Liquid Desires

by Edward Sklepowich

  This obviously awakened an unpleasant association and Tina Zuin stopped short.

  “But the Dalí was Flavia’s favorite,” she went on. “We laughed over it even more than we did any of the other paintings. We were just kids. All we saw in the painting was sex! Two naked men, and the older one even had a woman’s breast and a very large—” Tina blushed and didn’t finish the sentence. “I think she eventually outgrew the painting, though. She hardly mentioned it after her mother died. When I brought it up recently to cheer her up and remind her of old times, it seemed to do the opposite, so I let it drop. You see, Signor Macintyre, there’s not that much that I can tell you, but I want you to know that Flavia was a good girl. I never would have done anything to hurt her and neither would Bruno.”

  Urbino asked Tina if Flavia had been taking any medication. To her knowledge she hadn’t. One of the last things Tina said was that Flavia had been very careful about taking even aspirin and that she seldom, if ever, drank.

  After they left, Urbino took out the postcard of Dalí’s The Birth of Liquid Desires. Aside from what the painting might “mean” or what it had “meant” to Dalf, it had obviously fascinated Flavia with its sexuality. This Urbino could understand.

  But was it true that Flavia had “outgrown” it, as Tina Zuin had suggested? If she had, then why did she tear the page with the Dalí color plate out of the catalog? Violetta had given her the catalog only five years ago for her twenty-first birthday. Had she torn out the page to put on her wall or in her scrapbook, or had she done something else with it?

  When Tina had brought up the Dalí painting with Flavia recently, Flavia didn’t seem to find it a pleasant reminder. If Urbino could only find out why Flavia had reacted this way, he might be closer to understanding what had happened to her the night she had been murdered.

  Tina Zuin had ended up telling him much more than she seemed to realize. Arranging it with everything he already knew, Urbino was trying to see a pattern. He believed that he was close to seeing one, but there was still too much getting in the way. He needed more time and more information to clear away the debris.

  3

  At ten the next morning, a Friday, the air was heavy and damp when Urbino left the Palazzo Uccello. He had been kept up almost all night, tormented by his speculations and by a squadron of the laguna morta’s most persistent mosquitoes. Urbino was on his way to the Palazzo Brollo on the other side of the Grand Canal to return Flavia’s scrapbook and to ask Lorenzo Brollo some more questions.

  As Urbino was ferried across the Grand Canal in a gondola that had given its best years to the tourist trade, he was more oppressed than relieved by the fetid breeze that stirred the slightly oily waters of the canal. Even the sea gulls and pigeons seemed to be in a torpor. The thunderstorm on the night Flavia was murdered hadn’t broken the heat wave, but perhaps another one would. Only something violent could make a change. The city might then enjoy a few days of comfort before it once again became trapped under a glass bell of heat and humidity.

  Urbino got off the gondola and walked slowly through San Polo toward the Palazzo Brollo. The canals were low, exposing the understructures of the buildings and giving glimpses of debris embedded in the sludge of the canal beds. Only flat-bottomed boats like gondolas and sandolos could negotiate these canals at low tide.

  Several years ago the canal by the Palazzo Uccello had been drained, revealing all the refuse on the bottom. The odor had been unbearable, and Urbino had stayed at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini until the work was finished. His housekeeper Natalia had covered her nose and mouth almost constantly with a scented handkerchief.

  Annabella Brollo, smelling of stale sweat and anisette and with purple rings of fatigue beneath her eyes, showed Urbino up to the dark sala with its Oriental carpets, portraits in heavy wooden frames, and profusion of plants and flowers. This morning the long, narrow room seemed even more like an aqueous tomb than it had two days ago. The air, heavy with the scent of flowers, was even staler, as if the balcony doors hadn’t been opened since then. Brollo must have finished Little Dorrit, for on the small, round table next to a fresh arrangement of crimson Cattleya orchids and the photograph of Brollo, Regina, and ten-year-old Flavia was The Old Curiosity Shop.

  “I believe you have something that belongs to me, Signor Macintyre,” Brollo said without preliminary. Dressed in his English blazer, cravat, and flannel slacks, he was seated on the Louis Seize banquette near his wife’s portrait. Urbino handed him the scrapbook and sat down in one of the armchairs.

  “More than a little belated,” Brollo said in his precise British English, running a palm over his bald crown. “I wonder what pleasure you get invading my daughter’s privacy like that. Well, you might be relieved to know that I blame mainly Ladislao Mirko for this impropriety. It wasn’t his business to give the scrapbook to you. He hasn’t made a clear-minded decision in decades.” Brollo tossed the scrapbook on the low table in front of the sofa. “I’ve also heard that you’ve been showing around some kind of postcard. Yes, Violetta told me. She might be only a sister-in-law but she has a devotion to the Brollos. And we Brollos still are a family—Annabella and I, sadly reduced though we are.”

  As delicately as possible, Urbino mentioned what Graziella Gnocato had said in reference to Regina Brollo’s confidences to Flavia about Alvise da Capo-Zendrini.

  “Mirko said that Flavia told him the same thing.”

  An effort at control was visible along Brollo’s jawline.

  “So this is what you were getting at the other day! I don’t believe for a second that my wife said such a thing! You shouldn’t trust the memory of an old woman, Signor Macintyre. She should be more careful than to malign a dead woman, a woman who, I might add, was always good to her and even provided for her in her will. As for that poor excuse for a man, Ladislao Mirko, it is beneath me to speculate about the possible motives of someone who is always high on one substance or another! He’s ruined every business he’s turned his hand to! He’ll lose that pensione sooner or later and end up just like his father. As the French say, ‘Tel père, tel—’” Brollo declined to complete the adage, so similar to the one he had used two days ago about Flavia and her mother. He frowned. “Let me assure you of something, Signor Macintyre,” he said, raising his voice slightly. “If you bother me anymore with questions such as these, I will inform the police. This is harassment. You are meddling in affairs that are no concern of yours. This is an affront, an invasion of our privacy!”

  “The Contessa da Capo-Zendrini—”

  “I don’t care a fig for the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini and any crazy notions my poor daughter might have passed on to her or any fantasies either of you have about my daughter having been murdered! Now Violetta tells me that the two of you think that you’ve got proof of some kind just because none of that medication was found in my Flavia’s body! You aren’t seeing things clearly because you don’t want to! Tell your friend that she will be much happier if she just accepts the truth—that my daughter was a disturbed young woman who ended up hurting people who loved her.”

  Brollo shook his head sadly.

  “My daughter said many things that weren’t true. I hesitate to call them lies only out of respect for her now that she’s gone. Children can be very cruel to their parents. You are trying to find some silly intrigue here, Signor Macintyre. I tell you there is none. All this talk about Salvador Dalí and Yves Tanguy and tape recordings and pages ripped out of books! What do they have to do with me? Nothing! I’m not interested in looking for answers to every question that might trouble me in any one day. I’m not a stranger to grief and I know that—at least for me—when someone dies you have to let go of a great deal.” His eyes flicked in the direction of his wife’s portrait. “Guilt, the baggage of the past, suspicions, unanswered questions—they all have to go when you lose someone you love. Best to close the door on everything but the good memories and the things you know for sure. Regina was a good wife to me, the best she could be. If she
ever hurt me, it was because of her illness—but she never hurt me in that way!”

  Brollo sat back. But his eyes were softer now and, with his neat gray fringe of hair, for a moment he struck Urbino as a lapsed monk, as someone who remembered and regretted a better life. Involuntarily, Urbino’s heart went out to this man who had lost his wife and his daughter—if Flavia had been, in fact, any flesh of his.

  Brollo sighed deeply.

  “I’ll satisfy you on one score, Signor Macintyre. I’ll tell you what I think of this Dalí painting. Violetta described it for me in more detail than I cared to hear. I’ve never seen it. My tastes are more traditional,” he said, turning down his mouth in almost a parody of distaste. “My sister-in-law is an intelligent and talented woman, but perhaps she made a mistake in exposing my daughter to that kind of art at a vulnerable age. I would have preferred that Violetta had encouraged her along different lines. The Accademia Gallery is where she should have brought her. Why not give her a catalog of their Tintorettos and Giorgiones and Veroneses! The mind and the soul are inspired by great art!”

  Urbino, who couldn’t have agreed with Brollo more, once again felt a surge of understanding for the man, but it didn’t deter him from posing another question that was bound to disturb him.

  “Did your sister-in-law also tell you that I asked her about Lago di Garda—about an argument Mirko says he heard between you and Violetta in your wife’s bedroom?”

  Urbino asked the question just as Annabella entered the sala without a sound. He was happy to see that her tray didn’t hold coffee and anisette on this sweltering day, but just two spremute di limone.

  Brollo stiffened, but Annabella showed no response. She moved Flavia’s scrapbook aside to make room for the tray and left as soundlessly as she had entered.

  “Yes, Violetta told me, but no such argument ever took place, at Lago di Garda or anywhere else. Ladislao Mirko is always hearing voices, and when he isn’t, he’s spreading lies for his own advantage. Just ask yourself this question, Signor Macintyre: If you had a lovely, intelligent daughter with her life all before her, would you want her hanging around the likes of a Ladislao Mirko, someone just waiting to pull her down to his level, just waiting for his chance to do with her as he wanted? No!”

  Beads of perspiration stood out on Brollo’s slightly quivering upper lip. Urbino had just been given another example of the anger that Brollo was able to keep in check most of the time. Brollo took out a handkerchief and patted his lip.

  “Your inquiries are an insult to me and my wife—and to our daughter,” Brollo said, his voice now back under control.

  Urbino expected to be asked to leave, without even having a chance to touch his lemonade, but Brollo, perhaps wanting him to go away only with the best impression of him, pulled his mouth into a thin-lipped smile.

  “There’s no need for all this quibbling,” Brollo said in his clipped voice, with a transparent effort at downplaying the hostility that he obviously felt for Urbino. “Why don’t we just sit here and drink our lemonades in a civilized manner, Signor Macintyre? Then I’ll play something on the piano for you.”

  Brollo, with no attempt at transition, then began a quietly controlled tirade against the Biennale, making conversation unnecessary. He passed from this year’s Biennale to the one two years ago, reserving most of his scorn for that exhibit’s United States Pavilion.

  “All those lights flashing those absolutely ridiculous statements. So pathetically American, excuse me, Signor Macintyre. I can still remember some of them. ‘Romantic love was invented to manipulate women’ and ‘An elite is inevitable’ and ‘Expiring for love is beautiful but stupid’! I ask you, Signor Macintyre, are such things art?”

  Brollo, pleased when Urbino made no effort to defend the exhibit, went to the piano and started to play a Mozart sonata. Under the spell of the sonata the discomforts of the hot dim room began to recede, and Urbino almost forgot the urgent questions that only Brollo might be able to answer.

  Whatever kind of man Brollo was, he was a masterly pianist. The sala seemed magically transformed by wonderful waves of sound that were also somehow a bath of light flooding the room’s darkest corners. Like some aged dryad charmed from a wood, Annabella emerged from the deeper recesses of the house and stood in the doorway listening, her arms crossed and an expression on her sharp face that was as much a sneer as a smile.

  As Urbino continued to listen, however, something started to intrude on his enjoyment of the sonata. He was carried back to the Ponte degli Alpini in Bassano del Grappa, when the Contessa had pulled Flavia’s scrapbook out of her Bottega Veneta bag like a rabbit out of a hat. Something had tugged at his memory then, and he was close now to knowing what it was. It had to do with Brollo’s tirade against the electronic lines of text at the United States Pavilion at the last Biennale.

  Urbino didn’t trust Brollo. He was convinced that the man was lying about Flavia, but exactly how and why Urbino didn’t know. It had something to do with Flavia’s last meeting with this man who claimed she was his daughter. Once again, Urbino tried to imagine what had taken place that Thursday night between Lorenzo and Flavia and, a little later, between Lorenzo and Violetta—and also what Annabella’s role might be in everything. These three might individually or together or in some combination, one with the other, have spun a web of intrigue that Flavia had become caught up in during her short life.

  It was time for Urbino to leave. Annabella started to walk toward the staircase.

  “Signor Macintyre can find his own way out, Annabella dear. You have to get ready for your doctor’s appointment.”

  “I’ll only be a minute, Lorenzo,” she said quietly.

  The other time Urbino had been at the Palazzo Brollo Lorenzo had urged the reluctant Annabella to accompany him to the door. This morning their roles seemed reversed.

  Annabella didn’t look at her brother as he stood uneasily in front of his wife’s portrait. She went down the stairs silently with Urbino, casting a quick glance over her shoulder back up at the sala. She still said nothing as she opened the door for him.

  When Urbino stepped out into the calle, however, she leaned toward him and whispered in a stifled voice, “He’s lying to you! That’s all he’s ever done, lie! lie! lie!”

  The smell of anisette hung between them in the hot, humid air.

  “What do you mean? Lying about what?” Urbino asked in a low voice, sensing Brollo’s presence at the top of the staircase.

  Annabella stared at him through narrowed eyes. Urbino thought she was about to answer but she just kept on staring. He decided to try a different tack.

  “Did you ever hear an argument at Lago di Garda the summer your sister-in-law died? An argument between Violetta Volpi and your brother?”

  “I’ve heard many arguments in my life, signore,” she said slyly. “Flavia was usually the one who made the most noise.” She found this amusing and started to laugh. “Maybe you should be asking about arguments Flavia herself had not too long before she died.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the one she had with her boyfriend’s art dealer, the same dealer that Violetta has. What’s his name? Massimo Zuin?”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Three weeks ago. I was on my way to see a friend near the Casa Trieste, the pensione of Flavia’s friend. Flavia was standing at the open door with Zuin. She was very upset.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Something like ‘You’ll have to kill me to keep me away from him, but thanks for the money anyway. I’ll put it to good use.’ Massimo Zuin cursed her and stormed past me. Neither of them saw me. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone before, even though I knew it must be important, what with Flavia dead and all.” She smiled mischievously. “I know I should have. I’ve been naughty.”

  “You should have told the police.”

  There was more amusement than fear or guilt in Annabella’s blue, bloodshot eyes.

  “Perhaps,” sh
e answered.

  “Is there anything else you know or might have overheard that could be important? Like an argument at Lago di Garda?”

  Urbino thought he heard the click of the intercom above the bell push. Annabella held up a thin finger against her lips, reminding Urbino of the woman in Odilon Redon’s painting Silence. Then, with a cold smile, Annabella put her thumb and forefinger together and twisted them against her lips. She closed the door quietly and firmly behind her.

  Urbino stood there in the deserted little square for a few minutes, looking up at the wicker basket tied to the balcony and the closed shutters of the Palazzo Brollo. It was difficult to imagine Lorenzo Brollo ever leaving his domain, although surely he must. The Palazzo Brollo was very much a world closed in on itself, now inhabited by only an unmarried sister and her widowed brother who had just lost the young woman who might or might not have been his daughter. Flavia had been determined to escape from her father’s house—from the profusion of plants and flowers tended by her aunt, from the icy control exercised by the man who insisted he was her father. Urbino could understand why Flavia had preferred to live in a room at the Casa Trieste, why she had felt more at home at Villa Pippa with Madge Lennox.

  Something about the Palazzo Brollo reminded Urbino of the Hennepin residence in the Garden District in New Orleans. The Hennepin mansion, despite its high, wide porches and annual coat of fresh white paint, had always seemed turned in on itself, too—a closed, hothouse world. Urbino had been admitted, obligingly if not warmly, but the Hennepins—mainly Evangeline’s father, Emile, the so-called “Sugar Cane King”—had wanted Urbino to close the door behind him and to leave much of his own world on the other side. Evangeline herself, out of weakness, had ultimately wanted him to do the same.

  As Urbino left the little square and walked in the direction of the Casa Trieste, he replayed his visit to Lorenzo Brollo. The pianist had denied any knowledge of the Dalí, his wife Regina’s confidences to Flavia, or the Lago di Garda argument, but had Urbino really expected anything different? Urbino had come to understand that denials and silences and giving answers unrelated to questions asked could often be more revealing than an hour of tearful confession.