Death in a Serene City

by Edward Sklepowich

  While Voyd had been talking, a man in his mid-twenties came up to them in time to hear the last words. He was dressed in a dark-brown velvet suit and had a shock of unruly blond hair over his smooth forehead. It was the man Bellorini had collided with earlier at Florian’s.

  “As usual you exaggerate, Clifford,” he said with a slight accent that sounded vaguely Germanic. “There’s not that much to do, is there? You’re almost finished, in fact. You work fast.” He looked at Urbino. “Excuse me, my name is Kobke, Christian Kobke.” He extended his hand.

  “Urbino Macintyre.”

  The good-looking young man turned again to Voyd, who was looking at him with a mixture of amusement and irritation.

  “You do go on, Clifford. You give the impression that you are absolutely inundated with things. But the truth of the matter is, Mr. Macintyre, that everything has been done that needs to be done. My friend here is most efficient when it comes to these things. He brought everything out this afternoon in several large boxes. I was staggering under their weight.”

  “Now who is exaggerating?”

  “Nonetheless—”

  “Yes, nonetheless, my dear boy,” Voyd interrupted, “it’s a disturbing duty I must perform. I’m Quinton’s literary executor, Mr. Macintyre. And in addition to all her writing, her niece has asked me to help go through her other things and kindly said I might take what I want.”

  “Which was about twenty or thirty letters he’d written her—or were there even more?”

  “They fall within the domain of my literary executorship, Christian, as you well know. This is a duty I would most gladly relinquish, believe me. As for poor Quinton’s objets, I’ve limited myself to a painting, a few books, and a trinket here and there, none of them worth much. The painting’s a Riva degli Schiavoni in the manner of Sargent, a bit heavy-handed but the two of us found it on one of our many forays together.”

  “It has what you might call sentimental value,” Kobke said with a little smile.

  “Sentimental value can often make up for a lot of mediocre art,” Urbino said, thinking of some of his own favorite pieces at the Palazzo Uccello.

  Kobke looked at him sharply.

  “You aren’t an art critic, are you, Mr. Macintyre?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I’ll leave the explaining to Clifford. Meanwhile, I’m off in search of that glowering old woman with the tray, the one who looks like the witch in ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ I wonder if she’d let me do a sketch of her.”

  “You’ll have to excuse Christian,” Voyd said when the young man had left. “He’s rather out of sorts at the moment. He just learned about a poor review back in Copenhagen. He’s an illustrator. Believe me, his work is absolutely of a charm. Perhaps if you come by some time he’ll be in a better mood and show you what he has with him. We’d be delighted to see you.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Europa e Regina. We can almost see right through the doors of the Salute from our balcony when we’re brave enough to venture out in this weather. You’ll have to visit us. Perhaps we can continue our conversation about my friend Quinton if you’ll allow an old man to indulge himself. You seem a sympathetic listener, so rare to find in any man. And I would be interested in your own impressions of her. Give me a ring but don’t wait too long. We leave before carnival.”

  “I thought that might have been why you came.”

  “You amuse me, Mr. Macintyre, you really do. We have a great deal to learn about each other. Carnival! Never! But excuse me,” he said as he looked at his watch, “I must And our dear hostess and say good night. I won’t be able to stay for dinner. Eating late has never agreed with me, recently less than ever. And it seems my best writing here is done between midnight and three—although tonight this might make a great deal of difference.” He held up his empty wineglass. “Good-bye, my new young friend. Don’t forget to stop by. The Europa e Regina.”

  No, Urbino said to himself as he watched Voyd join the Contessa, he wouldn’t forget. Hadn’t Voyd implied that he would like to tell him more about Margaret Quinton? It was as if the writer needed someone to talk to about the unfortunate woman, someone more receptive than the ironic Kobke. Or was it that Voyd had sensed Urbino’s eagerness for information about her and was tempting him with the prospect of future revelations?

  Whatever it was, Urbino was sure of one thing. The great Clifford Voyd felt more than a little guilty about the death of his friend. He wondered how the Contessa was going to take the news.

  10

  “BUT just a few opals, Barbara, ti prego” Stefano Bellorini was saying when Urbino joined him and the Contessa in one of the side alcoves with windows looking out over the water. Urbino had waited until Voyd had made his farewell to the Contessa. The writer, however, had not yet slipped away but, with an impatient Kobke, was talking with a professor from Ca’ Foscari and his wife who was handing him a book and a pen. “Not for all of them, you understand,” Stefano continued after greeting Urbino. “No, not at all, but for your lovely nonna.” He was referring to the photograph of the Contessa’s grandmother. “And it might even be less expensive. Per esempio, we could—”

  The Contessa shook her head impatiently.

  “I am not concerned with saving money on this little project, Stefano dear, as you well know, and neither should you be. You will never be able to convince me by arguing expense when it’s a matter of opals. They’re bad luck, aren’t they, Urbino?”

  “Some people think so but—”

  “That’s quite good enough for me. And it will have to be the same for you, Stefano, even if you aren’t superstitious. Not that I am myself but—but I believe my grandmother was,” she finished somewhat lamely.

  “You are more difficult to deal with than my father was,” Stefano said, making one of his well-known jokes, “except that he was always trying to save money!” His father, dead for thirty years, was still remembered in the Cannaregio for his miserly ways and domination of his wife and only child with a fortune made in the shipping trade. “I will say this for you, Barbara, you know what you like.” He took several sheets of paper from a small table and handed them to Urbino. “Here they are.”

  They were the sketches he had misplaced earlier in the day. It was difficult to tell exactly what the finished frames would look like but Urbino was impressed as he knew he would be. The designs, each ornate and decorative in its own distinct way, were striking.

  “Lovely,” he said, handing the sheets back to Stefano. “They remind me of Art Nouveau, with a touch of the Pala d’Oro, but yet they’re very much your own.”

  The artist beamed behind his thick round glasses.

  “Art Nouveau! Exactly! That’s why I wanted opals. But don’t worry, Barbara. We artists have almost always listened to our Popes and other patrons! But you must excuse me. Cavatorta is monopolizing Angela disgracefully and even after all these years I’m still a bit of an Othello. One good thing my father did was see to it that I didn’t lose Angela to someone else.”

  He frowned in the direction of his wife and Cavatorta, an ex-priest and now a mask maker in the Cannaregio. The Bellorinis had a strained relationship with Cavatorta that was said to go back to the time of their marriage, when there had been a disagreement of some kind over a gift given by Cavatorta’s father. Those who disliked Angela spread the story that she had acted in a haughty manner that went with the Candiani blood and the Bellorini money. Equally vociferous were those who couldn’t abide Cavatorta. Surely a man who had never been known even in his youth to pass by an opportunity to make others look worse than himself had enjoyed taking malicious advantage of a mild misunderstanding and fanning the flames over the years.

  Urbino had always found all this rather amusing than otherwise. Venice, a small, inbred place, was rife with such gossip, petty jealousies, and rivalries.

  If Angela had a condescending side—something that he didn’t necessarily discount despite, perhaps even because of, all he
r charity work—she had never shown it to him or to the Contessa whose good friend she was. Through the Contessa, Angela and Stefano had become, if not his friends, then his close acquaintances and had been particularly helpful during the second stage of his renovation of the Palazzo Uccello. Often they had known better than the restorers where to find matching marble for the fireplace and the best terracotta bricks and tiles for the andron.

  As for Cavatorta, he had an irritating snideness. Urbino suspected that his behavior was an understandable, if mean-spirited reaction against the ill will many people had for him since he had left the Church. It must not be easy for him, living in the same quarter in which he had been a priest.

  After Stefano had bustled off to rescue his plain-faced wife from what seemed the rather bored attentions of the mask maker, the Contessa put her hand on Urbino’s arm.

  “So how does our writer feel about his poor dead friend? Is he racked with remorse as you so colorfully expressed it earlier?”

  Urbino started to go over his conversation with Voyd and his friend Kobke. He was just wanning to the topic, trying to remember as best he could everything that had been said, when the Contessa interrupted him.

  “No more details, Urbino, if you don’t mind.”

  “But the details are particularly interesting.”

  “But they might make me try to find excuses and the man doesn’t deserve any. He feels guilty because he is guilty and knows it. It’s a simple question of morality and the workings of the conscience. There you have it, my dear.”

  Urbino didn’t go on but he disagreed with her. For him details were almost everything. Wasn’t it one of the main things he loved about the city, its mad jumble of details that somehow all came together so beautifully? And all those lists of flowers, of perfumes, of painters in Huysmans? The Contessa had once accused him of losing a sense of “the one true bright thing,” as she had phrased it, because of this love for details. “But I’d be lost, adrift without them” had been his answer. “I’d be lost forever if I indulged in them” had been her own quick response.

  The Contessa was smiling at him now, her head tilted slightly to one side.

  “I know what you’re thinking, caro. You’re saying to yourself, ‘For a bright old woman Barbara has her peculiarities.’ You’re saying, ‘Barbara and her blasted morality!’”

  “Not quite but you’re close. Tell me, though, does all this mean that Clifford Voyd has seen the last of his invitations here?”

  She gave him a look from which everything was absent except the reproach.

  “My God, Urbino, what’s your opinion of me! Of course not. He’ll be back, I’m sure, if he cares to come, and his handsome young friend is welcome too. It should be interesting to see what costumes they wear for carnevale, don’t you think?”

  “We’ll never find out, I’m afraid. They leave before then. Voyd doesn’t care for carnevale.”

  “Now that’s a surprise. I would have thought otherwise. We’ll just have to get along without him then. Do you think we can manage?”

  “Considering that neither of us is particularly fond of carnevale either, don’t you think that the question is more one of how we’ll be able to survive it under any circumstances? But it’s not for a whole month yet. For now all I’m concerned about is managing the walk back home.”

  She looked up at him with a playful smile.

  “What is it going to be tonight? Casablanca? Brief Encounter?”

  “Camille.”

  She gave a self-satisfied nod and patted his hand.

  “She got what she deserved, that woman!”

  With this she went off to say good night to the curator of the Glass Museum, who was about to leave and was looking for her. Urbino, now ready to leave himself, saw that he would be obliged to stop and say something to the Bellorinis and Cavatorta who were at the other end of the salone by the staircase. Voyd and Kobke, a little closer to making their exit, joined them a few moments before Urbino did but Kobke and Stefano gave no indication that they had met earlier at Florian’s.

  Cavatorta, a thin man in his mid-fifties who somehow always managed to look unkempt no matter how he was dressed, was describing the history and design of Venetian masks. The Bellorinis, who most likely knew a great deal about masks themselves, had bored expressions.

  “For example, color,” Cavatorta stressed, looking at Voyd as if he were the only one who could understand or appreciate what he had to say. “Color, now, is of extreme importance. It is essential, in fact.” He took a sip of his whiskey. From his thick, slurred speech it was evident that he had already had too much to drink. He had something of a reputation in the Cannaregio, if not for outright drunkenness, then for a chronic state of mild intoxication that often led him to say or do something that gave offense. “The moretta is always black, always, and should be made of velvet although these days I usually use plain cloth. Now the domini should be made of silk but they can come in many different colors, red and gold and purple and yellow and green.” As he said this he took in Angela’s bright green dress and added, “Yes, color is of the essence. Color gives personality, it reflects it. For example, brown suits you, Signor—Signor—”

  “Kobke,” the Dane said less than enthusiastically.

  “It complements you. And look at our famous author—austere and priestly in his black, but our friend Signor Macintyre here knows that black doesn’t quite suit his coloring so he wears midnight blue.” Briefly, his eyes flicked in Angela’s direction again. “And as we say, ‘He—or she, as the case might be—who wears green must be very sure of himself.’”

  It seemed an invitation to look at Angela that none of them was able to resist. The bright green of her dress made her complexion even more sallow and emphasized the dark circles beneath her eyes. A woman of a certain age who was not attractive to begin with, she obviously had gone to a great deal of trouble with her hair and her dress for the party. Stefano glowered at Cavatorta and seemed on the point of saying something, but to say anything would have drawn more attention to his wife. Beneath his evident anger there seemed to be something else—uneasiness, almost a touch of fear, perhaps for how his wife was taking the comment. His concern for her was, the Contessa often said, what she admired even more than his talent. He gave his wife a strained smile. Then, taking her arm and saying an abrupt good evening, he brought her over to join Rebecca Mondador, a young architect talking with a reporter from Il Gazzettino.

  “That Cavatorta,” the Contessa said a few minutes later when Urbino had described the incident to her, “he manages to rub everyone the wrong way. I don’t know why I invite him here.”

  But Urbino knew why. Although she readily admitted being prejudiced against the mask maker because of his abandonment of the priesthood, his father had been one of her husband’s most faithful friends. If the sins of the father were often visited upon the sons, perhaps the virtues of the father could in some way make up for the wrongs of the son—at least up to a certain point.

  Perhaps she was thinking of the same thing for she said, “Now his father was a good man, the best. He sold a building over on Murano just to start Luigi up in business after he left the priesthood. Sold it at a loss, too, to one of the glassmakers who needed space for a showroom. If he had held on to it, it would be worth a fortune today. All that old Cavatorta got out of it was the satisfaction of pleasing his son and the dubious comfort of a discount on whatever he wanted to buy at the glassmaker’s. I wish I could remember his name—what was it now? Oh, there’s Sister Veronica. I didn’t think she would be able to come. She might know.”

  Sister Veronica, dressed in a simple dark gray suit and black shoes instead of the modified habit she wore when she was about her official duties at the Convent of the Charity of Santa Crispina, came up to them. Urbino knew he was old-fashioned to think so, but although he liked and admired her, he couldn’t get used to the considerable freedom she enjoyed, a freedom that had her going to parties like these and often joining the
Contessa or Angela or some other woman from the parish on shopping trips or outings as far away as Milan and Florence. And it wasn’t as if she were one of the younger sisters who had grown up in a more liberal church. She was only a few years younger than the Contessa.

  As it turned out, the Contessa didn’t ask Sister Veronica the name of the glassblower. Instead they started to talk about Margaret Quinton. After a few minutes Urbino, feeling that the two women wanted to be alone to discuss the ill-fated writer, said good night. He was amused to see that Voyd was still there, a fresh wine in his hand. Kobke was nowhere to be seen.

  11

  ALTHOUGH Camille was one of his favorite movies, Urbino’s attention continued to wander from the divine face of Garbo.

  He was thinking about Margaret Quinton. Although he had met her only a few times, she was vivid in his mind. She had been a large woman who wore cumbersome shoes and dresses with little shape. Barbara had assured him, however, that the dresses were custom-made in Milan and Paris. What Voyd had told him tonight about her being slightly deaf helped him understand the intense look she had had whenever she was listening to him. He now wondered, despite all her nods and smiles, how much of what he had said to her she had even heard. He could still see the slightly pained look on her long, thin face when he had gone into considerable detail about his dislike for the centro tavola in the form of a garden with fountain on display at the Glass Museum. At the time he had taken it for disagreement but now he realized she had probably been straining to hear.

  He wished he had been more attentive to her, had invited her to the Palazzo Uccello, had drawn her out more about the history of glassmaking that Barbara said she knew so much about. It might have helped just a little to dispel her vague, forlorn air.

  He promised himself that he would take Voyd up on his invitation. He wouldn’t mind learning a few more things about the woman. She was much more interesting to him now in her death than she had been in life.