The Last Gondola (18 page)

He pushed her bell several times, but there was no response. He tried the door. It was open. The lock was rusted and broken. Razzi might complain about the danger to her building from the break-ins, but it seemed she wasn't taking precautions. She should give Demetrio Emo or one of the other locksmiths a call.

He began to climb the flights of worn steps. Nothing broke the unnatural quiet until he reached the third floor. There a woman's low sobs burdened the air. Elvira Carelli, wearing her long brown coat, was standing beyond an open door in a small vestibule. In her hands was a man's shoe.

“Signora Carelli,” he said softly.

The woman looked up. Her face showed no trace of tears. Her hair appeared to have been cut unevenly, as if by her own hand. Another sob escaped her.

“You can't have it!” She held the shoe against her chest.

“I'm not here to take anything, signora.”

“You're a policeman! You want to turn the house upside and down. There are no drugs! He was a good boy.”

She raised the shoe in a menacing manner and spoke in a rapid, garbled flow. The words “My boy” and “Ca' Pozza” and “murdered” fell unmistakably upon Urbino's ears. A look in her eye, something both blank and impassioned at the same time, warned him about attributing too much consistency, or reasonableness, to what she said or did.

He let her diatribe come to an end. She lowered the shoe to a less threatening position. A look of softness descended over what he now saw were refined though ravaged features. Her eyes were clear blue. The height scorned by Benedetta Razzi gave her a regal air as she stared at him.

“Here, Signora Carelli. This is yours.”

He drew her yellow scarf from his pocket. She snatched it with her free hand and began to kiss the soiled, tattered piece of cloth.

“Thank you, signore, thank you; but where did you find it? I lost it yesterday afternoon—”

She broke off this rather lucid discourse and stared at him more closely. “You're the signore who was going into the Ca' Pozza. Thank God you weren't harmed! May God always protect you!”

Elvira placed the shoe on the floor beside its mate. Several other pairs were ranged neatly, all of them mens, and all clean and shined.

She placed the scarf around her neck, caressing it.

“Were you on your way out or in, signora?” Elvira returned this with a blank look.

“Perhaps you're about to go on some errands. It would be my pleasure to accompany you and be of whatever assistance I might.”

This formal, even stiff offer was nonetheless sincere. From what Razzi had said, Elvira was all alone in the apartment. She must find it difficult to take care of her needs, given her grieving and her disturbed emotional condition.

“Errands?” the woman repeated. She started to sway.

Urbino caught her arm. “Perhaps you should sit down, signora.”

There was no seat in the vestibule. Beyond it opened a room filled with sunshine. “Here. Let me help you.”

He guided her into the room and to the nearest chair. She sank into it with a little sigh. The room was a parlor, with worn but clean furniture. An open armoire was full of colorful dresses and blouses, neatly arranged on hangers. Despite her difficulties, Elvira was not a lax housekeeper, contrary to what Razzi had feared.

On a small table in a corner a votive candle flickered in front of a black-and-white photograph of a young man, whose features Urbino couldn't make out from a distance.

Urbino was torn between concern for the woman and his desire to ask her a few questions. He moved aside the curtains from one of the windows. Directly across from the open shutters were the heavily draped windows of the Ca' Pozza's top story. The unkempt garden spread below.

Elvira glowered at the Ca' Pozza with rage.

“I'm Signor Urbino Macintyre,” he said. “I live in the Cannaregio. I'm an American, as you've probably realized from my accent.” Elvira seemed to be taking all this in. “I know Signora Benedetta Razzi, your landlady. And I'm acquainted with the owner of the Ca' Pozza, Signor Samuel Possle, another American. I—”

Elvira leaped to her feet and once again gave vent to a stream of rapid Italian, mixing in the Venetian dialect. Urbino picked out words and phrases such as “evil old woman” and “fancy clothes” and “makeup” and “hiding in the house like a spider.” She had as little regard for Benedetta Razzi as Razzi had for her.

She finished, rushed to the window, and threw open the panes. “Marco!” she cried.

Urbino touched her arm. Elvira returned to the chair and started sobbing. Still, no tears came. A cold draught was coming through the open window. Urbino closed it. He picked up the photograph of the young man from the table. “A handsome boy,” he said.

Marco resembled his mother. He was about sixteen or seventeen years old in the photograph. Sitting at a café table, he stared out at the camera with a bright smile. From background details, Urbino identified the Campo San Polo. It was a short but tortuous walk from the apartment.

“And a good boy! Like gold!” Elvira said, a hand pressed against her chest. “My only son. Now I'm all alone.”

“I'm sorry for your loss, Signora Carelli.”

“Snatched away from me. Right in front of my eyes. He died in my arms. My poor Marco!”

She got up and took the photograph from his hands. She kissed it, then put it back on the table. “Come!” she said. “I will show you.”

She went through a door on the other side of the parlor. Urbino followed her and found himself in a small bedroom with a large, unshuttered window without any curtains. Like the parlor the room was neat and clean, but its furniture was new. The bed was freshly made. In a corner were a soccer ball and a pair of sneakers. Elvira was standing in front of the window.

“Look,” she said, pointing downward through the window.

Urbino looked over her shoulder. Below was the
calle
that gave access to the entrance of Elvira's building and farther down to the entrance of the Ca' Pozza. It continued to the bridge over the canal. In the other direction it led toward the covered passageway where Urbino had hesitated the night he had thought he heard footsteps pursuing him.

“I was turning into the alley,” she said. “I saw him fall. It was because of the spider! Her! Her!”

If Razzi felt she had a lot to blame Elvira for, Marco's mother apparently was even more passionate on her side, and perhaps with just cause. All Razzi cared about when it came to her property was the money that it brought in.

Urbino unlatched the window and opened the panes. He looked down into the
calle
. Marco's bedroom was about twelve feet to the side of the entrance. To the immediate right of the window projected a small stone balcony of the Ca' Pozza's top story. The balcony was a foot lower than the broad sill of the bedroom window. Uneven brickwork and crumbling stone molding marred the wall of Razzi's building beneath the bedroom window. Anyone trying to get a foothold would have a hard time of it. He thought he understood why Elvira was cursing Razzi. She should have been taking much better care of her building.

Urbino turned back into the room. Elvira had thrown herself on her son's bed and was beating her fist against a pillow.

Urbino was feeling more and more like an intruder. He bid the woman good-bye but doubted if she heard him. In the parlor, he extracted a calling card from his wallet and placed it with a generous sum of money on the table holding Marco's photograph and the votive candle.

As he was leaving the parlor, he spied something that brought him up short. On a table cluttered with pens and pencils, elastic bands, scissors, and paperback books was a color photograph torn from a magazine. It was one of the photographs of the Contessa that he had been looking at in his library, the one of her wearing her tea dress and carrying her slouch hat in front of the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido.

Urbino's eyes slid toward the armoire of clothes a few feet away. What might he find in there if he had the time to go through it? But Elvira's footsteps were approaching. Urbino left the parlor. The door into the hallway was still open, and he closed it behind him.

40

As Urbino proceeded down the stairway of Elvira's building, he knocked at some of the doors. There was no response until he reached the first floor. A dirty-faced little girl with bright red hair opened the door.

A weary-looking woman appeared behind her. Her hair was several shades darker than the little girl's.

“Haven't I told you never to open the door, Maria?” she said.

She put an arm around her daughter and took in Urbino's long, black cloak.

He introduced himself and said that he was concerned about one of her neighbors, Elvira Carelli.

The woman became less wary. A look of sympathy came over her face. “Poor Elvira,” she said. “But what is it that you want with me, signore?”

“Do you know if there is anyone to look after her?”

“I check on her from time to time and bring her food or old magazines and newspapers that we've finished with. Sometimes she tells me to go away. Her mind isn't right, and how can you expect anything else? To have her son turn out so bad and then to die the way he did.”

“He turned out bad, you say?”

He had to raise his voice as a child started to cry from inside the apartment.

The woman looked apprehensively over her shoulder. When she turned back to Urbino, the suspicious look she had had in her eye earlier had returned. “I thought you said you knew Elvira,” she said.

“I do, but it's only been since Marco's death. And she doesn't say anything about the troubles she might have had with him.”

“But what do you expect? She's a mother. Or she was, poor thing.”

She ran her fingers through her daughter's hair.

“Drugs, ever since he was thirteen. He seemed to have a good heart, but the drugs destroyed everything. Just as his death is doing to her.”

“Were you in the building when he fell?”

“Yes. But I didn't see or hear anything until she screamed. No one did. The police spoke to everyone in the building. Elvira was the only person to see him fall.”

“How do you think it came about that he fell?”

“You know how young people are these days. Maybe he climbed out of his window just for the fun of it and lost his balance.”

Once again the child cried from inside the apartment.

“You'll have to excuse me, signore. I must see to my little one. Don't worry about Elvira. We're doing our best to help her. With the help of God, she'll get through this.”

She had her doubts just as Urbino did. He gave her his card.

“Call me if you ever think I might be of help to Elvira. By the way, signora, when was the last time you saw Benedetta Razzi here in the building?”

“Here, signore? That would be strange! She's never stirred more than fifty feet from her apartment in all the time I've known her, and that's going on ten years! It would be like seeing a ghost if she was anywhere near here!”

“What about the building next door? The one on the canal? Do many people come and go?”

The woman stiffened slightly. A cautious look came over her face.

“The Ca' Pozza? The only person I've ever seen come in or out is the strange man, the caretaker of the American gentleman. I've never spoken to him or even seen the American. It's just the two of them in the building.”

“Don't they have any help?”

“None that I've ever seen. The caretaker does everything. I see him at the Rialto markets and the shops from time to time. He knows just what he wants. Buys it without wasting a minute. He does the same at my husband's tobacco and newspaper kiosk near San Polo. He comes in two or three times a month and buys a whole pile of newspapers and magazines, all sorts of magazines. It must be to keep the sick American entertained.”

“I've seen Elvira in front of the building once or twice. She seemed very disturbed.”

The woman nodded. “She curses it sometimes, but she does the same thing to the Church of San Polo. Marco was buried from there. But the next minute she'll be singing. She curses the children and me. I try not to let it bother me. But excuse me, signore, I must go.”

41

When Urbino left Razzi's building, he took a long, reflective walk to the Campo San Zanipolo on the other side of the Grand Canal by the lagoon. There in the square he contemplated the large equestrian statue of the fifteenth-century military leader Colleoni.

He always found some inspiration from the sight of the man and his horse in all their virile nobility. But the statue had nothing to say to him today, unless it whispered about the differences between Colleoni's age and the diminished one that Urbino and Possle lived in. The days of fine, uncomplicated heroics were long past, although Urbino realized that he shouldn't delude himself that he could have or ever would have been a man like Colleoni or even Byron, or would have wanted to be. And yet he turned his back on the statue with a feeling of humility and frustration.

He approached the large Renaissance building behind the statue. It was the municipal hospital. Its facade was heavily decorated with carved cornices, ornate columns and capitals, graceful arches, windows, and lunettes. But these impressive details, no more than the trompe l'oeil sculptures and pedestals adorned with dancing children on either side of the main door, could not dispel the air of gloom that overcame Urbino whenever he entered the building.

The scream of an ambulance siren penetrated the thick walls of the building as Urbino sought out his friend Paola, who coordinated some of the social services associated with the hospital. He described Elvira Carelli's situation to her. She made a few phone calls and learned that Elvira wasn't on any of the city's lists for counseling or house visits. He got her promise that someone would be sent to see her as soon as possible.