Farewell to the Flesh

by Edward Sklepowich

  “She might know something about Gibbon’s murder—she might even know who the murderer is. She could have gone away for her own safety.”

  His satisfaction at having routed the Contessa—having turned her suspicion around in this way—was soon dissipated when his friend added, rephrasing his own earlier fear, “Or whoever killed Gibbon might have decided it was best to make her less of a threat.”

  The Contessa’s euphemism, though quietly spoken, screamed at Urbino across the line. The Contessa seemed right either way. Either Hazel Reeve had run off because of her direct involvement in Gibbon’s murder or she had been “made less of a threat” by the real murderer.

  25

  After his conversation with the Contessa, Urbino could think of nothing but Hazel. He couldn’t ignore the fact that she had changed so abruptly during the short time he was away from the table. Had she spent those moments reflecting on some of the things he had said—or perhaps hadn’t said? Had it been his poorly concealed disapproval of Val Gibbon that had made her want to punish him by terminating their evening?

  Urbino pulled himself back from these speculations when he realized that there was a high proportion of the egotistical in them. He was presuming that Hazel’s disappearance had something to do with him, with his treatment of her. Surely he was assigning himself an importance that he certainly didn’t have in her life.

  Yet he couldn’t help going back over their time at the Montin, trying to find some reason for her changed behavior. It might have nothing to do with her subsequent disappearance but it was something that needed an explanation.

  Urbino decided to call Porfirio. Hazel could have come back. Porfirio answered.

  “It’s Urbino. Commissario Gemelli just left and told me that Hazel didn’t come back there last night.”

  “So it would seem—unless she slept on the floor or made her bed perfectly. What happened between the two of you last night?”

  “We had dinner and then she wanted to take a walk by herself before going back to your place.”

  “And you let her?”

  “It wasn’t a question of letting her. It was what she wanted to do and there was no reason for her not to.”

  “You don’t think so? The man she loved is murdered and you think it’s all right if she just goes off in a crowd?”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Porfirio. I didn’t call to have an argument over this. I called to find out if you might have had word of her.”

  “I would have mentioned it right away. Albertine Disparue,” Porfirio insinuated, referring to Proust’s novel in which the narrator’s beloved, Albertine, disappears and later dies in a fall from a horse. “Or should I say La Petite Hazel Disparue? At least we know she has little chance of dying in a fall from a horse—not here in Venice, anyway, unless she climbed to the top of the Colleoni monument. I suggest that the next time you have a young woman in your charge you see that she doesn’t elude you.”

  26

  Berenice Pillow and her stepson had already arrived. When Urbino walked into the Contessa’s, salotto, the scene seemed to be set up for a repetition of his first meeting with Berenice Pillow two nights ago. The tall, an gular American woman was wearing the same belted dress with thin violet and black vertical stripes and the same chains and pendants. Her hair was pulled back in her characteristic bun, except that renegade strands had slipped out and were brushing against the nape of her neck. It gave her a less severe look and for a moment Urbino could see in her the mischievous, romantic young girl of the Contessa’s reminiscences.

  Berenice Pillow was even standing looking up at the Veronese as she had the first time. Her stepson—this evening, however, dressed in black trousers and a black turtleneck—was once again sitting in the rococo chair next to the sofa of which the Contessa had taken her usual gracious possession.

  Here, however, all similarities to that first meeting ended. Berenice Pillow wasn’t actually looking at the Veronese but staring blankly at the allegory of love with its buxom Venus flanked by two handsome courtiers. The frown on her face tonight wasn’t one of aesthetic disapproval but of worry. Tonio Vico looked uncomfortable and a little afraid.

  Urbino’s entrance into the salotto made an understandable change in the scene. As Berenice Pillow turned in his direction, she exchanged her frown for a smile of welcome in which there seemed to be relief. Tonio Vico stood up, as if to attention, looking less apprehensive now than a little defiant, although the element of unease was still there.

  Only the Contessa remained where she was and how she was.

  “We couldn’t be happier that you’ve finally come, Urbino,” she said. “Fix yourself a drink.”

  Urbino went over to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass of Corvo. He had already had more whiskey tonight than was good for him.

  “We’ve all been waiting for you with more than our usual anticipation,” the Contessa said. “Not that you’re late, caro,” she added. “In fact you’re right on time”—she glanced at the Louis Quatorze clock on the mantel—“but it’s just that Berenice and Tonio were even more punctual.”

  Urbino walked over to a chair, waiting for Mrs. Pillow to reclaim hers before sitting down. Only Vico remained standing. He seemed to want to pace the room but the Contessa’s salotto wasn’t designed for anything more energetic than spirited conversation. Vico compensated by negotiating the cluttered space between his chair and the liquor cabinet, where he poured himself another whiskey. Then he went over to stand beside his stepmother’s chair. Mrs. Pillow reached up to pat his hand.

  “Before you came, Berenice said she had something to tell us.”

  “We both have something to tell you,” Berenice Pillow corrected, looking up at her stepson. Having said this, neither of them said a word. With a deep intake of breath, Mrs. Pillow went on to explain. “My stepson knew this man who was murdered a few days ago.”

  The Contessa’s gray eyes widened in astonishment.

  “Whatever do you mean, Berenice? Tonio knew Gibbon?”

  As soon as Berenice Pillow had spoken, certain things fell into place for Urbino about last night at the Montin. How blind he had been! He now realized what had been suggesting itself to him earlier as he had walked back to the Palazzo Uccello by way of the Salizzada degli Specchieri. His first feeling was satisfaction and relief. His second was fear for Hazel.

  “Through Hazel Reeve, wasn’t it?” Urbino directed the question not to Mrs. Pillow but to Tonio Vico. The young man exchanged a quick nervous glance with his stepmother.

  “You’re right, Mr. Macintyre,” Vico said. “I knew him through Hazel Reeve. But how do you know Hazel?”

  Either Vico was an expert at dissimulation or the young man really didn’t know.

  “She’s here in Venice. I’ve met her.”

  He didn’t think it would be a good idea to mention Hazel Reeve’s disappearance. He hoped that the Contessa would realize this as well and say nothing.

  Astonishment raced across Mrs. Pillow’s pale face at the mention of Hazel Reeve.

  “She’s in Venice? But why?” She looked at her stepson for an answer but the next moment provided one herself. “She came down from London after the murder.”

  “She’s been here for a week,” Urbino explained. “She was at the same restaurant you and your stepson were at last night with Barbara, Mrs. Pillow. Didn’t you see her?”

  “We most certainly didn’t. We didn’t have a clear view of the entrance.”

  “Would someone please have pity on me and tell me what you’re all talking about?” the Contessa asked.

  Urbino, verbalizing the connections his mind had been quickly making, told her that Tonio was the man Hazel had been seeing before she met Gibbon.

  “Yes, I knew him through Hazel,” Vico repeated. “Or it would be more exact to say that I knew of him. I never met him. But I didn’t kill him!”

  “Of course you didn’t!” his stepmother said.

  “But Berenic
e dear, why didn’t you mention that Tonio knew Gibbon? Gibbon was killed more than two days ago. You were here when Sister Teresa came over to tell us.”

  “I know, Barbara, but you don’t understand. I—”

  “Let me explain, Mother.” Vico had put his glass down and seemed more in control of himself now. “My mother wasn’t aware that I knew Gibbon. I didn’t even mention his name to her until this afternoon. I didn’t want her to know.”

  “Why?” Urbino asked. “Because you were embarrassed to admit that Hazel Reeve was in love with someone else?”

  He was deliberately trying to provoke Vico.

  “It wasn’t that way at all! Hazel and I would have worked things out. She was just a little confused. Gibbon was a Svengali. Hazel would have eventually realized what he was really like. There was no reason to say anything to my mother. It would only have upset her and—and she might have held it against Hazel. I didn’t.”

  Vico picked up his glass and came close to draining it. Mrs. Pillow was shaking her head.

  “You should have told me, Tony. I had the feeling there was something strange about Hazel ever since Christmas but I believed you when you said she had been working too hard, and needed time by herself.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother. All that was true—I just didn’t tell you about Gibbon. I didn’t know him—except what I gathered from Hazel, and that was enough! She told me all about him on Boxing Day.”

  “On Boxing Day!” Mrs. Pillow said contemptuously. “She might have told you earlier than that if she was involved with him.”

  Temper flared behind Mrs. Pillow’s words and Urbino could understand why her stepson might have feared that she would hold things against Hazel for having hurt him. It was an understandable reaction for a mother—and that was what Mrs. Pillow had been to the motherless Tonio.

  “Please, Mother,” Vico said. “It doesn’t do any good now. Gibbon’s dead and I knew about him. I can’t deny that.”

  He looked at Urbino. What Vico was really saying was that Gibbon had been murdered and he had an excellent motive. Not only that, but Vico was appealing to Urbino for help. That was why they had both come tonight to the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini.

  As if to demonstrate the validity of what he had just been thinking, Mrs. Pillow said, “Mr. Macintyre, we don’t know what to do. It’s not as if Tony has anything to hide, but he hasn’t gone to the police yet. He didn’t even know about this man’s murder until today.”

  “Today?” It was the Contessa. “But he was murdered on Wednesday night. Today’s Saturday!”

  “Tony usually doesn’t read the papers. And all I had was The International Herald Tribune. They didn’t cover the story, of course.”

  “But, Berenice dear, surely you must have mentioned the murder to him. You learned about it here.”

  “She did say something about the murder of some Englishman but she had no idea that it could be someone I knew. Someone else might have run to the papers but I didn’t. If she had mentioned Gibbon’s name or even that a photographer had been murdered, it would have been different. As it was, I only found out about it when I was looking through the paper for the television schedule.”

  “What should we do, Mr. Macintyre?” Berenice Pillow asked again, furrows of concern across her forehead.

  “It’s obvious, Mrs. Pillow. He should go to the Questura at once.”

  “Isn’t that what I said, Tony? You see, Mr. Macintyre, when Tony told me this afternoon that he knew this Gibbon fellow I didn’t see that he had any choice but to go to the police. If he doesn’t, he might be in trouble.”

  “He certainly might,” the Contessa said.

  “But I’m afraid, Mother.”

  Berenice Pillow got up and put her arm around him. Tears welled in her eyes and as she spoke, her voice quavered.

  “I know you are, Tony. But we don’t have any choice. He knows he has to go, Mr. Macintyre, but he said he would feel better if someone other than ourselves and the police also knew about all this. We of course thought of you—and Barbara, too,” she added with a weak smile at the Contessa.

  “She’s right. I know I have to go, Mr. Macintyre, but will you go with me? And do you think we could wait until tomorrow morning?”

  The way Vico appealed to him made him seem like a little boy trying to postpone the inevitable deserved punishment.

  “Tomorrow would be all right, I suppose, but as early as possible. I’ll be at the Splendide-Suisse at eight.”

  “I want to come, too,” Berenice Pillow said.

  The gentle arm she put around her stepson and the look she gave him—and them all—were more convincing than a monologue would have been to express her belief in his innocence.

  27

  Like all the palazzi on the Grand Canal, the Contessa’s turned its aristocratic back on the activity of the alleys, squares, and bridges. It was into this bustle that Urbino now plunged on his way back to the Palazzo Uccello. Several horns were blown in his face and he was dusted more than once with confetti on the busy strada that funneled the crowds between the train station and the Piazza San Marco.

  It might be past ten o’clock but it was the Saturday night of Carnevale and people were still pouring in from the train station.

  Fortunately, it didn’t take Urbino long to leave this commotion behind as he walked away from the Grand Canal deeper into the Cannaregio. In Venice just one turning could make the difference between the thick of things and an almost funereal calm. Sometimes the division was as sharp and as sudden as that between life and death. One moment you were at the feast, the next moment beyond feasting, beyond caring, beyond feeling.

  His thoughts were consumed with how Hazel’s disappearance might fit into what he had learned tonight about Vico and Gibbon. Berenice Pillow had explained that there was no way for her or her stepson to have seen Hazel leave the Montin from where they were sitting, but what about when they had come in? Urbino had little doubt now that Hazel had noticed the two of them coming in with the Contessa when he had left the table. That explained the change in her behavior.

  Gibbon’s murder, followed only a few days later by Hazel’s disappearance after she had been in the same restaurant with Vico, didn’t look good for Mrs. Pillow’s stepson. Urbino felt that he hadn’t been told the truth tonight, not the whole truth. One thing that he was convinced of, however, was that Tonio Vico had kept Hazel’s involvement with Gibbon a secret from his stepmother. Vico would never have told her. That Mrs. Pillow hadn’t known of Gibbon’s existence was one thing, but it was not as easy to believe that Vico had been unaware that Gibbon was in Venice. Yet, if Vico had had something to do with Gibbon’s murder, would he have waited for a whole day to “discover” that Gibbon had been killed? Wouldn’t he have taken advantage of yesterday’s Gazzettino article to come forth right away and admit his acquaintance with the murdered man? What would a guilty man gain by delaying the revelation except the suspicion of intentional concealment? Had Vico actually not read Il Gazzettino until today?

  The faces of guilt and innocence were unfortunately sometimes the same, except in one respect. One was actually a face, the other a mask indistinguishable from it.

  When he got back to the Palazzo Uccello, he tried to give his attention to Proust. He started to read at random. He was familiar with the vast gallery of characters as well as with the story—the plot—if you could give these names to the ruminative narrative that re-created the loves and disillusionments of its main character, a thinly veiled version of Proust himself.

  He hoped that Proust would be able to soothe him tonight. He also hoped that, as often happened when he put aside a problem, he would be visited with some sudden clarity, an insight that would have eluded him if he had sought it out. Urbino supposed that it wasn’t much different from the unexpected power of involuntary memory that was at the heart of Remembrance of Things Past. First there was the intuition, followed by rational examination. It was what Urbino always hoped for in his biographies. It wa
s also what he hoped for in this present business with Hazel Reeve and the murder of Gibbon.

  Tonight no sudden clarity came, however, and he had to be content with the pleasures of the text alone, with characters changing into their exact oppsites, with a social world in which the reality behind appearances and illusions was only gradually revealed. It wasn’t long before his mind was filled with Proust’s notions about passion transforming our normal character, about the difficulty of ever knowing another person, about the inseparable trinity of love, suffering, and jealousy. He couldn’t get Hazel, Val Gibbon, and Tonio Vico out of his mind as he considered Proust’s belief that jealousy can not only outlive love but frequently can’t be cured even by the death of the beloved.

  But perhaps the thing he thought about most, so much so that he put the book down in his lap, upsetting poor little Serena, who had climbed into it, was Proust’s notion that another person is not like some garden with everything blooming for us to see beyond its railing but instead a shadow we can never penetrate—a shadow behind which the imagination can alternately see, with equal justification, both the fires of hatred and those of love. This wasn’t particularly encouraging for someone in the business of getting at the truth about people, but Urbino took Proust’s belief as a sensible admonition more than anything else, as a warning about presuming to know too much too soon. He saw no solution except in pursuing the truth as quietly and methodically as he knew how, all the while hoping for one of those fortuitous stumblings on the truth that Proust said gave some support to the theory of presentiments.

  To clear his mind Urbino went for a walk. The weather was still cold and crisp, but no longer completely clear. Clouds moved quickly, pushed by winds from the Dolomites.

  By avoiding the Piazza and the main squares and thoroughfares, he had the solitude he wanted for his reflections. He moved deeper into the Cannaregio, going along quays and up narrow alleys, past shuttered palazzi and bars and hostelries. He went past the dilapidated House of Tintoretto and the leprous statues of the Moors, one of whose noses had been refashioned out of metal, and then turned up toward the Madonna dell’Orto. When he stood on the bridge by the church and looked down at the black funeral motorboats moored against one of the buildings, the image of Hazel Reeve lying injured or dead somewhere in the city drifted into his mind like some dark fog.