The Last Gondola (20 page)

As Urbino and the Contessa looked at the gondola, he ran a sobering declension through his mind. Guggenheim's splendid gondola, Possle's fixed one at the Ca' Pozza, and his own. Guggenheim's was the most magnificent of them all by far, but now it was just a reminder of a rich life that had once been lived in the grand style.

“Once it's gone, it's gone,” the Contessa said, showing how uncannily she was in tune with his own thoughts. “That's something we all need to remember. This one,
caro
, is the last of the gondolas. The personal gondolas. Not Samuel Possle's. As for yours, let's call it a pale imitation of an original. Yes, my gift is a sad forgery, I'm afraid.” She looked into his eyes. “As you said, it's all been done before. It's quite useless to pretend otherwise. You're not an original, and neither am I. The best we can hope for, my dear Urbino, is to be eccentric, but eccentric in as original a way as possible!”

Urbino smiled. “You mean like Samuel Possle?”

“Oh, don't compare me to Possle, if you don't mind! Save that for yourself!”

44

At seven-thirty the next morning, Friday, March 15, Urbino was in the reception area of the Casa Crispina, the pensione run by the Sisters of the Charity of Santa Crispina. It provided a good view of the Church of San Gabriele across the
campo
.

He had come to speak with the church secretary who had signed Armando's receipt for the commemorative mass of the dead, but unfortunately the nun had gone to a convent of the same order in Umbria for several weeks. The nun at the reception desk had no information to give him.

Urbino chatted with her, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on the front doors of the church.

Armando, dressed in his usual black—a color that on this occasion seemed to be particularly appropriate—soon emerged and paused on the top step. An old woman, also dressed in black, appeared behind him. She eased herself down the steps and across the square in the direction of the Calle dell' Arcanzolo. Another woman emerged, older than the first one, and using a cane. She hobbled away from the church.

Armando looked toward the Casa Crispina and seemed to be staring right at Urbino, who drew back from the curtain. Armando abandoned the church steps and walked slowly and, it seemed to Urbino, sadly, across the
campo
and down the Calle dell'Arcanzolo, his arms close to his sides as was his habit.

As soon as the nun finished her account of two elderly Frenchwomen who had been locked out of the Casa Crispina last night, Urbino bid her a quick farewell.

He walked up the steps of the fifteenth-century Gothic church, many of its stones leprous from damp, age, and chemical corrosion from the mainland. He entered and gazed toward the chapel in the east transept, where a glass coffin stirred up dark memories. The coffin displayed the body of a virgin saint in a white gown, crimson gloves and slippers, and a silver Florentine mask. Venetian merchants had snatched her from her native Sicily hundreds of years ago during one of the serene republic's so-called sacred thefts. Her body had been at the dead center of one of Urbino's most puzzling cases.

The church was deserted. The monsignor and the altar boys must have left by the side exit. The sexton was nowhere in sight.

Urbino left the church and went down the Calle dell' Arcanzolo to a tobacco kiosk where he bought a copy of the day's local newspaper. He moved out of the way of passersby and opened the newspaper to the obituary and commemorative notices. Black-and-white photographs, almost all of elderly men and women, stared back at him. One of them was of a young woman with large, liquid eyes. Beneath the photograph he read:

In beloved memory of my sister Adriana Maria Abdon

Who departed this life seventeen years ago on this day

Eternal Love

From her brother Armando

Urbino studied the photograph. Adriana must have been in her early twenties when it was taken. He could trace some of her brother's features in her face like an angelic version of the grotesque.

45

Half an hour later Urbino was brought up short by a sign on the door of
THE KEEPER OF THE KEYS
:
CHIUSO
. The woman tending the newsstand next door called out to say that Emo had been taken sick and gone home. She gave him his address.

Emo's ground-floor apartment was at the end of a narrow alley near the Casa di Tintoretto. The alley stank of cat urine and garbage.

Emo answered Urbino's ring almost immediately.

“It's you,” he said. “Another emergency?” The small slice of door that Emo held open revealed that he was wearing something that might have been a bathrobe. Its violet color and vaguely ceremonial cut made it reminiscent of Possle's attire. “Or maybe you're back for more stories about haunted buildings in Venice, is that it?”

“Excuse me for disturbing you, but I need some information about a man named Armando Abdon. You might know him through San Gabriele. He works for Samuel Possle, the owner of the Ca' Pozza.”

The locksmith's eyes searched the alley. “Armando, the mute,” he said.

“Yes. He has masses said at San Gabriele in memory of someone named Adriana Abdon. He might have started doing it when you were there.”

“He did.” A gleam came into Emo's small eyes. “You want information on Armando and Adriana, is that it? For the book you're writing about this man who lives in the Ca' Pozza? Well, it's going to cost you.”

“Let me come in and we can talk about it.”

“I need to take my medicine and lie down for a while. But there's no reason we can't talk over dinner as long as it's at Harry's Bar. It's way beyond my budget. Is it worth it to you?”

The request didn't strike Urbino as being unreasonable or particularly unusual, if one assumed that Emo's size was a result of his love of good food. Urbino had often ended up paying much more, in one way or another, for information.

“But how do I know that you have anything to tell me?”

“Anything worth the price of a meal at Harry's Bar, you mean? You'll have to find out. But just to whet your appetite, let me do a bit of a calculation. Let me think. Armando and his masses. I'd say he's been having them said now for about sixteen or seventeen years. So is it on for Harry's Bar?”

“Lunch tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow. Tuesday, if you don't mind. And dinner, not lunch. Get the best table. And do I need to warn you that I have a big appetite? Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get out of this draft. A current of air can carry you to your grave.”

46

Gildo, wearing a cap over his mop of Venetian reddish blond curls, was standing in the sunshine in front of the Palazzo Uccello when Urbino returned after speaking with Demetrio Emo.

“This is for you,” the young man said, with a subdued and deferential air before Urbino could say anything.

He handed him a small white envelope.

Urbino's full name was written on it in violet ink and in the script that was now familiar to him.

“Where did you get this?” Urbino asked him.

Gildo's handsome face, usually a clear mirror of his emotions, was closed.

“I found it in the gondola. On one of the seats.”

The boat was drawn up to the water steps where Gildo sometimes cleaned, swept, and polished it in the sunshine.

“I went into the house to get a cloth. When I came back, it was there.” Then he added in a rush of words, “The man from the Ca' Pozza put it there. The mute. He was going over the bridge when I came out.”

“Do you know him?”

“No!” Gildo exclaimed.

Urbino put the envelope in his pocket. Gildo shifted uneasily from one foot to another. “Signor Urbino, are you investigating something in that building?”

“No, Gildo. Why do you ask?”

The gondolier looked away.

“It's because of your friend, Marco,” Urbino answered his own question. “That's his name, isn't it?”

The gondolier nodded.

“Just because Marco died when he fell from the building next door wouldn't be a reason to investigate anything about the Ca' Pozza, would it?”

“But you think that something happened to Marco in the Ca' Pozza,” Gildo said in a rush of words. “That's why you go there all the time.” Unspoken pain was alive and glowing in his green eyes.

“I didn't even know about your friend when I became interested in the Ca' Pozza,” Urbino responded. “Let's go inside. We can explain things to each other better there.”

The fact that explanations were necessary appeared to sober the young gondolier even more. He hung his head and followed Urbino into the house.

They went to the parlor. Gildo removed his cap. Urbino left him looking around the room as if seeing it for the first time as he went to fix them coffees. When he returned with them, Gildo was sitting on the sofa and stroking Serena who had settled in his lap.

“The owner of the Ca' Pozza could help me with a book I'd like to write,” Urbino began, when he seated himself across from Gildo. “That's why I go there. But I've become interested in your friend Marco for your sake and for his and his mother's. I've come to know her slightly recently. Would you mind telling me how you and Marco became friends?”

Gildo let out a sigh as he continued to stroke the cat. His open and ingenuous face was clouded. “What good will it do, Signor Urbino?”

“It's always good to talk of the dead when they've been so close to us in life.”

Gildo's eyes misted. “I guess you're right.”

Serena left Gildo's lap and walked out of the room. Gildo ran a hand through his hair. Urbino refrained from saying anything more as he waited. Taking a deep breath and with his liquid voice filled with melancholy, Gildo hurried through an account of how he had known Marco for three years and how Marco had attached himself to Gildo after they had met at the San Trovaso
squero
. They both used to hang around the boatyard watching the gondolas being constructed and running errands for the
squeralioli
.

“He was five years younger than me, signore. Like a kid brother. I don't have any brothers and sisters, and—and he didn't either.”

Urbino nodded with the sympathy of an only child himself.

“He was a good boy, no matter what people tell you about drugs or anything else. He had some friends who were bad, but Marco wasn't like them. He would have been a top
remero
. You saw the
forcola
. You said it was good! His mother sacrificed a lot for him to be an apprentice. That's what got him into trouble. I'm only telling you this, Signor Urbino, because I don't want you to think he was bad. He just wanted to help his mother.”

“What do you mean?”

Gildo studied Urbino's face as if to assure himself of something.

“They didn't have much money,” he said quietly. “Marco—well, sometimes Marco took things that weren't his. And he sold them, but it was only to give money to his mother.”

“Did she know what he was doing?”

Gildo shook his head.

“She thought he was selling some of his woodwork. He never took anything from poor people. Only from people who had a lot.”

“And he thought the man who lives in the Ca' Pozza has a lot.”

The gondolier shrugged his broad shoulders.

“A week or two before he—he died,' Gildo went on, “he said that he was going inside. I warned him. I always told him he shouldn't be breaking into any buildings, and especially not that one.”

“Why not that one in particular?”

“Because of the man who brought the note. He's very strange.”

Urbino couldn't disagree with this, but Gildo's response seemed somehow too quick and a bit evasive.

“And I worry about you when you go there, signore,” Gildo hurried on. “I could tell that you were interested in it many months ago when you asked me to take the boat that way. It isn't a good place. You're intelligent, but you must be careful. All of your books won't protect you.”

“I don't expect them to, Gildo. But as for Marco, he went into the building, right? Is that what you're saying? Did he ever tell you what he saw inside?”

“He broke in somehow, signore, but he promised me he wouldn't. He didn't want me to worry.”

“His mother seems to think that he fell from the Ca' Pozza and not from their building, although she's very confused when she speaks.”

Gildo nodded. “Did she say anything about me?” he asked.

“We didn't talk about you.”

“She doesn't like me. She screams at me whenever she sees me.”

“I thought she might be doing that on the afternoon we were passing by the Ca' Pozza.”

“You noticed, signore.” A blush came over the gondolier's face. “She thought I was a bad influence on Marco because I was older, but it wasn't like that.”

“No.”

Once again Gildo studied Urbino's face for some kind of reassurance. Perhaps he didn't find it there this time, for he gave an almost inaudible sigh and remained silent. Urbino sensed that he had let the young man down. Gildo seemed to be waiting for him to make up for it, to say or ask something that indicated he really understood.

They sipped their coffees, then Urbino said, “Perhaps someday you and Signora Carelli will be able to be friends. You've both lost Marco, and you both loved him.”

Tears brimmed in Gildo's eyes. He didn't try to hide them from Urbino but looked at him directly.

“You're going to the Ca' Pozza to learn more about Marco even though you say you aren't. Sometimes I think something evil happened to him there. Ever since he died, it gives me a bad feeling when I see it. But it's strange, Signor Urbino. Sometimes I—I want to look at it. I can't help myself.” He sighed again, then added, almost under his breath, “There are many things I can't help about myself.”