The Last Gondola (17 page)

“He can't have changed all that much. Physically, yes, but not in a basic way.”

“If you're thinking of tossing that Proust quotation at me again, the one about a man not changing emotionally after the age of sixteen, don't do it! You're as bad as Possle. And haven't you learned from experience? Too much remembrance of things past can be unhealthy, if not downright dangerous. I have a suggestion. Why don't you come up to Asolo with me on Tuesday? Patricia called me last night.” Patricia was her sister in London. “She'd like to stay at the villa in April with some friends. I should see what needs to be done. Some fresh mountain air will be good for us both.”

36

Later that evening Urbino roamed around the Ca' Pozza. As he had after his first visit with Possle, he felt fatigued. But he was also restless.

The house seemed particularly silent and empty, even with the knowledge that Gildo was in his little apartment on the
pianoterreno
. Before going to Morocco, Urbino had enjoyed his solitary life in the Palazzo Uccello, but since Habib had been staying with him, much had changed. It wasn't that he still didn't savor his solitude, but that he had come to count on Habib, with all his enthusiasm and his ability to turn the most routine of activities into a celebration, to keep him from being swallowed up by it. Without Habib, solitude felt a little too much like loneliness.

Urbino went into Habib's studio. The poster of Habib's favorite Arab diva stared out at him with her wide-eyed gaze. Habib had neatened up the room before he had left. The paints and brushes were all in their places, the rags were arranged on the rack, the divan was made up, and the cassettes of Arabic music were in neat rows on the shelf. The ingenious storage and drying cupboards that Habib had constructed were closed.

Urbino examined some of Habib's paintings leaning against one wall. Part of a series on the Basilica San Marco, they turned the rich, dark interior into a bazaar of color and movement that evoked an elemental spirituality.

Urbino checked his wristwatch. It was nine o'clock. Perhaps he should call Habib in Fez, but then he decided against it. Habib was sure to detect his melancholy mood. Urbino didn't want to cast any shadow on Habib's visit with his family. He would wait to call him when he himself was in a cheerful mood.

Urbino went into the library. He felt drained. His head ached slightly. He hoped he wasn't coming down with the flu.

Urbino's gaze strayed to the corner of the room that held his editions of Huysmans and illustrations of scenes from the book, one of which was his own. He was puzzled as to how Possle had seemed to know about them and about so many other things as well.

The old guidebook he had consulted two weeks ago was still on the long, wooden table. He sat down and reread the passage about the Ca' Pozza. It now said nothing to him, whereas before it had been filled with promise and suggestion. But since then he had been behind the walls of the building. He had got in, twice.

It made him hungry for more. The Ca' Pozza was turning out to be much stranger and more fascinating than he had anticipated. Possle was an enigma, and one that Urbino couldn't leave alone.

Possle, for his own reasons, couldn't leave Urbino alone either, it seemed. The two of them were bound together on some strange journey together that Urbino anticipated with almost equal thrills of pleasure and fear.

37

The next morning Urbino went to see the widow Benedetta Razzi. She might be able to give him some solid information about Possle and the Ca' Pozza since, as Rebecca had told him, she owned the building next door, the one in which Elvira lived.

At 9:55 the
vaporetto
for Burano was pulling out of the boat landing on the Fondamenta Nuove below Razzi's windows when Urbino sat down in her parlor.

There was just the two of them, and about five hundred dolls.

The dolls were everywhere—on chairs, sofa, tables, shelves, and cabinets, even perched on a wall clock, peeping from open drawers and baskets, and adorning the wooden top of a baroque mirror. Many of them were in regional costumes from Italy and other parts of Europe and the world.

A tiered table was crammed with miniature cups and saucers, tiny porcelain masks, Lilliputian books, and a delicate candelabra with candles no thicker than pencil leads, all for her little ones. Over the years Urbino had learned the advantage of bearing gifts when he visited the old woman. Today it took the form of a tiny fan made out of marbleized paper.

“How lovely.” Razzi was a small woman approaching eighty with wispy white hair and faded blue eyes. “My darlings are poor in fans.”

She went to the table. She moved some pieces and placed the fan beside a glass swan Urbino had given her on a previous occasion.

“You see, I remember all your gifts,” she said.

She lowered herself into a worn love seat, arranging the skirt of her black, sequined dress and straightening up two dolls beside her. One was a Japanese doll with a white porcelain face, slanted eyes, black hair, and an elaborate headdress. The other was a delicate figure in an embroidered pink dress and a pillbox hat draped by a veil.

Urbino seated himself in an overstuffed armchair.

“So what do you want to know this time?” Razzi asked him. She attempted a coy look from beneath long, false eyelashes.

“As it turns out, Signora Razzi, there is some help you might be able to give me and help yourself at the same time as well. It's about one of your properties.”

The woman's face lit up. “It would be an honor and a personal pleasure, Signor Macintyre.”

Urbino saw the misunderstanding.

“It's not about renting one of your apartments, signora,” he said. “It's about the problems in San Polo. I know some people there who are concerned about what's happening to their property. Maybe I could do something to help the situation for them and yourself.”

“You've solved many problems, Signor Macintyre, but you don't want to get close to this one. Drugs!”

“Why do you say it's drugs?”

“What else can it be when packs of young people are breaking into houses and stripping them of whatever isn't tied down?” She cast an apprehensive look around the parlor at her dolls.

“Has your building been broken into?”

“Thank God, no, but it's sure to happen one of these days. Then the tenants will blame me and use it as an excuse to try to get money from me!”

“Let's hope not. I believe a young man had an accident in your building about three months ago.”

“Suicide!”

“Suicide?”

“Exactly! God only knows what he put into his arms and his nose and down his throat. There are plenty of others like him. None of them want to get old and responsible like you and me; they'd rather kill themselves! Suicide, I call it. They should all get it over with and leave the rest of us alone.”

“I see what you mean, signora. This boy lived in your building?”

“Ever since his father died when he was two years old. Marco used to look as innocent as one of my little ones. But almost all of them end up changing, especially these days.”

She picked up the doll in the embroidered pink dress and cradled it in her arms.

“His mother is a tall woman, I believe.”

“Tall and haughty, that's Elvira Carelli! Well, she's not good for anything anymore except a joke. Completely out of her mind, she is.”

“I've seen her acting strangely.”

“That's putting it politely! I can imagine what damage she's done to my apartment. And she makes so much noise with her screaming and crying that the other tenants are always calling me up. But what can I do? She'll be there until she dies or until they cart her away to the madhouse.”

The laws governing tenants in Italy were strong in their favor. Once someone moved into a building, it was almost impossible to get him or her to leave.

“What happened to Marco?”

“He fell. Two or three months ago. It would have to be from my building!”

“Where did he fall from? A window or a balcony, perhaps the roof?”

She shrugged. “No one knows, unless it's Elvira.” She sighed. “She'll be there for years to come if I can't get her out.” A shrewd look dropped over her haggard features. “Maybe you could help me, Signor Macintyre. Then one of your friends could move in. We could all come to an understanding about the rent.”

Urbino bridled at the thought. “I don't think I'd care to get involved, but I'll see if Signora Carelli is being looked after properly. Her bereavement is recent, after all. With time and good care, she might be able to resume most of her old patterns in her apartment, despite her loss and even if it holds bad memories. That is, if that's what she'd like to do.”

Razzi glared back at him.

“By the way, signora,” he said, after a few moments of silence, “what's your impression of the owner of the building next door? Samuel Possle?”

She didn't respond right away but sat there taking time to brood over his refusal to be his ally against Elvira Carelli.

“He struck me as a nice man,” she eventually said. “Maybe he can help me with Elvira.”

“Perhaps. How well do you know him?”

“Hardly at all. I met him once or twice after I bought my building. I've never been the kind of landlady to always be snooping around her own buildings. Some people say he gave noisy parties, but I don't know anything about that.”

“What about his employee, Armando Abdon?”

“Is that his name? I've seen him creeping around every once in a while. I wouldn't let him within fifty feet of my little ones.”

“Do you know someone named Adriana Abdon?”

“You ask a lot of questions for only one fan,” Razzi said, with no attempt to conceal her irritation. “No, I never heard of anyone by that name.”

38

At two o'clock the next afternoon, March 12, Urbino and the Contessa were walking through the puzzle maze in the gardens behind her villa in Asolo. They were muffled against the bitterly cold day, Urbino in his cloak and the Contessa in her mother's ocelot coat, which she wore only on the grounds of the villa when she was alone or with Urbino. The blue sky sparkled above them like a jewel, as it often did, winter and summer, in the hills above Venice.

As they made their way through the maze, the Contessa leaned on Urbino's arm, but it was she who was leading him. Despite Urbino's many negotiations of the maze's devious twists and turns and cul de sacs with the Contessa, he had never learned the route.

“Maybe the reason your Samuel Possle is courting you,
caro
, is that he thinks I'll throw some of my benevolence his way,” the Contessa said, as she looked straight ahead along the line of neatly clipped yews. “In debt, is he? The way he lived in the old days, I'm not surprised. Maybe you should suggest that he have Demetrio Emo conduct tours or exorcisms of the Ca' Pozza! The House of the Mad Woman! Possle seems as if he'd be receptive to it, what with his phrenology and somnambulism.”

“It's not somnambulism. It's called narcolepsy. If anyone's a somnambulist, it would be Armando.”

“Does he take care of Possle and the whole house by himself?”

“So it appears. Maximum care of Possle and very minimal care of the house from what I can see.”

When they came to a junction along the path, the Contessa turned to the left, then to the left again.

“The poor man can't help the way he looks, can he?” the Contessa observed. “Any more than he can help being a mute. And he does remember his dead. That goes a long way.”

“True enough.”

“Don't be discouraged. You've solved the mystery of the melancholy gondolier. At least you know why Gildo is so sad. And why that poor woman Elvira is so disturbed. I suppose that makes two mysteries, doesn't it?”

“Sometimes finding answers only opens up more questions.”

The Contessa looked up at the viewing tower in the center of the maze. It rose across the top of the hedges less than fifteen feet away but they would have to go much farther than that before they could reach it.

“But all roads lead to Rome, as they say”—the Contessa gave a little smile—“unlike my little maze here.”

They reached one of the several spiral junctions of the maze. A covered sign said
LIFT IF LOST
in three languages. The Contessa ignored it and without hesitation took a path to their right that looked identical to the others.

“Everything leads to the Ca' Pozza, you mean,” Urbino said. “It does seem that way. Marco Carelli fell to his death from the building next door to the Ca' Pozza.”

“And his poor mother is a mad woman. Of course I know she isn't mad, but that's what everyone seems to believe. Marta. Benedetta Razzi. Cries, sobs, and laughter in the middle of the night. You've heard them yourself. It isn't hard to understand why the legend of the madwoman of the Ca' Pozza—or the Ca' Pazza—is alive and well.”

“So it seems.”

She came to a halt.

“You will have noticed that I haven't mentioned my clothes. I know that they have a lot of competition for your attention, but don't forget about them. Don't forget about
me!”

“How could I do that, Barbara, even if you let me?”

“If I really thought you might, I'd just leave you here and take away all the signs. Then where would you be?”

“Lost, until you found me.”

“Like twenty years ago.” She patted his arm affectionately and they were in motion again. “We're almost there,
caro
. Just a few more steps and a few more twists and turns.”

PART THREE

THEFTS

39

At ten the next morning, a Wednesday, Urbino walked under the shadow of the Ca' Pozza to the building next door. A card on the corroded row of bell buttons indicated that Elvira Carelli lived on the top floor.