The Last Gondola

by Edward Sklepowich

  He examined the color photograph of the Contessa with some friends from Nice. It had been taken on the afternoon she had gone to the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido. She looked fresh and pretty in her mauve-and-blue tea dress. She was carrying her slouch hat with the flowers. Another photograph, this one in black and white, caught her at Santa Maria del Giglio. The snowy domes of the Salute were in the background on the other side of the Grand Canal. Around her neck was the silver cascade necklace. She somehow made it look appropriate for the celebration of health and good fortune. In a third photograph, in color, she wore her pashmina and silk Regency scarf on the loggia of the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini. It had been taken the Sunday of the Regata Storica. Urbino and Habib were standing beside her.

  All the photographs had appeared in the local newspaper and supplements.

  13

  “Eccolo!” came a woman’s voice as the long, black body and bright steel beak of Urbino’s gondola slid past the embankment the next morning. “L’americano!”

  If Urbino had been regarded as an eccentric in all the years he had been living in Venice, to his own secret amusement he had become even more of one recently because of his gondola. The only people who rode in style in gondolas these days were tourists for their requisite forty-five minutes and a photograph by the Bridge of Sighs. Even wealthy residents had long since abandoned their private ones. Collective gondolas might ferry Venetians across the Grand Canal at strategic points, but such hurried, utilitarian passage hardly counted as a gondola ride, not in the old-fashioned sense.

  And it was precisely its old-fashioned associations that had inspired the Contessa to make her gift.

  “You’ll seem like someone from another world,” she had said, during the gondola’s maiden voyage. “Gliding out into the canals like a spirit from the past, just the way you entered my life. Where has this young man come from? I thought. And here we are now. Two lovers of Venice, and one gondola between us. But beware, caro,” she had said, touching his arm beneath the cloak. “The gondola is yours and so will be most of the talk. No matter how often I go out with you, people will know you for what you are. But you’ll find it all delightful.”

  It hadn’t been delightful at first, not for someone as temperamentally shy as Urbino. He had only gradually become accustomed to the smiles, stares, and comments like the one the woman had just made. Even so, he knew he would never feel completely at ease. For if riding around in a gondola was romantic and graceful, it was also more than a little proud and self-indulgent, especially when the gondola was your own and you had the services of your private gondolier.

  The only thing that might have made it worse was if the gondola was any color but the customary dead black and if Gildo, like the gondoliers in a Carpaccio painting, wore a red jacket, checkered tights, and a plumed cap, and broke out into spontaneous song.

  But despite the unwelcome attention and jokes, Urbino had taken to this new, or rather old, mode of transport. Although it could never take the place in his heart of his rambling walks, its vague air of invalidism suited that part of him that was not so much passive as receptive and observant. His mind, which by its nature was always seeking connections and making metaphors, often imaged the craft as a kind of drifting palanquin, with a lone gondolier instead of two bearers and with a forcola and an oar instead of poles. Yet on other days, even ones less dark and gloomy than this one, Lord Byron’s description of “a coffin clapt in a canoe” seemed much more apt although much less consoling.

  Most of the times he had ventured out in the gondola so far, it had been with the felze attached, as it was on this gray day on the first of March. Although the small, covered cabin was designed as a protection against bad weather, it had additional attractions for Urbino. It encouraged his musings. From behind its shutters, he had the luxury of seeing without being seen.

  It was not hard for Urbino to feel, for long delicious moments afloat in his gondola, like a pasha reclining against plump Oriental cushions. He would fantasize about being rowed to some secluded unfamiliar canal unmarked on any maps or to somewhere far away in the lagoon where he could reconstruct the absent city in his imagination.

  Urbino straightened up against the dark blue cushions. He peered through the slats to try to glimpse the woman who had drawn attention to his passage, but all he saw was a piece of crumbling wall, mossy water steps, a tarpaulin-covered row-boat, and the low-hanging branches of a tree, all slowly and dreamily sliding by.

  Ever since he had taken to the water in this fashion, Venice had become wrapped again in the same delicious confusion as it had been for him once. Familiarity had stolen some of the city’s mystery, and now he was regaining it through the Contessa’s unpredictable and extravagant gift.

  Pasquale’s comment about the different view from the water came back to him as Gildo gave a sharp, warning cry and brought the gondola around the corner of a canal. Weathered, rose-colored brick moved past. Exactly where they were, he didn’t know, except that they were di là del Canale, on the other side, as the Venetians referred to the one that didn’t include San Marco.

  As he continued to watch the scene, or what the narrow apertures of his womblike space permitted him to see, he fell into a languorous mood. He was soon almost asleep, fatigued as he was by his recurring dream of Possle and the veiled woman and the Contessa in a room that blazed into flames.

  His mind now inevitably drifted toward Possle and all the things that he might learn if the doors of the Ca’ Pozza were ever opened to him.

  The shouts of children playing football in a square startled Urbino into fuller awareness. He stared through the cabin opening to the gondola’s prow where the steel ferro, with its curved blade and seven blunt prongs, sliced through the morning air. In an exercise that entertained him from time to time, he idly speculated about the possible meaning of its unusual shape. But whether the baroque-looking ferro was merely a counterweight to the gondolier on the poop, a device to measure the height of bridges, or, more exotically, a vestige of Egyptian funeral barques was fortunately unresolvable. Although Urbino’s mind was one that preferred answers, this little mystery of the ferro didn’t trouble him. Even if he were able to reach an answer, it would not be a disturbing one. And nothing was at stake. If only the mystery of the Contessa’s lost items were the same, he thought as he rearranged a cushion behind his back.

  He had not yet given her the details of what he had learned from her staff. The Contessa, absorbed in her preparations for her first conversazione the coming Friday, a week from today, hadn’t pressed him. But he was determined to speak with her tomorrow.

  He was ashamed to admit it, but he was grateful for the Contessa’s problem. It gave his mind something to exercise itself on other than Possle. For months now, almost everything he did, everything he picked up to read, every painting he saw, every walk he took, had seemed to lead him in some way to the Ca’ Pozza and its occupant. Yes, he said to himself in the dark little cabin, it was a welcome tonic to be involved in at least one thing that didn’t relate to the old recluse.

  A few seconds later, however, a glance through the shutters revealed how little he could escape his obsession. Looming up from the canal’s edge and doubled in its waters were the crumbling walls of the Ca’ Pozza.

  When he had pulled away from the Palazzo Uccello, he had given Gildo no destination. Yet here they were, gliding past the coveted building. On previous occasions when he had directed Gildo to take them through San Polo, he had asked the gondolier to slow down as they approached the Ca’ Pozza. Gildo, perhaps to please him, was slowing the gondola now. It rocked gently from side to side.

  Urbino angled the shutters so that he could see the upper stories of Possle’s building. The attic frustrated his scrutiny; it displayed a row of darkly curtained squares. The windows of the piano nobile were hardly more cooperative, but at least they were larger, arched, and draped, with one exception, in lighter material. He searched the row of tall doors of the stone loggia above the cana
l. At one of them the figure had appeared the other night, the figure that had seemed to be holding a severed head. It had been a ridiculous notion, he now reassured himself.

  So much of his life was lived in the mind, in his imagination, that it sometimes colored even the barest of realities. He was all too frequently in a state of mild disappointment or fleeting confusion. So far he had always eventually returned to the proper balance, but he feared that someday the necessary efforts on his part would become much more strenuous than they had been so far and less capable of producing the desired results.

  These thoughts, in their way, were not all that different from the Contessa’s fears, unfounded in his opinion, about what the disappearance of her items might mean for her.

  Urbino cast a last glance up at the Ca’ Pozza as the gondola resumed its usual rhythm.

  Suddenly a woman’s cry broke the silence. It was like a howl of pain. A middle-aged woman in a tattered blue housedress stood on the embankment. She shook her fist and shouted in Italian. Only a word here and there could be made out, but no sense came through. She appeared to be venting her fury against the gondola and toward the poop where Gildo was making the required balleticlike movements as he maneuvered the vessel.

  Or perhaps Urbino was deceived by his less than clear view of the woman, for the next moment it seemed indisputable that the Ca’ Pozza was the object of her rage. She glowered up at the silent building. Curses faded in and out of coherence on the morning air, succeeded by deep sobs. This was surely the same voice that had broken out the other night into shrill laughter and sobs.

  Who was the woman? What was her relationship to the Ca’ Pozza? And why was she filled with such anger and sorrow?

  These were the questions Urbino posed to himself as the gondola quit the area of the Ca’ Pozza, moving more quickly, it seemed, than usual.

  14

  “I’m sure of one thing,” Urbino told the Contessa the next afternoon in the salotto blu, “Silvia and Vitale don’t hold a candle to their predecessors.”

  The Contessa stared back.

  “Did I need you to put on your stalker’s hat and polish your magnifying glass to find that out? I’m well aware that most things are in decline here.”

  “Your body, mind, and spirit, you mean. I don’t believe it for a minute and neither do you. Vitale, however, is insufferably smug, and your Silvia is flighty and evasive.”

  “Now you’re telling me that my staff are like characters from a Goldoni play! Before we know it, you’ll be referring to them as servants.”

  “If they are like Goldoni characters, Barbara dear, don’t forget that Goldoni shocked most people by showing that the serving class could have story lines and intrigues of their own.”

  “So now the fruit of all your investigation is to tell me that Vitale and Silvia have a life away from the house and from me? What a shock!”

  She was aiming for levity, but the faint smile on her face soon faded. “But we’ve had our experience with the secret lives of my staff, haven’t we?” she asked, alluding to the tragedy last year surrounding her previous boatman.

  “We can’t count it out,” Urbino said. “It’s not that I mistrust any of your staff, but we need to keep all possibilities open.”

  “You haven’t mentioned Pasquale.”

  “The best of the lot, perhaps. I’ll get to him. As for Vitale, he said that you didn’t ask him to repair the door knocker, as far as he can remember,” he added, although the majordomo had expressed no apparent doubt. “He doesn’t seem the type to admit to a mistake easily. And he’s adamant that no one got into the house. Not on his watch. And I advise you again, Barbara, you should install some kind of security system. As a first step why not at least have Demetrio Emo—”

  A quiet knock on the door interrupted him. Silvia, with a nervous smile on her pretty face, entered with the steaming kettle.

  Breaking into Italian, the Contessa said, “I’ve noticed, Urbino, that your sweet Gildo has been looking sad these days. Is he cross with you for some reason?”

  She threw a glance at Silvia as the young woman placed the kettle above the silver lamp on the table. The maid lingered, making unnecessary adjustments to the kettle and the teacups.

  “He’s been abstracted,” Urbino responded in Italian, wondering what little game the Contessa might be playing. “But he’s as competent as ever. A friend of his died recently; someone in apprenticeship to be a remero.”

  “Poor boy. Yet it’s given him a melancholy air that suits his profession, considering how handsome he is.”

  Silvia closed the door behind her.

  “What was that all about?” Urbino asked.

  “Silvia has the biggest crush on Gildo. An example of the private lives of my staff.”

  “And so you want to torture the poor girl?”

  “You know I like playing Cupid, although I may have a difficult job of it with Gildo. And besides, caro, since we were discussing my staff, Silvia included, we didn’t need to have her blabbing it all over the house.” She sliced into a trim loaf of cake on the table. “If you haven’t noticed, I’ve made some Madeira cake.”

  They were the only cakes Urbino had ever known her to make, and she did them to perfection. But she never turned them out unless she was in an agitated state, and then she was likely to bake enough to furnish a small pasticceria.

  “In that case,” Urbino said, getting up, “I’ll have some of your Madeira instead of tea.”

  He poured himself some of the wine, a dry variety, and reseated himself. The Contessa handed him a generous slice of cake.

  “There’s no need for Demetrio Emo or anyone from that security company you use,” she said, deftly picking up where they had left off before Silvia had come in. “There are locks on all the doors. Stout ones. The camera at the land entrance is enough. Do I want electronic beams in every corner setting off lights and alarms? Men rushing to my rescue when all I’m trying to do is get a glass of milk in the middle of the night?”

  “It works well at my place, and I don’t have a tenth of what you have to worry about. Just look at what you have in this room alone.”

  He made a wide gesture. Almost every painting, print, bibelot, and piece of furniture crowded into the room came with a story—and, in most cases, a high price tag. He took a bite of the cake.

  “But you have yourself to worry about,” the Contessa countered. “Your sleuthing has made you unpopular with quite a few people.”

  It was true enough, and it was one of the main reasons he had installed his security system. But the Contessa, as his closest friend and confidant, was herself vulnerable from that direction.

  “Is this a version of the lady or the tiger, caro? Do I have to choose between losing my mind or having had someone break into the house?”

  “Or considering that someone in the house might be mischievous,” he said, before taking a sip of Madeira.

  “I like your choice of words. Anyone in particular?”

  “The likely suspect would be your infatuated Silvia. She has immediate access to your personal objects. If only we could figure out if your things all went missing at the same time.”

  “Why is that important?”

  “Someone in the house would be inclined to take them one at a time. A person who broke in would probably take everything at once.”

  “Yet a clever person attached to the house,” she responded, “might take everything at once, wouldn’t he—or she? It would appear to be a robbery. But I have no idea if they disappeared all at once or one at a time. As I’ve told you, once I noticed that the silver cascade was missing, I got anxious about what else might be gone. That’s when I discovered the other things—or didn’t discover them. The middle of January.”

  Urbino sketched out the time frame he had been considering the other night in the library.

  “So let’s go through this together,” he said. “No one could have taken the tea dress and the hat before the beginning of September. Do y
ou remember seeing them anytime between then and the middle of January?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think they were in the closet in the middle of November before the Feast of the Salute.”

  “And the Regency scarf? You wore it at the regatta. Did you wear it after that?”

  “In October when I went to Florence,” she said after thinking for a few moments. “A German woman on the Ponte Vecchio commented on it. And it was in my armoire right before the Feast of the Salute, too! I remember!”

  She smiled as if she had pulled off a great feat.

  “That means that your things went missing sometime after the middle of November to the middle of January. It narrows the picture quite a bit. And there’s something else that might help us. Are you aware that you wore the dress, the hat, the scarf, and the necklace in photographs? They were in II Gazzettino, La Nuova Venezia, and Marco Polo from early September to the end of November.” He paused. “All local.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “Maybe nothing, maybe everything. We may be on the trail of something. It’s just that I don’t know what.”

  He waited for her to take a sip of tea before he went on. He described how Pasquale had found the rowboat between its mooring and the water entrance of the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini.

  “I didn’t notice it,” she said. “And he never mentioned it to me.”

  “No reason why he should have, really. Not at the time. Anyway, someone could have taken the boat to your landing, and from there got into the house. The door from the water entrance opens into that seldom-used area with the large armoire. The person could have slipped inside and stayed until it was safe to come out.”

  “And then have roamed through the house and taken my things.”

  “All at the same time or at different times, as we’ve said, but my guess is that it would have been at the same time. It’s unlikely anyone treated your house as his or her own personal orchard.”

  “Him or her, you say, but it must be a woman. Remember what I’m missing.”