Deadly to the Sight (11 page)

“I have to sit down,” he said.

Habib looked frantically around for something for him to sit on. All he could find was a metal bucket. He turned it over, and set it close to the building.

“
Sidi
, you sit here and push yourself against the wall.”

He helped Urbino ease himself down on the bottom of the bucket. Urbino's head was starting to swim.

“Here,
sidi
, you wear the burnoose.”

He removed the heavy garment from his shoulders and draped it over Urbino. He stared into Urbino's face and put a cool hand against his forehead.

“Like a fire,” he said. He nodded his head slowly. “I was wrong. It is not the pork. It is the old lady's evil eye! She threw it on us the other day, just as I said. I will be sick too, or have an accident. She is evil, and we are in her world now!”

He looked into the surrounding fog and darkness as if seeking out Nina Crivelli. Urbino could feel the Moroccan's fear and anger.

“Don't be foolish. It's just a return of what I had in Morocco. I'm afraid you'll have to go back to Frieda's. Barbara will have to have Giorgio bring the motorboat as close to here as he can.”

Urbino lifted his head to read the name of the
calle
written on the wall.

“Can you remember that name?” he asked Habib.

“Of course!”

“But wait. Ring one of these bells. The people will know where Frieda's house is.”

“We do not want to disturb anyone. Don't worry. I will take care of everything. The medina in Fez, it has many more turns and twists.”

Before Urbino could protest, the fog swallowed up Habib.

17

On this same evening of Urbino's illness, as he waited for Habib to return, the Contessa paused at the open door of Il Piccolo Nettuno. Behind her fog was stealing away all forms and shapes. The restaurant was filled with distorted shadows.

“Is anyone here?”

Silence.

A sickening odor of food, soap, disinfectant, and a backedup sewer assaulted her. The sharp sound of metal on crockery rang out from the kitchen. The Contessa started.

“Is anyone here? Signora Crivelli? It's the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini.”

Her voice didn't sound like her own. A dull echo returned to her.

She had the feeling that she was being watched. She glanced behind her into the Via Galuppi.

It was deserted, at least what she could see of it through the fog. She quickly returned her eyes to the dark room. She sensed, rather than saw or heard, a movement from the back.

“Is it you, Signora Crivelli? It's the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini.”

Once again the echo came.

She felt ridiculously frozen in place, poised as she was between the empty street and the dark room. For a few moments she had a feeling of paralysis, the way she did in nightmares when she knew she had to move but couldn't. Except that now she had the additional problem of not knowing if she should go into the restaurant or back into the night. Slow, phantom footsteps sounded behind her. Were they from the Via Galuppi or some alley behind the buildings?

She felt the wall on one side of the door, then the other. Her hand found the light switch. The restaurant became flooded in harsh fluorescent light. The upturned chairs were a thicket of arms reaching to the ceiling from the tabletops.

A figure in a dark garment suddenly swam into view ahead of her. The Contessa gasped and took a step backward. But it was only her own dismayed image.

Fear turned into irritation. She silently cursed the mirrors.

She walked into the room, slowly at first, then less hesitantly. She ignored, but only with effort, the reflections of her own progress from mirror to mirror. She riveted her eyes on the open kitchen door at the far end. Her foot stepped on something. There was a cracking sound. Beneath her foot was a pair of eyeglasses. One of the thick lenses had become dislodged from the frame. When she lifted her head, shadows flickered in the kitchen. She called out Nina Crivelli's name again. Silence.

She had no intention of going any farther.

It was then that she noticed another odor among the others. It was the smell of decay and death. It was a familiar smell. It was the smell of Nina Crivelli.

Her eyes fell to the floor again. There, a short distance away, lying face up between two tables, was the old woman. Her black shawl was twisted beneath her body. Her eyes, unshielded by her thick glasses, bulged out at the Contessa. Pressed against her mouth was a lace handkerchief.

Dishes crashed in the kitchen. A streak of gray rushed past the Contessa's feet and out into the Via Galuppi.

Cats and mirrors were nothing to be afraid of, the Contessa thought, but a dead Nina Crivelli, and what it might mean for her, filled her with dread.

She rushed out into the Via Galuppi.

PART TWO

A DELICATE FABRIC

1

A few evenings later the Contessa entered the library of the Palazzo Uccello.

Urbino sat on the sofa, bundled in a red-and-purple blanket with geometric patterns and slowly turning the pages of a large book. Perched on his head was a cloth cap with swirls of green and brown. Aligned on the carpet in front of the sofa were two green slippers with prominently pointed toes. The strains of Rimsky-Korsakov's
Scheherazade
floated through the room, a bit too loudly for the Contessa's taste.

Beside her invalid friend stood Habib. He was wearing a Missoni sweater that looked suspiciously like one of Urbino's, and an expression of solicitude that looked even more suspiciously sincere.

“It's time for another
tisane
,” he was saying.

“It's good to see you, Barbara,” Urbino said. “I wish you had come to dinner.”

“I haven't had much appetite these days,” she said, looking for a seat that wasn't littered with books and magazines.

“Would you like a
tisane
?” asked Habib, who had resolved the problem of whether to refer to her to her face as “Contessa” or “Barbara” by never using either.

“No thank you, Habib,” she responded, having resolved her own little dilemma by choosing familiarity. “You just take care of Urbino.”

“But of course!”

“I know what a difficult patient he can be.”

She gave Urbino a knowing smile and started to seat herself in an oak armchair. Habib protested.

“It is too far from Urbino. Wait!”

He picked up the chair and carried it closer to the sofa. He grazed it against the mahogany confessional, damaged already from the neglect of Urbino's American tenants. Urbino showed no distress, but the cat, Serena, jumped from the confessional's maroon velvet seats, where she had been dozing, and resettled on the hearth.

“Thank you, Habib. You are very gracious—and very strong.”

Habib took the book from Urbino and placed it on the refectory table, where it rested precariously on top of a pile of others. Then, at Urbino's request, he lowered the volume of the Rimsky-Korsakov.

“I will go now and make your
tisane, sidi
. You stay right there.”

“It doesn't seem as if he has any intention of moving an inch. You do look better,” she said to Urbino when Habib had left. “Much better than me, to be sure.”

“How are you doing?”

“Miserably,
caro
. This is an absolute nightmare. And it's only just begun. Here I was waiting for the second shoe to drop!”

“You never should have gone there alone.”

“Because I've put myself in a better position of being a murder suspect, or should I say worse?”

“Don't be absurd. First of all, Nina Crivelli died of a heart attack. No one is even considering the idea of foul play.”

The Contessa was irked by his cool manner even though on most other occasions she had taken necessary shelter in it.

“And second of all?” she prompted as he stared at her from beneath his cap.

“Second of all, even if she didn't die a natural death, you would hardly be a suspect.” He paused and added, “A serious suspect.”

She gave a smile that she hoped communicated the peculiar satisfaction that she felt. He was, at least to this extent, agreeing with her.

“And there's nothing about Alvise she could have blackmailed you with,” Urbino went on. “We came to that conclusion after a lot of searching a few years ago, as I reminded you last week.”

“It's lies I'm afraid of. Someone—maybe more than one person—could have been fed her lies. No,” she said with a slow shake of her head, “it's not over yet.”

Urbino gave a little tug at his cap that the Contessa interpreted as a sign of nervousness, unless it was self-consciousness about having been caught wearing it.

“Nina Crivelli was probably a disturbed woman who was trying to take advantage of you because of your prominence and your money. And she had a heart attack and died.”

Even as he said it, he hoped it was as simple as that.

Scheherazade
came to an end. In the sudden silence she heard Habib's laugh and Giorgio's voice coming down from the kitchen.

“They seem to get along quite well,” the Contessa said.

Urbino made no response.

The bell of the Madonna dell' Orto tolled across the roofs of the Cannaregio. The Contessa's eyes wandered around the familiar room where she and Urbino had spent many enjoyable hours. Suddenly, her eyes stopped at a table beside the door.

“Where is that Faenza dish that used to be there?” she asked.

Her distress was not so much for the lovely blue majolica ware they had found together in Florence as it was a reflection of her own free-floating anxiety about things being confused and out of place.

“Oh, I hope those brutish Americans didn't break it! Forgive me, but they were! Or maybe you've moved it?”

“I'm afraid it was broken when Habib was playing with Serena.”

“Beyond repair?”

“Not quite that, but it will never be the same, not,” he added, “for those who know and can see.”

As if to refresh her vision and her spirit, the Contessa stared at the Bartolomeo Veneto engagement portrait of a young lady, which Urbino had done such a good job of restoring several summers ago. This evidence of one of his talents encouraged her, all the more so because he had done the restoration while investigating something of great personal importance to her.

“You must help me,” she brought out in a determined voice. “Humor me. Condescend to me. Be impatient, even angry with me, but
help
me.”

“Help you how?”

“In the way you've done for me and for others before. Ask some questions. Get some answers. Settle this one way or another.”

“As you see, Barbara, I'm not quite up to poking around at the moment.”

“Oh, you will be soon, with such good care,” she added as the sound of footsteps approached the door.

Habib appeared with a tray with three steaming cups. He went over to the Contessa first.

“Please, take one. It is not just for sick people. You must not be left out.”

“How sweet of you. It does smell good.”

“And for you,
sidi.
”

He put the tray down on a low brass table beside an ottoman, neither of which the Contessa had ever noticed before. He went over to the fireplace.

“Tell me, Habib,” the Contessa asked, “what does
sidi
mean?”

“It is a title of respect.” He extracted something from his sweater pocket, knelt down, and opened his hand to Serena. She nibbled the treat and resumed her nap. “An Arabic word,” Habib continued, “but like El Cid in the Spanish story. It is what I call my older brother, sometimes my father.”

He seated himself on an ottoman, balancing the cup on his knee.

“I see.”

Her eyes grazed Urbino's, and he looked away. She took a sip of the
tisane
.

“Very good. Did you get the herbs here in Venice? Maybe at that little shop in Dorsoduro? You know it, Urbino. By the Montin?”

“Oh, no!” Habib said with his engaging smile. “I brought them from Morocco.”

“Smuggled them in, did you?” she asked.

Habib's smile faded. He looked at Urbino for help. When Urbino had explained, Habib turned back to the Contessa with an alarmed look.

“Contraband? I never did a thing like that! I never would go against the law!”

“Barbara was only joking.”

Habib retreated into silence and his own cup of herb tea.

As she waited for conversation to pick up again, the Contessa glanced around the room. This time it was the absence of an eighteenth-century carved wood fire screen with an embroidered panel, one of her many gifts. However, she made no comment as she had before about the Faenza dish.

Urbino drew Habib out by asking about his progress in Italian at the language school. He spoke enthusiastically about his teachers and the new friends he was making. When Habib finished with a description of an itinerary of trips the school was planning for its students as far away as Rome, he got up and collected the empty cups.

“You must not stay up too late,
sidi
. The
tisane
steams your body much better when you are resting or asleep. Good night,” he added with a slightly strained smile at the Contessa.

He departed with the tray, Serena trotting five feet behind him.

The Contessa stood up.

“It's good to see that he's adjusting so well.”

“Yes. I'm pleased that he's making friends and feeling more comfortable here. I was afraid that he'd be isolated. I worry about him, of course—perhaps too much—but I am responsible for him.”

“Indeed. I'm sure you'll find the proper balance between giving him his independence and looking after him. It's your way.”

She looked at him warmly.

“I promise to ask a few questions here and there. I admit it might be a good idea to learn something about Nina Crivelli. Then your mind can be at ease.”