Frail Barrier

by Edward Sklepowich

‘I’ll have to miss the mascarete. But go ahead.’

  She seemed about to say something else, then thought better of it and left.

  Urbino stood in the pergola until Foppa had time to leave the garden. He stared down at the cigarette stub with Foppa’s bright red lipstick staining it. He went upstairs to relieve the doctor and sit with Giulietta.

  Thirteen

  Urbino, sitting beside the sleeping Giulietta in the darkened room, had to be contented with cheers, shouts, and applause that lasted only a few minutes and that corresponded to the appearance of the women’s racing boats in the Grand Canal. He kept track of the enthusiastic responses.

  There was one for the women’s mascarete as they approached the paleto, and another for the returning boats on their way back to the floating machina at the Ca’ Foscari finishing line.

  He hoped that Silvia, the contessa’s maid, would relieve him before the next race began, but another forty minutes elapsed. He feared she had forgotten.

  The next surges of sound were in response to the caorline, powered by their six oarsmen, as they went past the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini to turn around the paleto near the train station and then raced past again to Ca’ Foscari.

  Giulietta stirred several times in response to the sounds from outside, but she didn’t awaken. At one point he heard her mumble ‘The pistol, the pistol.’

  Urbino occupied himself by reviewing some of what he knew and suspected about the deaths of Zoll, Benigni, and Albina. He tried to make various connections in his mind. Many of them were plausible until he reached a wall he couldn’t get beyond and had to retrace his steps.

  He had his suspects, and they were all under the roof of the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini. He looked down at Giulietta lying asleep on the sofa beside him as he ran though all the motives – revenge, greed, jealousy, thwarted love, as well as combinations of these – and attempted to assign them to the various players, one of whom he believed was a much darker player than the others.

  The trouble was that he could think of a motive for each one of them, but motive was nothing if there hadn’t also been opportunity. And even with both and with knowing both, he still needed to understand the filament of relations between the deaths of the mortally-ill Zoll, his companion Luca Benigni, and a woman who had played a secondary role in both their lives.

  But had the role been secondary? Wasn’t this precisely what he needed to understand?

  When Silvia slipped into the room ten minutes after the caorline had gone by the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini, Urbino felt as if he would be able to see things more clearly if he had one more piece of information – or, more probably, if he only understood the significance of a piece already in his possession.

  But perhaps this was just a comforting illusion.

  He joined most of the other guests on the loggia where they were waiting for the most popular race of all, the one of the gondolini.

  For Urbino, standing beside the contessa, the gondolini race was a rush of color, sound, and thoughts. The eight light boats sped past the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini. Each was painted a different color: white, celestial blue, red, rose, brown, orange, canary yellow, and the green of Gildo and Claudio’s gondolino.

  Because the contessa had shut off the television, none of the guests had any idea of the placement of the competitors. If any did know – mobile telephones being an anachronistic, but inevitable element in the spectacle these days – they were wise enough to remain silent.

  Urbino’s eyes immediately sought out Gildo and Claudio’s gondolino. It was seventh, and it seemed it would soon overtake the canary yellow one in sixth place. This was an excellent position for them, considering that returning champions dominated a race that was known as the race of the rowing champions. The two brothers who had taken the red ribbon the previous year were in front. Usually, the winners were evident as early as when the boats passed under the Accademia Bridge, for the leading positions seldom changed. But there was a shifting of position among the other boats.

  The two young men were dressed, like the other rowers, in white pants and blue-and-white striped T-shirts, but their belts and bandannas were in the color of their boat. The other gondoliers had similarly distinguished themselves in their own colors.

  Claudio stood at the prow, gripping the oar that was held in place by the forcola. Gildo, his reddish-blond curls catching the sunlight, was in the middle of the slim craft, manipulating the oar in its lock on the other side of the gondolino. They rowed with force and grace. Neither of them looked up at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini.

  Along with the other spectators on each side of the Grand Canal, the contessa’s guests waved, clapped, shouted. Although there must have been supporters of the other teams among the contessa’s guests, no one cried out encouragement for anyone but Gildo and Claudio.

  Perla, standing next to Romolo, called out the names of both rowers, revealing none of the preference she must have felt. Romolo was straining forward, his eyes squinted in order to give him a clearer image of the competitors. He didn’t seem to take his intense look off the boat in which his wife’s lover – his student – was performing so well.

  When the gondolini had moved out of sight on their way to the paleto beyond the train station, most of the guests stayed out on the loggia, for the boats would soon be passing below them again as they raced to Ca’ Foscari.

  ‘I’m so proud of them,’ the contessa said. ‘They’re doing marvelously! Oh, here’s Silvia.’ Concern crossed her face. ‘I hope Giulietta’s all right.’

  Fortunately, according to Silvia, Giulietta was not only all right but she also insisted on seeing what remained of the races. Urbino found her sitting up on the sofa. Some of her color had returned. Urbino gently guided her out to the loggia, with Silvia on her other side.

  ‘At least I want to see Claudio go by once,’ she said. ‘For Albina’s sake.’

  Giulietta got her wish a few minutes later, when the gondolini went past again toward the finishing line.

  Gildo and Claudio were now in sixth place. As the two rowers went by this time, Claudio looked up at the loggia and gave a smile. It seemed directed at no one in particular. Perla, Giulietta, and even, surprisingly, Clementina, who had momentarily discarded her morose air, waved.

  One would have expected Hollander, with his keen interest in boating, to be more caught up in the moment. But he took his eyes away from the swift scene in the Grand Canal and gave his attention to Giulietta. When he found Urbino staring at him, he looked back down at the boats.

  Urbino’s thoughts and speculations were racing as swiftly as the gondolini which were soon spots of receding color moving toward Ca’ Foscari.

  After the contessa and her guests learned that Gildo and Claudio had placed an amazing fifth, just missing the green ribbon, the party began to break up. Although the contessa said that everyone was welcome to stay as long as they liked – and in some cases, like Giulietta’s, even overnight or longer – she understood that most of them were eager to enjoy the activity in the streets that followed the regatta. The Beatos, Hollander, and Maisie Croy had left in quick succession fifteen minutes ago. Clementina had set out on her own a few minutes after Croy had made her exit, with effusive expressions of gratitude.

  ‘You may go, too, caro,’ the contessa said when she found Urbino alone on the loggia, staring down at the Grand Canal, thick now with water traffic, horns, shouts, and laughter. ‘I think other duties may be beckoning.’

  ‘Let’s say there are some things on my mind that I need to look into.’

  ‘Be careful,’ she said, touching him on the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Remember how easy it is to lose what you have.’

  The sparkle of her restored bracelet gave an accent to her words.

  Although a constant stream of people moved toward the train station now that the regatta was officially over, another larger and much more energetic one surged in the opposite direction toward the Piazza San Marco. It carried Urbino along in its noise and activity.<
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  This stream flowed down the broad and narrow streets and pooled into the squares, where music played and people sang and danced, but the stream always kept moving toward the piazza with mounting noise and liveliness the closer it got to that destination.

  Trapped in the middle of a crowd moving down the Salizzada San Lio between the Rialto and the Piazza San Marco, Urbino caught sight of a woman standing in front of a café farther along the street. The people around him obscured a view of her dress, but her hair was metallic red. The way the setting sun was striking her face not only erased her features but also momentarily transformed her head into a death’s skull.

  Could it be Maisie Croy?

  As Urbino watched, a waiter emerged from inside the café and shook his head firmly at the red-haired woman.

  By the time Urbino reached the café, the woman was no longer there. Chairs were upturned on the tables inside. The café was in the process of closing.

  When he reached the Piazza San Marco, Urbino managed to find some free space beneath the clock tower and took in the scene.

  Crimson and gold banners were draped from the windows above the arcades. Italian and Venetian flags flapped in the wind. A congestion of boats filled the Bacino. People milled around by the water between the twin columns and in front of the Doges’ Palace, whose upper story glowed pink in the dusk. As for the Piazza San Marco itself, the mosquelike Basilica and the brick Campanile presided over a scene that hadn’t seen such crowds and merriment since carnival. A large proportion of the great square’s occupants were Venetians. It was as if in the midst of high season and in honor of the serene republic that the regatta celebrated, they were proudly reclaiming the large public space for themselves after months of silent relinquishment.

  An old man was playing an accordion with energy and spirit and singing an old Venetian tune in dialect. Children leaped and danced around him, while their parents socialized and looked for friends and family in the throng. Two figures, draped in red, green, white, and blue and wearing white half masks, cavorted on stilts. Drifting slowly up into the darkening sky above the piazza was a cluster of balloons.

  Spanish tourists sat down a few feet from Urbino to share a bottle of wine. Companions soon joined them.

  A stout, middle-aged woman was singing and dancing by herself near the Caffè Quadri, spinning, weaving, and moving her arms around wildly.

  A well-dressed woman standing next to Urbino stared at her.

  ‘People are crazy,’ she said in English.

  ‘Or happy,’ he couldn’t help correcting her before crossing the square to Florian’s. As Urbino had expected, Florian’s was jammed. The line waiting to get in kept being dispersed by the flow of people under the arcade. Fortunately, he had no intention of sitting in any of the rooms or at any of the tables placed under the arcade or in the square.

  The attendant at the door let Urbino inside.

  He went to the bar area. He was congratulated as if it had been he and not Claudio and Gildo who had made such a great showing a few hours before.

  ‘He came here after the race,’ the baristà said. ‘The clients were excited when they found out he had been in the regatta.’ He shrugged. ‘But he had a quick drink, accepted our congratulations, and left.’

  ‘Did he say where he was going?’

  ‘Believe it or not, he was going home! Going home after running in the gondolini!’

  ‘Has anyone else come looking for him?’

  ‘A woman. She has an erboristeria in Dorsoduro. She missed him by a few minutes. Rushed right out again.’

  Urbino snatched a few words with the busy manager. Claudio had picked up the envelope Albina had left for him.

  Urbino went out under the arcade. The long, wide corridor was a sea of slowly moving merrymakers as far as he could see toward the Correr Museum and the Napoleonic Wing in one direction, the Basilica in the other. The piazza was all sound and movement, and now, with the coming of dusk and the turning on of the lights, it had an even more festive air than it had a short time before.

  Carabinieri seemed to be everywhere in their distinctive uniforms. Two of them were reprimanding a group of drunken teenagers who were trying to climb on each other’s shoulders outside a jewelry shop.

  Something tugged at the edge of Urbino’s mind, wanting attention. What was it?

  The image of the woman he had seen a short while ago came to him, the woman who had resembled Croy, the woman whose head had been transformed into a death’s head by some trickery of the dying light.

  What was it about the scene that was troubling him? He kept playing it over and over again in his mind.

  People bumped against him. Someone pushed him, not too gently. But he was almost oblivious to everything except the scene he was replaying in his mind.

  The red-haired woman might have been Croy. She might have been Croy, the woman with a painting kit of cadmiums and cobalts, Croy of the battered gondolier’s hat and scratched arms, the woman with the sharp eyes who had noticed the German words on Hollander’s ring and the intertwined gold ‘A’ and ‘B’ on the contessa’s bracelet, the woman whose watercolor of the Ponte dei Pugni was hanging in Zoll’s apartment on the Grand Canal.

  What was it about the scene he had just witnessed at the café?

  Sometimes all it takes to find an answer and a pattern – to find the pattern – is one event, one sound, one sight, one object that brings everything together.

  In Urbino’s high school chemistry class, he had always enjoyed forming a precipitate in a liquid by adding one small dose of a chemical, not too much, not too little.

  He did that now. He added a small dose of something stored in the vial of his memory. It gathered together scattered specks and pieces, and the precipitate formed.

  He needed to reach Claudio’s apartment as soon as possible.

  The police would be no help. It would take too long to convince them to go to Claudio’s apartment – if he could convince them.

  Claudio was in possession of the one thing that would probably have got them moving quickly, if they could see it.

  Urbino went back inside Florian’s to call a water taxi.

  Night had fallen by the time the taxi finally came. Urbino had waited impatiently for it by Harry’s Bar, and had almost considered jumping on the next vaporetto to San Tomà.

  And now, to add to his anxiety, they were making slow progress up the Grand Canal. Urbino wished they could go faster but too many boats were in the water, not just public transportation and taxis, but more gondolas than usual, crammed with revelers, and numerous rowboats and small craft in which families and friends were extending the day’s celebrations.

  Light spilling from the windows of the palaces and from lantern-lit boats was doubled in the dark waters. The Gritti Palace was illuminated, its terrace restaurant busy with diners. The windows of the suite that Urbino believed might be Hollander’s seemed to show the glow of light behind its draperies, but like the death’s head of the fiery-haired woman it was most likely a deception of the eye.

  On the other side of the Grand Canal across from the hotel, the windows of Zoll’s apartment were not only dark but also tightly shuttered.

  People danced on the Accademia Bridge, and waved and shouted from the railings. Amplified rock music and a laser beam came from the Campo Santo Stefano. From the windows of the palaces beyond the wooden bridge drifted quieter music and softer lights. People stood on balconies. Occasionally their laughter and an odd word or phrase found its way to Urbino’s ear despite all the other sounds. It reminded him that most people on this evening, at least for these hours, were far removed from the kind of anxious thoughts troubling him.

  The taxi passed the machina that had been constructed between the Ca’ Foscari and the Palazzo Balbi. The floating platform was now empty of its dignitaries. Its carved and gilded details, its garlands and flags, only reinforced its ghostlike impression, its evocation of how death swept across every person’s stage, no matter i
f it was as sumptuous as Zoll’s frescoed and tapestried rooms or as humble as the Gonella apartment.

  A few moments later, Urbino was getting out at San Tomà.

  The narrow calle leading to Claudio’s apartment was dark. None of the celebration had spilled into it.

  Lights showed behind the windows of the apartment.

  The broken entrance door gave Urbino access without any trouble. Two dark rectangular spaces along the hall marked where doors had led into the former apartments, which were now gutted.

  He started to walk carefully – and quietly – up the staircase to the first-floor landing. He remembered the damaged steps near the landing and managed to move close to the wall where the steps were intact.

  The building was silent.

  Urbino went up to Claudio’s door. It was slightly ajar, as if it hadn’t been closed properly. Muffled voices came from inside, but Urbino couldn’t identify them.

  Suddenly, a woman’s high-pitched laughter shattered the silence. Urbino started. It sounded exactly like Perla Beato’s laughter. Urbino couldn’t tell if it had come from Claudio’s apartment or through the broken window that opened on to a well.

  He pushed the door inward as carefully as he could. Light showed at the end of the dark hall.

  Framed in the doorway of the living room, with his back toward Urbino, was Claudio. He was still wearing his white trousers and striped T-shirt. All Urbino could see of the person he was staring at was a hand. In the hand was a small, delicate pistol, the kind preferred by women.

  Urbino exchanged a look with Claudio. Urbino hoped he understood what he should do.

  Claudio moved toward the bedroom. Hollander watched him sharply. Claudio stepped into the dark room. He turned to the left along the wall. Moments passed. No sound came from the bedroom.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Hollander was breathing heavily.

  He edged sideways to the empty doorway. With rapid movements of his head he tried to keep on eye on both Urbino and the bedroom.

  He entered the bedroom, looking toward the left, where he trained the pistol, seeking out Claudio.