Frail Barrier (3 page)

Urbino immediately identified her as a distinct type. She was one of the amateur painters – almost always either English or German – who descended on the city with their easels, water-colors, and collapsible stools to render the Venetian scene with varying degrees of skill.

On the surface of the canvas Urbino could vaguely discern the form of a campanile. It resembled the one rising above the tiled rooftops beyond the bridge in the direction of the Campo Santa Margherita.

Two nuns were examining the woman's work from a respectful distance. Standing closer and engaged in spirited conversation with her was a short, stout man. He pointed at the canvas and the campanile in the distance, and nodded with approval. The woman clapped a straw gondolier's hat with a red ribbon on her head and smiled.

The gondola passed beneath the bridge. When Urbino regained his view of the figures on the bridge through the slats of the shutters, the scene had drastically altered.

The stout gentleman appeared to have accidentally knocked down the easel in one of his lively gestures. He was all red-faced and apologetic as he helped the woman reposition the easel. The woman minimized any damage or inconvenience with a warm smile and a touch on his shoulder. Her soft laughter drifted down the canal to Urbino.

For Urbino it was all a pleasant little scenario. There was order and calm one moment, then their interruption, and then a return to order and calm. It was like Venice after the terrible storm. It was like so many other things in his life.

But order and calm could not always be restored. As the gondola moved away from the bridge, the contessa's words at Florian's, about how easy it was to lose precious things, echoed through his mind.

Urbino reopened his Goethe. He examined the Tischbein portrait of the writer. Goethe was in semi-profile. Dressed in a flowing white traveler's cloak and a dark hat with a round, wide brim, he was reclining on a bench, looking intelligent and meditative. The antique, ivy-adorned ruins around him contributed to his noble air. In the distance the hills of the Campania unrolled beneath a cloud-filled sky.

Urbino was struggling through Goethe's
Italian Journey
in the original German. His German was far from as free and as fluent as his Italian and French.

At the beginning of the summer he had embarked on a new writing project. It was an addition to his ‘Venetian Lives', a series that combined his interest in biography and his love for his adopted city.
Goethe and Venice
would focus on the role that the city had played in the writer's life and art, concentrating on his visit to the lagoon city in the autumn of 1786. It would have reproductions of paintings and photographs of Venetian scenes that had been important to Goethe during his stay.

Goethe's sentiments about Venice struck strong responsive chords in Urbino. He had been reading his Goethe for the past weeks with almost as much interest in finding parallels to his own experience as in gathering material. When Goethe had come to the crowded city, he had observed that he could now enjoy his cherished solitude even more since nowhere was more conducive to being alone than a large crowd. This was exactly how Urbino had felt when he had made Venice his home. It also gratified him that Goethe could be as contradictory as he was, and praise the city's incomparable light and gleaming palaces one moment, and the next moment recoil from the refuse dumped in its canals and the sludge underfoot after rainstorms. Goethe seemed to be the kind of person, like Urbino himself, who could appreciate beauty even more by acknowledging all the faults not only surrounding it but also, in some strange way, contributing to it.

But Urbino warned himself now, as he did so often, about the dangers of identifying too closely with his subject. He preferred to think that his tastes and temperament, his likes and dislikes, seldom complicated his biographical portraits or his sleuthing, one of his other passions. In truth, they very often did. In the pages of one of his books, the potential damage was only professional. But in the conduct of one of his cases it could be a matter of life and death – his own or someone else's.

For the moment no case occupied his attention. They were not something he sought out, but something that, for reasons different with each one, he could not ignore with a clear conscience.

It was much better to devote his time these days to Goethe, who after a long and productive life, had died, quite naturally and peacefully, in a corner of his big armchair in Weimar.

With this consoling thought, Urbino lost all sense of time and exterior scene, except when he became momentarily distracted whenever Gildo cried out a warning
‘Hoi!'
as he turned from one canal in to another.

He buried himself in the volume for the rest of the ride home, carried on the wings of Goethe's words back to the days of a former century when the city had been, nonetheless, very much the same as it was now. Whenever he looked out of the
felze
at the canals and the buildings and the bright blue sky, appreciation and satisfaction surged through him, made more intense by the fact that Goethe, centuries ago, had felt the same things Urbino was feeling today.

When the gondola came to a gentle bump at the water entrance of the Palazzo Uccello, Urbino closed the book and refreshed his eyes with the sight of the worn stones of his Venetian home, his only home.

He would often remember this feeling of contentment as, in the coming weeks of high season, death entered his perfect little world again and asked him to make some sense of it.

Everything, in fact, was set in motion a few minutes later when the contessa called from Asolo.

‘I have distressing news,
caro.'

The contessa must have been out in the gardens of the Villa Muta. The repeated
‘Ciao!'
of her brilliantly plumed parrot that she kept in a brass cage on the pergola was a counterpoint to the serious tone of her words.

‘What is it, Barbara?'

‘It's that poor man we saw under the arcade outside Florian's, the one who looked so ghastly, the one with the bloody handkerchief. He's dead!'

Urbino was somewhat taken aback. It was indeed disturbing that the man had died, whoever he was, but as far as he was aware, the contessa hadn't known him. Neither had he.

‘I'm sorry to hear that, Barbara.' He paused. ‘But you didn't say that you knew him.'

‘I do now. I mean I know who he is – or was!' A trace of exasperation rasped her voice. ‘I know because of Sebastian. I was going to call you about it today but then – then I found out he died, Konrad Zoll.'

She wasn't making much sense.

‘Is that his name, the man we saw?'

‘Yes, Konrad Zoll. A German. He had been living in Venice for a year. Strange that our paths only crossed that one time at Florian's. Last week I got a letter from Sebastian with an article about him. It had his photograph. That's how I identified him, although the poor man changed so! He was an art collector.'

‘But why did Sebastian send the article?'

‘Because of Nick Hollander. Since Sebastian asked me to invite Hollander to the regatta party, he thought it might be nice if I invited Zoll, too. Hollander is Zoll's stepson – rather he
was
his stepson. No, not because Zoll is dead,' she said before he could ask for clarification. ‘Hollander's mother and Zoll divorced five years ago.'

‘His ex-stepson, then.'

‘Yes. The way you have an ex-brother-in-law from your divorce. And I assume they must have been close the way you and Eugene are. Sebastian would never have suggested that I bring them together if they hadn't been.'

Urbino, who knew the contessa's young cousin was capable of this and more, remained silent. He had traveled through Morocco a few years before with Sebastian. The trip had turned out to be disastrous. They had parted company in Fes.

‘But I still don't know how you found out that this Zoll is dead.'

‘Sebastian called this morning. Hollander told him. And that's where you get involved.'

‘Me? How?'

‘By going to see Hollander and offering our condolences. He's staying at the Gritti Palace. I would do it myself if I weren't up here.'

‘He didn't leave after Zoll died?'

‘Not according to Sebastian.'

‘I guess the dark young man with Zoll was Hollander.'

‘Apparently not. He's not dark and he has hardly a hair on his head, according to Sebastian. Try to see him later today or tomorrow. Perhaps he can come up to Asolo this weekend. The both of you. I'll ring him. He could use a change of scene. Venice in August isn't the best place to be when you're grieving. He'll be welcome here.' Once again, this time as if on cue, the parrot uttered its remarkably human-sounding
‘Ciao!'
in an even more welcoming tone. ‘And even if he doesn't come, I'd like you to come. I'll show you the article Sebastian sent.' The contessa sighed. ‘Poor man. He was so vigorous-looking such a short time ago.'

Urbino was reviewing his conversation with the contessa when a knock sounded on the library door. It was Natalia, his housekeeper and cook.

‘Gildo would like to speak with you, Signor Urbino.'

The smile on Natalia's round face was not for Urbino, although she liked him well enough. It was for Gildo, who was her pet. Ever since the young man had started to work as Urbino's gondolier a year before, she had taken him under her wing. She delighted in bringing meals to his self-contained apartment by the water entrance and looking after him in every other way she could.

The young man stood behind her. He was slim but muscular from his exertions at the gondola oar. His good-looking face, glowing with health, was open and ingenuous.

The plump Natalia reached up to tousle his reddish-blond curls before she returned to the kitchen.

‘I was wondering if you will need me for the rest of the day, Signor Urbino.'

‘You know that I didn't even want to go out in the gondola this morning.'

Urbino spoke in Italian, as he did in most of his dealings with Italians. He seldom ventured for long into the Venetian dialect, however. He hadn't mastered it as well as the contessa.

‘Yes, but, as I told you,' Gildo said, ‘it was good exercise, with the qualifying competition coming up tomorrow.'

The next day, in the waters off Malamocco on the Lido, the
gondolino
rowers who had applied to the municipality would be having the last of the rigorous competitions that would determine which teams would participate in the regatta.

‘Nonetheless, Gildo, after tomorrow I want you to give all your attention and energies to practicing for the regatta itself.'

‘We must take one thing at a time, Signor Urbino!'

‘Well, whatever happens tomorrow, Natalia and I – and the contessa – are already proud of you and Claudio. You tell him that for us.'

‘You can tell him yourself. He's downstairs. He wants to see you about something anyway.'

Claudio was sitting by the window that opened on to the canal, looking through a boating magazine.

After the three of them had chatted about the upcoming competition, Claudio said, ‘I was wondering if I could borrow Callas's Hamburg Concerts. They'd be a good way to relax before tomorrow.'

‘That's a good idea,' Urbino said. ‘No problem.'

Gildo made an exaggerated frown.

‘You're strange, Claudio. All that opera stuff – oh, excuse me, Signor Urbino,' Gildo added quickly. ‘I didn't mean that
you're
strange.'

‘What a disappointment!'

This only discomposed the young gondolier more. He looked back and forth between Urbino and Claudio.

‘I'm sorry, Signor Urbino. Of course you are different. Everyone knows that. But – but you are strange in a good way! Yes! In a good way!'

Urbino laughed. He patted Gildo on the shoulder. ‘Now you'll have to explain to Claudio how he's strange in a bad way! I'll get the Callas for you, Claudio.'

After giving Claudio the recording, Urbino went to the kitchen. Natalia was bustling around preparing lunch. He was pleased to see that it was something light, an
insalata mista
and
prosciutto crudo
with melon.

‘I hope you're not putting too much pressure on those two boys.' She gave him a quick look over her shoulder as she washed a plate. ‘You know how much Gildo wants to please you, and Claudio is always doing things for other people and not himself.'

‘Don't worry. I've made it clear that even if they don't get selected for the regatta, they've already succeeded in my eyes. They don't have to win anything.'

Natalia made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a harrumph.

‘Sometimes you say things without saying them,' she observed.

Urbino, who couldn't dispute the truth of this, remained silent. He smiled to himself. Here, within less than a quarter of an hour, Gildo and Natalia had pinpointed two of his qualities: his eccentricity and the way he often communicated both more and less than his spoken words.

‘And who knows?' Natalia pursued. ‘If Gildo strains himself, he won't be able to ferry you around like a doge in that gondola.'

Natalia had never approved of the contessa's gift, although she didn't seem to realize that her beloved Gildo would never have come into their lives without it.

‘And how would you feel if you were responsible for spoiling Claudio's beautiful voice?' she threw in for good measure.

Urbino started to slice the melon. Natalia took the knife out of his hand.

‘Thank you very much, but remember how you cut your finger with the zucchini last winter and had blood all over my kitchen. If you want to help, just let me do what I have to do.'

She sliced the melon with a few deft strokes of the knife.

‘And if anything happened to his voice, you can be sure that Albina Gonella would be angry with you, gentle soul that she is. He goes to her house and sings for her and her sister.'