8
“The pathetic and the deluded,” the Contessa said when Urbino told her about Giovanni Firpo and Xenia Campi Who was pathetic and who deluded she left for him to sort out as she glanced disdainfully at the flyer.
The Contessa’s choice today of her multicolored Fortuny dress that had belonged to the actress Eleonora Duse indicated that she was either weary or depressed, perhaps both. Urbino had never known her to wear it in any other circumstances. She seemed to believe there was something talismanic in the garment that would lift her spirits. It didn’t seem to be working this afternoon, however.
“Is that poor soul still talking about Disneyland? She said the same thing last summer.”
She sighed and absently fingered her strand of matched pearls.
“And she probably will again this summer. She does have a point though.”
“Of course she does! There’s nothing worse than an idealist gone wrong. You should be able to appreciate that.”
“I would think that you’d be more sympathetic, Barbara. You don’t care for Carnevale any more than she does.”
The Contessa looked out the window into the crowded Piazza.
“I endure it like so much else in life. Just a week until it’s all over.”
The waiter brought over a Campari soda for Urbino and a fresh pot of tea for the Contessa, made with the first flush jasmine tea her majordomo Mauro brought over every month. The needs of the Contessa and Urbino were anticipated here at Florian’s, where the Contessa was almost a daily figure, usually in the company of her American friend or some social, political, or artistic luminary of the city.
She favored the Chinese salon, one of the smaller rooms, with its floral patterns, vaguely Oriental portraits, and wooden parquet floor. It had an intricate ceiling of lace and flower designs sheeted in clear Murano glass and framed by dark, shining strips of wood in geometrical configurations. The walls had the same Murano glass but many of the strips of dark wood on the walls were gilded. Here in the Chinese salon, surrounded by its painted panels and carved wood, its velvet and marble, its stucco and its gilding, and its heavy mirror and bronze amorini holding delicately fluted lamps, the Contessa had one of her best settings. From the plush maroon banquette by the windows, she was mistress of all she could survey in the Piazza outside or in the small room itself. But right now she was staring at Urbino.
“Whatever is that thing around your neck?”
“I’m going to Porfirio’s party before the Fenice tonight.” He quickly added, “Don’t worry. I won’t be late.”
He felt uncomfortable mentioning Porfirio’s party, knowing that there was bad blood between her and the Venetian photographer. Had she been invited? Perhaps she was brooding about it.
“I’m not worried but do put that thing away. It’s distracting. There’s something I want to talk about.”
Urbino slipped the mask into the pocket of his blazer.
“I thought it gave a rather nice touch of color.”
“I’m beginning to wonder about you, Urbino. Are you sure you aren’t a closet masquerader or whatever one would call it? Trying to relive your adolescent days of those ‘mystical crows’ or whatever they’re called? Do you have a wardrobe of bizarre costumes at the Palazzo Uccello like Giovanni Firpo? It’s the kind of thing one would expect of an admirer of that decadent duke Des Esseintes! I’ve probably passed by you during Carnevale on any number of occasions and not even known it was you. Of course, one has absolutely no way of knowing who most of these mad men and women out there are, either. And I probably wouldn’t want to know. Shocks like that add lines to the face and gray to the hair!”
A figure was standing at the window looking at them. It was wearing a large mask designed after one of the weird portraits of the sixteenth-century painter Arcimboldo, composed of vegetables, fruits, and flowers. This comestible mask had a thicket of roots for hair, mushrooms for ears, a tuber for a nose, and a sprouting potato for a chin. The Contessa sighed and shook her head.
“You said you had something to talk about,” Urbino reminded her.
“So I do, caro. Three days ago I was rung up by someone I haven’t seen for longer than I care to remember. We were only about fifteen the last time we saw each other. Can you believe such an atrocious thing? Her name is Berenice Reilly—or rather it was. It’s Berenice Pillow now.”
“Pillow! You British have some of the strangest names.”
“Actually, caro, the name is American—or at least her husband was American. The family was probably British originally. She read about the Ca’ da Capo in the article in Casa Vogue. She couldn’t believe it was me—a Contessa, she said, little Barbara Spencer—and to think we had been girls together at St. Brigid’s-by-the-Sea.” She looked at Urbino with a little smile. “She recognized me, I believe. That picture taken in the library was a good one.”
“Recognized you after all these years? The article did give your maiden name and some other information.”
“In any case, caro,” the Contessa went on, “she said she remembered me quite well. She was a rather plain girl with a fiery temper to match her red hair. I never heard from her, or even of her, again until three days ago. Can you believe a person from your past just popping up like this?”
She took a sip of tea.
“She wanted to see me for old times’ sake and to find out about my life since St. Brigid’s. She said I was just the person she needed to talk to, to confide in the way we used to on those winter nights at St. Brigid’s. It’s rather flattering, don’t you think, after you get over the initial shock? It should be fun showing her around to Oriana and some of my other friends—and, of course, you, caro—as long as she promises to be discreet!”
A figure in a domino with its ample hood pulled up over a paint-whitened face paused before their window. He was about to move along when he saw the Contessa looking out. He raised his hand, bowed his hooded head, and called out “Benedicite!” to her. The Contessa turned away, not waiting to see what he might say or do next. The man blessed himself and continued along the arcade.
“Berenice and I decided to meet here at four-thirty yesterday. Well, I must tell you that I waited almost a full and complete hour! I had some diversion while I was waiting, but not completely pleasant. Gibbon came in with a plain young woman who’s also staying at the Casa Crispina. I talked with them for a while although she hardly said a word. I wish the same could be said for Gibbon. Every time I meet him he makes me regret ever listening to Sister Teresa. Somehow, within only a few minutes, he managed to disparage both Josef and Porfirio. There was a malicious edge to everything he said. The girl was quite amused but I definitely wasn’t. One of Porfirio’s friends was sitting at the table over there and heard everything. I have no doubt he repeated every single word back to him. When our local dragon Xenia Campi descended on us with her flyers, Gibbon and the girl left. The girl didn’t seem comfortable with Xenia Campi in the room although if she had waited only a few moments she would have had the pleasure of seeing her escorted out.”
Her eye ran over the flyer again before going on.
“Berenice finally came. She looked a wreck! You would never think we had been in the same form together although she was a year older, I think. I would never have recognized her but she came right over to my table without any hesitation. She was loaded down with enough things to outfit an army! She had her purse, a guide book, a Missoni shopping bag, and one of those folding lap desks. It wasn’t the most dignified entrance Florian’s has ever seen. She ordered a martini—a martini, mind you!—and drank it faster than I drank the rest of the tea in my cup. She asked me all about myself but we didn’t come close to sharing any confidences. Maybe once she saw me she decided she didn’t want to confide in me after all, and I admit I held myself back. I think we have to get reacquainted first. Just about the only things I learned were that she has been married twice, once to an Italian—and twice widowed, poor thing—and that she has a son. That is, I think she h
as a son. She was so confusing that I wasn’t able to figure out if he was a stepson or a son by one of her two marriages.”
She shook her head slowly.
“She’ll be stopping by the Ca’ da Capo tomorrow with her son—or her stepson. Why don’t you stop by, too? It might be fun, meeting an old school chum of mine—as long as you don’t ask any personal questions.”
“I’ll come just to see what a woman with a name like that is like!”
“As I said, she doesn’t look anything like my age. Or I should say,” she emended, realizing that this might be misinterpreted, “that she looks as if she had been at St. Brigid’s years before me! But you’ll see for yourself!”
She said this with a bright smile of confidence.
9
Urbino, wearing his scarlet mask, looked around Porfirio’s living room. The swaggering, violent music of Stravinsky’s Blackamoor was playing a little too loudly.
This might only be Urbino’s second visit to Porfirio’s but even a hundred wouldn’t reconcile him to all the laminated plastic, glass, and chrome. The living room, mercilessly illuminated and filled with hyperpatterned, bright-colored furniture and rugs, was straight out of the contemporary design collaborative of Memphis/Milano.
Porfirio—because his last name was the comically inappropriate “Buffone,” he used only his first one—lived in the Cannaregio between the Ghetto and one of the long canals. He wasn’t a particularly popular man in the quarter precisely because of his apartment. Not that the residents had little fondness for modern architecture and up-to-date improvements. On the contrary, most of them liked them very much. It was why so many, like Venetians from the other quarters, were moving in large numbers to the mainland for something “high, dry, and modern.”
No, it wasn’t the apartment’s modern design—all of it behind the building’s nineteenth-century facade—that disturbed the residents of the Cannaregio, but that, after greasing enough palms and pressuring the right people as far as Rome, Porfirio had managed to evict two Venetian families so that he could begin his renovations. One of them had been Xenia Campi and her husband, Ignazio Rigoletti. It was as if the equo canone—the fair rent law—protecting apartment dwellers didn’t exist for him. Although Porfirio wasn’t the first person to be involved in what an editorial in Il Gazzettino had called “a violent gentrification that strikes at the pocketbook, the stability, and the very heart of long-resident families,” he was one of the most disliked. As the last member of a Venetian family with a long, distinguished history of philanthropy, Porfirio had been expected to act differently, to be a protector, not a spoiler.
Also fanning the flames was Porfirio’s much-acclaimed photography that celebrated Venice. Wasn’t there something vampiristic—certainly hypocritical—about a man whose art and reputation fed off a city whose residents he obviously had little regard for?
Urbino, whose own Palazzo Uccello had been almost uninhabitable when he had inherited it, didn’t approve of the way Porfirio had gone about emptying and renovating his own building, but he did approve of his photography. He was pleased to have him providing the photographs for his book on Proust. All Porfirio’s collections were of Venice—its palaces, gardens, bridges, squares, and festivals, including a particularly popular one several seasons ago on Carnevale. He had taken photographs of the Palazzo Uccello for Urbino to send back to his two great-aunts in New Orleans, who were understandably curious about his living in a palace but whose advanced age didn’t permit a trip. The photographs had been a great success with the women.
Porfirio had therefore been the logical choice to take the photographs at San Gabriele, not the English photographer Gibbon. Porfirio didn’t need the Contessa’s commission or whatever limited recognition he might get from taking photographs of the paintings and frescoes at the church. They would only end up in the parish files anyway. What upset him, the Contessa had assured Urbino, was that a man of his reputation had been rejected before he could refuse the project himself.
The fifty-five-year-old Porfirio, who had an arrogant face and carried his more than six feet with a commanding air of self-confidence, was dressed as Pantalone, the Venetian merchant. He wore knee-length red trousers and a red waistcoat, a long black cape, a floppy red hat, and a mask with a hooked nose. In keeping with the character, Porfirio would occasionally use expressions from the Venetian dialect.
Not everyone was in costume but those who were conformed to the commedia dell’arte theme of Porfirio’s little gathering. There were Harlequins, Columbines, Pierrots, Brighellas, Pulcinellas, Dottores, and Capitanos. Porfirio, however, by either design or circumstance, was the only Pantalone.
As Urbino and Porfirio stood in front of the large windows that looked out on a back canal, now obscured by night, Urbino decided to mention Val Gibbon. Knowing how upset Porfirio was about having been passed over by the Contessa made Urbino feel, perhaps wrongly, that not bringing up the topic might only make things fester the more.
“What do you think of Val Gibbon’s work, Porfirio?”
“Gibbon, Gibbon.”
Porfirio repeated the name slowly in a musing way as if he didn’t recognize it. He looked across the room at a massive expressionist canvas in reds and yellows that would have been just as much at home on the other side of the Grand Canal at Peggy Guggenheim’s.
“He’s taking photographs of the San Gabriele fresco that Lubonski is restoring.”
“And he’s one of the hundreds of other photographers who have descended on our Piazza these days in their high boots!” Porfirio said contemptuously, turning his gaze back to Urbino.
Urbino, who had seen his host in high boots in the Piazza on numerous occasions several Carnevali ago—albeit stylish models and not the cheap plastic ones hanging by huge clothespins in the Rialto shops—restrained a smile. After sipping his whiskey, Porfirio continued.
“They have no dedication, this kind of photographer, no commitment to one thing more than any other. Every time I see someone with a camera here in Venice, it makes me angry, even a little ashamed—yes, ashamed for them and for myself. Why does almost every person with a camera think he is an artist? Tell me that! They think it is so easy, but photography is one of the arts. You must be consacrato! to the art and to a special subject. I will be known as the photographer of Venezia! You see, my dear Urbino, you have chosen well for your Proust!” he finished with a little smile that he probably wanted Urbino to think was meant as an ironic qualification of his self-praise.
He excused himself and went over to the bar on the other side of the room where Pietro Basso, the architect who had designed Porfirio’s apartments, was standing with a young woman Urbino didn’t recognize. She had tawny hair cut in a short blunt style and was wearing a long dark-green dress with a lacy white apron attached in the manner of the character Columbine. She wore no mask, however, and her eyes flicked briefly in his direction before she responded to something Porfirio had said. After a few minutes Porfirio drifted off to join another group.
Urbino went over to the bar to get some more wine. Basso was looking pleased with himself as he finished his favorite lecture on the virtues of all modern architecture. The young woman looked relieved when Urbino joined them and introduced himself.
“Hazel Reeve,” she said, smiling and extending her hand.
She looked directly into his eyes. She was about twenty-five with an assured and intelligent manner. Her face was oval with a generous mouth and widely spaced sea-green eyes.
“Signorina Reeve is English. She is staying here with Porfirio,” Basso said. The architect was a man whose shortness and rotundity were amusingly at odds with the angularity of his architecture. “She is doing some translating for him, isn’t that right, Signorina Reeve?”
“That’s right, although I think he feels somewhat compromised that his photographs need a text at all, whether in Italian or English,” she explained, looking over at the photographer, who was now talking with a journalist from Il Gazzettino.
After having looked at Urbino so directly a few moments ago she now seemed to be avoiding his eyes.
“When he came up to London before we published his first book on bridges,” she went on, “he defended the purity of his art quite impressively. ‘A photograph should stand alone, isolated,’ he said, ‘a clear statement in itself and by itself’—something very much like that. It was decided nonetheless that if the Italians needed a text, then surely the benighted Brits did as well.”
She laughed lightly, showing even white teeth.
“Ah,” Basso said after taking a sip of his drink, “a bridge is a bridge is a bridge is a bridge.”
“Do you speak from your knowledge of architecture, Signor Basso, or your familiarity with Gertrude Stein?” Hazel Reeve asked playfully. “Porfirio’s photographs of bridges could have stood on their own, perhaps, but not the ones on relics that we’re publishing in the autumn. However could the photographs be enough, even for the Italian reader?”
“But most of the chests, reliquaries, and altarpieces are beautiful in themselves,” Urbino said.
“That’s certainly true, but it’s the story behind the relics—the story of the relics—that’s of interest for most people, wouldn’t you say? It’s a whole fascinating history of thefts and concealments, pillagings and supposed miracles.” The quick, brief glance her green eyes now gave Urbino was all the more forceful for having been withheld for what seemed much longer than it actually was. “At any rate, it’s not up to me. I get my assignments, I do my work. Not that I’m not thrilled to be working on another of Porfirio’s collections. They’re quite magnificent.”
“They certainly are!” Basso agreed heartily. “And don’t forget that you get to come to our beautiful city.”
“Believe me, Signor Basso, such extravagances are beyond our budget. I know my Italian and, as far as my editor is concerned, that’s supposed to be sufficient. But it’s Carnevale and I thought I’d take a look for myself at the relics—although I’m not exactly sure what the advantage might be for a mere translation.”
Farewell to the Flesh Page 4
