Farewell to the Flesh (6 page)

Porfirio had therefore been the logical choice to take the photographs at San Gabriele, not the English photographer Gibbon. Porfirio didn't need the Contessa's commission or whatever limited recognition he might get from taking photographs of the paintings and frescoes at the church. They would only end up in the parish files anyway. What upset him, the Contessa had assured Urbino, was that a man of his reputation had been rejected before he could refuse the project himself.

The fifty-five-year-old Porfirio, who had an arrogant face and carried his more than six feet with a commanding air of self-confidence, was dressed as Pantalone, the Venetian merchant. He wore knee-length red trousers and a red waistcoat, a long black cape, a floppy red hat, and a mask with a hooked nose. In keeping with the character, Porfirio would occasionally use expressions from the Venetian dialect.

Not everyone was in costume but those who were conformed to the commedia dell'arte theme of Porfirio's little gathering. There were Harlequins, Columbines, Pierrots, Brighellas, Pulcinellas, Dottores, and Capitanos. Porfirio, however, by either design or circumstance, was the only Pantalone.

As Urbino and Porfirio stood in front of the large windows that looked out on a back canal, now obscured by night, Urbino decided to mention Val Gibbon. Knowing how upset Porfirio was about having been passed over by the Contessa made Urbino feel, perhaps wrongly, that not bringing up the topic might only make things fester the more.

“What do you think of Val Gibbon's work, Porfirio?”

“Gibbon, Gibbon.”

Porfirio repeated the name slowly in a musing way as if he didn't recognize it. He looked across the room at a massive expressionist canvas in reds and yellows that would have been just as much at home on the other side of the Grand Canal at Peggy Guggenheim's.

“He's taking photographs of the San Gabriele fresco that Lubonski is restoring.”

“And he's one of the hundreds of other photographers who have descended on our Piazza these days in their high boots!” Porfirio said contemptuously, turning his gaze back to Urbino.

Urbino, who had seen his host in high boots in the Piazza on numerous occasions several
Carnevali
ago—albeit stylish models and not the cheap plastic ones hanging by huge clothespins in the Rialto shops—restrained a smile. After sipping his whiskey, Porfirio continued.

“They have no dedication, this kind of photographer, no commitment to one thing more than any other. Every time I see someone with a camera here in Venice, it makes me angry, even a little ashamed—yes, ashamed for them and for myself. Why does almost every person with a camera think he is an artist? Tell me that! They think it is so easy, but photography is one of the arts. You must be
consacrato!
to the art and to a special subject. I will be known as
the
photographer of Venezia! You see, my dear Urbino, you have chosen well for your Proust!” he finished with a little smile that he probably wanted Urbino to think was meant as an ironic qualification of his self-praise.

He excused himself and went over to the bar on the other side of the room where Pietro Basso, the architect who had designed Porfirio's apartments, was standing with a young woman Urbino didn't recognize. She had tawny hair cut in a short blunt style and was wearing a long dark-green dress with a lacy white apron attached in the manner of the character Columbine. She wore no mask, however, and her eyes flicked briefly in his direction before she responded to something Porfirio had said. After a few minutes Porfirio drifted off to join another group.

Urbino went over to the bar to get some more wine. Basso was looking pleased with himself as he finished his favorite lecture on the virtues of all modern architecture. The young woman looked relieved when Urbino joined them and introduced himself.

“Hazel Reeve,” she said, smiling and extending her hand.

She looked directly into his eyes. She was about twenty-five with an assured and intelligent manner. Her face was oval with a generous mouth and widely spaced sea-green eyes.

“Signorina Reeve is English. She is staying here with Porfirio,” Basso said. The architect was a man whose shortness and rotundity were amusingly at odds with the angularity of his architecture. “She is doing some translating for him, isn't that right, Signorina Reeve?”

“That's right, although I think he feels somewhat compromised that his photographs need a text at all, whether in Italian
or
English,” she explained, looking over at the photographer, who was now talking with a journalist from
Il
Gazzettino
. After having looked at Urbino so directly a few moments ago she now seemed to be avoiding his eyes.

“When he came up to London before we published his first book on bridges,” she went on, “he defended the purity of his art quite impressively. ‘A photograph should stand alone, isolated,' he said, ‘a clear statement in itself and by itself'—something very much like that. It was decided nonetheless that if the Italians needed a text, then surely the benighted Brits did as well.”

She laughed lightly, showing even white teeth.

“Ah,” Basso said after taking a sip of his drink, “a bridge is a bridge is a bridge is a bridge.”

“Do you speak from your knowledge of architecture, Signor Basso, or your familiarity with Gertrude Stein?” Hazel Reeve asked playfully. “Porfirio's photographs of bridges could have stood on their own, perhaps, but not the ones on relics that we're publishing in the autumn. However could the photographs be enough, even for the Italian reader?”

“But most of the chests, reliquaries, and altarpieces are beautiful in themselves,” Urbino said.

“That's certainly true, but it's the story behind the relics—the story
of
the relics—that's of interest for most people, wouldn't you say? It's a whole fascinating history of thefts and concealments, pillagings and supposed miracles.” The quick, brief glance her green eyes now gave Urbino was all the more forceful for having been withheld for what seemed much longer than it actually was. “At any rate, it's not up to me. I get my assignments, I do my work. Not that I'm not thrilled to be working on another of Porfirio's collections. They're quite magnificent.”

“They certainly are!” Basso agreed heartily. “And don't forget that you get to come to our beautiful city.”

“Believe me, Signor Basso, such extravagances are beyond our budget. I know my Italian and, as far as my editor is concerned, that's supposed to be sufficient. But it's
Carnevale
and I thought I'd take a look for myself at the relics—although I'm not exactly sure what the advantage might be for a mere translation.”

“I wouldn't denigrate your work like that, Miss Reeve,” Urbino said.

“Traditore, traduttore
,” Basso said loudly with his small, round head thrown back, reciting a popular Italian saying that played on the similarity between the words “betrayer” and “translator.”

“I hope that
my
translations aren't in any way a betrayal, Signor Basso. What you say is more appropriate for a translator of Dante or Petrarch.” Then, without any preliminary except for a slight intake of breath and as if she were doing the most natural thing in the world, Hazel Reeve recited the opening canto of Dante's
Inferno:

“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

Che la diritta via era smarrita.”

After finishing she said quickly, as if to discourage any possible praise or criticism of her Italian, “I've read at least a dozen English translations of those lines and not one even comes close to the original. How would it be possible! When it comes to Dante,” she said, directing herself to the architect, “the translator
is
a betrayer, even if he does have the purest of hearts and the best of intentions.”

Urbino paid little attention to Basso's response. Hazel Reeve's recitation was still sounding in his ears. He, too, like Dante, was midway in his own life's journey—if he were, in fact, to be blessed with the three score and ten the Bible allotted. In no way had he, like Dante, gone astray in a dark wood—or even among all the beauties of Venice that could be so disorienting. Yet Dante's words, spoken so well by this young Englishwoman, had seemed to be speaking directly to him, reminding him somehow of the warning the Contessa had given him on the day of the Regatta.

“You seem lost in thought, Mr. Macintyre,” Hazel Reeve said. “I didn't mean to be superior, rattling off Dante like that. You'll have to forgive me. I love Italian so much that I forget it's not a language most people are inclined to study, certainly not the way they do French and Spanish.”

“I know Italian well enough,” Urbino said with what he hoped would be taken as neither pride nor injured feelings. “It was just that the Dante—” He stopped. How could he explain something that he didn't understand himself?

“It's just that you spoke so well,” he finished.

“D'accordo!”
Basso said with a lift of his glass. “But your Italian is equal to hers, Signor Macintyre. There's no cause for envy.”

Feeling completely misunderstood and yet not up to explaining himself, Urbino said nothing. He drew comfort, however, from the look that Hazel Reeve gave him as she took a sip of her wine, another look from her brilliant green eyes.

She seemed to know exactly how he felt. He had no need to make explanations.

“Signor Macintyre is a writer,” Basso said.

Interest flickered in Hazel Reeve's eyes.

“Do you write novels?”

“Not novels, although on occasion I've been accused of writing fiction. I write biographies—biographies about Venice.”

“Biographies about Venice?”

“Not about Venice itself but about some of the people who have had an association with it. Mainly writers and artists—and not only Italians.”

“But you have so many to choose from! Browning, Ruskin, Mann, Turner, Vivaldi, Tintoretto, James—there must be dozens!”

“Exactly, although so far I've done books only on Ruskin, Casanova, Canaletto, and Browning and monographs on Pound and a Venetian family of restorers. I'm doing one on Proust now. Porfirio is providing the photographs.”

“How interesting. I absolutely adore Proust.”

“Proust!” Basso said with a frown after taking a sip of his whiskey. “I tried to read the book years ago but never got any farther than the first pages. The man was using so many words but he wasn't saying anything that I could see. Something about kissing his mother.”

“Perhaps you should try again, Signor Basso,” Hazel Reeve suggested. “The book is like a cathedral—but to begin to see that you would have to read more than just a few pages.”

The comment seemed directed less at Basso than Urbino. She smiled, her green eyes looking directly into his.

10

The Teatro La Fenice was ablaze with lights as Urbino slipped into the Contessa's box in the second tier. The Contessa's restrained black and ecru Pirovano gown and Bulgari ruby necklace complemented La Fenice's dominant beiges, golds, and reds. She was talking with her friend Oriana Borelli, who was alone in the next box. They gave him a quick greeting and returned to their low conversation, which was probably about the most recent marital explosion at the Ca' Borelli on the Giudecca.

Urbino looked around the crowded theater. The crystal, gilt, and velvet enhanced the well-dressed audience, some of whom were in elegant masks and costumes. Urbino was curious about this new production of Rossini's
Otello
. For him as well as the Contessa it would be the first production he had seen of the opera that had been eclipsed by Verdi's version. He was familiar with the music but not the libretto. The librettist, the Marchese Berio di Salsa, was related by marriage to the da Capo-Zendrini family, and the Contessa hoped that her friend would disagree with the almost universal low opinion of his work. Her own opinion, it would seem, was a foregone conclusion. Ever since her marriage to Alvise da Capo-Zendrini—but especially since his death twelve years ago—she had become the champion of the family, drawing attention to their considerable contributions and deemphasizing, when not simply ignoring, their almost equally numerous peccadilloes.

The Contessa finished her conversation with Oriana and turned to Urbino. He was glad Barbara wanted to do most of the talking as they waited for the performance to begin. He was thinking about Hazel Reeve. She had managed to insinuate herself into his thoughts not only by what she had said but also by what she had left unsaid and implied. Urbino wasn't flattered easily—or at least he didn't think he was. Yet he had felt sought out, even favored in a subtle way by this young Englishwoman with the widely spaced green eyes and had stayed longer at Porfirio's than he had intended. After Basso had gone off, they had discussed Browning and Proust.

When the performance began, it didn't take Urbino long to realize that the libretto travestied Shakespeare's tale of passion, pride, and jealousy.

During the intervals the Contessa, however, praised the opera, looking at him with an amused expression as she singled out the libretto for special comment, calling it “unique.” He didn't dispute her for indeed the libretto was unique in the worst sense. He mumbled something innocuous about the recitatives and the similarity between one passage and a Verdi aria, surprised that aspects of the opera had managed to penetrate his abstraction.

“What did you think, Urbino?” the Contessa asked when the performance was over and they stepped out into the night air with Oriana Borelli.

“Any version that substitutes a love letter for the handkerchief can't be anything but all wrong, but thank God he smothered her instead of forgiving her.”

Oriana, who knew that the Marchese Bario di Salsa was related to the da Capo-Zendrinis, reached out to touch the sleeve of the Contessa's sable coat in consolation and turned surprised eyes, magnified behind her outsize black frames, in Urbino's direction. Her gaze was transferred to the Contessa the next moment when the Contessa laughed and said,