woman who had exploded her bombshell under the Contessa's pergola on Saturday afternoon.

“I was particularly struck with it the other times I was here,” Urbino said. “As a matter of fact, the last time I saw it was minutes after it was slashed.”

Zuin's face hardened almost imperceptibly.

“It's a pity. These crazy feminists! It must have had something to do with that girl murdered near here. Some woman blaming the sexual attack on art, most likely. Once the painting is repaired, no one should be able to notice the damage. There was only one tear. I'm sure we can agree on a fair price if you're interested in it.”

“Right now I'd like to know about the model.”

More surprise than disappointment showed on Zuin's face. He scratched the long gray hair at the nape of his neck.

“The model? Bruno only used her the one time.”

“Do you know what her name is?”

“If I did, Signor Macintyre, I couldn't give you that information.”

“But you
do
know who she is?” The art dealer didn't answer. “Perhaps Novembrini wouldn't mind telling me. Do you have his number?”

It occurred to Urbino that Zuin might be no more inclined to give him Novembrini's phone number than the name of the model, but Zuin surprised him by smiling and saying, “I'll give it to you only because it's listed in the phone directory. Surely you understand that art dealers have a responsibility to protect their artists in whatever way they can.
And
our own interests. I wouldn't be quite so willing to give you Bruno's number if I thought the two of you might strike a private deal between you.”

With a cool smile, Zuin took out a fountain pen, wrote a phone number on the front of the catalog, and handed the catalog to Urbino.

Eugene joined them. Urbino made the introductions and told Eugene that Zuin was the dealer for the painter whose work was in the room.

“So you work for this November fellow! Wonderful!”

“I do,” Zuin said in English. “Are you interested in contemporary Italian painting?”

“Is that what this is? I know what I like and I like this stuff here. Is any of it for sale?”

Zuin's face brightened.

“Most of it. Are you interested in any in particular?”

“That one.” Eugene pointed to the painting of the gondolas transporting pieces of Venice up the Grand Canal. “Has anyone grabbed it up yet?”

“Not yet, but you'll have to wait until the end of September when the Biennale closes.”

“No problem. I've got to wait until almost Christmas for a gondola!” Eugene turned to Urbino. “We're one day ahead of ourselves now! I'm determined to buy something every day,” he explained to the puzzled Zuin, “something nice like this November's paintings. I've already bought a gondola at a rundown boatyard. By the way, I guess we should talk about money. How much you askin'? You don't have to decide right away. You can give me a call at the Danieli Hotel—is that how you pronounce it, Urbino? I'm stayin' there instead of that tiny little palace Urbino has. It's in such a pokey part of town. I like to be where the action is.”