Deadly to the Sight

by Edward Sklepowich

  Rebecca launched into some professional observations about the Palazzo Uccello’s zoomorphically carved Gothic cornerstones. Urbino was beginning to feel more hot and dizzy.

  Someone tugged at his sleeve. It was Habib. He had somehow managed to maneuver himself from the other side of the room, but not from the company of the tiny Polidoro. The gallery owner was still only a few inches away from him, lodged against an elbow chair and wearing a pained expression.

  “Sidi,” Habib said in a loud whisper, “may we leave?”

  “You’re not enjoying the party?” Rebecca asked in a warm voice. She had become fond of Habib. They often went on outings together. “Where are your laughing eyes? Where is your smile?”

  Habib ducked his head.

  “It is a very nice party.”

  “And you’ve made a good connection, so you shouldn’t be looking so sad. Do you realize what a talented young man you’ve been talking to, Marino?”

  “You embarrass me,” Habib said.

  “That is too bad!” Rebecca scolded. “You are going to have to learn to sing your own praises, Habib, or you’ll be left behind. And you mustn’t squirm when people praise you. He’s just like a child, Marino. He sees and feels things very clearly, and very intensely. Just a glance at one of his paintings will prove it. He has a marvelous talent. I said he’s like a child, and that’s true, but he also has force and vision. It’s the most marvelous combination. Urbino and I find it a little like the Burano school, but much, much—”

  “The Burano school was the Burano school,” Polidoro interrupted. “It was almost a century ago; last century. And no amount of painting in the bright light and with the bright palette of Burano will turn yesterday into today, or today into yesterday, however I can say it! Via col vento, Rebecca! It is ‘gone with the wind,’ young man,” he said putting a claw-like hand on Habib’s sleeve.

  Habib drew his arm away slightly. Urbino, knowing his superstitions all too well, assumed that he was disturbed by the man’s unusual appearance.

  “But I trust your opinion, dear Rebecca,” Polidoro was saying, a little more subdued now. “I’d like to see some of this young man’s work. We will arrange that, will we not, my boy? I agree with Rebecca. You must toot your own horn.”

  “What does it mean, sidi, to toot my own horn?” Habib asked anxiously in one of his stage whispers.

  Mondador and Polidoro laughed as Urbino explained. His head had become increasingly stuffy during the past few minutes. He made an effort at a smile, but it froze the next moment when he caught the alarmed expression on the Contessa’s face.

  Inconsequential pieces of her conversation with Frieda, Beatrix, and Marie had been drifting over to him, and weaving themselves into what Rebecca, Polidoro, and Habib had been saying. Now, however, he registered that the words lace and lace maker had occurred with some regularity in the last few minutes.

  Marie was waving a lace handkerchief in front of her face.

  “I can’t breathe with all this smoke,” she said.

  But it wasn’t her distress that was the focus of the women’s attention but the lace handkerchief.

  “Yes, it’s a lovely handkerchief. You say that the old woman has one with the same design?” Frieda said. “The woman with thick glasses and very white hair? She wears gloves with the fingers cut off.”

  Marie nodded.

  “She showed it to me when I was looking for one at a shop by the boat landing. I bought this one just to get away. She’s frightful looking.”

  “You are a child,” Beatrix said, but in a consoling tone. She touched her friend’s wrist. “Put it away, liebling.”

  Marie stuffed the handkerchief in her pocket as Frieda was saying, “The old woman is harmless. It’s not her fault that she looks the way she does. I tell you that she has a good imagination. That is what is important, yes!”

  “What do you mean?” asked the Contessa.

  Her voice sounded weak and somewhat tremulous.

  “She tells strange tales,” Frieda said. “Perhaps not as strange as mine. Ha, ha! But she could have been a writer, if all that is needed is the imagination. Regina must agree. She knows her better than any of us.” She craned her head around the room, but Regina was now nowhere in sight. “Perhaps she’s gone outside this time to smoke her cigarette,” she said with a smile for Marie. “I am sure she saw you waving your handkerchief against the smoke!”

  The tall Beatrix had a pensive look on her face. She stared at Frieda for a few moments.

  “You must tell me something,” she said. “Will you use her imagination?”

  “Oh, you are speaking of the old lace maker! I have more than enough of my own, thank you!”

  Her slightly protruding eyes regarded the Austrian woman without even a faint glint of humor.

  “But other writers would steal,” she added, “or pay much money for a good story! Artists are always sketching faces in secret. It is a kind of theft. And for a writer, everything becomes—how do you say it, Contessa?—meal for the mill?”

  The Contessa nodded, her eyes locked with Urbino’s. Any desire to supply the correct idiom was driven out by the discomfort so clearly reflected in her face.

  “But I do not steal,” Frieda went on. “I use what someone else tells me or something I read, and when I am finished with it, it is one hundred percent Frieda Hensel, yes!”

  She then gave a colorful narrative of what she called the romance of lace that she seemed to be spinning out as she spoke. It was about a handsome fisherman from Burano who became shipwrecked, and was rescued and comforted by beautiful mermaids in a castle of coral. When the mermaids conveyed him back to Burano after many happy months, his pockets were full of the mermaids’ seaweed. His wife, seeing the sad state of her husband, went to a wise old woman, who told fortunes and gave advice. The wife hurried home and started to copy the pattern of the seaweed with her needle and thread. And in this fashion lace making was born, and was forever associated with danger, seduction, melancholy, and love.

  Urbino’s mind had become less and less focussed as Frieda went on. He recognized some familiar elements in her tale from something he had read at one time or another, but, as she had just said, she had made them her own.

  “Please, sidi, are you dreaming? You aren’t listening to me!” came Habib’s impatient voice. “I need good air! I do not feel well. We must go!”

  Making his apologies to Frieda and arranging with the Contessa to meet her at the dock in half an hour, Urbino managed to extricate himself and Habib, both socially and physically, from the overcrowded parlor.

  16

  But once they were outside for a few minutes it was Urbino who didn’t feel well.

  It was a warmish night. Habib insisted on taking a walk. The fog drifting in from the lagoon soon swallowed the little green house behind them.

  “This is better, yes, sidi?” Habib said after taking a deep breath.

  He was wearing a dark brown burnoose, the capacious hood falling beneath his shoulders. It suited him, and in fact suited the damp, wind-swept calli of wintry Venice as it did the narrow street they were walking down now. Urbino, seized with a sudden chill, envied it. He drew the lapels of his tweed sport jacket against his chest and readjusted his scarf.

  They were walking away from where Giorgio would be waiting with the motoscafo, but Urbino knew Burano well enough to take the proper turns that would eventually get them to their destination. As they moved closer to the open lagoon, the fog became thicker. At one point they had to grope their way for several feet.

  Habib appeared to have regained whatever strength he had momentarily lost in the parlor. He began a spirited monologue about the deserted streets, the fog, the boots outside the entrances, the tolling of the church bell and the distant put-put-put of a boat’s engine. He seemed seized with a nervous excitement and his English came fluently as it usually did when he was alone with Urbino.

  Urbino made only an occasional comment as they walked slowly p
ast the shuttered houses, with the illumination leaking through the slats. The more Habib spoke, the less Urbino felt like saying anything himself, or needed to. And the more energized his burnoosed friend became, the weaker he felt.

  They had been walking for about ten minutes when Urbino was seized with a violent fit of shivering. He stopped. Habib, caught up in a description now of the painting he was working on, walked a few paces ahead before he realized that Urbino had fallen behind.

  “What is it, sidi?” he asked, retracing his steps.

  Urbino was standing, or rather leaning, against the corner of a building beneath the feeble glare of a lamp.

  “Oh, my good God, you do not look good.”

  “I don’t feel very good, either.”

  “Is your stomach running away? You should not have eaten the sausages, sidi. It was pork!”

  Urbino didn’t feel like arguing that the sausages hadn’t been made of pork. In any case, he doubted it had been anything he had eaten at Frieda’s. He had been feeling a bit fatigued for the past week or two, and especially today. From his first months in Morocco he had occasionally been laid low by what he and his doctors referred to as a stomach virus. He feared that he was in for another bout.

  “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 gra
cious—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.