She was about to turn away when the door opened a few inches. A slice of Salvatore’s face from one dark-circled eye to his beard-stubbled chin was visible.
“Buon giorno, Signor Crivelli. It’s the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini.”
Silence. The eye stared at her.
“I’ve come to give you my condolences on the death of your mother.”
The silence of the hallway and the echo of her voice reminded her of her night visit to Il Piccolo Nettuno. Salvatore’s eye continued to stare at her. It was shot with red. Hot breath mixed with the smell of wine came through the narrow crack.
“I—I’ve come to give you something.”
She fumbled in her handbag and pulled out a large white envelope. Did she notice some quickening of interest in the eye?
“It’s a Mass card. From the Church of the Madonna dell’ Orto,” she said, hearing the tremor in her voice. “A Mass will be celebrated every year in perpetuity on your mother’s onomastico. Her baptismal name was Anna. Annina, she was called, and—and Nina. Am I right?” She realized she was showing her nervousness. “So, you see, Signor Crivelli, on Sant’ Anna’s Day a Mass will be said in her honor.” She waited for a response, then added, “Every year, as I said.”
The door started to close.
“Here!”
She thrust the envelope through the opening but before it got all the way through, the door closed completely.
The envelope was stuck between the door and the jamb. She tugged at it, thinking she would slip it under the door, but it wouldn’t move. More loudly than any words Salvatore might have used, its blank, white surface spoke to her of her failure.
4
The Contessa hoped to have more success with the two lace makers. So far things were going along well.
The Contessa was acquainted with Gabriela Stival and her friend, Lidia Invernizzi, from her attempts to establish the lace making scholarship. Before she had admitted defeat, a generous amount of liras had flowed not only into Nina Crivelli’s greedy hands, but also into those of the two more amiable women.
The lace makers seated across from her in Gabriela’s parlor were almost textbook illustrations of how age sees fit to expand some people while diminishing and contracting others. The two women had enjoyed a youth neither buxom nor lean, to judge by a photograph—their eyes squinting into the sun and their arms thrown around each other’s shoulders—that Gabriela had proudly shown the Contessa.
Over the years, Gabriela had increased in size and roundness. Lidia, however, had dwindled down into something resembling a sparrow, but a sparrow with a distinct preference for clean white lace collars and cuffs.
Gabriela, for her part, wore no lace at all, perhaps because she had dressed the parlor with every last scrap and piece in her possession. Where it didn’t drip from lampshades and embrace pillows, it adorned picture frames and crept across table-tops, only to gather more energy to cascade from curtain rods and foam out of vases.
The three women had managed to dispense with the weather and Lidia’s recent mishap with an unmuzzled dog, as well as a cup of coffee and a slice of hazelnut cake by the time they were ready for the topic of death on Burano.
“Poor Nina Crivelli,” Gabriela said with a huge sigh.
She straightened her spotless white apron. The Contessa had never seen either of the two women without this traditional accouterment of their art.
“So young to die,” Lidia chirped between bites of her second portion of cake. Every time she swallowed a piece, she closed her eyes and seemed to concentrate as it was sent on its way.
The Contessa made appropriate commiserating sounds.
“I suppose her heart was no better than her eyes,” she said.
“Much worse,” Lidia said with a cackle.
She peered at the Contessa through horn-rimmed glasses that dwarfed her face.
“We all come blind into the world and blind we leave, especially us poor lace makers,” Gabriela said, suppressing a smile.
She pulled the bows of her wire frames back over her ears.
“Hearts can go any time,” Lidia said. “Sometimes long before the body.”
Gabriela nodded.
“At least she was able to work until the end,” the Contessa said.
“Washing and scrubbing and sweeping was all she was fit for, and sometimes throwing a meal together. Lidia and I just began a tovaglia.”
A tablecloth usually took ten women three years to put together. The Contessa’s quick computation had her marveling at her companions’ faith in their longevity.
She admired the elaborate stitching of net and flowers of the table centerpiece.
“Ah, yes, Contessa, you have always appreciated our difficult work,” Gabriela said, stretching her apron across her lap. It immediately began to shrink back.
“You would have made an excellent lace maker,” little Lidia added.
The Contessa hoped her slight regretful smile communicated what she had missed despite the richness of her life.
“But how impossible it would have been for me, dear ladies, to ever match your own excellent work, or that of poor Nina Crivelli, in her prime, I mean.”
“Nina was never very good,” shot back Lidia.
“Beware of a lace maker who works alone,” Gabriela said. “They’re crafty. God only knows what they’re thinking.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Her mind was always wandering. When we work together, we talk, yes,” Lidia said, “but it’s our way of keeping our minds sharp, sharp, sharp on the work. Patience and concentration are the virtues of a woman dedicated to the stitch.”
“That has always been my impression,” the Contessa agreed.
“And Nina Crivelli, God rest her soul,” Lidia forged on, “wasn’t a woman dedicated to the stitch. To nothing but herself and her son.” She darted a look at the Contessa. “That’s why she didn’t understand your good efforts on behalf of our art.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
All things come to those who wait. The Contessa inquired about the recipe for the hazelnut cake. She accepted another cup of coffee. She admired an antimacassar. She listened as Lidia gave her a lecture on punto in aria. She studiously examined a specimen of this difficult lace point in the form of a doily with wide volutes, flowers in relief, and borders of thick cording, as if she needed to memorize each detail.
Then Gabriela, with an air of exasperation, observed abruptly, “Nina Crivelli recited a poem over and over again. It was about you, Contessa.”
“About me?”
“Exactly. We’ve had our Contessa Marcello, and we want no Contessa Uccello. Her own little poem. Just those words, weren’t they, Lidia?”
The other woman bobbed her head.
“Lidia and I got very angry, and we argued with her. We told her what kind things you’ve done, and how good you could be for Burano and lace making, but she was impossible. She would hear none of it.”
“The Contessa Uccello?” The Contessa was mystified. “She meant me?”
Uccello meant bird, as she well knew, and it was the name of Urbino’s palazzo. The building had some vague association with the painter Paolo Doni, called Uccello. The fact that Lidia looked so much like a bird made the whole thing more confusing. She felt her face flush.
“You exactly, Contessa!” Gabriela confirmed.
“And the Contessa Marcello? What did she mean by that?”
“Oh, surely you know,” Gabriela said. “The Contessa Adriana Marcello.”
The Contessa had an almost irrepressible desire to reach out and shake the woman.
“The Contessa Adriana Marcello and Francesca Memmo,” Gabriela supplied.
Then it was back to Lidia, who piped out, “Yes, La Scarpaiola!”
The Contessa felt as if half her wit and most of her Italian had somehow flown away and was nestling somewhere in the room amidst all the lace. Were they talking about a woman who made shoes? Maybe one who wore big boots?
It was as if they were playing a maddening guessing game with her. Her irritation rose.
The two women, the one with her round fleshy face and the other with her sharp narrow one, stared at her with almost identical smug expressions.
The Contessa strained her mind as some associations, finally and thankfully, started to squeeze through. Before she could seize hold of them, Lidia began to explain with a quick, self-satisfied air.
“The Contessa Adriana Marcello helped to establish our lace school! More than a hundred years ago. It was through the kind support of Queen Margarita.”
“I remember!” the Contessa cried out as if her life depended upon it. “And Francesca Memmo was the seventy-year-old lace maker who was the only person left alive who still knew the secret of the punto buranese!”
“Brava!” both women cried out at once.
“But why did she call me the Contessa Uccello?”
“Quite simple! Because of your Signor Urbino of the Palazzo Uccello!” explained Lidia.
The Contessa was aware of the deep pockets of resentment against her in Venice, where some people couldn’t accept her marrying into the Da Capo-Zendrini family. She had enemies of a certain sort, men and women who cut her at social affairs, tried to undermine her work for local charities, and in general did everything they could to remind her that Venice could never be her home as it was theirs. Her close friendship with Urbino, whose relationship to the city was even more ambiguous in their eyes, only added fuel to the flames.
But this didn’t answer the question of why Nina Crivelli, a lace maker from Burano, had felt animosity not only against her but, it appeared, Urbino as well. Even the grumblings about her failed lace making scholarships didn’t explain things.
As if Gabriela read the Contessa’s mind, she said, “It was all for no good reason that she could ever give. We told her that you had always shown the greatest generosity and kindness to us all, and that we had never heard a bad word against Signor Urbino.”
“Nina had a mean spirit, God rest her soul,” Lidia offered as a further explanation. “Always speaking against you as soon as your back was turned. She knew things about other people that they had forgotten themselves—or wanted to! She didn’t have a friend in the world. To think she was a mother! Such a mother! Children didn’t want to be within ten feet of her.”
“Did she say anything against me in a specific way?”
“Of course not, our dear Contessa! What could she have said?” Gabriela protested. “And if she ever tried! We would have stuffed a tombola in her mouth, yes, wouldn’t we have, Lidia?”
The laughter of the two lace makers had a sharp, malicious edge. The Contessa tried to show no emotion, neither inappropriate humor nor the consternation that was rising in her. The image of Nina with the lace handkerchief by her mouth, half in, half out, rose before her eyes.
“I saw Salvatore Crivelli today,” she said, feeling tightness in her throat.
“How’s that, Contessa?” asked Lidia.
The Contessa sensed a quickening of interest in the two women.
“I stopped by his apartment to give him a Mass card.”
“A Mass card?” repeated Gabriela. “For Nina Crivelli? She wasn’t a pious woman, and neither is her son. Her funeral was the first time in twenty years either of those two souls ever saw the inside of a church.”
Lidia leaned toward the Contessa.
“Was Salvatore happy to get it?”
A smile quirked the corners of her lips.
The Contessa told them what had happened.
“What can you expect? It’s bad manners, and more than that,” Gabriela said. “He didn’t have a tear in him all during the service.”
“But more wine than the sacristy,” Lidia added.
“He’ll drink all the more now,” Gabriela said. “To celebrate.”
“They didn’t get along?”
“Never!”
Gabriela’s response was seconded by a quick nod from Lidia, whose eyes were closed as she took another swallow of cake.
“But we never heard him complain, did we, Lidia?” The other woman shook her head. “And there was plenty to complain about. She kept him all to herself in that house. I can imagine what it was like, having her as a mother, always at his elbow, following him to work, never giving him a moment’s peace! A mother’s love can be a curse when the mother is Nina Crivelli. Oh, he suffered, you can be sure. Suffered every day of his life since he was a boy. Mothers deserve respect, but she was impossible. Doesn’t the Bible say to put aside your mother when you take a wife? He should have put her far, far away!”
“Salvatore was married?”
“Is married for all we know,” corrected Lidia, her round eyes now wide open.
“Where is his wife?”
“You mean his wife and son,” Lidia said. “Somewhere in Germany.”
“Switzerland,” Gabriela corrected. “Some more cake, Contessa?”
“No thank you. It’s quite delicious, though.”
“Germany! It was Germany,” Lidia insisted.
“Switzerland! Roberto the mailman said Salvatore got postcards from Zurich.”
“Berlin!”
“Berlin, and with a seven-year-old child? That’s almost in Russia.”
“When did she leave Burano?”
“Twenty years ago in May,” Gabriela said.
“When she went to Germany!” threw in Lidia. “Your geography was always upside down. Berlin is nowhere near Russia! It’s right up against the Contessa’s England!”
The ringing of the doorbell ended the dispute. It was Gabriela’s grandchildren. After admiring the two little girls and listening to them recite a poem together, the Contessa said her good-byes.
5
“You were wrong,” the Contessa said to Urbino over the telephone from the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini that evening. “And as you see, you’re involved yourself.”
Her voice held a distinct note of satisfaction.
“‘The Contessa Uccello,’ she called me,” the Contessa said with quiet emphasis. “She disliked us both for whatever peculiar reason. A strange and unpredictable woman, no matter what you said the other night in her defense. But I’ll agree about one thing. She didn’t have anything to tell me—to sell me—about my wonderful Alvise. How could I have thought such a thing? Maybe it was you she was talking about!”
“Me?”
“And why not you? You’re an eternal source of speculation. Going off to Morocco didn’t help. You had almost become a familiar figure, but now people might be seeing you with new eyes! I know I’m flying off in all directions, but you need to get some focus yourself. And some proportion as well.”
“All of which might be true,” he conceded, “but at the moment we’re concerned with Nina Crivelli.”
“I’m trying to tell you that it all could be related. You and Habib and mothers and—and the rest,” she finished, somewhat lamely.
“Habib?”
“Well, she singled him out for special attention, didn’t she? And—and he called her a witch!”
“Not to her face.”
“Oh, I know I’m not making much sense. How is the boy?” she asked, almost as an afterthought.
“Fine. He went to Vicenza yesterday with his language school.”
“How nice. He doesn’t seem the type to appreciate Palladian architecture, though.”
“Perhaps not, but he seems to have had a good time. But to get back to Nina Crivelli, Barbara, aren’t you forgetting that she was badgering you before I returned?”
“I’m not forgetting one single, solitary thing! She was a monstrous old woman,” and then she added, somewhat guilty, “God rest her soul. Filled with venom and the wrong kind of mother love. And you can be sure she was spinning some fine web, and it wasn’t made of lace! She collected information about people. Some do it for perverse amusement, but others do it to sell to the highest bidder, waiting for it to go up in value! The time had come for Nina Crive
lli to market me! Or you! Or me and you!”
“At least you’re leaving Habib out of it this time,” Urbino said with dry humor.
“The Contessa Uccello, Nina said, and don’t forget it. When you get on your feet, you’ll have to start tending to things farther away from home.”
6
Urbino had only a few moments to reflect about his conversation with the Contessa when the doorbell rang.
Natalia hadn’t gone for the night. Shortly, she opened the door of the parlor after a discreet knock.
“Signora Hensel. Signora Bauma.”
“But we are signorine!” Frieda called out as she strode into the room. She was carrying two small, brightly wrapped packages.
The tall, aristocratic-looking Beatrix Bauma, her hands behind her back, stood in the doorway and surveyed Urbino with a quick, amused glance.
He wasn’t wearing the cap that had so preoccupied the Contessa several evenings earlier. The pointed slippers were on his feet, however, and he had donned an embroidered jellaba over a brightly colored pair of cotton pajamas in expectation of his visitors. Now that he was well on the way to mending, he enjoyed playing the invalid even more, especially with Habib’s pampering.
“Would you like anything before I leave, Signor Urbino?” Natalia asked.
“No, thank you. I can manage.”
Dressed in a long, belted dark-brown dress, Beatrix sauntered further into the room, her hands still behind her back.
“Oh, here, signora,” Frieda said. She held out a woolen scarf, more muted than the silk one of bright blue-and-yellow tied flamboyantly around her head. “I forgot to give you this.”
Frieda spoke in flawless, unaccented Italian.
Natalia took the scarf with something close to a strained little bow that Urbino had never seen her indulge in before. As she was closing the door, she threw a peculiar look at Beatrix’s back.
“How comfortable you look!” Frieda said with a big smile. “And all prepared for Barbara’s costume ball, I see. Ha, ha!”
“All I need is a mask,” he said.
Deadly to the Sight Page 10
