Then, one morning, a week before the regatta, when the weather was all too obviously returning to its earlier, insufferable pattern, he set out from the Palazzo Uccello to try to answer some of the questions that had been swirling in his head during all those hours on the altana.
The path he pursued in the following days was as improvised as it was calculated, a combination that often led him to unforeseen, remarkable destinations.
He warned himself, however, that sometimes they were also unwelcome and even dangerous ones.
‘A glass of Cynar, Signor Urbino?’ Giulietta asked Urbino as she preceded him into the living room.
It seemed that he would have to endure more of the distasteful drink. But he was surprised when Giulietta brought only one glass in from the kitchen, went to a sideboard, and poured him a generous portion. The situation became clear after she seated herself next to him on the sofa. A half-filled glass of the liqueur stood on the little table next to her beside one of her crossword puzzle books, several sharp pencils, and an open packet of cigarettes. Urbino hadn’t noticed cigarettes in the apartment on his previous visits. Was it possible that she had taken up the habit – or returned to it – as a consequence of Albina’s death and the break-in?
‘Everyone in the house feels as safe now as the Contessa Barbara in her palazzo,’ she said. ‘As for me, I’m not waking up every two minutes during the night and listening for every strange sound.’
‘That’s good to hear. But it still must be difficult to be alone now that Albina is gone.’
‘Yes. I miss her.’
Giulietta’s voice quavered. She had hardly any make-up on, none of the bright red rouge and lipstick she had worn when he had visited her last.
‘Of course you do. All those years.’
Urbino picked up the Cynar and took a little sip.
‘I’ve been thinking of something that might make you feel better. It should make us all feel better, you, me, the contessa, all of her friends.’
‘What’s that?’
It was one of the things that Urbino had run through his mind on the altana.
‘You know I’m a writer, Giulietta,’ he began.
‘Yes. I saw your books in the window of a store near the piazza, but they were in English.’
‘I’ve decided to write a little book. About Albina. And I’ll write it in Italian.’
Giulietta took a sip of her Cynar.
‘A book about Albina?’
‘Yes.’
The book would be a convenient excuse for the questions he planned to ask her and others about Albina. Most of the people acquainted with him knew about his sleuthing, and any questions from him following a death risked being placed in this category. But they were also aware of his biographies, and by drawing attention to this other interest of his, he might be able to throw them off the track or slightly disorient them, enough to gain an advantage. But aside from being a camouflage, the book would also be a nice tribute to the woman. He would have it published at his own expense.
Jesuits had put their stamp on Urbino at an impressionable age. Their habit of sophistical argumentation and explanation was much too expedient to abandon, especially in his detecting work. His plan to write something about Albina was a good example, but he needed Giulietta’s approval to make the truthful deception as smooth and effective as possible.
‘But Albina wasn’t famous,’ Giulietta protested. ‘She didn’t do anything important.’
‘That’s true. She had a simple life, but simple lives can be the most beautiful. They can be very interesting in their own way. Most of the saints were simple people.’
Urbino feared that he might have gone too far. Giulietta didn’t strike him as a pious woman. Even if she had been, it was doubtful whether she would have been sympathetic to any comparison between her sister and a saint or, in fact, any comparison that placed Giulietta in a lesser light. Urbino tried to repair whatever damage he might have done.
‘What I mean is that everyone is important, even in apparently little ways. Think of the good things you’ve done for others and for your sister that have made their lives better. Just the other day you went out and cleaned up the area under the sotto-portico where Albina died. You did it for her, didn’t you?’ Giulietta gave him a somewhat distracted nod in response. ‘That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.’
Giulietta straightened her shoulders and cleared her throat.
‘Well, I suppose that would be nice of you, to write something about Albina.’ But there wasn’t much enthusiasm in her words. She drained her Cynar. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I’d like to know as much about her as you’d care to share with me. You spent your whole lives together. I won’t be able to put most of it in the book but the book will only be the better for knowing as much about her as possible.’
Giulietta poured herself another glass of Cynar and stared down at the viscous brown liquid. She seemed to be assessing what he had said.
‘I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,’ she said as she looked up. ‘My memory is good. Albina used to ask me about things that had happened in the past. I remembered our first house better than she did, even though I’m five years younger. We lived in Castello, behind the Church of San Francesco di Paola.’
This was the quarter where the Le Due Sorelle was located. Giulietta went on to describe the apartment in detail, and even – it seemed – every doll the two sisters had ever had. Nursing his Cynar, Urbino soon settled back for a narrative of Albina’s life in which Giulietta played a central role.
It was a familiar tale: two daughters brought up in a strict family, sheltered, uneducated beyond secondary school, unmarried, without any close relatives after the deaths in quick succession of their parents. They had moved to the smaller apartment in Dorsoduro twenty years before, where it would appear they had lived together in a shifting alliance of intimacy and distance, affection and coolness. Neither had ventured far from Venice. They had once made a trip together to Rome, and on another occasion to distant cousins in Treviso. Giulietta had once spent a week alone in Vienna with an Austrian woman, a regular visitor to Venice whom she had met through her dressmaking business which at one time seemed to have been much more flourishing than it was now.
Contrary to what was usually the case, Giulietta’s account became less detailed as it moved to more recent events. He listened, he nodded, he sifted what she was saying for anything relevant. Nothing particular struck him.
‘I noticed that Clementina Foppa was at the funeral Mass,’ he said when Giulietta had finished. ‘Did Albina know her well?’
‘I don’t think she ever mentioned the name. Which one was she?’
Urbino described the cartaio. Giulietta shook her head.
‘I don’t remember her.’
‘She told me something very nice about Albina,’ Urbino continued. ‘She helped a German man who was sick. She went all the way from Florian’s to Perla Beato’s erboristeria to get herbs for him. Like the ones she brought you.’
‘I’m not sick! She should just take them back!’
‘I didn’t mean that you were sick, Giulietta, but this German was. Unfortunately, he died about a week before Albina did. Clementina Foppa’s brother was the German’s friend. That’s how she met your sister.’
‘Was he at the funeral?’
‘I’m afraid not. He’s dead, too.’
Urbino explained the circumstances of Benigni’s death.
‘I remember some of the neighbors talking about it,’ Giulietta said. ‘The young die all the time.’
From the tone of her voice this reality seemed to give her some satisfaction.
‘Did Albina mention it?’
‘No.’
Giulietta stared at him. With some effort, Urbino downed a large portion of his Cynar and stood up.
‘I should be leaving, Giulietta. I’ve taken up enough of your time.’
‘But you didn’t write anything down.’
/> ‘Like you, I have a good memory. By the way, would you mind identifying Albina’s keys? I mean each individual one.’
Giulietta’s eyes shot to a sideboard near the door where the keys lay in a ceramic plate.
‘I know you told me to put them in her room with her other things,’ Giulietta said. ‘I forgot. But I suppose it makes no difference. What do the keys have to do with your book?’
‘They don’t have anything to do with it. It’s because the apartment was broken into.’
‘Yes. Don’t forget that my apartment was broken into.’
It was almost as if she said it to remind him of the break-in.
She got up and brought over the keys. She had no trouble identifying them.
‘This one is for the old lock on the door downstairs.’ She pinched the largest key and held it up. ‘And this one is for the old apartment door. And the small one – the one that’s bent a little – this one opens her jewelry box.’
‘Was it broken into?’
Giulietta nodded.
‘But everything was still in it. Sentimental things. No real gold and diamonds or things like that.’
‘But yet she kept the box locked.’
‘Sentimental things can have value. Usually greater value than a diamond. A diamond can be replaced.’
‘Of course. But maybe she put something valuable in the box lately.’
‘We weren’t the kind of sisters who told each other everything. And I didn’t snoop.’
Urbino, a snooper himself – for what else was he doing now? – somehow doubted that Giulietta had made it easy for her sister to keep whatever secrets she had had over the years. But Giulietta had confided no secrets about Albina as far as he could determine. Was this for her sister’s sake or for her own? The same question could be asked about her assiduous cleaning of the sottoportico.
Albina might have put something in her jewelry box for safekeeping. She could have been going back for her keys to prevent someone from opening the jewelry box if the keys fell into the wrong hands.
But did this make much sense? Someone had broken into the box. No key had been needed. But people didn’t always think logically. And Albina might have been worried about someone who could open her jewelry box stealthily, with a key, not about someone who would go to the extreme of breaking into it.
If something had been taken – something that Albina had wanted to keep safe and that Giulietta was unaware of, or so she said – it was probably the motivation for not only the break-in but also Albina’s death.
Urbino thanked Giulietta and left.
Fifteen minutes later Urbino was going over what he had learned from Giulietta as he entered the Campo San Barnabà on his way to the vaporetto stop. A group of sunburnt backpackers was gathered in front of the church. They had put down their loads and were trying to eat their gelati before the brightly colored ice cream melted in the heat.
A tourist stopped Urbino to ask directions to the Ca’ Rezzonico. While he was explaining the route the man should take, a young woman walking toward him through the Sottoportico del Casin drew his attention. She looked familiar but the shadows of the passageway obscured a clear view. When she emerged, he identified her as Clementina Foppa. The cartaio seated herself at an outdoor table in the café across from the church.
‘Isn’t this a pleasant surprise!’ she exclaimed when Urbino went up to her table. ‘Why don’t you join me? Oh, let me take that away.’
She freed the chair across from her of a small paper bag with the name of her shop on it. Urbino glimpsed the edge of a book-sized object wrapped in marbled paper. Clementina placed the bag on the ground by her feet.
‘Thank you.’ Urbino sat down. ‘How are you?’
‘Well enough, in this heat.’
Her pale face, with its bright red lipstick, was beaded with perspiration. She took a lace handkerchief from the pocket of her dark gray dress and patted her face. Urbino noted again her unusually muscular arms.
When the waiter came, they both ordered limonate. Their table provided a good view of the small square, with its church, its canal, and the bridge that led to the Fondamenta Rezzonico. The square was busy with shoppers, children, strollers, and tourists. Most of the latter spent no time to enjoy the charms of the spot, however, but surged on toward the Piazza San Marco.
Clementina said that the Campo San Barnabà was her favorite square.
‘Do you live near here?’ Urbino asked.
‘No. On the Giudecca near the Fondamenta di San Giacomo.’
It was a working-class quarter near the Church of the Redeemer.
‘I like the Giudecca, but don’t get there often enough. What is it about this square that you like so much?’
‘The vegetable and fruit barge, for one thing.’ She looked in its direction and then gazed up at the campanile. It had a conical spire, the only one of its kind in the city. ‘The spire, too. But most of all because the square is small and compact. I like small things. Maybe because I’m small myself.’
‘Petite.’
‘A nicer way of putting it,’ she said, giving him an appreciative smile. ‘And San Barnabà has an interesting history. Many of the impoverished nobility used to live here. My mother would tell us stories about how poor her noble family had become over the centuries.’
The waiter brought their limonate. They sipped them in silence as they looked out into the square. When a dog came up to their table and started to nose at Clementina’s bag, she picked it up, drew another chair over to their table, and put the bag on the chair.
‘It’s a gift for Albina Gonella’s sister,’ she said. ‘I don’t know her but I thought she might appreciate a visit. I’m stealing a little time away from my shop. She lives near here.’
Urbino found it a little unusual that Clementina was making a visit of charity to someone she didn’t know. But why shouldn’t she want to reach out to someone else who had just suffered a loss? Surely it was a natural, commendable instinct. And she had gone to Albina’s funeral. It could be a way of remembering her own dead.
‘Yes, near the Campo Santa Margherita,’ Urbino said. ‘I was just there myself. But I confess I wasn’t thoughtful enough to bring a gift.’
Clementina flushed.
‘It’s nothing much. Just a book for photographs. After my father died, my mother and I found comfort in organizing photographs of him. It brought back so many good memories. Luca and I did the same thing after she died.’ She paused and bit her lip. ‘And now I’m doing the same thing with photographs of Luca. But it’s – it’s not going so well, I’m afraid.’
Her face went awry in a childish manner, as she struggled to hold back tears. She gave in and started to weep. She took out her lace handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘But it’s hard. I pretend it isn’t sometimes. I have to go on, the shop and all. But Luca was the only person I had. The only one who meant anything to me. We had different fathers, yes, but he was my brother in all ways.’
‘I’m really very sorry. I know how difficult these things are from my own experience. There’s always comfort in sharing grief. What about Luca’s father?’
‘He died a few years ago after he moved to California. So Luca and I only had each other – except for a few distant cousins of his in Sicily.’
Tears welled in her eyes again.
Not only did Clementina’s tears stir Urbino’s sympathies but they also made it difficult to ask her any questions that might disturb her further.
He sat looking at her as she dried her eyes. She returned the handkerchief to her pocket, and took out a pack of cigarettes. They were the same brand as the one on the table beside Giulietta’s sofa.
‘I hope you don’t mind?’ she said.
‘Not at all.’
She lit a cigarette with a small gold lighter and inhaled deeply, blowing the smoke over her shoulder. Her eyes glistened with tears.
‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘T
he way a person can break down with almost a complete stranger. It’s somehow easier. It surprises me though. There it is, right under the surface ready to come out.’
‘It hasn’t been long.’
‘I don’t think it’ll ever be any different. I’ve never got over my mother’s death. Now with Luca gone, what it’s done is to reopen that wound. It never healed. But listen to me! I’m sorry about all this. I really am.’
‘Believe me, I understand. And it’s never good to keep these things in. It’s good to talk about our dead, no matter how painful.’
Urbino was being both sincere and calculating, and where one shaded into the other wasn’t clear even to him. But if he didn’t think it would be appropriate to ask Clementina questions, this didn’t mean that he couldn’t encourage her to talk.
The cartaio stubbed out her cigarette. She had hardly smoked it. Her bright red lipstick had left its mark on the tip.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It does help to talk. I don’t think people realize that until they have a loss. Everyone thinks they shouldn’t mention the dead, that you don’t want to talk. When Zoll died, poor Luca came over and cried like a baby. Knowing that it was going to happen didn’t make it easier for him. All he wanted to do was talk about Zoll, tell me the things they had done, little things. He’d probably still be doing it now if … if he hadn’t died himself.’
She took a deep breath. Urbino thought she was going to cry again. But she took out another cigarette and lit it.
‘My brother was a very devoted boy, Signor Macintyre. Would you believe that he gave up his studies in March at Ca’ Foscari to take care of Zoll? He was very bright. He could have done a lot with his life.’
‘What was he studying?’
‘Art history. That’s how he met Zoll. They both loved art. They struck up an acquaintance at the Accademia Gallery. That was two and a half years ago.’
She stubbed out her cigarette, this one even less smoked than the previous one. She drank some of her limonate, looking at Urbino in what seemed to be a calculating manner.
Frail Barrier Page 15
