Death in a Serene City

by Edward Sklepowich

  “There’s no need to be concerned.”

  “I want nothing to do with the police if I can help it. One of the things our father taught us was never to trust them, never depend on them. We’ve never had much cause to. The Pignatti family has always tried to lead its life with honor.”

  “I’m sure of that, Signor Pignatti, but not even the Pignatti family, no matter now it conducts its life, has control over people who choose to live differently.”

  “What is it you want to know?”

  There was a note of resignation in his voice. He cut a piece of cheese and put it into his mouth with the edge of the knife.

  “Do you use arsenic here?”

  Pignatti swallowed and picked up his glass of wine before answering.

  “Tin oxide, we use tin oxide. I can show you our records. Nothing but tin oxide.”

  Urbino took a sip of the wine which was the only thing he had accepted when Pignatti had offered to share his meal with him.

  “So you don’t use arsenic to make your emerald-green glass?”

  Pignatti raised his eyebrows.

  “You know something of our art, I see. Centuries ago that knowledge might have brought you death—and certainly the death of the glassmaker who gave you the information.”

  “It wasn’t a person but a book.”

  “A book,” he said scornfully, “everything is in books today. Not long ago the only way to learn our art was from a glass maestro. But to answer your question, Signor Macintyre, we do not use arsenic at the Pignatti Glass Factory, not anymore; none of the glass factories do.”

  “When did you stop?”

  “It must be a good thirty years ago, just after I started learning from my father. Even back then, as I remember, it was difficult to get, as you can imagine, although it was well known that we glassmakers needed it. There were papers to sign, care to be taken. It should have been as difficult to come by in the days of the Borgias!”

  “Did your father keep the arsenic locked up?”

  “Most of the time, certainly at night when we were closed. During the working hours it depended.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether we had need of it. It was used not only for the emerald-green color but to reduce silver ions to elementary silver—for that we use iron today and, as I said, tin oxide for the emerald-green. My father always said the colors were better with the arsenic but I never noticed much difference. He was a perfezionista, he preferred the old ways, God rest his soul.”

  “Did he ever notice if any of his arsenic was unaccounted for?”

  “If he did he never said anything to me about it. He might have noticed if large amounts were missing from one time to another, but other than that …”

  “So someone could have taken a little at a time over a period of days or weeks without his necessarily noticing?”

  “Who is this ‘someone’ you’re talking about?”

  “You said you were an apprentice here over thirty years ago. That was about the time Beatrice Galuppi died, wasn’t it?”

  A cloud passed over Pignatti’s handsome face.

  “I’ve already told you and the Contessa that I never knew her.”

  “Yes, I remember what you said. Tell me, were there other apprentices here then?”

  “Several.”

  “Do you remember them?”

  “Fairly well. There were twin brothers from the Castello. One of them had the skill, I think the other came just to be with his brother. They left after a month or so, went to Argentina. Still there now, someone told me, married to twin sisters.”

  “What about the others?”

  “One other—a man from Padua, about five years older than me”

  “What did he look like?”

  “As handsome as the others were ugly. And his name was Giovanni Fabbri, can you imagine! How many Giovanni Fabbris do we have here in Italy? They’re like your John Smiths in America and England. Isn’t that what the name is there? We would joke about it, ask him if it was his real name, try to get a look at his carta d’identità, but I stopped after my father told me not to tease him. ‘Maybe he has his reasons’ is what he said, ‘and who are you to say it isn’t his real name?’ He was very protective of him, made me feel a little jealous, I admit, all the more so because his work was better than ours. When we had our picture taken together, one of the twins put his fingers behind Fabbri’s head for horns. My father got very angry. We had to take the picture over again.”

  “Do you know where this Fabbri is today?”

  Pignatti shook his head.

  “He left about three months after the gemelli, said he had to go back to Padua. He always seemed nervous. I think he was having problems at home, but he never talked about them. He hardly told us anything about himself. He might still be in Padua, but you know how it is these days, people don’t stay where they were born anymore.”

  The glassmaker gave a deep sigh.

  “Did he ever come back here again?”

  “Not as far as I know, but I left for the army not too long after that, then traveled around for a year, settled down in Canada, got married. My wife and I came back after the flood in sixty-six. My father was getting old by then and needed someone to help out, all he had was a nephew and my two sisters. I had to learn everything all over again.”

  Now Urbino thought he understood Pignatti’s sigh a few moments before. He had probably been thinking about his own attempt at escape years ago only to find himself now in the place where he had begun. But he had little to complain about from a professional point of view. The Pignatti glassworks were thriving and, according to the Contessa, were one of the best on Murano.

  “So you never saw this Giovanni Fabbri again?”

  “And why should I? I doubt if he would have wanted to pay any friendly calls, at least not once my father died. I wasn’t very nice to him. You know how young people are. No, I never saw him again. Of course, that was thirty years ago when I knew him. I might pass him by every week on the quay and not even know it was him.”

  He couldn’t resist looking at himself briefly in one of the mirrors across from him and admiring his own dark good looks which were probably only a mature version of what they had been in the fifties.

  “And the photograph?”

  “The photograph?” Pignatti looked away from the mirror with a puzzled frown. “What photograph?”

  “The one of you apprentices.”

  “Oh that! It used to hang right there.” He indicated an area behind the counter now occupied by shelves and backed by a mirror that displayed an array of glass pencils of different shapes, sizes, and colors. “That was twenty years ago—more than that now—before the fire.”

  “Is there a negative?”

  “My father couldn’t bear to have any reminders of what the showroom used to look like. It was very elegant in an old-fashioned way. He made no attempt to replace anything. He kept it simple, the way you see it now—just the shelves and the mirrors. He even threw away some of the things saved from the flames. He was convinced it was arson, that someone envied him his showroom. He didn’t want to take the chance again. He might even have thought it would be bad luck.”

  As Urbino walked slowly back to the boat landing, stopping only to have a sandwich and another glass of wine in a crowded bar, he remembered what Caterina Zanetti had said about Maria Galuppi’s annual visit bringing Lodovico Pignatti bad luck.

  11

  WHEN the water-bus from Murano slipped through the fog to San Michele, Urbino got off in front of the bone-white chapel. He could catch one of the next boats back to Venice.

  He went through the gateway with its Gothic carving of Saint Michael and the dragon to the cloister, empty except for himself and an old woman walking in the opposite direction and carrying a bunch of white chrysanthemums. She had probably put fresh flowers in their place but these old ones would last a few more days, perhaps next to a votive light and a picture of her deceased.

 
At the information office across from the cemetery entrance he asked the old friar, muffled in a scarf and wearing gloves with the tips of the fingers cut off, for the location of the Galuppi graves. Although Urbino had a general idea of where they were, he didn’t want to waste time wandering around. On another occasion it might be enjoyable but not this afternoon. The friar wrote the information on a small map of the cemetery and pushed it through the opening.

  “And where is Beatrice Galuppi buried?”

  “It’s right in front of you, young man.”

  The friar nodded toward the sheet of paper.

  “Would you please check your records, Frate? Beatrice Galuppi.”

  Urbino thought he knew what the friar would find but he had to be sure. The friar seemed surprised by the information he eventually located after several minutes of incoherent mumbling. He shouldn’t have been surprised at all, however, for better than Urbino he must have known that the deceased from poor families seldom enjoyed perpetual rest but one of only twelve years’ duration, the realization that had so troubled Urbino during Maria’s funeral.

  “Beatrice Galuppi was disinterred and taken to the common grave site.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Let me check the dates again. Here it is. The remains of Beatrice Galuppi would have been consigned to the area of mass graves.” He showed Urbino where it was on the map. “This was several years after we stopped sending the remains to Sant’Ariano farther out in the lagoon.”

  Urbino knew the island although only by reputation as he did the island for the insane. Sant’Ariano was the old Ossario, the Island of the Bones, the final resting place for the deceased poor after their twelve years on San Michele. Today it was no longer used for this purpose—or for any other. It was just a remote island on the edge of the lagoon, littered with bones, shunned and ignored and not even listed on most of the detailed maps of the area.

  “Exactly when was Beatrice Galuppi disinterred, Frate?”

  “Her campo was scheduled for November sixth, 1966. That would make it only a few days after the flood.”

  “What is the procedure for disinterment?”

  “If the survivors have not contacted us about their intentions, we send them a notice, asking them what they wish to do with the remains of the deceased. We also post signs in the campo and here at the office with the dates of disinterment, but so many of the survivors never visit the graves. Twelve years is more than enough time to forget.”

  “What alternatives do the survivors have?”

  “The remains can be removed to another part of the cemetery and given perpetual care or put into one of our own ossuaries and deposited in a wall. What usually happens is consignment to a common grave on the island. As I said, up to twenty-five or thirty years ago the remains were sent to Sant’Ariano. Rarely—usually only in the case of forestieri—is the body taken to a cemetery in another city or country. If you have any more questions, you might ask Lapo Grossi. He’s working in the campo of the Galuppi mother and son this afternoon. He has been here a very long time. He knows everything there is to know about San Michele.”

  As Urbino went to the field where Grossi was working, walking down one of the many paths that cut geometrically through the island of the dead, he didn’t feel the same self-indulgent melancholy as he had in the Protestant graveyard the morning of Quinton’s burial. This afternoon, whose fog and gray sky were themselves funereal, the rows of graves with their names, dates, inscriptions, and photographs seemed so many futile attempts not so much to deny death its sting or give reverence to the dead as to assure the living that they couldn’t—wouldn’t—ever forget their beloved dead. The saddest words someone had said to him after his parents had been killed were by a well-meaning neighbor: “You’ll get over it, Urbino. My mother died eight years ago and I can’t remember what she looked like, what she sounded like.”

  Was there a second death after the first? The death of memory?

  But then the image of the old woman with the white chrysanthemums came to him. She was remembering, and after she was gone, perhaps there would be someone for her—someone to light a candle, bring fresh flowers, and most important of all, speak with love and affection of a familiar face, a familiar voice. Yes, there was the old woman, and others like her, others like Maria who had never forgotten her daughter. The more he learned about Maria, the clearer it was that she had always been remembering her daughter, even, he was sure now, until the very second of her death.

  No matter what Lapo Grossi knew or didn’t know, it couldn’t shake Urbino’s conviction.

  “I remember very well,” old Grossi said as he eased down his wheelbarrow. He was a man whose appearance was well suited to his job—tall, cadaverously thin, with eyes and mouth that were mere slits. He might have been used as an emblem of the Isle of the Dead. “What interest is it of yours?”

  Urbino immediately understood what kind of person he was dealing with. Grossi’s sense of proprietorship about his domain was matched by a suspicious nature developed over many years of service. As he reached into his pocket and took out a ten-thousand lira note, he hoped that there was a third component in the man’s nature—not necessarily greed but an understanding that everything should have a price.

  Grossi stuffed the money into his filthy pants pocket.

  “I still don’t know what interest it is of yours, but—”

  He waved a dirt-encrusted gloved hand in the air.

  “Beatrice Galuppi was disinterred on November sixth, 1966,” Urbino said to encourage him.

  “I don’t remember the exact date, but it was after the flood. We had a lot of work to do here, you couldn’t imagine, tutto in disordine, folks that came to see their plots almost dropped dead on the spot themselves. With all that work for me I wasn’t looking for more on account of Maria Galuppi’s daughter.”

  “More work? But isn’t it part of your job to disinter and deal with the remains?”

  “That it is—and I used to do it almost all by myself until not very long ago. Would you believe I’ll be seventy-six on the Feast of the Redeemer?”

  “Unbelievable, Signor Grossi! It might be your hard work that keeps you so fit.”

  The old man smiled. He was certainly vigorous for his years but most likely the two younger men who were standing near a row of disinterred graves, surrounded by dirt, broken pieces of concrete, and dried flowers, did all the strenuous work.

  “But what did you mean when you said it was more work on account of Maria Galuppi’s daughter?”

  “‘It was, I tell you!”

  He looked down at the ground and seemed reluctant to go on. Whether it was a true or feigned reluctance, Urbino couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, he decided to pull out another ten-thousand lira note, then added another. Grossi snatched them away more quickly than the first with a nervous glance in the direction of the two young men.

  “And not just more work, understand,” he said, lowering his voice, “but not exactly regular either. And I pride myself after these more than fifty years with keeping to the regular way of doing things.”

  “In what way was it irregular?”

  The old man glared at him.

  “When I say it wasn’t regular I don’t mean it was illegal. From the way you said ‘irregular’—”

  Urbino quickly assured him he had meant no offense.

  “What I meant by not regular,” the man went on, “is that what she wanted me to do wasn’t the usual way of doing things—not anymore, it wasn’t.”

  “By ‘she’ you mean Maria Galuppi?”

  “Who else? Although why something should be done for years and years and then no more is a mystery to me. For years we would take the poor old bones on a scow out to Sant’Ariano, and then back in sixty, sixty-one there was an end to it all. Now we just take them to the other side of the island and put them all together, a sad sight, believe me. I wonder what they’ll do when there’s no room, but I won’t be around to see that.”

&
nbsp; “So Maria Galuppi didn’t want you to throw her daughter with the other bodies.”

  Grossi gave him an offended look.

  “We don’t throw the bodies. There’s a way of doing things that’s proper and respectful. But yes, no matter how delicate and respectful we should have treated her daughter, she didn’t want her put in a common grave. Of course, not having hardly enough money for herself and Carlo she had little choice. That’s where she got me to help.”

  “How?”

  Urbino was afraid Grossi was going to hold out for yet more money but his hesitation seemed more emotional then mercenary. He sighed.

  “I had to take her daughter’s body and put it in one of those over there.” He nodded toward several low stone buildings that Urbino, on his walk to see Grossi, had assumed were small mausoleums. “Just overnight, you understand. The next night Carlo and I brought the remains over to Sant’Ariano. You should have seen the man, blubbering and shaking all over the place. It came to my mind when I heard he killed his mother. How could such a fellow bring himself to do it, I ask you?”

  “But I don’t understand,” Urbino said, thinking it best to avoid any discussion of Carlo’s role in his mother’s death. “What difference could it have been to Maria Galuppi to have her daughter on Sant’Ariano instead of here on San Michele?”

  “I asked her the same question, hoping with all my work that she would see the sense of it. All she said at first was ‘Because of a picture I saw once, a picture of a lot of bones.’ I asked what she meant and she said she had seen a photo of a strange place, a cellar in Rome somewhere, in a church, I think, where all the bones of hundreds and hundreds of monks were piled up for everybody to see. She had never seen it herself, she said, only the picture, but it had been enough. ‘A sign from the monks it was,’ she said, ‘telling me what to do with my own sweet little saint. I have no money to give her anything better.’ That’s what made the difference for her, I guess—that monks were buried the same way. It comforted her. But maybe if she had seen how all those bones are scrambled together on the ground she would have changed her mind. You should have seen poor Carlo! Doing the tarantella he was, so he wouldn’t be stepping on any of the bones!”