Deadly to the Sight (6 page)

She stepped away after pecking him again on each cheek. But then she hurried back and, leaning closer to him as if someone might be lurking beneath the bridge to hear her confidence, added, “Oh, by the by, please don't get involved in Filippo and my little—how shall I call it?—tangle, our imbroglio! I know what Barbara's cooking up. I wouldn't want someone as sweet and considerate as you to get caught in the cross fire! There are much better things to do with your valuable time. We'll work it out ourselves, or kill each other first. Ciao,
bello
!”

9

“I've been going mad waiting for you,” the Contessa said when Urbino entered the
salotto blu
.

“I'm not that late,” he said, dropping into one of the Louis Quinze chairs by the fireplace. His accustomed spot, it stood next to a small table holding the Contessa's collection of eighteenth-century ceramics. The fireplace, with a Veronese above it, crackled in homey fashion from wood brought down from Asolo, near the Contessa's villa. “In any event, Oriana must have been more than a little diversion.”

“So you saw her.
Diversion
, do you say? It was like being in a cage with a tigress! I don't think she sat down once.”

“She was a bit hyper, but then she's never been a mellow type. Nonetheless,” he said, “it doesn't seem as if she broke anything as she stalked the room.”

His eyes surveyed the familiar surroundings. If the Contessa's
salotto blu
had been cluttered when Urbino had first seen it, it was even more so these days. It wasn't that the room was small—in fact, it was a good size—but that the Contessa had furnished it with most of her favorite things.

“If the house ever starts breaking apart and floating off,” she had said several years ago, “I'll run to the
salotto blu
and hope to reach a desert island somewhere.”

Urbino contemplated one of the recent additions to the room. It was a portrait of the Contessa, showing to fine, but not flattering advantage her generous cheekbones, slanted gray eyes, and patrician air. This portrait dated from the time of the devastating storm shortly before Urbino's departure for Morocco. Murder and intrigue at the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini had surrounded the portrait. Although someone had viciously slashed it during that nightmarish weekend, it had been so skillfully repaired that you would have found it difficult to detect the damage easily. Originally planned to hang in the family portrait gallery, the Contessa had decided to keep it before her as a reminder of a difficult time.

Those jealous of the Contessa, however, might have said that she kept it in her favorite room out of vanity. If they had seen her now, reclining on her sofa and looking careworn and abstracted, they might have had a private thrill of satisfaction that it might not be too long before her portrait outshone her.

A small table near the sofa was set out for tea. Urbino regretted not having stopped somewhere on his walk for a bit of what Oriana had been having. His eyes flicked in the direction of the bar.

“Ah, here is Silvia. I'm sure you're just dying for a cup of tea on an afternoon like this,” the Contessa said with a slight note of appeal.

Urbino understood. Tea was always soothing for the Contessa, but never more soothing than when shared, and this afternoon she gave every sign of needing the benefits of more than one mutual cup.

The maid, of whom the Contessa had so many complaints, carried in the steaming kettle to the small table a bit unsteadily and placed it above the silver lamp. She gave Urbino a quick glance as she was leaving. If youth and prettiness made up for everything else, Urbino thought, then Silvia could be allowed many errors. During his visits to the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini since returning, however, he had more and more missed the assured, mature presence of Lucia, as well as that of the now retired Mauro.

“You know, Barbara, I'm beginning to agree with what you said at Florian's the other day. No, not about Oriana and Filippo,” he forestalled her as she began to say something. “I'll get to them in a moment. No, I mean about the changes here. There've been quite a few, but not necessarily for the worse,” he tried to assure her. “Vitale, Silvia, and Giorgio, there's no question they're splendid physical improvements over their predecessors, and Vitale seems to live up to his name—”

“Doesn't he!” the Contessa wailed as she proceeded to make the tea. “I've told him time after time that he needn't announce you of all people, but he does it just the same. He doesn't know what to do with his energy.”

“Oriana could give him a few suggestions—him and Giorgio.”

“You'd think that woman would mend her ways considering she's facing divorce. She didn't fool me by not coming in her boat!”

Urbino repressed a smile, not wanting to give Oriana away any more than she did herself. In a more serious tone, he said, “You also mentioned at Florian's that you were counting on me to ‘save' Oriana and Filippo, and in the process also save you—and myself as well, I suppose—from suffering further changes—”

“Why do I detect a
but
in your voice?”

“Oriana just told me quite plainly that she doesn't want or need my help.” He explained what Oriana had said to him. “I'm not going to blunder around, make a fool of myself, and probably cause more harm than good.”

“My, my haven't you grown humble! You still take only one lump? Here!” She handed him his cup. “I won't press you on the point. Reluctant peacemakers can do too much damage. Besides,
caro
, I may need your efforts in a different area, something more personal. I know there's your new book, and helping me plan the ball, and your readjustments to being back, not to mention the repairs at the Palazzo Uccello, and—and Habib, of course, but …”

She trailed off.

“What is it, Barbara? It's Nina Crivelli, isn't it?”

She poured out her own cup and added sugar before responding.

“I suppose it was a little obvious, the way she was stalking me outside Florian's.”

“Is that how you describe it? Maybe it's more serious than I thought. What's this all about?” It would be best to wait to hear what she had to say before telling her about his own encounter with Crivelli.

She took a sip of tea to fortify her.

“It's all rather embarrassing,” she began. “Or that's all it was at first. I suppose that was why I didn't say anything all this time. But things have changed since then. I guess the best place to begin is the day I showed Frieda the Casa Verde. I wanted to help get her established before I left for London since you'd be returning shortly after I got back. I didn't think that Burano would suit her, especially after she had stayed at the Palazzo Uccello, but—” She broke off abruptly. “Just listen to me! I'm getting off the point already. I used to be such a good storyteller.”

“Calm down. You're all wound up, like Oriana. Maybe you should have something other than tea?”

“Maybe you mean
you
should have. But it will just sap your strength. You haven't been looking all that well since you got back, you know.”

“My body hasn't readjusted to the weather.”

“Is that it? Go right ahead, then. Suit yourself.”

He was tempted, but he showed his solidarity by raising his cup and taking another sip.

“Go on,” he urged.

She took a deep breath and continued at a slower pace. Urbino settled himself in his chair, determined to keep to tea drinking for the moment, and not to interrupt her as she relived what he soon realized had been a distressing series of events.

10

On the morning the Contessa took Frieda Hensel to Burano it was clear and bright, but it started to darken for her as soon as Giorgio was maneuvering the
motoscafo
to the landing.

An old woman was standing alone on the quay staring at the boat. The Contessa recognized her as a lace maker from Burano. She had become acquainted with her when she had tried to set up a lace making scholarship there several years before. The woman had been given a large amount of money in anticipation of giving lace making lessons, but, according to the Contessa's agent, she had given only two afternoons of instruction and then refused to give any of the money back. The Contessa had not pressed the matter.

She now gave a little shiver. The Contessa had seldom felt so assaulted by a gaze as she was by the woman's. Her eyes, magnified behind thick glasses, seemed to invade the very privacy of her thoughts and leave behind a chill.

Frieda gave a full-hearted laugh. She was a tall, attractive woman in her late forties with slightly protruding eyes. She wore, as was her custom, a large colorful scarf tied around her head and draped over one shoulder.

“You are cold, Barbara?” she said. She had a strong accent, but spoke excellent English. “But today, for November, it is so warm. It is not like the winter at all. You have become Italian after all these years!”

On their walk to the bright green house on a small canal, and all the time the Contessa was showing it to Frieda as if she were an estate agent, she couldn't shake her chill despite the sunshine and the German woman's enthusiasm. She realized that it was the chill of a premonition. She had felt them before. Although they usually turned out to be nothing, whenever one touched her, she expected the worst.

All during their meal at Il Piccolo Nettuno, a small restaurant on the Via Galuppi where she often ate when she was on the island, she was abstracted and apprehensive. Frieda joked with her, perhaps perceiving that the Contessa was disturbed about something. She assured the Contessa that the little Casa Verde was delightful, and that she'd take good care of it, and that she was completely prepared—in fact, she insisted—that the Contessa accept at least a token amount from her in the way of rent.

The Contessa responded to her exuberance with a wan smile that she saw reflected from odd, unaccustomed angles in one or another of the restaurant's unavoidable mirrors. She attributed these ill-considered new additions to the vanity of the woman who owned the restaurant and who kept throwing glances into them as she moved from table to table.

The Contessa noticed that the waiter, who had worked at the restaurant for as long as she had been coming, was reeling more than usual as he carried plates. She had always suspected him of frequent nips from a bottle in the kitchen. Obviously the mirrors only added to his disorientation and lack of surefootedness these days.

The Contessa was beginning to feel more at ease by the time they were lingering over coffee, Frieda's having been “corrected” by a generous dose of anisette. Regina Bella, the
padrona
, joined them to chat, speaking in English and only now and again breaking into Italian.

“Everyone here on Burano is grateful for your attempts to help its delicate art, Contessa,” she said in a voice made hoarse from all the cigarettes she smoked. “We Buranelli are one big family. We hope you will try again to establish a scholarship. The time wasn't right before.”

The Contessa's immediate response was to give a perceptible start and an equally perceptible gasp. She stared into one of the mirrors.

In it, the face of the old woman from the boat landing peered at her with her grotesquely magnified eyes. She pressed a lace handkerchief against her mouth and then drank from a glass of water, all the while staring at the Contessa.

This sudden appearance of the old woman in the restaurant would have been enough in itself to startle the Contessa. Her distress was heightened, however, by the way that Bella's comment had seemed to invoke the face of the very person who had been largely responsible for the failure of her benevolence. It suggested to the Contessa the old adage, Speak of the devil and he will appear.

Bella followed the Contessa's gaze. She gave a nervous laugh.

“That's Nina Crivelli,” she said.

“Yes,” the Contessa said, “I recognized her.”

“People always remember Nina! Those eyes! They stab right into you! She used to be one of the best of the lace makers in her day, before her sight started to go. It was all the lace making that did it. She can hardly see beyond her nose, even with the glasses. I think that's why her eyes seem like knives, from the strain. But she manages to see quite a bit, don't you worry about that. She's become very attached to the restaurant recently,” she added in a lighter tone.

“Almost blind?” Frieda said with exaggerated sympathy. “How sad, and from making beautiful lace. There is a story to be found, yes, don't you think?”

“A story?” Bella repeated.

“I am a writer, my dear. Be careful. Some of us have been known to steal a person's life before they know it!”

Bella, who seemed to follow the spirit of this if not quite all the sense, retreated behind a confused smile.

“Steal? I never said that Nina would steal even a button!” She lit a cigarette and glanced uneasily in the direction of the kitchen. “The waiter, Salvatore, is her son. She comes to check up on him every day. She's a very attentive mother, even after so many years. She does some of his cleaning up to get him home earlier. Sometimes she cooks meals when Nella isn't here. You must excuse me.”

Bella threw her lamb's wool coat over her shoulders and dashed into the street, turning toward the main square.

The Contessa paid Salvatore, and indicated he could keep the rather generous amount left over. She wanted to get out of the restaurant, and back to the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini as soon as possible. She had a vague sense of insecurity as long as she stayed on Burano.

Frieda stopped at one of the lace shops on the way to the boat landing.

“If it's good Burano lace you're looking for,” the Contessa told her, “you won't find it in one of these places.”

“Unfortunately, Barbara, I don't have your large purse. Nor your good taste, I am sure. Please indulge me. I need a special piece of lace for my costume for your ball. I will be Scheherazade, and wear a lovely lace veil instead of a mask, yes!”