Frail Barrier

by Edward Sklepowich

  Many of Albina’s colleagues from Florian’s were present as well as a waiter from Da Valdo, although Valdo himself was absent. Neighbors from Albina’s quarter occupied two whole rows of pews. Or rather not quite two rows, for wedged in the middle of one pew were Romolo and Perla Beato, who lived in the much more fashionable part of Dorsoduro. Perla had once used Giulietta’s services as a seamstress in the days before she married Romolo and worked as a nurse.

  Giulietta, ashen and wearing a black dress trimmed in cream-colored lace, sat stiff and dry-eyed throughout the service.

  Only two things surprised Urbino about the mourners. One was how few Gonella relatives were there, a mere three elderly aunts and uncles with one cousin, all from Treviso.

  The other thing was the presence of Clementina Foppa. The cartaio had arrived after the Mass began. She sat by herself. From the way she kept staring at Claudio, who sang the Ave Maria and other hymns from one of the carved and gilded singing galleries, it was as if she had come for his performance alone. Perhaps she was taken with his resemblance to her dead brother, as Urbino had been when he had seen the death notice.

  Claudio seemed oblivious to everyone and everything around him. The quality of his voice was not good this morning, but he more than made up for it in the depth of his emotion. The darkness of the church and Claudio’s distance from the other mourners concealed what Urbino was sure were tears in his eyes, for he could hear them very distinctly in his voice.

  After the service, during which the elderly priest delivered a short but eloquent eulogy to Albina, the priest and the mourners followed Albina’s coffin to the funeral gondola.

  As they neared the doors that opened on to the little square and the canal, they passed a wooden statue of the Madonna and Child on a throne decorated with cherubs. The figure of Mary, veiled and robed in white, looked like a bride. A scapular hung from one of her hands.

  Claudio, his face drawn, had descended from the singing loft to be one of the pall-bearers. Silently, somberly, and wreathed by the fog drifting up from the canal, Claudio and the other men carried the coffin to the funeral gondola. They placed it on a canopied platform with black curtains.

  The barge-like vessel, much larger than a regular gondola, was adorned with figures of a grieving angel and a lion and with an ornate double garland around the hull, all the details carved and gilded.

  Claudio and Gildo, with their oars, took their positions immediately in front of the casket, with two other rowers behind it. The two friends could little have imagined that their rowing skills would have been required for this sad duty. The funeral gondola started to move slowly through the light fog drifting above the canal toward its destination on the cemetery island.

  Two hours later Urbino and the contessa were walking down one of the paths of the cypress-clad cemetery island in the lagoon between Venice and Murano. It was a hot day with a gray overcast sky and an uncomfortably damp wind from the lagoon that blew wisps of low-lying fog against them. Urbino felt both overheated and chilled. The contessa walked without any problem, the injury to her ankle having proven to be minimal, as she had predicted.

  ‘At least we spared her this,’ the contessa said.

  She nodded toward rows of disinterred graves, surrounded by mounds of dirt, broken pieces of concrete, and withered flowers.

  They were skirting the edge of a field where the graves were in the grim process of being dug up now that the dead’s twelve-year tenancy was over. Many families rented burial space for only this brief period. They were usually less grieved by the inevitable exhumation than one might think. Most dead were soon forgotten, and space for them was a precious – and expensive – commodity.

  The contessa had arranged for Albina to be buried in a perpetual grave with a space next to her for Giulietta, whenever her day might come. Their parents’ graves had long since been dug up and their bones placed on one of the lagoon’s ossuary islands used for this sad purpose.

  After Albina had been buried, Urbino and the contessa had visited the Da Capo-Zendrini mausoleum. She had deposited a bouquet of flowers and spent half an hour unnecessarily neatening the area – unnecessarily because she made sure that it was well tended to once a week.

  They were now going to make a visit that had become a ritual for them. It was to the grave of Diaghilev. The contessa’s mother had been Diaghilev’s friend and had always regretted being unable to pay her last respects to a man she had loved and admired. In memory of her mother the contessa visited the ballet impresario’s grave whenever she was on the cemetery island.

  Urbino and the contessa passed graves where men and women were cleaning the stones and tending to plants and flowers. They walked through an area of loculi where the dead were buried in walls. There was a movable ladder to give access to the higher graves. They paused at one tier of loculi. The contessa gazed up at one of the burial niches and said a silent prayer for the soul of a former maid who was buried there.

  They then entered the Orthodox compound and went down the path to the brick wall. The fog was thicker here. A rusted iron gate opened on to marshland and the bluish-gray expanse of the lagoon, where boats were making their way to Murano in the near distance. To the far left and out of their sight was the Dead Lagoon, where the tides never reached.

  ‘As if we didn’t know what we’d find.’ The contessa looked at Diaghilev’s simple memorial stone. ‘There’s another one.’

  She didn’t mean the bouquet of purple and white carnations with the yellow ribbon at the base of the tombstone, but the ballet slipper on top of it. It had lost little of its color and hardly any of its shape. It was very different from the twisted, faded, and moldy one they had seen on the stone in June. But like the other slipper, this one too had a spider’s web spun across its opening.

  ‘We never see anyone leave a slipper, but there’s always a new one,’ the contessa mused.

  ‘One of Venice’s many mysteries. One of its benevolent ones.’

  On their way out of the Orthodox compound, the contessa said, with a sidelong glance at Urbino, ‘You want some answers about poor Albina, don’t you? Isn’t what Salvatore Rizzo told us enough?’

  Rizzo had been Albina’s physician. After the burial, he had explained that Albina had indeed had a weak heart.

  ‘Not completely,’ Urbino said.

  ‘He said that it was perfectly consistent with her condition that she could have died suddenly.’

  ‘And he also said that she could have lived for many more years.’

  The contessa gave a little sigh.

  ‘Fate, caro, fate and circumstances. Not the kind of philosophy that a supposedly good Catholic should have, I know.’

  ‘But I was part of Albina Gonella’s circumstances on that night, Barbara. If it was her fate, I had some role in bringing it to her. I need to know what happened to her.’

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’ll learn and however it might comfort you.’

  A slight edge of impatience sharpened the contessa’s tone.

  ‘If Albina went out for something other than her keys,’ he explained slowly, ‘then I’d be a little comforted.’

  ‘But she would still be dead.’

  ‘And,’ Urbino pursued, ignoring the truth of the contessa’s comment, ‘if I learn that she didn’t die naturally even if she did go back for her keys, then I might have the satisfaction of finding out who is responsible.’

  ‘And you’d be off the hook.’

  ‘I’ll never be off the hook with this one.’

  The two friends didn’t return to the subject until they reached the contessa’s motorboat by the bone-white church of San Michele.

  As he was helping the contessa settle into her seat, Urbino said, giving her some of the fruit of his thoughts since they had left Diaghilev’s grave, ‘Konrad Zoll, Luca Benigni, and Albina Gonella. All dead.’

  ‘You’re not thinking there’s some kind of connection? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Many things
don’t. Not at first.’

  Part Three

  The Recently Dead

  Five

  At a few minutes past seven the next morning Urbino was awakened by the telephone.

  ‘Signor Urbino? Is it you?’

  The low voice, a woman’s, was unrecognizable. It sounded muffled in tears.

  ‘This is Urbino Macintyre, yes.’

  ‘It’s Giulietta Gonella.’

  Albina’s sister had never called him before. He sat up and propped a pillow behind him.

  ‘Giulietta? What’s the matter?’

  Albina’s sister had remained calm throughout the funeral and the burial, even a little cool and distant. The more the other mourners had become emotional, the more she had withdrawn into herself. But Urbino was aware that a bereaved person’s demeanor was an unreliable indicator of the depth or sincerity of emotion.

  ‘Someone broke into our – my – apartment,’ Giulietta explained in a stronger voice.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday. No one was in the building. Everyone was at the funeral. Most of the people in the calle, too. When I got home last night from staying with a friend in Castello, my door was open. The apartment is upside down.’

  ‘You have to call the police.’

  ‘I did, as soon as I realized what had happened. And I had to wait a long time for them to come! They asked a lot of questions and wanted to know if anything had been taken.’

  ‘Was there?’

  A silence fell across the line.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Giulietta said after a few moments. ‘Maybe some of Albina’s things. Not anything of mine. No, not any of my things,’ she repeated. ‘None at all.’

  Urbino was a little skeptical. It often took someone days, often longer, to determine that something was missing unless it was a large item or a valuable one that they quickly checked on.

  ‘Money? Jewelry?’

  ‘What I have, I keep in the pockets of an old coat no one would ever want to steal or think of searching. It was all still there. But I’m afraid, Signor Urbino. Afraid that whoever broke in will come back. Please, could you help me? I don’t want to stay in the apartment with the door broken.’

  ‘Of course you don’t.’

  Urbino, who knew how long it took owners of buildings in Italy to make repairs, even with the intervention of the police and the municipality, told her he’d be there as soon as he could.

  Urbino was sitting in Giulietta’s living room shortly after nine, to the obvious relief of the frightened woman. She was wearing the same black dress she had been wearing yesterday. It was wrinkled, and a piece of the cream-colored lace trimming had ripped.

  The living room had a musty smell, but it seemed clean. Some things were out of place. A bonbon canister was overturned, a small rug was doubled up against the side of the sofa, and romance novels and crossword puzzle books were scattered across the floor. The base of a porcelain lamp was shattered in a corner. A dressmaker’s dummy stood in a corner, tipped against the wall. Scraps of flowered blue material draped one shoulder of the dummy. Beside the window were three cardboard boxes that carried the name of a Tuscan winery. Brightly-colored garments with brocade and sequins spilled out over their open flaps.

  The furniture, although of good quality, was worn and old. As Urbino sat next to Albina’s sister on the sofa, an exposed spring pressed into him from beneath the piece of green material that had been thrown over the sofa.

  ‘Don’t worry, Giulietta. I’ll arrange to have your door fixed right away. And the one downstairs too. It’s in bad shape. Is there a locksmith near here that you and Albina used?’

  ‘She brought someone back a few years ago when we had trouble with our lock. But I don’t know who he was. She took care of those things.’

  ‘There’s one near the Carmini. I’ll go directly from here.’

  The woman’s small thin face was gaunt, and its tiny black eyes were rimmed with dark circles. She periodically bit a corner of her brightly-rouged lower lip.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a glass of water?’ she said. ‘I’d offer you coffee but I couldn’t even make one single cup for myself these past few days. We ran out of coffee, and I’ve been too busy to get some. Albina took care of it. Or maybe a glass of Cynar? That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’ she asked with eagerness.

  The thick, brownish liqueur made from artichokes was far from Urbino’s favorite drink.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

  Giulietta looked disappointed

  Urbino stood up.

  ‘Are you sure that the person broke in your door? Maybe you left it open. You’ve had a lot to deal with.’

  ‘I locked it when I left. I’ve never forgotten to do that. Albina was the forgetful one. And the lock is broken. I told you that!’ she added petulantly.

  Urbino went over to the door and moved the slide bolt that Giulietta had shot into place as soon as he had come in. He opened the door and examined it but could find no evidence of a forced entry. However, the door was so old and the lock so worn and rusted that it was possible that a person without much strength could have been responsible for the damage. And when he had entered the building, he had noted that the entrance door, which had Albina’s obituary notice on it, could be opened with a slight push although he had waited until Giulietta had released the lock to let him in so as not to frighten the woman any more than she already was.

  ‘What did the police say about the door?’

  ‘Bah, the police! They said nothing. They did nothing.’

  ‘May I see Albina’s room?’

  ‘Why?’

  Giulietta gave him a stern-faced expression.

  ‘Whoever broke in might have taken something of hers, you said. They didn’t take any of your things, right?’

  She stared at him.

  ‘If we can figure out if they took something specific from Albina’s room,’ he went on, ‘there might be a chance of finding the person or persons who broke in.’

  Giulietta considered this for a few moments.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said with what seemed reluctance. ‘You know more about these things than someone like I do, the way you like to investigate. As you wish. Her room is this way.’

  She led him down a narrow, dark hallway with four closed doors. She opened one at the far end.

  Albina’s room had a frayed dark blue carpet. Its one window was covered with thin, semi-transparent blue curtains through which the brick wall of an adjacent building was visible. Crowding the small space were a single bed with a wooden headboard, a plastic chair, a chest of drawers, a dark armoire, and a corner bookcase.

  Being in Albina’s room was one thing. Searching it, which is what Urbino wanted to do, was something else entirely. He realized that he was going to have to be content with not much more than a quick visual survey. All the drawers of the chest had been pulled out. Garments gaped out. Shoes lay in a jumble on the carpet. The doors of the armoire were wide open. Clothing made a disorderly pile on the floor in front of it. The bedclothes were in disarray and the mattress didn’t seem to lie properly on its frame.

  ‘My room looked the same, but I straightened it up. I haven’t had the energy to do it in here. I don’t even know if I’ll keep all her things.’

  ‘Natalia can come over and help you. But I wouldn’t throw anything away, not yet. Just put things back as best you can. We’ll figure out what to do with them later.’

  Giulietta didn’t question his advice. She bent down and picked something up from the floor. It was a brightly-colored birthday card. She put it on the dresser. Urbino noticed that two of the fingernails on her right hand were broken.

  ‘From Claudio,’ Giulietta said. ‘He brought it over and sang songs. In July. Albina was five years older than me.’ Then she added, mechanically, ‘My poor sister.’

  ‘Your sister was well loved. Look at all the people who came to her funeral. I’m sure she didn’t have an enemy in the worl
d.’

  He tried to make this last observation casually. Giulietta stiffened slightly and looked at him, her eyes rounder.

  ‘Why do you say that? Is it because you think someone came into our apartment because of Albina? Because they didn’t like her?’

  ‘Were any of the other apartments broken into?’ Urbino asked, without responding to her questions.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Albina left the apartment a short time after I walked her home, right?’

  Giulietta bent down and picked up a worn shoe. She searched for its mate, found it, and put them both neatly beside the bed.

  ‘She went back for the keys,’ she said.

  ‘But why would she go out again so late, and with the storm that was coming?’

  ‘It made no sense to me either.’ Giulietta stood up. ‘The keys would keep, I told her. But she was determined to get them. She was afraid someone might take them, and then she’d have to spend money to have new ones made.’

  ‘Were any keys found with her?’

  ‘The keys to Da Valdo. In her pocket. With some money. Thank God no one robbed her while she was lying there dying or already dead!’

  ‘Do you know if she got her keys from Da Valdo before she died?’

  ‘All these questions, Signor Urbino! I have no idea. I never asked her slave driver if her keys are still in the café. I didn’t even think of it.’ She gazed out the window, and then turned back to Urbino. ‘Oh, I see what you mean. Someone could have used the keys to get into the apartment. And – and that could mean that someone might have attacked her. For the keys? Yes, someone could have attacked her for the keys.’

  The possibility seemed to please her. Or perhaps, Urbino thought, she was trying to encourage him in this line of thinking.

  ‘Possibly,’ Urbino said, a bit cautiously given Giulietta’s reaction. ‘Or someone could have taken advantage of her condition to take them.’