The Last Gondola (16 page)

Taking advantage of being left to his own devices for however long or however short Possle's narcoleptic spell lasted, without getting up from his chair Urbino examined the small, squat pots of plants and flowers closest to him. He was careful to avoid the candles. He reached down and touched a petal of one of the exotic flowers. The flower was artificial. So were the dewdrops beading it. A pot next to this flower held the yellowish, artificial-looking plant streaked with gray that evoked a piece of stovepipe. He touched the plant. It was real. These, too, were details from Huysmans. Artificial plants that looked real and real ones that looked artificial.

He also now took the opportunity, still from his seated position, to look more closely at the paintings ranged on the wall across from the gondola. Some were also lifted from the pages of the book. Two of them remarkably resembled ones that Huysmans had described. One was Gustave Moreau's
Salome Dancing Before Herod
. The other was Moreau's
The Apparition
, with its severed head of St. John the Baptist rising from a platter. Urbino had seen it at the Louvre. The
Salome
was in a gallery in the States. The two paintings were copies.

Beside the
Salome
was a portrait of a light-haired young woman in the manner of Sargent. Dressed in a low-cut black dress with a large, pale yellow flower at her bosom, she was seated on a sofa with high, curved sides. Urbino didn't recognize any original for the painting and assumed that it wasn't a copy.

A movement from the gondola caught his attention. Possle was staring at him. “I was off again,” he said. “My sessions are becoming more frequent. I hope you were able to entertain yourself.”

Urbino sensed that Possle, despite his spell, knew what he had been doing during it and that he was aware of Urbino's little outburst.

“About my own interest in Monsieur Huysmans,” Possle continued, showing that he could pick up where he had left off, “be assured on a few points. I don't corrupt street urchins and get them habituated to brothels, and there's no jewel-encrusted tortoise hiding away in a corner of the room.”

These were further details from the book, and Possle threw them out with an amused, casual air.

“And even that cage with the cricket, Mr. Macintyre. You probably think now that it's because, like our mutual hero, I want to express my loathing for my childhood by being reminded of the song that accompanied so many of my sad summers, but you are wrong. I like, instead, to be reminded of the old legend of the sibyl who forgot to ask for eternal youth when she was awarded eternal life. She was reduced in her ancient years to hanging in a cage and croaking out, ‘I want to die.' You noticed that
my
cricket is dead.”

His small eyes strayed toward the silver cage and back to Urbino's face.

“So you see, I don't go as far as I can with my imitations from the yellow book so cherished by Dorian Gray. And as for you, Mr. Macintyre, you haven't gone anywhere near as far as I have. Your Palazzo Uccello has nothing to compare with this, I'm sure. Just the book itself, perhaps different editions, maybe an illustration or two.”

This was a good description of what Urbino did have in the corner of his library dedicated to Huysmans. “As I said last time,” he responded, holding back his anger, “you seem to know a great deal about me.”

“More than you know about me, you mean? Is that what irritates you? Reflect, Mr. Macintyre. You may not have been as reticent as you think you've been over the years. Venice might be a secretive place, turned in on itself and shut off from the rest of the world, but it's one big stage as well. And in any case, when one has a secret, it encourages others to search it out.”

Possle's gaze fell upon the crown of Urbino's head.

“Would you mind coming up the steps to the gondola for a moment?” he asked.

Curious as to what this was about, Urbino got up and approached Possle, with the expectation of being handed something that his host would withdraw from among the cushions or being asked to take the empty porcelain cup lying against them.

But instead, “Bend your head down please,” Possle said.

When Urbino leaned closer to him, Possle's hands seized Urbino's head. His fingers groped Urbino's skull from front to back, side to side. Their touch was cold, very cold. Urbino wanted to draw back, but he endured it.

Rain was now beating against the windows of the gondola room, driven by the wind.

Possle held Urbino's head a long time before releasing it. Urbino went back to his seat, meekly perhaps to Possle's eye, but inwardly rebelling against the man's touch and angry with himself for having allowed it, but equally mystified.

“Do you believe in phrenology?” Possle asked.

“No.”

“Perhaps you should. I wasn't able to give your head a proper examination, but it reveals a great deal. You have some morbidly developed faculties and some deficient ones. You're strong in philoprogenitiveness, for example, as is displayed in your fondness for your Moroccan friend and your gondolier.”

Possle's voice was becoming weaker as he spoke. He took an audible breath and went on.

“If I could get my hands on the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini, I'm sure I'd find that her bump of benevolence is prodigiously developed. I've often wondered if the wealthy puzzle about what to do with all their money.”

“The Contessa is a very generous woman.”

“And you have been one of her main beneficiaries. But surely all her generosity is a mere pittance of what she has.”

Before Urbino might defend the Contessa, Possle forestalled him by saying, “How I would have loved to have a go at Byron's head. He had a fine head on him.”

He spoke for two or three minutes about phrenology and Byron, growing increasingly fatigued, and all the while weaving in references—some familiar, some arcane—to the poet, and looking at Urbino covertly and with distinct expectation.

“Might you know if Byron ever had a phrenological reading?” he asked at the end of this monologue. “I suspect that you know more about him than I do.”

Urbino had listened to all of what Possle had said in patience, and when Possle finished, quietly took up with the subject that was of more interest to him. “You're strange, Mr. Possle, but maybe not as strange as you want me to believe. You want my cooperation about something. What it is, I don't know, but you're going about it in the wrong way. There's a mystery of some kind surrounding you and your house, as I'm sure you're well aware. But whether it's a real one or only one you're trying to generate—or add to—I have no idea.”

“Or one that people have created themselves,” Possle supplied, as a further possibility. “Reality is a boring affair. We'll always be outsiders here, Mr. Macintyre, even if I manage to live more years and you live to be as old as I am, which I heartily wish for you.”

This latter observation amused him, if Urbino could judge by the same strangled sound that he had made earlier. It came from deep in his chest and grew and grew until his face lost its yellow waxy look and became decidedly red. He was seized with a cough that persisted long enough for Urbino to become alarmed. He arose from his chair and approached the gondola. Possle was now gasping for breath.

“I'll call Armando.”

But the mute was already in the room, seeming to have appeared from nowhere. He moved to Possle's assistance, pushing Urbino aside with more force than was necessary. He leaned over Possle, whose eyes were closed as he continued to cough, and threw Urbino a look that said as loudly and severely as any words could that his visit had come to an end.

34

For the first ten minutes after leaving the Ca' Pozza, Urbino hugged the sides of buildings, waded through ankle-high water, and suffered the reek of backed up sewers. He cursed not having brought an umbrella, although with the force of the wind it would have soon proven as useless as the skeletons of the ones that littered the alleys.

He found a bar to wait out the storm in and ordered a glass of wine. He replayed his visit from the moment Elvira had given him her dire warning before entering the Ca' Pozza until Possle had been incapacitated by his cough.

Up until a few days ago, a silence had enveloped Possle that Urbino had been obsessed with penetrating. Now Possle was directing a barrage of calculated hints, suggestions, and revelations at him, delivered in his tremulous voice from among the cushions of his gondola. And somewhere among it all he was concealing his real intentions. Of this Urbino was positive.

He took from his pocket the slip of paper that he had impulsively and guiltily picked up from the carpet. He unfolded it. At first it appeared to be a receipt from a dry cleaner's shop or photographer's studio.

But printed across the top was the name of the Church of San Gabriele near the Palazzo Uccello. The voucher—for this was what it was—named the coming Friday, five days from now. A mass for the dead was to be celebrated at seven-thirty in the morning in the memory of someone named Adriana Abdon. The voucher, officially stamped, acknowledged that Armando Abdon had paid the requisite sum. It was signed by the secretary of the Church of San Gabriele, a sister of the Convent of the Charity of Santa Crispina. The convent was associated with the church and located across the square from it.

Urbino now knew Armando's last name, but what was his relationship to the dead Adriana? Had she been his mother, perhaps his wife? His sister? His aunt?

Urbino was disappointed and also upset with himself. He had risked Possle's censure for what? His desire to snatch the paper had been fired by the hope that it would contain some important piece of information about Possle.

He had noticed it right after Armando served the wine. Had it been there before, or had it fallen from his pocket? Could Armando have dropped it for him to find? If he had, what was his motivation?

The rain had stopped. Urbino returned to the Palazzo Uccello, frequently having to reroute himself when the flooded alleys blocked his passage.

35

“He's playing with you!” the Contessa cried out over the telephone an hour later, after he had given her some details of his visit.

“My thought exactly. But to what end? I suspect he wants my services, but which of the two might it be?”

He explained how Possle had brought up the topic of his biographies while they were talking about Byron.

“He could be a filter was the way he expressed it,” Urbino said. “That's what I've been thinking. When I asked him if he was making me an overture, he got evasive. And a short time later he brought up my sleuthing and my discretion, and suggested that there might be something at the Ca' Pozza for me to look into. But he's sly and slippery. It's difficult to pin him down.”

“And we know how many glass cases of butterflies you've collected over the years! I see quite well why Possle annoys you so much, and I wish he wouldn't drag me into the picture. My benevolence indeed! What business is it of his what money I have?”

“It's his knowing tone. Not just about you, but personal things about me and how I think,” Urbino went on. “It's as if he's inside my mind or thinks he is, plucking out my secrets. He's right on target most of the time, I have to admit. And I feel as if he's saying and doing things that I have myself. It's almost as if he's—he's appropriating me.” He told her about the unusual coincidence involving Huysmans. “Or maybe it's as if I've been unconsciously imitating him in some strange way or—or as if I'm looking at myself distorted in some mirror!”

Urbino was giving the Contessa the benefit of his own dimly formed but deeply felt suspicions and explanations as he struggled with the peculiar connection that Possle seemed to have with him.

“As if, as if, as if,” the Contessa mocked him. “Nonsense! You're getting infected, and after only two visits! What's going to happen if you spend days and months interviewing him for a book? Before we know it, you'll be speculating that he's some kind of vampire, although that would be a more appropriate role for Armando, I suppose!”

“I'll take comfort in the fact that I've seen him in the daytime,” Urbino joked, in an attempt to alleviate his darkening mood.

“Nonetheless, tell Natalia to double the garlic. But seriously, Urbino, maybe what it all comes down to is that you don't like being around the aged and infirm.
‘Memento mori,'
isn't that what it's called?”

The Contessa knew him well enough to have hit on something sensitive, but he didn't want to pursue it. Instead he brought up the topic of her next
conversazione
, scheduled for a week from today.

“I'd really like to come,” he said. “It would be a comfort to me in the midst of all this business with Possle. Cipri seems to find it strange that I'm not coming, and I'm sure others do as well.”

“As if you care what others think! And as for it being a comfort to you to come, just think of me,
caro
, worried about you sitting there and listening to every word! I know you mean well, but let's leave it the way it is.”

It was useless for Urbino to insist.

He hadn't yet told her everything about his last visit. Somewhat embarrassed, he now explained about the receipt from the Church of San Gabriele, and he asked her if the name Adriana Abdon was familiar.

“So it's come to that! Picking up odd scraps of paper at the Ca' Pozza. Leave Armando to his devotions to the dead, whoever this Adriana might have been. Adriana, Adriana. A lovely name. I've never known anyone named Adriana, but with my memory—” She interrupted herself and went on, “As I was saying, leave Armando to his requiems. And try to be more careful. Hold on to that precious logic of yours. Everything you've told me about Possle doesn't tally with my own impressions of him, limited though they were. He was very much the bon vivant, more a person of doing than talking.” A sigh carried across the line. “But of course we're speaking of a gulf of forty years. Between the Samuel Possle of then and the cadaverous, housebound man of today.”