Death in a Serene City (7 page)

As for Cavatorta, he had an irritating snideness. Urbino suspected that his behavior was an understandable, if mean-spirited reaction against the ill will many people had for him since he had left the Church. It must not be easy for him, living in the same quarter in which he had been a priest.

After Stefano had bustled off to rescue his plain-faced wife from what seemed the rather bored attentions of the mask maker, the Contessa put her hand on Urbino's arm.

“So how does our writer feel about his poor dead friend? Is he racked with remorse as you so colorfully expressed it earlier?”

Urbino started to go over his conversation with Voyd and his friend Kobke. He was just wanning to the topic, trying to remember as best he could everything that had been said, when the Contessa interrupted him.

“No more details, Urbino, if you don't mind.”

“But the details are particularly interesting.”

“But they might make me try to find excuses and the man doesn't deserve any. He feels guilty because he is guilty and knows it. It's a simple question of morality and the workings of the conscience. There you have it, my dear.”

Urbino didn't go on but he disagreed with her. For him details were almost everything. Wasn't it one of the main things he loved about the city, its mad jumble of details that somehow all came together so beautifully? And all those lists of flowers, of perfumes, of painters in Huysmans? The Contessa had once accused him of losing a sense of “the one true bright thing,” as she had phrased it, because of this love for details. “But I'd be lost, adrift without them” had been his answer. “
I'd
be lost forever if I indulged in them” had been her own quick response.

The Contessa was smiling at him now, her head tilted slightly to one side.

“I know what you're thinking,
caro
. You're saying to yourself, ‘For a bright old woman Barbara has her peculiarities.' You're saying, ‘Barbara and her blasted morality!'”

“Not quite but you're close. Tell me, though, does all this mean that Clifford Voyd has seen the last of his invitations here?”

She gave him a look from which everything was absent except the reproach.

“My God, Urbino, what's your opinion of me! Of course not. He'll be back, I'm sure, if he cares to come, and his handsome young friend is welcome too. It should be interesting to see what costumes they wear for
carnevale
, don't you think?”

“We'll never find out, I'm afraid. They leave before then. Voyd doesn't care for
carnevale.
”

“Now that's a surprise. I would have thought otherwise. We'll just have to get along without him then. Do you think we can manage?”

“Considering that neither of us is particularly fond of
carnevale
either, don't you think that the question is more one of how we'll be able to survive it under any circumstances? But it's not for a whole month yet. For now all I'm concerned about is managing the walk back home.”

She looked up at him with a playful smile.

“What is it going to be tonight?
Casablanca? Brief Encounter?
”

“
Camille.
”

She gave a self-satisfied nod and patted his hand.

“She got what she deserved, that woman!”

With this she went off to say good night to the curator of the Glass Museum, who was about to leave and was looking for her. Urbino, now ready to leave himself, saw that he would be obliged to stop and say something to the Bellorinis and Cavatorta who were at the other end of the
salone
by the staircase. Voyd and Kobke, a little closer to making their exit, joined them a few moments before Urbino did but Kobke and Stefano gave no indication that they had met earlier at Florian's.

Cavatorta, a thin man in his mid-fifties who somehow always managed to look unkempt no matter how he was dressed, was describing the history and design of Venetian masks. The Bellorinis, who most likely knew a great deal about masks themselves, had bored expressions.

“For example, color,” Cavatorta stressed, looking at Voyd as if he were the only one who could understand or appreciate what he had to say. “Color, now, is of extreme importance. It is essential, in fact.” He took a sip of his whiskey. From his thick, slurred speech it was evident that he had already had too much to drink. He had something of a reputation in the Cannaregio, if not for outright drunkenness, then for a chronic state of mild intoxication that often led him to say or do something that gave offense. “The
moretta
is always black, always, and should be made of velvet although these days I usually use plain cloth. Now the
domini
should be made of silk but they can come in many different colors, red and gold and purple and yellow and green.” As he said this he took in Angela's bright green dress and added, “Yes, color is of the essence. Color gives personality, it reflects it. For example, brown suits you, Signor—Signor—”

“Kobke,” the Dane said less than enthusiastically.

“It complements you. And look at our famous author—austere and priestly in his black, but our friend Signor Macintyre here knows that black doesn't quite suit his coloring so he wears midnight blue.” Briefly, his eyes flicked in Angela's direction again. “And as we say, ‘He—or she, as the case might be—who wears green must be very sure of himself.'”

It seemed an invitation to look at Angela that none of them was able to resist. The bright green of her dress made her complexion even more sallow and emphasized the dark circles beneath her eyes. A woman of a certain age who was not attractive to begin with, she obviously had gone to a great deal of trouble with her hair and her dress for the party. Stefano glowered at Cavatorta and seemed on the point of saying something, but to say anything would have drawn more attention to his wife. Beneath his evident anger there seemed to be something else—uneasiness, almost a touch of fear, perhaps for how his wife was taking the comment. His concern for her was, the Contessa often said, what she admired even more than his talent. He gave his wife a strained smile. Then, taking her arm and saying an abrupt good evening, he brought her over to join Rebecca Mondador, a young architect talking with a reporter from
Il Gazzettino
.

“That Cavatorta,” the Contessa said a few minutes later when Urbino had described the incident to her, “he manages to rub everyone the wrong way. I don't know why I invite him here.”

But Urbino knew why. Although she readily admitted being prejudiced against the mask maker because of his abandonment of the priesthood, his father had been one of her husband's most faithful friends. If the sins of the father were often visited upon the sons, perhaps the virtues of the father could in some way make up for the wrongs of the son—at least up to a certain point.

Perhaps she was thinking of the same thing for she said, “Now his father was a good man, the best. He sold a building over on Murano just to start Luigi up in business after he left the priesthood. Sold it at a loss, too, to one of the glassmakers who needed space for a showroom. If he had held on to it, it would be worth a fortune today. All that old Cavatorta got out of it was the satisfaction of pleasing his son and the dubious comfort of a discount on whatever he wanted to buy at the glassmaker's. I wish I could remember his name—what was it now? Oh, there's Sister Veronica. I didn't think she would be able to come. She might know.”

Sister Veronica, dressed in a simple dark gray suit and black shoes instead of the modified habit she wore when she was about her official duties at the Convent of the Charity of Santa Crispina, came up to them. Urbino knew he was old-fashioned to think so, but although he liked and admired her, he couldn't get used to the considerable freedom she enjoyed, a freedom that had her going to parties like these and often joining the Contessa or Angela or some other woman from the parish on shopping trips or outings as far away as Milan and Florence. And it wasn't as if she were one of the younger sisters who had grown up in a more liberal church. She was only a few years younger than the Contessa.

As it turned out, the Contessa didn't ask Sister Veronica the name of the glassblower. Instead they started to talk about Margaret Quinton. After a few minutes Urbino, feeling that the two women wanted to be alone to discuss the ill-fated writer, said good night. He was amused to see that Voyd was still there, a fresh wine in his hand. Kobke was nowhere to be seen.

11

ALTHOUGH
Camille
was one of his favorite movies, Urbino's attention continued to wander from the divine face of Garbo.

He was thinking about Margaret Quinton. Although he had met her only a few times, she was vivid in his mind. She had been a large woman who wore cumbersome shoes and dresses with little shape. Barbara had assured him, however, that the dresses were custom-made in Milan and Paris. What Voyd had told him tonight about her being slightly deaf helped him understand the intense look she had had whenever she was listening to him. He now wondered, despite all her nods and smiles, how much of what he had said to her she had even heard. He could still see the slightly pained look on her long, thin face when he had gone into considerable detail about his dislike for the
centro tavola
in the form of a garden with fountain on display at the Glass Museum. At the time he had taken it for disagreement but now he realized she had probably been straining to hear.

He wished he had been more attentive to her, had invited her to the Palazzo Uccello, had drawn her out more about the history of glassmaking that Barbara said she knew so much about. It might have helped just a little to dispel her vague, forlorn air.

He promised himself that he would take Voyd up on his invitation. He wouldn't mind learning a few more things about the woman. She was much more interesting to him now in her death than she had been in life.

The realization so startled him that he decided to banish any more thoughts of her for the rest of the night and to start the movie over again. Before he did, however, he went across the hall to the library and took down one of Quinton's books,
A Knot of Clowns
. He would read it as soon as he finished the George Sand novel about Venice that he had just begun.

After making a note to order flowers from Tommaso Soli for the funeral the day after tomorrow, he settled himself in front of
Camille
again with an almost easy conscience.

12

AS Urbino sat next to the Contessa and the Bellorinis in the English Church of St. George, so unlike the nearby Salute and the other baroque, Gothic, and Byzantine churches throughout the city, he was struck with how suited the simple building was to the impression he had of the woman. He wondered, however, if Voyd, dressed in the same impeccable black of the Contessa's party and looking appropriately somber, might not have preferred more grandiose surroundings for his eulogy. His manner seemed to cry out for something more Latinate.

The Contessa was muffled in dark furs and a matching hat that concealed her face except when she lifted it to look up at Voyd. Her expression was almost completely blank, which probably meant there was a great deal of emotion behind it.

Several pews in front of them was Margaret Quintan's niece, Adele Carstairs, her bowed head covered with a black lace shawl. Beside her was the nurse who had come up with Margaret Quinton two months ago from Rome. The American consul and his wife, looking alternately bored and impatient, were across the aisle from the two women. Next to them was Sister Veronica, who kept glancing at her watch. This was the time that she usually began her tours with guests from the Santa Crispina hospice.

The dead woman had kept to herself and had made few close friends despite the entree given her by the Contessa. Other than the chaplain and the organist there was only one other person in the Church of St. George: Maria Galuppi. Whether it was shyness or unease at being in a church not of her own faith for perhaps the first time in her long life, she kept to the shadows to one side of the entrance where she stood in her long woolen coat, her gloved hands clasped loosely in front of her. When Urbino turned around at one point, she was staring at their pew with a grim expression. Perhaps she couldn't bring herself to look up at Voyd in the pulpit as he spoke about mortality.

Voyd's sonorous tones washed over the small group along with the steady sound of the rain outside.

“To die in Venice,” he was saying, “is to be in good company. Wagner, Browning, Diaghilev, Pound, and so many noble others, the unknown as well as the famous, those of modest talents as well as those of great genius. Our Margaret loved this city dearly and she was giving honor and praise to it in the way that meant the most to her and would certainly have meant a great deal to us. With all of her fine discrimination she was making it the setting for one of her incomparable fictions. But that, alas, is among the things that shall never be. There is much sad obscurity surrounding her last moments at the Casa Silviano—of this let us speak freely and openly as she always tried to do in her work—but we must not let their darkness hide for us the light and gentleness and talent that were Margaret Quinton. She was a woman we were all privileged to know but a woman who never once would have considered it such.

“I will leave you not with my own feeble words but with the shining ones of Quinton herself, something I marvelously chanced upon last night as I was glancing through some of her writings which it is now my dolorous duty to oversee. It is written in that fine spidery hand that seems to come from another age and that any of us who has ever seen it will never soon forget.”

He slowly took out his glasses from his vest pocket, unfolded a sheet of paper, and after clearing his throat, read even more sonorously than before:

“‘Venice, like love, is much described and little understood. Venice, like life, is both a reality and a dream passing away. Venice, like the only beauty to be truly valued, was born to die and in that dying and death to become, if possible, even more beautiful. I look from my windows at a romantic little canal, the kind that Sargent loved to paint, and sounding in my ears like some inner echo I hear that lovely aria from
I Due Foscari: “Ecco la mia Venezia, ecco il suo mare.
” Someday may she rest in peace beneath the waves of time and tide like all past dreams and forgotten or abandoned loves. Someday—but let it be a long, long day from this one—let her rest in peace, this serene dream upon the water.'”