The Last Gondola

by Edward Sklepowich

  Armando stood between Possle and his sister. He threw back his head. An animal-like howl rose above the noise of the crackling flames and Possle’s screams. Only Adriana, now a torch, was silent.

  The gondola room became a crackling inferno.

  Smoke and the odor of burning flesh filled Urbino’s nostrils. His throat closed. His eyes watered. The heat was intense.

  Urbino and Gildo, carrying their precious burden, made their way down the staircase and out into the blessedly cool, fresh air.

  EPILOGUE

  The Spoils of Florian’s

  “All those years,” the Contessa said to Urbino as the two friends gazed out into the Piazza San Marco from their seats in the Chinese salon.

  On this April afternoon the large space was more theatrical than sociable. Almost everyone seemed to have come either to be the center of someone else’s attention or to indulge in calculated displays of enjoyment as they thronged beneath the arcades and milled around on the stones beneath a bright blue sky. Even the orchestra made its contribution in the form of a relentless stream of tunes and classics that were the popular fare of movie theaters and concert halls in almost every capital and province.

  The scene was a far cry from its more serene state in February when the two friends had been troubled by the problems that had so strangely resolved themselves within the fiery walls of the Ca’ Pozza.

  The Contessa turned her eyes to Urbino, who was still staring into the Piazza. He had been abstracted ever since they had kept their rendezvous at their favorite perch.

  “Did you hear me, caro?” the Contessa asked. “I was saying that it was such a long time for Adriana to be living up in the attic.”

  After taking a sip of sherry, he said, “My guess is that he committed her to a much less expensive rest home after the Villa Serena. For her to have lived for seven years in the attic without having been detected would have been quite a feat.”

  “Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester managed to get away with it for longer than that, I think.”

  Urbino smiled. “I suppose he did. But I don’t see that as having happened at the Ca’ Pozza. Armando must have taken her somewhere else. Probably she wasn’t there for very long.”

  “But how long is not very long? Something for you to find out?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But what about filling in all the gaps and answering all the questions?”

  Urbino looked around the crowded, cozy room before responding with a shrug of his shoulders. “That’s never been possible, not completely. And this time we’re going to be left with more unanswered questions than usual. But I don’t want to mislead you,” he went on. “I’ve been trying to sort out a lot of things. Some of them might seem of little importance, but not to me.”

  The Contessa’s silence was an encouragement for him to continue.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’ve got some black-and-white answers in one particular area. You know how much of what Possle said sounded suspiciously familiar. I made a list of all the suspects. I’ve found the source of most of them. He was a thief, but not all that more devious than the rest of us when it comes to originality.” He paused. “But his thefts were original in a way. He made them his own.” Urbino smiled ruefully. “That’s what you said we did with Venice.”

  The Contessa, who had been trying unsuccessfully to pinpoint his mood this afternoon, asked with an air of concern, “How does it make you feel, though, not being able to fill in all the gaps?”

  “Not as bad as I once thought it might. It’s only a comfortable illusion anyway.”

  “What is?”

  “That things can be tied up in a neat package with a pretty bow on it. Life’s not that way.”

  “More the pity.”

  “Yes, well, it isn’t, and I’m not sure we’d want it to be.”

  The Contessa considered for a moment. “Maybe you’re thinking of what I said about the veiled lady,” she came out with. “Having the cake of the mystery but eating the—the”—she struggled to complete the metaphor—“the solution, too, I suppose it would be,” she finished.

  The power of association, perhaps, rather than hunger, drew the Contessa to the plate of petits fours on the table. She selected a delicate oblong. Its mauve icing matched one of the colors in her multicolored Fortuny dress that had provided Urbino with one of his essential clues.

  “But how do you feel about losing the poems?” she continued. “Not getting all the answers is one thing. Not getting the poems is another—if they existed.”

  “They existed. I have no doubts about that. Possle had them, and now they’re gone, along with Possle, Armando, Adriana, and almost everything else in the Ca’ Pozza.”

  The conflagration had spread rapidly and consumed most of the old building. It was the worst fire the city had seen since the one that had destroyed La Fenice. Nothing could be done to save Possle, Armando, or his sister after the fireboats had arrived. Urbino and the Contessa had been lucky to escape with Gildo’s help.

  “If only things had worked out differently,” the Contessa said.

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  “I see Habib’s influence on you more and more. Fate! There’s a great deal to be said about accepting the inevitable instead of fighting against it.” After a few moments she added, “Sickness, age, death.”

  She gave a soft pat to her hair. It had become a habitual gesture during the past week. After the singeing her hair had received in the fire, it had been cut and restyled into something shorter and sleeker than she usually wore. It became her.

  “One minute Possle is scheming over how he’s going to get enough money from the poems to keep him and Armando going for a while longer,” Urbino said, extending the implications of the Contessa’s comment, “and the next minute they have no more worries in this world.”

  “Nor in the one after, let’s hope. Possle and Armando didn’t murder anyone, did they?”

  “No. The reports make it clear beyond any doubt that Mechitar and Zakariya drowned accidentally. Armando saved Possle, and Adriana saved herself. She was a good swimmer, according to what Demetrio Emo told me, much better than Armando. But it must have been a horror for him until he found out that she hadn’t drowned. He seems to have made a choice between saving her and Possle.”

  He was spared the same decision at the Ca’ Pozza last week. There was never any chance that he could have saved either of them, but only himself. Urbino would never forget the frantic look on the man’s face and his guttural cry as he took in the situation and remained in the gondola room to share the doom of the others.

  “But why didn’t he tell Possle about Adriana?” the Contessa asked. “Not only that she hadn’t drowned, but that she had gone back to the Villa Serena?”

  “Yet another one of the questions,” Urbino replied. “I’d say that it was something he wanted to do for his sister all by himself—look after her. Remember that Possle seems to have rejected Adriana’s overtures before his marriage to Hilda and after their divorce. Armando must have assumed that Possle wouldn’t have been inclined to help. As it was, he was probably siphoning off money from the house for Adriana’s expenses. Possle said that the money had been disappearing quickly. If he had only known why.”

  Urbino took a sip of his sherry before adding, “And then there’s jealousy.”

  “Jealousy?”

  “Possle’s bond with Armando was very close. Cipri implied that Hilda had a story to tell there. I wish I had got it, but now…” He trailed off and gave a little shrug. “Possle would have resented the attention Armando was giving to Adriana. He needed almost all of it himself when his own world was becoming diminished. Yes, there were many reasons why Armando decided it might be best to keep it all a secret.”

  “But what was he thinking? Keep it a secret forever?”

  “He did a pretty good job of it, didn’t he?”

  “Until you came along. Until we came along.”

  “Right. If ne
ither of us had gone anywhere near the Ca’ Pozza, she’d still be Armando’s precious—and dangerous—secret. And still be alive.”

  “We can’t think of that. And Possle set it in motion himself by asking you to come to see him,” the Contessa pointed out. “Now you know why Armando felt animosity toward you from the beginning. You were endangering everything. Snooping around after Marco’s death. He must have thought that was your main motivation. Thank God he didn’t try to prevent you from coming, by doing something violent, I mean.”

  “He probably saw the good sense of not trying. If I had thought that anyone was trying to scare me or put me out of commission, it would have made me even more suspicious. And it would only have drawn attention to the house, given my reputation as a sleuth. He was relieved that Marco’s death hadn’t revealed his secret, but he was nervous about Elvira. I once thought that with her lovely voice she reminded him of his sister, but actually she was a danger and a constant reminder of what his sister had done to Marco. And if he had known that I had seen the belt and had discovered the clipping of you in his room—an illustrated item in Adriana’s shopping list of your clothes, let’s call it—he might have realized he had little to lose by going after me.

  “We can be more clear about Adriana’s responsibility for Marco’s death, though,” he continued. “With a madwoman’s strength, she pushed him when he was trying to get in or out of the Ca’ Pozza. Elvira might even have seen her do it. Everyone else but Armando thought Marco had fallen from Razzi’s building. All of Elvira’s hatred of the Ca’ Pozza was because of Adriana, although she didn’t know who she was.”

  “She thought Adriana was me,” the Contessa said. “I’ll never forget the look in her eye when she saw me in the cemetery.”

  “You understand now why she reacted the way she did. There you were, standing right over her son’s grave. Up until then she had only caught glimpses of Adriana in the windows. Armando must have had some arrangement, some provision, to try to keep Adriana from drawing attention to herself in that way. She may have been showing herself more boldly than usual during the past few months. Possle said that he was seeing the faces of the dead, but faces looking very old. She could have been wandering around the house at will at times.”

  “And when Elvira saw her during the past few months, she was wearing my clothes. Such a brother, such a sister,” the Contessa observed. “And twins, no less. Don’t they say there’s always a good and an evil twin?”

  “I give no credence to that. And you know how I feel about categorizing people as good or evil.”

  “Despite the Jesuits who taught you so well?”

  “Despite them, yes. Armando and Adriana were both emotionally disturbed, she more so than he, obviously.”

  “But it does seem as if the women are the ones to go mad, or more mad, not just Adriana but poor Elvira.”

  “She’s been torn apart by grief. Once she fully grasps that you weren’t responsible for Marco’s death, but that it was Adriana, who’s had a grisly form of justice, she should start to heal with the proper care. We have to do what we can to help her. And speaking of the fate of women, remember that there’s a woman who’s a survivor in all this—Hilda.”

  “The survivor of her beauty,” the Contessa replied.

  “But a woman who still creates,” he pointed out. “That counts for a great deal.”

  “Of course it does,” the Contessa agreed. “And she was wise to divorce Possle for whatever reason.”

  “Most likely all the frenetic activity and intrigues at the Ca’ Pozza in those days took their toll on their intimacy and her need for quiet. And then there was Armando and his devotion to Possle. As I said, Cipri seemed to be insinuating a great deal when he observed that marriage doesn’t suit all men. Hilda must have decided that it was better to cut herself loose from Possle and the Ca’ Pozza. Eventually she retreated into her work and her life with Cipri on the Lido. She probably knew about the boating accident, of course, but not that Adriana had survived it.”

  “As for Adriana, evil or not,” the Contessa said after a few moments of reflection, “she was the only one who brought blood to this case. She must have set the fire that killed their parents. Armando knew that she had done it, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, and their aunt’s death seems suspicious as well.”

  Urbino looked at his wristwatch and then out into the square beyond the tables set up under the arcades.

  “I still don’t understand why she wanted my clothes,” the Contessa said. “Why she wore them.”

  “You’re wearing your Fortuny dress today, aren’t you, the dress that seems to have been next on Adriana’s list?”

  “Yes, but…”

  She looked down at the dress that had once belonged to the actress Eleonora Duse.

  “Haven’t you always said that there’s something talismanic in it?” he went on. “That it can lift your spirits? Chase away clouds? And I think it’s always ended up doing that in one way or another, hasn’t it?”

  The Contessa nodded in agreement.

  “It’s a form of superstition,” he went on. “Adriana seems to have had it, too. The director of the Villa Serena mentioned how Armando brought Adriana a dress to wear when she left the clinic, a replica of one the director favored. Having your clothes could have made Adriana feel as if she had some power or victory over you, or maybe some of the power and influence you had. She wore your clothes, and she absorbed your energy.”

  “So now we’re talking about vampires?”

  “Remember, Barbara, that she must have resented that you studied at the conservatory when she couldn’t. And you were on the scene when she first was hoping to marry Possle. Years pass and she sees you come up to the Ca’ Pozza and ring the bell. And then you turn up inside the house in the gondola room with Possle. Within her madness, it was all logical.”

  “But why did she suddenly decide that she wanted my clothes?”

  “There had been all those photographs of you in the local papers. We know Armando bought magazines and newspapers for the Ca’ Pozza, obviously for her as much as for himself and Possle. Adriana saw the photographs and resented your visibility. She cut them out and told Armando to get the different pieces of clothing and jewelry.”

  Since the fire at the Ca’ Pozza, the Contessa had discovered that she was missing a coral necklace, a blouse, and a pair of shoes that she had worn at a garden party late last summer. A group photograph of the occasion had appeared in the local Sunday supplement. The Contessa had also worn a snakeskin belt in the photograph. It wasn’t, however, the one that she had discovered was missing. It would appear that Armando had become confused by the other belts and taken the wrong one.

  “But why did she cut you out of the Palazzo Labia photograph?” the Contessa asked.

  “There’s no way of knowing if she did it or Armando. It could have been just a way of emphasizing what he had to steal or—who knows?—his way of taking out his resentment against me, if he was the one to scissor me out.”

  “Well, if he was, thank God that’s as far as he went.”

  “And one more thing about all the publicity you’ve been getting. The photographs caught even Elvira’s attention, and she recognized your tea dress. Adriana was wearing it when Elvira saw her in the attic window.”

  “To think that I was upset with you for neglecting my problem when all the while you were taking care of it behind the walls of the Ca’ Pozza. Your obsession—well, that’s what it was!—turns out to have been my own. What did we say when we were here in February? All for one and one for all? And being so inseparable?”

  “Not just you and me, but Possle and Armando, and Armando and Adriana, up until the very end.”

  “And don’t forget yourself and Possle! You can’t fool me, caro. Part of your fascination was because he was similar to you. Or should I say it was part of, not only your fascination, but your fear as well?”

  Urbino looked away. The Contessa didn’t press
the point. Instead she told him that she had decided to put in a full security system at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini.

  “Long overdue, I’m aware, and like locking the barn after the horses have got out. I can’t shake the thought that Armando got in somehow, maybe more than once, and went creeping around my rooms and taking things for his sister! I should have faced it all before, but it didn’t seem real, not the way it has since last week.” She sighed.

  “Ca’ Pozza, Ca’ Pazza,” she recited. “It was the house of the madwoman all along.”

  Urbino consulted his watch again.

  “Are you expecting someone?” the Contessa asked.

  “Habib might drop by.”

  Habib had returned yesterday. The Contessa hadn’t seen him yet.

  She joined him in looking out into the square in search of the young Moroccan. The orchestra was playing the overture from Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld. Three blonde women, cheered on by friends and onlookers, were dancing the can-can to the familiar strains of the tune. The quiet days in Venice were over until the autumn.

  “I’m starting to think of Asolo already,” the Contessa said, showing how in tune she was with his own thoughts. “Far away from it all up in the hills.”

  “Soon enough,” Urbino said.

  The Contessa indulged in another petit four.

  “So tell me, caro, are you going to write a book about Samuel Possle? You might not have learned much about the good old days of his expatriate life, but think of what you did learn! And you have a great ending. You could put together something different than usual.”

  “I’ll let this one go, Barbara.”

  Yet his sigh betrayed that it wouldn’t be easy.

  “So you’ve come out with hardly any spoils at all. Not the poems and not a full picture of what happened. And now you say you’re throwing away the idea of even writing about it?”

  “But I’ve come away with a lot. Much more than you might think.”

  The Contessa stared. “Like knowing that some things are not worth going after? Like having seen the face in the mirror? Like having confronted the ghost of the person you might have become?” she summed up, drawing together many of the threads of their conversation.