Black Bridge

by Edward Sklepowich

  Urbino turned his attention to Fire, D’Annunzio’s novel about Venice, a fictionalized account of his affair with the actress Eleonora Duse. The hero was delivering a paeon to Venice at the Doges’ Palace while his aging mistress gazed adoringly at him from the crowd. The scene was filled with passion and bombast, poetry and prophecy, which managed to be somehow both inspiring and ridiculous at the same time.

  Despite all D’Annunzio’s excesses, you could easily be drawn in, as Urbino was now. This was D’Annunzio’s power, a power that the unattractive little man had exerted not only on the page but in the bedroom. All this made Urbino apprehensive about the Barone Casarotto-Re, who supposedly resurrected D’Annunzio’s spirit, though obviously not his homely flesh.

  “Excuse me, Signor Macintyre.” It was the pool attendant with a portable phone. “You have a call.”

  “Urbino!” Urgency charged the Contessa’s voice. “I hate to bother you in the midst of your mud”—her light laugh sounded strained—“but there’s a problem. Everything is at sixes and sevens! Bobo is being threatened! You have to come back to Venice immediately and do something!”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Have some sense! I can’t go into detail over the phone. Come back to Venice. I’m counting on you.”

  Urbino sighed. Suddenly, illogically, he didn’t want to leave Abano. What was the Contessa pulling him back to? And what did it have to do with the Barone Bobo?

  “All right, Barbara. The train will get me in at seven-fifteen. Have Milo meet me with the boat.”

  Urbino could feel the Contessa’s relief over the line.

  “I’ll make up for dragging you out of the mud like this, caro. I promise.”

  2

  When Urbino joined the Contessa in her salotto blu at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini, her face was becomingly flushed and the bridge of her nose was slightly sunburned, something she had never allowed to happen for as long as he had known her.

  “Bobo is resting at the Gritti. He’s been through so much in the past six hours, poor dear—and so have I! There we were at the Cipriani, having such a pleasant time with Oriana and John! Little did we know what was brewing for poor Bobo!” She sighed and shook her head, displaying brighter highlights in her hair than three days ago. “Would you make me another g-and-t?”

  The Contessa’s request and the empty glass she held out to him were the most vivid evidence she could have given of her strange state, for tea, mineral water, and wine were her accustomed drinks. Gin-and-tonic was for only special and not always the most auspicious occasions. Urbino knew very well that he should avoid alcohol because of his condition, but he felt he needed a drink to get him through whatever lay ahead. He fixed two gin-and-tonics. The Contessa took a sip of hers and narrowed her gray eyes as if she had just had a dose of medicine.

  “Some envious, mean-spirited person is trying to undermine Bobo’s success.”

  She stared at Urbino for a few moments as if she suspected him of the deed.

  “You mentioned that he received threats.”

  “Not directly—not yet anyway. One was put in the bocca di leone at the Doges’ Palace.”

  Bocche dei leoni—or Lion’s Mouths—had been placed throughout the city during the iron rule of the notorious Council of Ten. Denunciations against citizens had been deposited in the marble boxes sculpted with lions and had often led to inquisitions, torture, and death. The ones at the Doges’ Palace were among the few still left in the city, these days usually crammed with gum and cigarette wrappers.

  “Here’s a copy.”

  She unfolded a white sheet the size of typewriter paper and handed it to him. Several sentences were printed in Italian in block letters in the middle of the sheet:

  THE BARONE ROBERTO CASAROTTO-RE IS AS IMMORAL AS GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO, THE MAN HE USES FOR A MASK. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT D’ANNUNZIO IS DEAD AND CAN NO LONGER HARM ANYONE. THE TRUTH WILL COME OUT.

  “The original was on red paper, folded, and slipped into the bocca,” the Contessa explained. “The director of the Doges’ Palace called the police. The Gazzettino got the same sheet in the mail with fifty thousand lire. The manager assumed it was meant to cover the cost of an ad but he didn’t print it. He called the Questura, too.”

  “What does the Barone say about it?” Urbino asked, handing the sheet back.

  “Bobo is being brave, the dear man! He’s trying to brush it off as a prank but he’s upset. Who wouldn’t be?”

  “And he has no idea what it’s about?”

  “Absolutely none! How could he? There’s nothing in those things but envy and mean-spiritedness! He’s one of the most upright people I know. I have a nose for falseness”—she had a fine patrician nose which did, indeed, seem made for scenting out the undesirable—“and Bobo is as true as they come. He’s being done an abominable injustice and I want you to get to the bottom of it. You will, won’t you?”

  “What did he say about that?”

  “Oh, he’s so self-sacrificing! He said there isn’t any need for you—or anyone—to do anything, it will all blow over, but I don’t believe him. What I mean,” she clarified, “is that, yes, I believe him, but he’s wrong. It isn’t over. He’s trying to minimize things for my sake. But with you, he might tell the truth. I mean,” she repeated with a touch of impatience, “that with you he’ll be more inclined to say how he really feels about this beastly situation!”

  “Ah, but you’re wrong, Barbara dear,” a deep male voice said in British-inflected English from the doorway. “What I tell you and what I tell others will always be the same. On that you can rest secure. You must be Barbara’s dear friend Urbino. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  The Barone Casarotto-Re strode over and looked down at Urbino from his six-plus feet of height. He grasped Urbino’s hand and gave it a firm shake.

  3

  Everything about the Barone Roberto Casarotto-Re seemed to shout with vigor—his clear dark eyes, his olive skin, his sinewy figure, even his white hair, which had receded but not noticeably thinned. The Barone’s teeth, however, were perhaps too white and too regular to be real.

  Before Urbino had time to realize what the Contessa was doing, she spirited away her gin-and-tonic to the drink table and rang for Lucia to bring in the tea tray. The Barone went over and kissed her cheek.

  “You and Urbino should get to know each other a little before you settle down to talk about serious things, Bobo. Everything is going to be fine. Don’t you worry.”

  The Contessa gave his arm a reassuring, lingering pat.

  “But I’m not worrying, Barbara dear, not in the slightest. I apologize for Barbara pulling you back to Venice. She’s very naughty sometimes, but we have to forgive her, because we know how devoted she is.” His long upper lip curled into a smile. “And I know how particularly devoted she is to you, Urbino, if I may call you that. A lovely name—and a lovely city with its associations with Raphael. Please call me Bobo. Barbara has told me all about you. Not all your secrets—ha, ha! Perhaps they will come with time. No, not everything, but enough to whet my appetite. Ah, yes, and she’s told me about your problem,” the Barone continued, seemingly filled with illimitable energy and enthusiasm. “I mean your problem down there, my friend.”

  He pointed a long, well-manicured finger at Urbino’s Gucci-shod foot. The Contessa had a fixed smile on her face and didn’t meet Urbino’s eyes.

  “A bit young for that, but I’m far from an expert on matters medical. Never been indisposed the same way myself. Hardly been ill a day in my life. One of these days I’m going to have to pay for it.”

  “Let it be ever so distant, Bobo.”

  “You should take better care of yourself,” the Barone went on. “For example, that drink you have there. The culprit alcohol is lurking in it, just waiting to go down to that toe of yours and do its wicked little damage.”

  Fortunately, the Barone abruptly changed the topic when the Contessa joked about Urbino being smothered in Abano mud
. He threw himself into a description of his tennis match that morning at the Cipriani Hotel with the Contessa, Oriana, and John Flint, her most recent innamorato. He urged the need for exercise on Urbino, squinting at him with his dark brown eyes as if he could see through Urbino’s Ermenegildo Zegna suit to the supposedly exercise-starved flesh beneath.

  His monologue wasn’t interrupted by Lucia bringing in the tea things. Urbino wondered how long the man could go on like this until he remembered that he had a one-man show that lasted for more than an hour. The Contessa prepared the tea but kept shooting nervous glances at the two men. Relief from the Barone’s flow came only with his first sip of tea, but even this relief was momentary.

  “You make the most delicious tea. How do you ever manage it?”

  “Mother always said that you should recite the Miserere. When you finish, the tea is done to perfection.”

  “And so your tea always is, my dear. Your mother was a wise and—from her photograph—a beautiful woman.”

  The Barone put down his cup and reached into his jacket pocket to take out a chased-gold cigarette case. The Contessa, who preferred no one to smoke in the salotto—or, in fact, anywhere near her—seemed far from demurring when the Barone lit a Gauloise with a gold lighter. The Contessa’s eyes wavered for a moment in Urbino’s direction.

  Before the Barone could launch into another monologue, Urbino said: “Excuse me, Barone, but—”

  “Bobo,” the Barone said. He exhaled a curling stream of smoke in the direction of the Contessa’s collection of ceramic animals.

  “What I was going to say, Bobo”—the name didn’t come easily to Urbino’s lips—“is that you don’t seem as upset as I would be. That seems strange.”

  “Urbino!”

  “Not at all, Barbara dear. He’s right—and he’s right to say it. I admire honesty. The poor boy has been dragged back from his needed therapy and I’m not being appreciative of his sacrifice. But you see, Urbino, I don’t want to blow this out of proportion. I hate to see Barbara all wrought up. She’s afraid I’ll—what did you call it, my dear?—‘dry up.’ Perhaps it’s best to let this business alone.”

  “Let it alone? I wouldn’t want something like this left alone if I were being threatened. I’d want to find out if anyone meant me any harm. Of course, people who are serious about doing harm seldom give warning. They just strike out. This might only be a version of a poison-pen letter, but nonetheless there is a threat.” Urbino went over to the table and picked up the sheet. “What does it say? ‘The only difference is that D’Annunzio is dead.’”

  “It gives me a chill, Bobo! You must take it seriously.”

  “Why would anyone want to harm me? No, Barbara, it’s D’Annunzio this crackpot wants to harm. He has enemies even today. This could be literary criticism masquerading as an attack on my reputation! I can endure it! I have nothing to hide and just as little to fear.”

  “What do the police say?” Urbino asked.

  “Oh, they’ll send someone to the Doges’ Palace and to the Gazzettino, I suppose,” the Barone said in an offhand manner. “The Commissario wasn’t much concerned.”

  “If you don’t make it seem as if you care, Bobo, the police aren’t going to try very hard. Urbino is good at these things. He can ask around and maybe get some answers the police wouldn’t get. You know how Italians clam up when the police come along.”

  “I’m afraid he’d be wasting his fine talents on this silly affair.” He shook his head dismissively. “And who knows? If you start poking around, Urbino, we could be playing right into the hands of this prankster.”

  “I think there’s more danger in doing nothing. Have you ever had any problem like this before?”

  “Never!” He gave a laugh that seemed to be more nervousness than humor. “Oh, there once was some trouble during a performance in Milan. Some self-styled anti-fascists and women modeling themselves after your American feminists, Urbino. There were posters—‘BURN D’ANNUNZIO,’ ‘D’ANNUNZIO: MAN AGAINST PEACE, MAN AGAINST WOMEN.’ Got in the newspapers. But it came to nothing in the end. This is just more of the same thing.”

  “But if it isn’t, Bobo! Urbino is very discreet. I couldn’t bear it if there was even the slimmest possibility that you were in danger from some crackpot—or even embarrassed or inconvenienced.”

  A look of irritation passed over the Barone’s face. Urbino sensed that he usually got his way and wasn’t taking this defeat well. The Barone got up and went over to the Contessa and bent down to plant a kiss on her forehead.

  “As you wish, for your own dear sake. Do what you can, Urbino, but be as discreet as Barbara says you are. And now, for the rest of our evening, let’s talk about more pleasant things. Tell me about that little palazzo you inherited from your mother, Urbino, and about your Venetian biographies. By the way, do you think you’ll ever write one on D’Annunzio? Perhaps I could be of help if you do. For example, did you know that when he was living in the Casetta Rossa on the Grand Canal—”

  The Barone then shared some of his hero’s amorous adventures. The Contessa listened with such rapt attention that her tea grew cold. The conversation never got around to Urbino’s Palazzo Uccello or his Venetian Lives.

  4

  The next morning Urbino was in the Sala della Bussola at the Doges’ Palace. It was the waiting room of the Council of Ten, the much-feared intelligence agency of the former Venetian Republic. Only a handful of tourists were in the room, eager to move on to the more sensational parts of the Doges’ Palace. Few of them noted an unassuming object built into one of the walls. This was the “lion’s mouth” into which someone had dropped a threat against the Barone Bobo. Once you slipped something into the bocca through the slot on the other side of the wall, it couldn’t be retrieved except from this room. The metal lid of the bocca, which in the old days had been kept locked, was open. Urbino reached over the velvet cords and put his hand into the stone-lined box within. It was empty.

  “You’re not supposed to do that, Signore.”

  Urbino turned and saw a young man with an official tag on his pocket.

  “Sorry. Perhaps you could help me. Do you know anything about the red sheet of paper found in the bocca di leone yesterday? I’m making inquiries on behalf of the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini. It was her friend whose name was on the sheet.”

  Urbino slipped him two ten-lira notes.

  “The Barone something-or-other,” the guard said. “I found it about eleven in the morning. I turned it over to the director.”

  “Did you see anyone put anything into the bocca yesterday—or maybe the day before?”

  There was a canvas chair on the other side of the doorway in the next room where the guard usually sat to give him a view of both rooms.

  “Had to be yesterday. We check every day. No, I didn’t see anyone do it—but it could have been slipped through the slot on this side.” They went into the hallway. The guard pointed to a stone slab with a slot that had indecipherable words chiseled in Italian beneath. “I don’t go into the hall often.”

  “Did you notice anyone acting suspiciously?”

  “Well, there was a man about sixty. He was studying the ceiling for a long time. One of the first to come in when we opened.” The guard glanced up at the wooden ceiling with its painting of St. Mark surrounded by angels. “Usually people move through this room fast. Not much to see except the bocca. The good stuff was taken away by Napoleon. A lot’s in the Louvre. That’s why I thought it was odd for him to be studying the ceiling since it’s only a copy of the Veronese.”

  “Could you describe him a bit more?”

  “Dressed in good clothes and shoes. I always notice the shoes.” He glanced down at Urbino’s Gucci loafers. “But I didn’t get much of a chance to see his face. He had a fedora pulled down low. Had to tilt his head way back to get a good look at the ceiling. I wondered why he didn’t just take it off. Italian—or someone who spoke the language as well as one. He asked me what time it was. Seeme
d to be waiting for someone and then all of a sudden he slipped away. But it didn’t have to be him. Anyone could have slipped the paper into the bocca.”

  Urbino left the Doges’ Palace and went across the Piazza to the offices of the Gazzettino by the Clock Tower and asked to speak with the manager.

  “Yes, we received a similar sheet in yesterday’s mail,” the bespectacled man said, looking at the copy Urbino had handed him. “Fifty thousand lire were enclosed, but no note of explanation. Of course we didn’t print it.”

  “Do you still have the envelope?”

  “The police have the envelope and the note. We called them right away. It seemed like a prank but we have to protect people like the Barone Casarotto-Re.”

  “Or any ordinary citizen, as well, I’m sure. What was the postmark on the envelope?”

  “Venice. The main post office behind Piazza San Marco. It even arrived the next day. Quite an achievement for Venice or for anywhere in Italy.”

  Urbino walked the short distance to Harry’s Bar. The small, unpretentious room was crowded and smoke-filled, mainly with tourists with obligatory Bellinis. He sat at the bar, ordered a Campari soda, and looked through that day’s Gazzettino. There was no mention of the threats against the Barone Casarotto-Re, but there was an article about Bobo’s upcoming show at the Teatro del Ridotto:

  The Barone Roberto Casarotto-Re, actor, playwright, and author, will appear in his one-man show, Pomegranate: Scenes from the Life and Writings of Gabriele d’Annunzio, at the Teatro del Ridotto on the evenings of 22, 23, and 24 October at 8:30 P.M.

  The Barone Casarotto-Re has given his show to considerable acclaim in Rome, Milan, and Paris and will take an English-language version to London and New York in the New Year.