Death in a Serene City

by Edward Sklepowich

  “Would you remember where you left the girl’s body? From what you say the bodies don’t seem to have been buried.”

  “Most of them weren’t. Carlo and I left his sister’s body near a thick clump of bushes. That whole island is just about nothing but bushes and weeds, weeds and bushes—and all those bones everywhere. I think I could remember, but I’ve never gone back. I was never asked to do anything like that again, you can be sure!”

  “But you could take me to the spot, then.”

  “I suppose so, but—”

  A fleeting look of fear came into his eyes.

  “If I ever ask you to do that, Signor Grossi, you can be sure that you would be in no trouble. And I would pay you a great deal more than Maria Galuppi was able to.”

  The gravedigger scowled.

  “I never took any money from that poor woman! It was an act of charity. I did it for Maria and for the memory of Beatrice Galuppi. To think she had been reduced to that sad bundle we brought over to Sant’Ariano!”

  With this the gravedigger turned back to his work, leaving Urbino with not only the information about Beatrice Galuppi’s body but also the comforting feeling that he had found in Lapo Grossi yet another one of those who remembered.

  12

  WHEN Urbino got off the vaporetto at the Fondamenta Nuove and turned away from the lagoon toward the Grand Canal, something in his conversation with Don Marcantonio earlier in the day kept tugging at his mind—something about Cavatorta perhaps? Or was it the old priest’s comments about glassmaking? With a rather grim appropriateness he had called it a dying art.

  Urbino still hadn’t sorted it out by the time he joined the current of people in the Strada Nuova. When he reached the Cannaregio, he went to the bar at the Ponte del Giglio across from the Palazzo Labia and chatted a few minutes with Marcello over glasses of Cynar, a drink made from artichokes that the genial padrone had introduced him to his first month in Venice. Marcello didn’t refer to the recent violence in the Cannaregio but instead talked about the various celebrations that had already begun for carnevale.

  When Marcello went off to tend to other customers, Urbino was visited with doubts and confusions as he sipped his Cynar. He reluctantly considered the possibility that he might have made a basic error in his thinking. He had gone ahead on the assumption that there was a direct and important link between Maria Galuppi’s murder, the death of Beatrice over thirty years ago, and the burning down of the Pignatti showroom in November of 1966. He reminded himself for reassurance, however, that Maria Galuppi had made those visits to the glassblowers on the anniversary of her daughter’s death. And hadn’t he just learned from Bartolomeo Pignatti that arsenic had been used at their glass factory back in the fifties?

  On his way back to the Palazzo Uccello he went down the Calle dell’Arcanzolo that angled off from the Campo San Gabriele. Cavatorta’s shop was near the mouth of the calle not far from the entrance to the Convent of the Charity of Santa Crispina. The tall, thin mask maker was pushing up the shutters.

  “Aren’t you the eager one,” Cavatorta said. “Don’t tell me you don’t have your mask for carnevale yet? And here I always thought you and the Contessa were the type to have yours months ahead of time.”

  Urbino followed him in as he switched on the lights. The shop was dark even at the brightest time of the day. Cavatorta had wisely taken advantage of this drawback by positioning a battery of lamps to illuminate the masks on the walls and shelves. It was an eerie effect, with masks of various colors, shapes, sizes, materials, and designs glowing and staring out with hollow eyes and casting bizarre shadows. There were silvery crescent moons and glowing suns with rays streaming from around their edges, court jesters, large lion faces with thick golden manes, masks of the plague doctor with his cone-shaped nose and of Arlecchino, Pulcinella, Pantalone, Brighella, and other commedia dell’arte figures, three-quarter volti designed to allow their wearers to eat and drink without removing them, and delicate oval morette worn by women or by men disguised as women during the bacchanal of carnevale. There was a shelf of dainty porcelain masks that brought a touch of the Orient to the shop and a whole wall of primitive masks in the African style interspersed with ones on ancient Roman models. Many masks were adorned with feathers, lace, sequins, false jewels, and artificial hair, some of them expressing a whimsy that Urbino was surprised to find playful and pleasantly childlike.

  “May I suggest il medico?”

  Cavatorta started to reach for the plague doctor but Urbino ignored the insinuation of nosiness and went to a display on the other side of the room. Unintentionally, Cavatorta was giving him a welcome opening. There were two things he wanted to know, and it seemed easier to begin with the masks since to talk about them was the obvious thing to do.

  “I am interested in a mask as a matter of fact.”

  He took down a large white harlequin with black lips, eyes rimmed in black and gold, and a drooping three-pointed hat with black and white lozenges and tiny brass bells. It was striking but he preferred something more stark. He put back the harlequin and took down a crimson volto. The half-mask was simple in design. He might even end up wearing it for carnevale.

  “I’ll take this one.”

  Cavatorta said nothing as he wrapped it but eyed him a few times with a raised eyebrow.

  “Most of your masks are papier-mâché, aren’t they?”

  “As you can see.”

  “And you make them yourself. I mean the mask shells.”

  “I know what you mean. I’m a mask maker, Signor Macintyre. If you want to see my molds, they’re in the back. ‘No charge for looking,’ as they say on Murano but in my case I mean it. No need to worry about being pressured into buying another mask. After you.”

  Cavatorta had an ironic smile on his face as he showed Urbino his cluttered workroom behind the shop with its molds, pails, paints and brushes, cardboard, shallow pans, and scissors used in the making and designing of masks. Urbino pointed to a pile of unpainted porcelain masks in a corner.

  “Do you make those as well?”

  “Those, my dear Signor Macintyre, are from a factory outside of Florence. Would you like their address? Are you thinking of dabbling in mask making? As long as you promise to be only a dilettante about it and nothing more, I might be induced to give you the benefit of my knowledge—unless, that is, you prefer knowledge of a more arcane nature, like the old Tridentine Mass?”

  He laughed at his own joke as he shut the light in the workroom and followed Urbino out. He went behind the counter and took out a pair of scissors, using the smaller blade to pick at his nails. His fingers were short and fat, as if they belonged to a different person. Putting one of his fingers up to his mouth, he looked at Urbino with amusement.

  Now, when the time had come for him to ask his second question, Urbino found himself saying good-bye to Cavatorta instead and walking out into the Calle dell’Arcanzolo. His reluctance wasn’t because of the mask maker’s ironical manner. He was almost immune to that by now and knew it too was a mask as surely as any of those displayed in the man’s shop. What held him back was fear. To ask the question would be, perhaps, to get the answer he wanted, but at what cost? The answer he already had didn’t settle things one way or the other.

  Cavatorta wasn’t stupid. He didn’t even pretend to be. It wasn’t one of the poses he so readily assumed. Hadn’t he looked at Urbino as if to say that he knew not only that there was an unasked question but also exactly what that question was? Or was Urbino seeing things that weren’t there?

  He knew of another place he might get the information he needed, but with the Contessa as well there was fear, fear that she too would understand what the answer could mean and he wasn’t quite ready for that.

  He would have to take the chance with her. He didn’t have much choice.

  But he had walked halfway down the Calle dell’Arcanzolo when he turned around. It might be better to ask Cavatorta after all. The Contessa hadn’t brought up the topic o
f the Cavatortas in reference to Beatrice’s artwork, which suggested either ignorance, a lapse of memory, or—this was hard for him to understand—intentional concealment. It was better to try to settle things at once.

  Cavatorta was still behind the counter, thumbing through one of the pamphlets that described the history and art of mask making. Urbino felt that the best approach now was a direct one, and he asked the mask maker about his father, the man who had been a good friend to Alvise da Capo-Zendrini. Urbino suspected the man had had a convenient, uncomplicated method of paying his way at wedding feasts.

  Urbino’s first surprise was that the usually evasive Cavatorta, the pamphlet still in his hand, answered so readily. The second was that the answer to his question about the late Cavatorta’s form of liberality was just what he had expected.

  13

  LATER that evening, after Urbino and the Contessa had avoided any serious discussion while Lucia served them the veal and truffles dish she claimed any restaurant in town would pay a fortune for, they retired to the Contessa’s cluttered salotto. There, with tea set down for her and brandy for him, she played a Scarlatti sonata on the Cristofori that was said to have belonged to the composer himself. Usually an accomplished player, tonight she was having a bit of difficulty with all the crossing of hands, broad skips, and rapidly repeated notes. She had seemed under a strain during dinner that was now going into her playing. She began another sonata, this one by Bach, then turned away from the harpsichord.

  “I’ve been as patient as I can, caro. What have you learned since leaving here last night?”

  He told her slowly, methodically, enjoying the opportunity to review things himself. Predictably, she was most interested in what he had to tell her about Beatrice’s disinterment and Maria’s arrangement with Lapo Grossi. She sat in silence as he filled her in on it all, including what he had learned about arsenic from his various sources and about his visit with Sister Veronica at the Glass Museum. When he had told her about everything except his decision to go back to Cavatorta’s shop only moments after leaving it, he could see she had questions, but before she could say anything he asked her to refresh his memory about the police report on Beatrice’s death.

  “As I told you,” she began, sounding suddenly tired, “she was found dead by Maria in the toilet of their flat on the Rio della Sensa. Officially she killed herself with a massive dose of arsenic on the fifth of November 1954.”

  “Exactly how would a woman go about inducing an abortion?”

  “But Beatrice Galuppi wasn’t pregnant, remember.”

  “Nonetheless…”

  In a weary, even voice as if she were being forced to indulge him she said, “Falling down a flight of stairs might do it, a blow to the abdomen, I suppose, maybe excessive exercise. This is a bit out of my usual range of knowledge, never having had a child or, more to the point,” she added quickly, “never even having been pregnant. Instruments of various types are what you hear of in the desperate cases. Then there’s medication, drugs, but exactly what kinds I wouldn’t know. Anything more technical than that you would have to get from a physician but I suggest you be discreet if you do. Venice is a very small town.”

  “Precisely. Do you think Maria would have helped her daughter abort—I mean if she had been pregnant?”

  “Certainly not!”

  “But would she have helped cover up an abortion?”

  “Possibly, but you keep forgetting that Beatrice wasn’t pregnant. The medical report—”

  “Then Maria might have removed any possible traces in the toilet—if her daughter had been pregnant and tried to abort the fetus,” he persisted.

  “It’s certainly possible. I would probably do the same in the same circumstances—who knows? A mother’s love for her child is very strong, sometimes I think it must be the strongest love there is.”

  There was a note of regret in her voice as she said this last.

  “Not to mention a mother’s concern for her daughter’s reputation.”

  He waited for the Contessa to ask one of her own questions but she seemed to be waiting for him to go on. He thought for a few moments before he did, taking a sip of his brandy.

  “This Giovanni Fabbri, the apprentice that Pignatti told me about—he’s our Domenica. I have no proof, not yet, but my instincts tell me he has to be.”

  “But who was Giovanni Fabbri?” The Contessa looked at him searchingly, clearly hoping he had the answer and—if he had it—that he would tell her. Her face clouded when he gave no answer but instead asked her a question himself.

  “Did Sister Veronica know Cavatorta’s father?”

  “Yes, through San Gabriele. He was a devout man.”

  “What about before she became a nun? When she was helping her father in the glass shop on Murano? Didn’t you say that Cavatorta’s father sold some property to a glassblower on Murano?”

  “Right, but that was after she became a nun and after Cavatorta left the priesthood. I didn’t know her in the fifties when she returned to Murano from Naples. I’ve always assumed she didn’t get to know Cavatorta’s father until she came to Santa Crispina. From what I understand, she was more or less immured during her years on Murano.”

  To remind himself more than anything else, Urbino mentioned how Sister Veronica had told him she hadn’t known Beatrice.

  “There you are! And most likely neither did she know Franco Cavatorta during the fifties. Her father didn’t let her traipse all over Venice. But if it’s so important, why don’t you just ask her when she got to know him?” She gave him a judicious look as she put down her cup and saucer. “Urbino, you disappoint me. I have the strangest feeling you’re not telling me everything.”

  “To be honest, Barbara, I’m not sure about certain things yet.”

  “You’re giving me the facts—or most of them—but you’re not giving me the rest. You’ve got ideas”—she said it as if it were a disease or a heresy—“you’ve got theories.”

  “Cara,” he said soothingly, “if I have any ideas or theories they’re all mixed up and confused at this point. Give me some time, just a little time—and promise me one thing.”

  “What’s that, caro?”

  “That you won’t mention any of what we’ve discussed tonight to anyone, to anyone at all.”

  “I promise.”

  14

  WHAT he had told the Contessa was true. He was confused, he was mixed up, yet it was the confusion that he knew often came before clarity.

  When he returned to the Palazzo Uccello, he felt restless and almost went out again for a long walk. He was happy he had eaten at the Contessa’s for he knew he would hardly have taken a bite on his own. He usually got in a state like this—nervous, excited, restless, barely eating or sleeping—when he was trying to puzzle out a problem or make an important decision. He remembered an October night ten years ago before he had moved to Venice. He had left every light on in the house on St. Charles and gone out several times, walking to Tulane and through Audubon Park and the French Quarter as he tried to decide whether to maintain a small apartment in New Orleans after selling the family house. His decision, made at four in the morning over beignets and chicory coffee at the Café du Monde, had been to burn all his bridges in order to live in the city with hundreds of them.

  Tonight he felt the same way. He walked from one floor to another, from the top story with its unoccupied servants’ quarters down to the ground floor, not unlike a warehouse built around an enclosed, unused docking area for boats, filled with odds and ends of furniture raised on platforms to protect them from the high water.

  He reexamined everything that had happened in November of 1966, now having the disinterment of Beatrice and her removal to the Ossario of Sant’Ariano to add to the list. He thought a great deal about Beatrice’s copy of the Barovier Wedding Cup and the uses and effects of arsenic. He tried to penetrate the mask of Giovanni Fabbri of Padua—also known as Domenica, he was convinced—and to understand what course of eve
nts might have brought him to murder three times and what role the glass lovebird had played. There was a great deal more for him to consider, among other items Margaret Quinton’s writings, Clifford Voyd, Santa Teodora, all the things he had learned from those who had known the Galuppis and especially what Cavatorta had told him about his father.

  He went over it all until he became as muddled as before. Then for a few brief, even more disturbing moments everything seemed probable—every connection, every hypothesis, every “theory,” to use the Contessa’s word. His mind began to reel. Where meaning had been eluding him before, it now mocked him by seeming to be everywhere, one thing canceling out another. He even began to question that Domenica was a man. Almost everything pointed in this direction and yet, inexplicably, a vestige of his former assumption about Beatrice’s friend trailed itself across his weary mind. It bad nothing to do with plausibility and yet he couldn’t shake it.

  Then, in the deadest time of the night, he remembered what had been teasing him earlier in Don Marcantonio’s comments, and from this he passed so quickly to what seemed the answer that he was afraid to go over it again more methodically. When he did, however, the answer still seemed as clear and irrefutable as when it had first come to him.

  When he finally got to sleep, he had troubled dreams. Floating before him were the faces of Carlo, Maria, and Beatrice, and an indistinct one that seemed sometimes a man, sometimes a woman. Santa Teodora’s face with its prominent nose and receding chin kept dissolving into these others.

  He awoke exhausted but excited. When he called the Contessa at nine, she had already gone out and Lucia said she wouldn’t be back until about midafternoon. She had gone for a dress fitting and then was meeting a group of friends at Florian’s about ten.

  After he hung up, he took a quick shower, wrote a note to Natalia, and left the Palazzo Uccello. If he stopped by Florian’s on the way to the Questura, he might be able to see the Contessa alone before the others arrived.