Farewell to the Flesh (15 page)

This seemed to awaken an unpleasant train of thoughts. A sad expression crossed her large face.

“A child is always enough for a good mother though,” she said, her voice seeming to come from far away. “More than enough.”

Xenia Campi then said a hurried good-bye and went out into the
campo
with her flyers.

A few minutes later Mother Mariangela discouraged Urbino from speaking with any of the sisters, assuring him that they had been in their rooms since seven on the night of the murder and had heard nothing strange, but she agreed to summon Sister Agata to her study.

With embarrassment the old nun admitted that she had dozed on the evening of Signor Gibbon's murder and hadn't noticed anyone coming and going. All she remembered was that Signora Campi came to the lounge after the guests' dinner. Mother Mariangela said a few soothing words to Sister Agata and dismissed her.

Urbino left the Casa Crispina and walked briskly toward the other side of the Grand Canal to clear his mind.

Other than the sisters, the only ones in the Casa Crispina after nine-fifteen when Gibbon had left were Xenia Campi, Lubonski, Stella Maris Spaak, and her daughter, Dora. But someone might have slipped out during the time Xenia Campi had gone to her room for some anisette, and even though Xenia Campi said that she had gone to bed, she herself could have left the Casa Crispina. Sister Agata wouldn't have noticed a thing.

17

After Urbino left the Casa Crispina, he went on a long, meandering walk that eventually took him to the other side of the Grand Canal to the broad embankment of the Zattere. He watched the busy water traffic in the Giudecca Canal, dominated by a sleek French liner and a Yugoslavian tanker, as he had some
tramezzini
and wine in a café and went over what Xenia Campi had just told him. The times she gave for Nicholas Spaak's and Gibbon's departures from the Casa Crispina the evening of the murder coincided with what Spaak and his sister had told him. Spaak hadn't returned, he said, until midnight, and Gibbon, of course, had never returned. As for Josef, he had been away for an hour from eight-thirty to nine-thirty. Where had he gone? Could it possibly have had anything to do with Gibbon's death later in the Calle Santa Scolastica? And could Josef have left the Casa Crispina for a second time that night? Urbino had assumed, perhaps wrongly, that Josef had phoned him from the pensione.

After leaving the Zattere, Urbino walked for a while longer but could formulate nothing but more questions, many of which were in direct conflict with each other.

More confused than anything else, he approached the
traghetto
stop at the end of the Calle Corner. Because only three bridges crossed the Grand Canal,
traghetti
, or ferries, had been established at various strategic points. They provided not only a convenient way to make the crossing but a cheap, if short, gondola ride, although it was mainly Venetians who used them, almost always standing up in no-nonsense fashion for the trip.

The gondola would take him from the San Polo quarter across to the Cannaregio. From there it would be a quick walk to Porfirio's. He wanted to see Hazel. Perhaps they could have a drink at a bar somewhere.

Three women were waiting. One of them was Berenice Pillow, burdened, as the Contessa had said she had been at Florian's a few days ago, with her purse, a shopping bag, and a delicate wooden lap desk in an Oriental design. She was looking more rested this morning than she had last night.

“Mr. Macintyre, what a pleasant surprise. You've come at exactly the right time, as Barbara says you do! I was just at the Ca' Pesaro and want to get to the other side. The young woman selling postcards said this would be the quickest way but now I'm not so sure. I was just thinking I should take the vaporetto instead.”

“Not at all, Mrs. Pillow. This is the way the
veneziani
do it.”

He indicated the two women with their mesh shopping bags waiting along with them.

“I was just wishing that Tony was with me but he went to Vicenza for the Palladian architecture.”

She became distracted as the gondola came up to the landing and the four passengers got off. She seemed nervous and held her objects close to her. Urbino offered to take something but she shook her head. He stepped into the gondola and helped her after him, paying both their fares.

“Don't worry, Mrs. Pillow. Just stand as still as possible. Maybe it would be better to look straight ahead.”

As the gondola moved into the Grand Canal, allowing a vaporetto to pass on its way to the San Stae landing, Berenice Pillow gave him a nervous smile. The two other women were busy chatting about food prices. Suddenly the gondolier burst into “La biondina in gondoleta,” a favorite song among the men of his profession.

“I thought all they sang was ‘Santa Lucia' and ‘O Sole Mio,'” Mrs. Pillow said with a little laugh. She looked up at Urbino for his reaction, and this proved her undoing. A startled look came into her eyes as she started to move, then flail her arms. Urbino reached out to grab her arm. The two women stopped their conversation and looked with a measure of scorn at the
forestiera
who was threatening to capsize them all. The gondolier compensated with his oar for the unexpected movements but this didn't help Berenice Pillow. Her purse and lap desk fell into the water. The shopping bag landed at her feet.

“Sit down,” Urbino told her as he took her elbow and helped her onto one of the flat wooden seats.

“My purse!” Mrs. Pillow shouted. “It has everything.”

The gondolier stopped the movement of the boat. The purse and the lap desk were floating about five feet away, but they wouldn't be for long. Urbino asked the gondolier to try to move closer to them. The two Venetian women were clicking their tongues and shaking their heads. With the gondolier's skillful maneuvering, Urbino was able to reach the strap of the purse but at first it slipped through his fingers. He could finally grab it and pull it back into the gondola. The gondolier used his oar to bring the lap desk closer. Urbino tried the best he could to reach it but it was moving beyond rescue, pushed farther by the wake of a motorboat.

A vaporetto was coming down the Grand Canal and approaching the Ca' d'Oro landing. The little lap desk disappeared in the froth of its prow.

Mrs. Pillow hugged the purse against her.

“Don't worry about it, Mr. Macintyre. Thank God you got the purse. I don't want you falling in yourself. Everything must be ruined anyway,” she said philosophically. “I've got what I want. Thank you.”

She looked pale. When they were approaching the landing, she had recovered somewhat and was talking with the two women in perfect Italian, telling them that she was an American but had been married to an Italian, a Neapolitan.

“Un napolitano,”
one of the women said, rolling her eyes.

Hearing this, the gondolier started in with “Santa Lucia.” They arrived at the landing without further incident. Urbino walked with Berenice Pillow as far as the Strada Nova where she turned toward the Ca' d'Oro. She thanked him again. He told her he would be joining her later at Florian's.

18

“I must admit I feel in a peculiar position,” Porfirio said half an hour later in his clipped British English. He was wearing a Missoni cardigan in beige, rust, and silver. “You come to my house calling for a young lady. Yes, a most peculiar position. I don't think I have the temperament for either a benign father figure handing over his fresh young daughter to an importunate suitor or—God forbid!—a Pandarus. Unfortunately, the charming Miss Reeve is not in. She's been out since early morning, it seems. Why don't you join me for a drink. She might come in at any minute. I'm sure she would be distressed if she just missed seeing you.”

As Urbino followed the photographer from the foyer into the living room, he was assaulted by all the chrome and glass and tubing. The effect was much sharper and stronger this early afternoon with the bright Venetian light pouring in than it had been three nights ago.

Urbino couldn't help feeling that someone who lived with so much brightness and open space and lines was trying to give the impression he had nothing to hide.

As if to show how little he did have to hide, the photographer said, “I hear that you're trying to get to the bottom of this murder.”

He poured Urbino a glass of red wine. On the long shining coffee table was a folio-sized volume with a photograph of the throne in San Pietro di Castello, said to have been used by Saint Peter at Antioch. In tasteful letters was spelled out
LE RELIQUIE DI VENEZIA DI PORFIRIO
.

“Mother Mariangela asked if I might try to smooth things over at the convent.”

“It certainly provides you with a convenient excuse, this request of Mother Mariangela. Oh, don't be offended. I only meant that a man in your profession—that of a biographer, I mean—doesn't need too much encouragement to satisfy his curiosity about people. Violent death certainly gives an extra interest.”

“Couldn't the same be said of people in your own profession?”

“You forget I'm not a photojournalist, or even a portrait photographer. As you know, I try to have as few people in my photographs as possible.”

“What kind of photographer was Val Gibbon?”

Porfirio stirred uneasily in his tubular chair.

“I haven't seen that much of his work, but what I have seen confirms my feeling about most photographers, especially the ones who swarm over Venice at this time of the year—or at any time, for that matter. They have no real love for anything. They're exploiters.”

Urbino involuntarily looked down at the book on the relics of Venice. Porfirio caught his glance.

“And what they also lack is concentration. You can't be anything but a passable photographer without it. Choose one subject and stay with it. That's what most of the great photographers have done.”

“Did you have a personal opinion of him?”

“I barely knew the man, although what I knew of his work told me as much about him as a day of intense conversation. There's something to be said for types, and maybe even the Renaissance humors. I would say that Gibbon was of the sanguine temperament, ever hopeful, ever optimistic about a relatively small talent.”

Had he explained it in this way to Hazel? Was this what she had meant when she had told Urbino that Porfirio hadn't liked Gibbon professionally or personally?

“It's a bit ironic that Hazel Reeve is a link between the two of you,” said Urbino.

“To be honest with you, I didn't have the slightest idea that she knew Gibbon any better than I did. I'm not upset, but it does seem as if it might have come up at some point.”

“Maybe she assumed you knew.”

“In that case she assumed wrong. No, I don't think that's it at all. She told me about him only after he was murdered. How could she keep it a secret after that?”

Urbino didn't know how much Hazel had told Porfirio or how much she wanted him to know about her relationship with Gibbon. Hadn't she said Porfirio would be the last person she would confide in about him?

Porfirio had an insinuating smile on his face. He seemed happy to be putting his houseguest in a somewhat bad light. It might be simply jealousy—but jealousy about what? About Hazel's interest in someone he considered artistically inferior to himself? About Gibbon's work itself? Urbino suspected that Porfirio didn't have quite as low an opinion of the English photographer's work as he said he did.

Urbino stayed only a few minutes longer. Porfirio said that he would tell Hazel he had stopped by to see her. He was sure she would be disappointed to have missed him.

19

The Piazza had a fey, elfin spirit this afternoon, the kind that came in fairy tales from the passing of a wand.

Revelers walked under the arcades, sat on the steps, leaned against the pillars, and thronged the square. Laughter and shouts were a counterpoint to the Vivaldi playing over the speakers. Brightly costumed men and women danced the
moresca
on the large stage while on a miniature one a Punch and Judy show was entertaining a group of children. A Queen of Hearts and an Ace of Spades were doing a
pas de deux
of love and death near one of the souvenir wagons.

In front of the Basilica a family of tumblers in white suits with large white buttons and ruffled collars were performing their act and a man in a tall turban was cavorting agilely on stilts. Three young women walked slowly on huge wooden platform heels—the
zoccoli
of Renaissance Venice. They wore long, richly embroidered gowns of green and gold. On their heads were straw hats with the crowns removed so that they could pull their long, blond hair out to be bleached by the sun as Venetian women used to do in former days.

Involuntarily, Urbino's eyes looked up at the space between the Campanile and the Basilica, half expecting to see a wire on which an acrobat was balancing. It would have fit perfectly into the dreamlike scene. Urbino felt as if he had stepped into the pages of a children's book.

Amid all this carefree activity, solitary figures in fanciful and grotesque costumes stood immobile as if part of the city's architecture. They leaned against the columns, perched on the base of the Campanile, and secluded themselves in niches and narrow openings where they could easily be mistaken for pieces of colorful sculpture.

As Urbino walked past one of these silent figures dressed in orange robes, a shaggy silver wig, and a huge five-pointed star glistening with silver sequins, Giovanni Firpo emerged from a lively cluster of people, carrying his mask in one hand, his mirrored fan in the other. He moved almost majestically in his blue and green robe and baubled headdress, his fan fluttering in the chill wind that blew across the domes of the Basilica. In order to take part in
Carnevale
the way he wanted to, Firpo had a reduced schedule at the hospital. He made up for it by working extra shifts during August when everyone else was running off to the seashore and countryside,