Liquid Desires

by Edward Sklepowich

  “You mean the page? No.”

  Madge Lennox was staring down at the Dalf postcard in Urbino’s hand. A strange, nervous unease seemed to possess her. She went to the window, moving aside the curtain and gazing out at the front yard for a few moments. When she turned around, a hand was at her throat and her head was slightly to one side. She looked bewildered and on the point of saying something. She searched Urbino’s face as if for some sign that she should—could—go on. When she did, however, it was to say, with an inappropriateness that at first puzzled Urbino, “‘Carnivorous flower.’” She smiled weakly. “That’s what someone called Dalf. ‘The carnivorous flower of the Surrealist sun.’ I forgot who it was. Carnivorous Flower was the title of an experimental play in New York in the sixties. I played Gala.”

  Madge Lennox began to reminisce about the play, growing more animated as she moved farther and farther from the topic Urbino had come to Villa Pippa to ask her about. He sensed that she was stalling for time, trying to absorb something he had said, just as she had done in the cemetery when he mentioned murder.

  Urbino let her go on with her reminiscence. He was certain that Madge Lennox knew something important about Flavia that she wasn’t telling him. She might be an actress—and might be doing the best she could to conceal her thoughts and feelings—but he felt that she was uncertain, off balance, even afraid—and it had something to do with Dalf’s The Birth of Liquid Desires.

  Urbino waited until Madge Lennox finished.

  “Flavia didn’t commit suicide,” he said. “I have hopes that the police will realize it, too. They’re not quite ready yet.”

  “You know so much more than they do?”

  Madge Lennox seemed to intend the question as a joke, but it came off with an edge of sarcasm. She was smiling but she didn’t seem amused. She seemed a little afraid.

  “The Commissario told me yesterday that no traces of a medication that they believed Flavia was taking were found in her system,” Urbino said. “The drug’s been linked to suicidal tendencies. And there were the wounds on her head which haven’t been conclusively established to have occurred after she fell in the Grand Canal.”

  “But surely poor Flavia didn’t need to be influenced by a drug of some kind to kill herself. Many people do it with quite clear minds.”

  “I don’t think suicide rings true for Flavia.”

  “On the contrary! I’m afraid it rings only too true!”

  Fear, rather than anger, was the unmistakable thread in her voice.

  “If there’s anything that you know—or even vaguely suspect—I need to know it too.”

  “Flavia couldn’t have been murdered.”

  She looked down at the Dalí postcard that Urbino still held in his hand.

  “Flavia seems to have cared for you, Madge.”

  It was the first time Urbino had used the actress’s first name. She smiled at him. There were tears in her eyes.

  “She trusted you,” Urbino added. “And you said she felt safe and secure with you.”

  “Yes,” Madge said quietly. “She did.”

  “If there’s anything that you remember, Madge—anything that you want to tell me—don’t hesitate. It could be very important.”

  “A matter of life and death, you mean?”

  Madge Lennox tried to toss this off lightly, but her voice had a dark thread of fear in it.

  “Yes.”

  Urbino gave her his card and told her she could call him at any time.

  Walking up the hill from Villa Pippa into Asolo itself, Urbino considered what Lennox had told him. Before Flavia’s death the actress had seen clippings of the Conte, the Contessa, and Silvestro Occhipinti in Flavia’s scrapbook, but the clippings weren’t in the scrapbook now. Lennox had told Occhipinti about them—Occhipinti, a man who Urbino believed would want to protect the Contessa and his old friend however he could.

  As Urbino followed the road through the wall of the city, passing Eleonora Duse’s house, he asked himself what it was about the Dalí painting that disturbed Madge Lennox so much. She had appeared to be on the point of saying something after looking at the postcard a second time.

  Did Madge Lennox have something to hide—not for Flavia’s sake, perhaps, but for her own? If she did, then Urbino was afraid that she would remain an actress until the very end, just as the Contessa said she would.

  Urbino had to talk with Occhipinti again. He quickened his stride in the direction of the Via Browning.

  10

  Occhipinti, with Pompilia on a leash, was just coming out of the door of his apartment building under the arcade. The little man, without his jaunty straw hat this afternoon, was blowing his nose vigorously. He still hadn’t shaken his summer cold. Urbino remembered how quick Occhipinti had been to say that he must have caught it from a neighbor, yet he might just as easily have caught it by getting soaked and chilled during the thunderstorm in Venice the night Flavia had died. As the Contessa had mentioned to Urbino, he had been in Venice for some business at the Ca’ Rezzonico.

  “Why not join us on our walk, Signor Macintyre?” Occhipinti said brightly in his high-pitched voice. “So lovely out. Nothing like what it must be back in Venice. I’m happy I’ve been able to stay cool up here in Asolo.”

  Occhipinti had made his point and Urbino let it pass without any comment. The man had already denied being in Venice two days ago. This latest comment made Urbino even more certain that it had been Occhipinti he had seen crossing the bridge in the San Polo quarter.

  Urbino and Occhipinti walked under the arcades toward the main square. Occhipinti’s brisk pace slackened when Urbino mentioned the scrapbook. Urbino was carrying it in a small satchel, but he had no intention of showing it to Occhipinti unless it was absolutely necessary.

  “Yes, Signora Lennox said she saw my picture in that girl’s book. I don’t deny it. ‘Truth ever, truth only the excellent!’ I guess I didn’t think it was important.”

  “Did you see the young woman’s scrapbook yourself?”

  “See it? Of course I didn’t see it! Did you?” the bald-headed man was quick to ask.

  “I saw it yesterday.”

  Once again, without any hesitation, Alvise da Capo-Zendrini’s old friend asked, “Is it true what Signora Lennox said, then? That I haven’t changed since that picture was taken?”

  Occhipinti stared at Urbino with his round, birdlike eyes. Urbino didn’t quite trust this pose of innocence.

  “Neither the picture nor the clipping that went along with it was in the scrapbook,” Urbino said, staring down at Occhipinti.

  “But Signora Lennox said the picture was. She saw it.”

  “She did, but it wasn’t there by the time I looked through the scrapbook.”

  Occhipinti shrugged.

  “Nothing to do with me. ‘Innocent am I, innocent as a babe, as Mary’s own’!”

  The old man’s look, however, didn’t match his words. He looked as guilty as a child with his hand in a cookie jar.

  “Could you describe the photograph, Signor Occhipinti?”

  “It must be the one of me and Alvise at Browning’s Ca’ Rezzonico with some municipal officials and a man from London—a relative of Browning. It was taken about fifteen years ago when I lent the Ca’ Rezzonico some of my things for an exhibit.”

  A young girl on a bicycle came flying down the alleyway next to the Hotel Duse. Pompilia started barking loudly, and Occhipinti pulled back on her leash with more force than was necessary.

  As they approached the real estate office, Urbino decided to risk shaking the man up slightly.

  “Perhaps you’ve forgotten that you have seen Flavia Brollo’s scrapbook, Signor Occhipinti,” he said.

  “Are you trying to upset me? I know you have to ask a lot of questions about this girl, but don’t treat me like Barbara’s enemy.”

  “How does your signature come to be in the scrapbook? I didn’t even know ‘Ugolini’ was one of your names.”

  Occhipinti se
emed genuinely puzzled, and even more so when Urbino added, hoping his memory wasn’t too inaccurate, “‘I have lived, and now, with one more kiss, can die!’”

  “Some of the words are wrong,” Occhipinti said, “but that’s from In a Gondola. I don’t understand.”

  “It’s what you wrote in the scrapbook.”

  The old man seemed to take several moments to think.

  “I remember now,” he said in a barely audible voice. “I did write in her scrapbook, but it was a long time ago.”

  Occhipinti seemed surprised by his own memory.

  “So you did know Flavia Brollo?”

  “Know her? She was just a young girl at the time! I didn’t see her from that time until she turned up in Asolo.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me you knew her?”

  Occhipinti had a defeated look on his little face.

  “Because of Alvise—and because of Barbara! It was at Lago di Garda the summer before Alvise died. He was staying at my villa there. Barbara thought that a change of scene would be good for him, and she had to be in Milan. That’s when I met Flavia Brollo. We both met her, you see—Alvise and I.” Occhipinti looked down at his hands. His chest was heaving quickly like a frightened bird’s. “And we also met her mother.”

  Occhipinti halted next to the Caffè Centrale, where the Contessa had told Urbino about her life with Alvise the day after her garden party. Urbino had come a long way in his understanding of Flavia Brollo since then, but he still had a good distance to go.

  Occhipinti looked at Urbino.

  “Signora Brollo was beautiful,” he said. “She had ‘great eyes, deep with dreams of Paradise’! Even then you could see that her daughter would grow up to look just like her, but beauty like that is a curse. Both mother and daughter, dead in their prime, and the same way!”

  “So you know that Regina Brollo drowned?”

  “Oh, yes, I read about it. My sister and I had sold the villa on Lago di Garda by then or else we might have been there when it happened. I was here at Villa Pippa.” He paused before adding, “And Alvise had died that winter.”

  “You said that Alvise also met Regina Brollo.”

  “Yes, on the garden terrace of the Grand Hotel. I had gone inside to make some telephone calls and when I came out young Flavia was there with Alvise. Alvise introduced us, and Flavia asked me to sign her book. She had just got it for her birthday. I did, and then Alvise did, too. Signora Brollo came out and Flavia introduced her. We chatted about the weather and the Grand Hotel, and that was it. I never saw Signora Brollo again—and as for her daughter, not until she showed up at the Contessa’s party.”

  “But you soon realized who she must be because she looked so much like her mother? And you must have remembered that you and Alvise had met her—as well as her mother?”

  Occhipinti nodded almost reluctantly.

  “But it was the only time we ever saw her!”

  “Violetta Volpi says that you met her sister on several occasions years ago when you were seeing each other. She says that Alvise might even have been with you.”

  Occhipinti let out a long, audible breath.

  “She’s lying,” he said.

  “Signor Occhipinti, you know how much Barbara wants to get to the bottom of this. She wants the truth, no matter what it is.”

  Occhipinti gave a high-pitched laugh.

  “Don’t be so sure of that, my friend! People might say that but they usually don’t mean it. Maybe she thinks she can deal with the truth but it would break her.” He paused. “You wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for that, would you? But what am I saying, Signor Macintyre? ‘How each loved each, he her god, she his idol’! Never doubt it!”

  Occhipinti hurried off in the direction of the civic museum. As he was going past the winged-lion fountain, he started to gesticulate with his free hand, and a few indistinguishable words were carried to Urbino on the gentle breeze.

  11

  An hour later when Urbino went in search of the Contessa along the pebbled path above the maze at La Muta, he was taken aback to find her dressed in a stunning pair of white silk palazzo pants. It was the first time he had seen the Contessa in pants. They became her, giving her less a contemporary look than one reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich and the 1930s.

  “And what are you looking at, may I ask?” the Contessa challenged him, lifting her well-defined little chin. “If a woman can’t wear what she wants in the privacy of her own home, what would you suggest she do? Oh, I know what you’re thinking, but your dear Madge Lennox’s pants are distinctly along the harem line—to go with those turbans she wears, I assume. At any rate, I don’t intend to parade around in these,” she added, looking down at what she considered her own much more suitable version of Madge Lennox’s preferred attire.

  Just how little intention the Contessa had of parading she immediately showed when she took Urbino’s arm and started to stroll with him down the pebbled path.

  “So tell me, caro,” the Contessa said, glancing at his satchel. “Have you run away so abruptly from the heat and crowds of Venice or from your charming ex-brother-in-law? You’ll notice that I’m not vain enough to assume you might quite simply have run to me for no other reason than my company. You—”

  The Contessa stopped suddenly and looked at him. Her gray eyes were touched with fear.

  “You have bad news. You had to tell me in person. Oh, caro, I’ve had a premonition all day.”

  It was true, of course. Urbino did have bad news. The time had come to tell the Contessa everything that he had held back from her so far about Alvise. Earlier, as long as he had had only Mirko’s word to go on, he could justify not saying anything to her, but now he could spare her no longer. She had to know. He couldn’t allow her to keep thinking that Alvise had had nothing at all to do with the Brollos, that Alvise’s entry in Flavia’s scrapbook might have been forged. Although Urbino had brought the scrapbook with him so that she could authenticate Alvise’s signature, it no longer seemed necessary in light of what Occhipinti had just told him.

  The Contessa must have seen the hesitation in his eyes, for she rushed on to say, with a touch of pique, “Do you know what it’s like for me? Do you know what I think about every single minute of every single day and night? I can’t lose Alvise in this way—no, not after he’s already gone. I can’t! I refuse!” she added, as if it were up to her.

  The Contessa put a hand to her face. For one of the few times since he had known her, she was crying. A sob escaped, and her shoulders heaved. Urbino put his arm around her.

  “Is it something else in the scrapbook—some letter, some document? What is it, Urbino? You have to tell me the truth.”

  Still with his arm around her, Urbino first described how Graziella Gnocato had heard Regina Brollo tell Flavia that Alvise was her father. Flavia had confided the same thing in Mirko, Urbino said. Then he recounted the argument that Mirko claimed he and Flavia had overheard at Lago di Garda the summer of Regina Brollo’s suicide.

  “Violetta Volpi shouted to Lorenzo that Flavia wasn’t his daughter and asked him why he didn’t admit it. Mirko and Flavia heard Alvise’s name mentioned and then there was a slap. Violetta started to cry and then so did Regina. Lorenzo warned Violetta to leave Regina and him alone.”

  The Contessa was stunned.

  “Regina Brollo herself? She was the one to tell Flavia?” The Contessa gave a hollow, humorless laugh. “I suppose she would know, wouldn’t she? What did Annabella say? ‘It would be a strange mother who doesn’t know her child’s father’!”

  She eased herself from Urbino’s arm and went over to lean against the trunk of a palmetto, her back to him. She seemed to be taking deep breaths. When she turned around, she said, “Don’t be angry with me, Urbino, but I refuse to believe it. The memory of an old woman? The ramblings of a drug addict? And we only have his word for the argument at Lago di Garda! Remember that we’re dealing with what we think is murder here. No, I’m sorry, Urbino,�
� she repeated. “All this isn’t enough and don’t try to convince me it is.”

  “I understand—and I agree with you.”

  “You do, caro?”

  She came over to him and slipped her arm through his. They continued along the pebbled path toward the maze.

  “Yes. But there’s another thing. It’s Silvestro. He’s hiding something.”

  “Then I’ll see him right away! I’ll tell him he must tell me. I don’t want to be protected by him—or you—or anyone else! He’s in a position to put me out of my misery. I won’t believe a senile old woman or a drug addict, but I’d believe Silvestro.”

  “Please, Barbara. Let’s sit down.” He guided her to the marble bench near the opening of the maze. “I may be wrong. He might be hiding something that has nothing to do with Alvise—or with Alvise and Regina Brollo.”

  “What did he say?” the Contessa asked in a resigned voice.

  Urbino told her about Occhipinti and Alvise’s meeting with Flavia and Regina at Lago di Garda shortly before Alvise had died and about how Occhipinti denied that he and Alvise had ever met Regina before—or after—that day. It was best to get everything out in the open at the same time. The Contessa had a handkerchief pressed to her mouth as Urbino continued.

  “Silvestro is holding something back. He was in Venice at the time Flavia was murdered and I’m sure I saw him on Tuesday evening in the San Polo quarter, but he denies it. He’s hiding something, Barbara, but I don’t know what his reason might be, not yet, anyway.”

  “His reason? To protect me and Alvise! Don’t be a fool!”

  Urbino stared at the Contessa until she turned away and looked at the opening of the maze.

  “I’m sorry, caro. It’s just that everything is turning so ghastly for me. My heart is in a thousand pieces.”

  “If there were any way I could make all this just disappear, I would do it, Barbara.”

  “Oh, I know you would! There’s no reason to feel guilty. Since I have to know the truth, I don’t want to know it from anyone but you. Thank God you’re here for me.”