The Last Gondola (28 page)

On their way up the Grand Canal, Gildo assured Urbino that his uncle was fine despite bruises. When Urbino asked why Emo had been in San Polo, Gildo said that he had gone there to change a lock.

Urbino regretted that his talk with Emo was delayed and hoped that what had happened to him in San Polo had nothing to do with the Ca' Pozza. It seemed a feeble hope.

Gildo was withdrawn. He kept looking through the window at the passing scene. When he spied some friends walking along the Rialto embankment when the
vaporetto
was about to pull away, he said a hurried good-bye to Urbino and jumped off to join them. As he threw his arm around one of his companions, he cast a quick glance back at Urbino.

61

Early the next morning, Urbino crossed the long, wooden bridge that led to the island of San Pietro di Castello in the eastern part of the city.

On the other side of the canal a man in a boat repair yard was applying bright green paint to a
sandalo
. Nets were stretched out in the sun under the blue sky. Near the boatyard was a row of simple houses with chimney pots. The gleaming white campanile of the church, leaning at a precarious angle, beckoned Urbino, for on this small island he might fill in some gaps in the story of Marco Carelli.

Consulting the address provided by the gondola maker at the
square
in San Trovaso, he went to one of the quaint houses on the canal where a man and a woman were sitting in chairs in the sunshine. When he asked them where he could find Carlo the
remero
, the man smiled and said that he was Carlo. He was a thin, friendly faced man in his late sixties. The stout, bespectacled woman, who was embroidering a handkerchief, was his wife.

Urbino explained that his gondolier had been Marco Carelli's friend. “He has the
forcola
that Marco worked on.”

“So you're the American gentleman with the gondola!” the wife exclaimed, looking more closely at Urbino now.

“Did you know Marco?” the
remero
asked.

“No. Gildo has told me about him. He treasures the
forcola
. It's good.”

“Marco made some mistakes. He was still learning. I gave it to his friend to comfort him after the accident.” His eyes filled with tears. “He was one of my best apprentices. He could have had his own workshop some day. Maybe this one. I'll be retiring in a few years; we have no children.”

His wife busied herself with her needle, glancing at Urbino from time to time.

“I'd like to make a gift on Marco's behalf,” he said. “For the
forcola.”

“That's not necessary,” Carlo began, evidently surprised. “We—”

“How kind of you, signore,” his wife interrupted him.

Urbino took out his checkbook and started to write a check for a sum that he believed would more than satisfy them.

“Marco was generous, like you, signore,” Carlo's wife said. “Sometimes he gave us extra money. He knew we had our difficulties. We still do.”

Urbino gave Carlo the check. He thanked Urbino and handed it to his wife. She looked at the amount written on it and smiled.

“Thank you, signore,” she said. She folded it and put it in her pocket.

Urbino described Armando and asked if they had seen him around the quarter or anyone else who had asked them about Marco.

“No,” Carlo said. His wife shook her head. “Maybe you're asking because someone spoke against him. A neighbor said something about drugs and a wild crowd in San Polo, but he was an angel from what we could see.”

“And even if it were true, signore,” his wife added, “we wouldn't have cared. How he behaved somewhere else wasn't our business.”

62

That evening Urbino, the Contessa, and Rebecca went out to dinner together at a trattoria in the Santa Croce district.

It had everything a trattoria should have. A roaring fire, simple, delicious food, an acceptable house wine, good company, and a family that did all the cooking and serving. There was even a group of men in a corner playing cards amicably.

As if by a common agreement, no one brought up Possle and the Ca' Pozza. Urbino appreciated this brief respite from something that he had been living and sleeping with for many weeks now. Whenever it intruded on his thoughts in the course of the evening, as it inevitably did, especially since his next visit to the Ca' Pozza was tomorrow, he pushed it away.

Rebecca shared her impressions of the newly restored Giotto frescoes at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. The Contessa discussed the music program she was putting together for the Contessa's last
conversazione
. Both Rebecca and Urbino would be attending, he having received her carte blanche to be there on this occasion.

For his part, Urbino, who had called Habib the previous evening after returning from Harry's Bar, told them about the young man's recent activities in Morocco. They included the sale of some of his paintings to a Barcelona dealer and an outing to Marrakesh in the Deux Chevaux Urbino had bought for his own use when he was in the country and left for the family.

Urbino had them laughing when he described how Habib had put, not only his mother on the line, but also each of his six sisters and two brothers.

All in all, the only disappointment of their evening was that their bill wasn't toted up with chalk on a slate to make the spell complete. Urbino got home feeling less fatigued than energized for tomorrow's visit to the Ca' Pozza.

But as it turned out the evening, or rather the night, was not to be without its far less pleasant side, for the dream of Possle and the fire was more vivid and disturbing than ever.

63

The next day was Thursday, March 21. Urbino had his rendezvous with Possle at four-thirty.

Before he left the Palazzo Uccello, he called Corrado Scarpa about the boat accident report. Scarpa was having trouble locating it, he said. He would keep trying.

Urbino then telephoned his friend Paola, who coordinated social services at the municipal hospital. It had been a week since he had asked her to have someone at her office make a visit to Elvira Carelli to see what might be done for her. Paola said that she had arranged to have her assistant stop by Elvira's apartment a few days ago. Elvira had allowed her in, and they had had a brief conversation. Elvira had ended up crying and screaming about Marco and had made incoherent comments about the neighboring building.

The assistant's observations confirmed Urbino's impression on his own visit. Despite her emotional problems, Elvira kept the apartment in fairly good order. The refrigerator and pantry had been well stocked and a pot of food had been cooking on the stove. The social service worker had given Elvira her phone number and had said that she would stop by again. Elvira hadn't given any indication that this would be unwelcome to her.

This was the most that Paola's services could do for Elvira at this point. She would let him know when her assistant made another visit.

As he was leaving the Palazzo Uccello, Gildo was coming in. Urbino asked him how his uncle was doing and learned that he had returned to work yesterday, the day after the attack.

64

Armando's sharp eyes, his loud silence, his cold smile, and even his unhurried passage up the staircase of the Ca' Pozza, although all no different than usual, were nothing less than accusations. Urbino was amazed at how much the man communicated without words, unless what he should have been amazed at, as well as warned by, was his own facility for reading meanings where there might not be any. But this was surely a circumstance in which it was better to think and believe the worst.

But as soon as he saw the old man buried among the cushions of his calculated divan, Urbino instinctively knew he was safe. This didn't mean that Armando hadn't informed Possle about Urbino's tour of the house, but that, if he had, Possle was going to do all he could to give no sign of it.

If Urbino had wanted to seek comfort by confessing after being accused, he wasn't going to find it here. No, everything about the recluse that Urbino absorbed in the first few moments of being in the gondola room told him that if Possle knew anything, he would utter at most, an almost diabolical, “I accuse you, I accuse you of nothing!”

Urbino's feelings as he seated himself were further complicated by his host's physical appearance on this occasion. Although he was decked out in his customary red satins and purple silks, his face beneath the purple headscarf looked more pinched and drawn than usual. One hand trembled slightly but all too evidently. Urbino hoped that all these signs didn't presage an attack that would snatch Possle away before he might get the information he needed.

Perhaps this fear and the realization that he was safe from Possle if not from Armando emboldened Urbino to seize the moment and try to gain the advantage. He sat patiently until Armando came with the Amontillado and left, all the while listening to Possle's long anecdote, delivered in his tremulous voice, about how one of Peggy Guggenheim's dogs had once become lost in the Ca' Pozza.

When Possle finished, Urbino leaned forward in his armchair and said, “Do you really think we need to go through the motions today? We both know what's on our minds—the Byron poems. Why pretend? Once you've shown your hand, there's no use in covering it up again.”

“An even more apt metaphor than you think.”

All the wrinkles broke out on one side of Possle's face as he gave his half smile. The other half, by contrast, remained disconcertingly smooth.

He had been fingering his crystal atomizer. The scent of the special potpourri hung heavy in the air. He thrust the atomizer back among the cushions.

“Very well,” he said. “I'm sure you've given some thought to my revelation.”

“Not only thought”—Urbino aimed for as neutral a tone as he could manage—”but also some action.”

“And what might that have been?”

“Let me say that I know about an Armenian named Mechitar Dilsizian.”

“You've gone to San Lazzaro degli Armeni, just as I thought you would,” Possle said, with a self-satisfied air. “Good for you.”

Urbino was annoyed. Once again, Possle spoke as if Urbino had no secrets from him, almost as if he somehow had an insidious influence over what Urbino did or didn't do.

“I know that this Dilsizian had Byron poems in his possession twenty years ago”—Urbino drew out the words—“or poems he claimed were written by Byron.”

“Oh, they were. They are! And you have little doubt yourself. Why else would you be so excited? You're trying to conceal it, but it's clear to me.”

“I know that Dilsizian and his son died in a boating accident off the Lido,” Urbino went on, controlling his rising irritation. “You were on the boat and so was Armando and his sister, Adriana. She drowned along with them.”

Urbino was sweating. The room seemed hotter this afternoon.

“You must be careful that Armando never hears you speaking about his sister,” Possle said. “Her memory is sacred to him. I hardly mention her, and especially not at this time of the year.”

Urbino looked in the direction of the
sala
.

“So Armando makes you uneasy,” Possle said. “Yes, he could be standing right outside the room. Such a quiet man, Armando. Would you take this, please?”

He held out his porcelain cup. Urbino got up and took it, using the opportunity to take a closer look at Possle's face. It was yellow and waxen. His eyes glittered feverishly behind their large glasses.

Urbino reseated himself and put the cup down on the table.

“I know what you're thinking about all this,” Possle said. “Mechitar Dilsizian had the Byron poems, and now I have them. Mechitar and his son drowned, and so did Adriana,” he added, whispering the woman's name, his eyes sliding toward the open door. He took a long pause during which he seemed to collect his energy from an increasingly depleted reservoir. “Only Armando and I survived,” he went on. “And now I have the poems. Do you think such things are worth killing for? Mere words on paper, even if they're Byron's?”

In Urbino's experience people sometimes killed for far less. And the fact that Possle had been the one to bring up murder alerted him. He could be trying to put him off the scent.

“So the poems you say you have—”

“The poems I
have,”
Possle interrupted with quiet emphasis.

“So these poems are the ones Dilsizian had in his possession before he died?”

“Not right before he died or even
when
he died. The way you phrase your question makes a link between my having the poems and his accident. I'm no fool. They were in my possession before that sad event.”

“And how did that come about?”

“You sound skeptical. Are you a gambling man? Roulette? Baccarat? Poker?” One of Possle's eyes started to twitch. He pressed a finger against it. “I don't think so, but I am. I had a gaming room in this house in those days. Mechitar Dilsizian was an obsessive gambler.”

Father Nazar had said the same thing.

“Do you see now why your comment about having showed you my hand amused me?”

“Are you telling me that Dilsizian lost the poems to you in a gambling game?”

“Don't look surprised. Fortunes and dukedoms used to change hands in the Ridotto in the old days.” Possle was referring to the former gaming house near the Piazza San Marco. “Dilsizian considered himself luckier at baccarat than he was. In the end all he had left to bet were the poems.”

Urbino wasn't prepared to accept this convenient explanation.

“If you're wondering if there was a witness to the affair,” Possle said, regarding him with a crooked little smile, “I give you my Armando.”

“I'm wondering a great many things. Like how the poems came into Dilsizian's hands to begin with.”

“A most interesting story. They were passed down from generation to generation in his family. Byron had many Armenian friends, and at least one Armenian lover. Dilsizian claimed that this woman, very beautiful, who lived in the Calle degli Armeni and is now mere dust, as we all must come to, was the original owner of the poems.”