The Last Gondola (11 page)

Armando noted Urbino's interest in the symbol and seemed to give him every opportunity to examine it as he slowly opened the door to release him into the late afternoon shadows.

22

When Urbino got back to the Palazzo Uccello after his encounter with Possle, he was fatigued. Although he had promised to let the Contessa know about everything that had happened during his first visit to the Ca' Pozza, he telephoned her and said that he preferred to wait until tomorrow when he would see her in person. He wanted to think about it all first. Since this was the eve of her first
conversazione
, she didn't press the matter.

Urbino picked at the sandwiches that Natalia had left for him and then went to the library. There he sat thinking for a long time, going over what had happened that afternoon behind the walls of the Ca' Pozza. He spent almost as much time berating himself for what he had failed to communicate to Possle out of caution and reticence as he spent going over what Possle had said—or had seemed to say. He found himself becoming more and more weary and lay down on the sofa to close his eyes for a few minutes. He soon, however, fell asleep, with Serena next to him.

He awakened past midnight.

When he got into bed, he had some trouble falling sleep, but fortunately, when he did, he had no dreams. Yet all the while as he slept he seemed to be lying in wait for the one which had become his dark companion.

23

“If you didn't ask him that,” the Contessa said to Urbino the next morning as he guided her along the slick pavement behind the Piazza San Marco, “then what
did
you ask him?”

The two friends were making their way from Florian's to the music conservatory, where the Contessa was scheduled to give her first
conversazione
.

The unasked question she was referring to was the one that had been troubling Urbino ever since Armando had delivered Possle's note.

If the Contessa hadn't been the one to secure him the invitation, then who had it been?

“Maybe no one was responsible,” Urbino said, “no one but Possle himself. He knows about me, and he knows that I've been trying to contact him, apparently from Armando. As it turns out,” Urbino added in a rueful voice, “I didn't end up asking him very much at all.”

“Quite unusual for you!”

“There are times when it's better to keep quiet and listen—and observe.”

“But why do I get the impression that you're not satisfied with having kept quiet?”

“It shows, does it? I asked a question here and there, and I'd like to think that I didn't press more on him because it would have been premature, or presumptuous, or both. Considering it was my first visit,” he added more forcefully.

“And you didn't want to make it your last as well.”

He nodded.

“But that's not the whole story,” she said.

“No,” Urbino admitted with reluctance. “He seemed to be the one asking the questions, when he wasn't revealing what he already knew about me, that is.”

“You're a well-known local figure,
caro
, even notorious in your way, not unlike your strange host: The
americano
who lives in an historic palazzo, glides around in his own gondola, and tracks down murderers when he isn't feeding off the dead like a vampire!”

“Thank you for the flattering picture! But that leaves us almost as confused as we were before. Did Possle contact me in my capacity as sleuth or as vampire, as you call me?”

“Perhaps both.”

“Or neither.” Urbino shook his head. “He gave no clear sign of anything along those lines. I felt as if I were there for his private entertainment.”

“That may not be far from the mark. After all, a man in his situation has to import most of his diversions. And years ago he became accustomed to a constant supply of them. It must be rather dull for him these days.”

“All alone, it seems, with Armando. What do you know about him?”

“Not anything. I was never in the Ca' Pozza, remember, or in Possle's gondola. And I never knew that Armando was a mute. He was very much in the background, and I certainly don't remember that he looked as—as weird as you say he does now. But he made me feel uncomfortable, as if he was wishing me ill.”

“He couldn't have made it more clear that he resented my being there.” Then Urbino added, “Or so it seemed.”

They came to a stop by a broad pool of water where a flotilla of gondolas was moored.

“At least you can cross him off your list of reasons why Possle might have invited you,” the Contessa said, as she searched the gondoliers who waited in their boats for their assignments to various stations around the city.

“Who knows? Possle seemed to be toying with me. Some of the things he said sounded familiar, irritatingly familiar, and I got the impression that he wanted to keep me off balance. Which he succeeded all too well in doing.”

“But I'm sure you're going to be your usual patient self and put up with as much of it as possible. For the sake of a greater good.”

“If he asks me back.”

“Being exposed to you once is not enough,” the Contessa said, “if one can judge from my own response. Oh, there's Gildo!”

She waved at the young man. He waved back to them from a gondola at the far edge of the clustered boats. His chiseled countenance showed little of its usual animation. It was one of the days when, according to their agreement, he wasn't in Urbino's service.

“He still looks sad, poor boy,” the Contessa said. “Have you found out anything more about his friend?”

“No,” Urbino replied, with a twinge of guilt. His interest in Possle was making him neglect other things. He cast a regretful glance back at Gildo. There was an air of isolation about his lithe figure.

Urbino held the Contessa more tightly as compensation for whatever ways he might have been neglecting her as they continued their slow, even stride toward the conservatory. They walked in a companionable silence, broken only by brief greetings given to acquaintances they met along the way. Above them the dark gray sky threatened more rain. The alleys were filled with shoppers and a scattering of tourists. Beneath a narrow, covered passageway, they had to draw to one side as a caravan of young people barged along.

Signs above their heads on the worn stones of the buildings provided direction, but Urbino and the Contessa had no more need of them than they had of any conversation. Each kept to his own thoughts. Urbino's were about his meeting with Samuel Possle the previous day, and the Contessa's, he assumed, were about her
conversazione
.

Thunder sounded as they crossed a square. The Contessa surveyed the leaden sky with a frown.

“Let's go past La Fenice,” she suggested.

A few minutes later, under an increasingly darkening sky, they were contemplating the grand old opera house, where they had spent many unforgettable hours together. It was being restored after a disastrous fire had destroyed its jewel-box interior a few years ago.

The Contessa gave a deep sigh. “I'm going to give the biggest celebration ever when it's finished,” she said. “But it will never be the same, will it?”

“Of course it will. It's burned down before, and it's risen from its ashes, remember,” Urbino consoled her, as they resumed their way, alluding to the name of the theater. La Fenice was Italian for the mythical phoenix bird, which after being consumed by flames, was reborn again from the ashes in its nest.

The thunder became louder and the sky darker. They ducked into the doorway of a shop for a few moments to open their umbrellas.

“I'll take the rain as a good omen,” the Contessa said, now stepping across the stones more carefully.

“Your
conversazione
will be a great success. I have no doubt of that.”

A worried frown descended on the Contessa's face. The silence they now fell into wasn't an easy one as they continued in the direction of the music conservatory.

An idea started to form in Urbino's mind about the Contessa's
conversazione
, which she had got his pledge not to attend. He entertained the idea privately at first, hardly noticing that the rain had abated and the Contessa had closed her umbrella.

He stopped when they reached the Campo Morosini. At the other side of the square was the Renaissance palazzo of the music conservatory. The Contessa went on a few paces before she stopped as well. She turned around.

“I'm coming to your
conversazione,”
he said, shutting his umbrella and giving her the benefit of his recent thoughts. “It's what I should do, and it's what's really best for you.”

The Contessa's gray eyes grew large. “Haven't I told you that I absolutely forbid it! Having you there, no matter how well intentioned and supportive you are and how much I love you, will make me a bundle of nerves, a bigger bundle of nerves.”

She put her gloved hand on his arm. “Urbino dear, I know you want to put me at my ease so that I'll be calm and silver throated, but the best way to do that is to respect my wishes. I'd rather have you say good-bye and good luck to me in the courtyard. You've heard everything I have to say about those years, and more than once! There are better things for you to be doing. Come. Let me show you something.”

They went across to the music conservatory and into the main courtyard. In the large open space beneath tiers of loggias, a group of people were waiting to go into the lecture room. A soprano voice floated down to them:

“‘When e're you pass my tombstone, Oh shed a tear for me love!…'”

It was from the mad scene of
Lucia di Lammermoor
. The woman's voice was uneven but filled with emotion.

The Contessa listened for a few moments with a reminiscent smile on her face, then went over to accept the good wishes of her friends and acquaintances. Among them were Lino Cipri and a woman in a plain black scarf. Cipri introduced the woman leaning on his elbow as his wife. She was bent over, with a heavily wrinkled face, and looked twenty years older than her husband. She stared up at the Contessa from bright blue eyes. They were the youngest thing about her.

“We're looking forward to what you have to share with us, Contessa,” Cipri said. “We're almost as interested in music as we are in art.”

His wife pulled her arm away from Cipri. “Not only art,” his wife rasped in Italian, with the trace of an accent of some kind, “literature, poetry.”

“I agree with you, Signora Cipri,” the Contessa said, averting her eyes from the woman's. “As it turns out, the relationship between music and poetry at the conservatory will come up during one of my
conversazioni
, but not today. Thank you very much for coming. I hope you'll both find something of interest. If you'll excuse us.”

She drew Urbino off into the second courtyard.

“Cipri is going to think it's peculiar that I won't be attending your
conversazione,”
Urbino said.

“Let him think what he wants, but let's hope the signora doesn't keep piercing me with her eyes. They were as cold as ice. But I didn't bring you into this courtyard or to this spot to escape from Signora Cipri. It was because of this other lady. She's what I want to show you.”

She indicated the stone figure of a robed and veiled woman a few feet away, standing with one leg bent forward. She clasped a book against her breast and stared ahead, her face visible through the veil in an unusual effect rendered by the sculpture.

“How fortunate that no one has ever discovered her identity,” the Contessa said. “The palazzo's little mystery. Don't you dare ever try to unveil her! Oh, I know that you'd like to have your cake and eat it, too—the romance of the mystery and the satisfaction of its solution. But that's impossible. Give your efforts to your Samuel Possle and my disappearing wardrobe. You can leave me now with a clear conscience. Our mysterious lady of the veil will watch over me along with Alvise's spirit and protect me from Signora Cipri's eyes!”

She gave him a kiss on the cheek and left him alone to contemplate the statue.

24

From the music conservatory it was a short walk over the Accademia Bridge to the broad embankment of the Zattere. Urbino headed there after leaving the Contessa, silently sending good wishes her way.

By the time he reached the Zattere, the clouds had started to disperse and sunshine was breaking through. Waiters at the cafés and restaurants were taking advantage of the change in the weather to set up tables on the pavement and on raft terraces that extended out into the wide Giudecca Canal.

The Zattere was an ideal place for a promenade even during winter since it faced south. Even on this less than ideal day, people passed back and forth, pushing baby carriages, carrying the morning's marketing, greeting each other and stopping to chat for a few minutes. Many were elderly Venetians, who could always count on meeting a friend somewhere on the quay. It extended all the way from the Punta della Dogana near the Church of the Salute to the Santa Marta quarter by the maritime station.

Urbino stopped at one of the cafés to have a coffee. He stood outside drinking it and looked across the canal to the Island of the Giudecca. In late July the island was 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 Venice had built in thanksgiving for having been delivered from the plague in the sixteenth century. The feast was one of fireworks and mulberry eating and bathing on the Lido at dawn. Urbino and Habib had thrown themselves into the festival last summer. They had been able to persuade the Contessa, who usually avoided the celebration like the plague itself, to join them, although she had drawn the line at the early morning rituals on the Lido.