The Last Gondola (22 page)

As he approached the door to the hall, he was seized with a more comforting thought in reference to the head. For it seemed that one of the mysteries of the Ca' Pozza had been solved, and it turned out to be a mundane one. Obviously the person he had seen in the window—the person he assumed had been Armando—hadn't been cradling anything as unbelievable as a severed head.

He hoped that the other mysteries of the Ca' Pozza could be explained away so comfortably, the way they were in a novel by Ann Radcliffe.

His hand was on the doorknob when what sounded like footsteps tapped above his head. He gazed at the ceiling, with its broken chandelier and peeling paint. The sound, whether footsteps or something else, didn't come again. Perhaps Armando had returned and ascended to the floor above. Or perhaps a branch of the tree had been scraping against the building. In any case he felt an urgency to get back to the gondola room.

Urbino checked his wristwatch. He had been gone for five minutes. When he opened the door, the dark hallway was empty. He stepped out, closing the door behind him.

The private stairway that led to the upper stories was too much of a temptation to resist. It seemed to beckon him. He had reached the first step before he had fully considered the further risk he was taking. The staircase was dark, much darker than the one in the entrance hall, and rose at a rather steep angle. It was made of wood, and the steps were partly covered in cloth. Careful though he was, his weight soon produced a creak, which he was sure reverberated through the entire house. He stopped and peered into the darkness above him. Then, whether his own anxious state made him hear imagined sounds or he heard real ones, Urbino thought footsteps were descending toward him, or if not footsteps exactly, then something like a rustling sound.

As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he made out something light-colored, thin, and elongated lying on one of the upper stairs. It was slightly twisted and curved, and part of one end, even in the dark, glistened. It didn't move, but he felt that it just had or was about to. It gave every appearance of being a partly coiled snake with a slightly mottled skin and with eyes that were catching whatever dim light penetrated the darkness. Slowly, cautiously, Urbino moved up another step. The shape remained strangely still. As he now stared at it, its various details assumed a different form, and he realized, not without relief, that it was a belt. What had caught the light was the delicate buckle and tongue. It was a slender belt and might even have been of snakeskin.

He couldn't linger any longer. He left the belt where it was. He descended the staircase and regained the hallway. Pressing his ear against the door into the
sala
, he listened for any sound in the room beyond. He opened the door slowly, then went through it, closing it behind him with barely a sound.

The chairs and paintings ranged against the two sides of the large room were silent witnesses to his hurried passage across the cold, empty space. He reached the open door of the gondola room.

Footsteps began to ascend the staircase from the hall below. Urbino wasted no time. He slipped into the gondola room, his heart beating quickly. A fearful glance assured him that Possle was asleep among all the orange cushions and black-painted wood.

But the next moment, as soon as Urbino had settled himself in the armchair and as if a spell had been broken, the reclining figure opened its eyes like a doll and said, “Please excuse me, Mr. Macintyre. I fear I've been far away. It's most inhospitable.”

The footsteps approached the door. Armando appeared. His hair was more matted than usual. His face was slick with sweat.

“There you are,” Possle said in Italian. “You know what we usually have, the two of us.”

Armando gave Urbino a severe look from his dark eyes. He held Urbino's gaze for longer than he ever had before. Urbino, to his chagrin, was the first to look away.

It might have been his guilty conscience or his intuition that was so seldom wrong, but he could swear that Armando's bold, unflinching stare revealed that he had been found out and that he wanted Urbino to know it.

What Armando might do with the knowledge remained to be seen. Urbino had now relinquished even more power within the walls of the Ca' Pozza and perhaps even outside of it.

The mute went off to get the Amontillado, indulging in what seemed to be a cruel, self-satisfied smile on his thin lips as he passed Urbino.

49

Urbino figured that the best way to recover from the strong suspicion that Armando was in possession of his secret was to sit back and listen to his host for a while.

And Possle seemed inclined to be particularly garrulous this afternoon, at least at first. He began by indulging in a series of insinuations and calculated confessions. As usual, they were sprinkled with quotations and paraphrases of someone else's thoughts, a good proportion of them related to Byron. He seemed gripped by a nervous agitation, tugging more than usual at his turbanlike headscarf, and he soon started to move from one observation to another with an incoherence and inconsistency that he tried to cover up. When he paused, he did so with an uneasy glance at Urbino from his small eyes behind the large glasses. He seemed afraid that Urbino might take the opportunity to interrupt him and ask an unwanted question or make a disturbing comment.

But Urbino remained silent, except for the sounds that encouraged Possle to go on. Possle's manner this afternoon suited Urbino and got him through the crucial ten minutes during which Armando served the Amontillado and left. All the while he felt the full weight of the key in his pocket and the advantage that Armando now seemed to have over him.

His uneasiness gradually dissipated, however, though surely to come back again. Taking its place now was the resolve that had been growing in him during the past few days to get at some answers.

When Possle made one of his pauses, Urbino straightened himself in his chair from his slump and said, “I find your reminiscences quite interesting, Mr. Possle. But I'd be misleading you if I continued to sit here and listen to them. We'd be misleading each other in fact. It would be a good idea to bring some things out in the open.” Urbino said this latter with a renewed twinge of guilt over what he himself was concealing and what Armando might soon reveal to Possle. “I appreciate your hospitality. But forgive me if I say that I'm a little suspicious of it. I'd like to keep coming back, and I think that you want me to, but if that's going to happen I'll need to have some questions answered. I said last time that there's a mystery of some kind surrounding the Ca' Pozza.”

“And you want to add some feathers to that stalker's cap of yours, is that it?”

“Before I rang your bell last time,” Urbino went on, not to be distracted, “a woman warned me not to go in.”

“Obviously your curiosity was stronger than your confidence in her. I believe I know this woman—or who she is. Her mind has been turned.”

“Because of the death of her son. He died in a fall.”

“‘In Adam's fall, we sinned all,'” he recited. “A sad accident.”

“His name was Marco Carelli,” Urbino persisted.

“You're making progress in this little mystery, whatever it is. His fall was an accident.”

“His mother seems to have some resentment against your building.”

Urbino had chosen these words very carefully.

Possle's tongue darted out to moisten his lips.

“Didn't we agree that she's disturbed in her thinking?”

He looked at the fire crackling in the grate on the other side of the room, adding the faint trace of burning wood to the scent of the potpourri in the air.

“Did you know her son?” Urbino asked him, intentionally risking the man's anger by pursuing the topic. “Was he ever here in your building?”

“Now what are you accusing me of? Luring young boys into my den? I told you last time that I draw the line at such things despite my love—our
mutual
love—for Huysmans. You're barking up the wrong tree, Mr. Macintyre. But perhaps you don't believe me. I think it would be a good idea to get Armando's opinion.”

Possle pulled on the rope. Armando's long, lean figure soon appeared in the doorway without a sound, his scarred hands held tensely by his side. His sharp, dark eyes sought out Possle's in a few quick moments of silent communication.

“Signor Macintyre has asked me a question,” Possle said in Italian, “a question that I can't answer myself. He wants to know about a young man named Marco Carelli. That's the name, isn't it, Mr. Macintyre? This Marco Carelli seems to have been the young man who fell to his death a few months ago. Tell us, Armando, was this young man ever in our building?”

It was impossible to envision a look of more suspicion and dislike than the one that Armando shot at Urbino.

“When you've been around Armando as long as I have,” Possle said in English, “you'll know the difference between one of his silences and another. He said no, most emphatically. Armando, would you take this cup please?”

The mute climbed the steps. As he reached for the cup, Possle touched his cheek.

“Don't be upset, Armando. Our guest is an inquisitive person. He earns a living and amuses himself by poking around in people's lives.”

Urbino felt uncomfortable. He felt even more so when, this time, Armando made a point of not looking at him. Instead he exchanged another glance with Possle. It left Urbino with the peculiar sense that somehow Possle already knew about his search through his rooms.

Urbino appeared as unconcerned as he could manage, but he was afraid that his smile of nonchalance was too evidently pasted. Armando left the room with his head held higher than usual, as if he had just scored a victory.

“As you see, we know nothing about this unfortunate young man. Is there anything else you'd like to know?”

Urbino intended to press on. He was motivated not only by the desire for an answer but also by a curiosity to see how far he might be able to go. He asked if Possle was acquainted with someone named Demetrio Emo. “He's a locksmith in the Cannaregio,” Urbino explained.

“Such unusual questions this afternoon. Grieving mothers and locksmiths. No, the name's not familiar to me. Whenever we might need a locksmith, I don't send Armando so far afield.”

“Emo seems to have some interest in the Ca' Pozza.”

“And so do many other people, yourself included.”

“So you're saying that Emo has never done any work for you?”

“And I'm also saying that I never heard the name before. Why are you being so persistent? Are you yourself today? I fail to see what all this is about. When you said you had some questions about the Ca' Pozza, I thought that they'd be much different ones. I don't know whether I should be relieved or annoyed.”

“You see,” Urbino went on, “Demetrio Emo is the uncle of my gondolier, Gildo, and Gildo and Marco were good friends.”

“Very interesting to you perhaps, but I don't see what it signifies.”

Neither did Urbino, but nonetheless he had learned something if it was only that Possle was slightly distressed to find that Urbino had been thinking about him and the Ca' Pozza in ways that he hadn't expected and perhaps didn't want.

“And before you ask,” Possle went on, as Urbino considered what to say next, “I only know your Gildo by reputation, thanks to Armando. He's my eyes and legs, and I—well, I'm his tongue. No, Gildo has never been here. But perhaps we can ask Armando about Gildo. Would you like me to call him back? No? That's wise. He doesn't like to be disturbed too often.”

Urbino stared back at Possle with a face that he hoped showed none of the uneasiness he was feeling.

“Let's lay our cards on the table, Mr. Possle. You wouldn't keep asking me here unless you wanted something from me, and I wouldn't continue to come unless I wanted something from you.”

“How cynical! Here we are, two expatriate Americans with so much in common. We're just getting to know each other.”

“If what you'd like me to do is to write your biography,” Urbino said as if Possle hadn't interposed, “that's something that we can discuss, but if I agree to do it, you'll have no success in manipulating me and you would in no way have final approval of what I might write. You would have to give me free rein or as close to it as possible and try to answer whatever questions I'd need to ask. You could answer them or not, as you wish, of course. I'd also expect you to provide access to your correspondence and to inform your friends and family that they should share whatever letters they have from you—all within reason, of course,” he finished, in what had turned out to be a greater rush of words than he had intended.

“Ah yes, Mr. Macintyre, all within good reason. That's always been your dominant trait, hasn't it? But you speak of my friends and family. I'm afraid that very few of them are left alive.”

“There's Armando.”

“Armando, of course. He'd be a treasure house of information.”

“But not forthcoming, even taking into consideration his muteness. And there's another thing. If you want my services as a biographer, I'd need to have a look at the memoirs that it's rumored you've been writing.”

“Ah yes, my memoirs. There used to be a lot of talk about them.”

“Do they exist?”

“The last time I looked in my desk”—he paused here and regarded Urbino with his small dark eyes—“I believe they were there, however many—or few—pages there might be.”

Once again Urbino had the odd feeling that Possle already knew about his foray into his rooms, but it only made him all the more determined to finish saying what he wanted to.

“But despite what I've been saying, Mr. Possle, I don't think that you have any interest in my skills as a biographer. Or let me say, no interest in my skills as a biographer of your life, even though it was my main interest before I met you. You might have heard, through Armando, I would assume, that I've been making inquiries about you and trying to find a way to meet you. You…”