Authors: Edward Sklepowich

Black Bridge (27 page)

“Don't forget what we've come here for! You must leave the man alone! I forbid you!” Signora Zeno said with a force that belied the minimal movement of the thin lips.

Fire flashed in Bambina's dark eyes. Almost sixty years ago her mother had said almost the same words to her. The pain was as sharp now as it had been then.

Bambina nodded her head of curls.

“Yes, Mamma.”

But the fire was still in her eyes and she had to put a chubby hand to her face to hide the smile that was starting to crawl across her bright red lips.

Everywhere Dr. Luigi Vasco went, the past spoke to him, but it was absent of doges and Titian and Marco Polo. It was his own personal past, and not his whole pastâa formidable contemplation, since he was eighty-sevenâonly that part which had unrolled in the serene city.

The memories assaulted him. Yes, they were everywhere. At the Bridge of Sighs, which he had drifted beneath in a gondola sixty years ago. At La Fenice, whose mirrored corridors had reflected the passage of two people caught up in something as operatic as anything taking place on the stage. At the parapet of the Rialto Bridge, where he had waited in a pelting rain, not unlike the one yesterday, for someone to keep a rendezvous.

Vasco could have provided a personal commentary of love and loss on almost every major sight in the guidebooks, ticking them off one after another.

His steps inevitably took him to one building, however, that wasn't mentioned in many of the guidebooks. Yet it was a place filled with even more associations than any of the others.

Vasco first contemplated the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini from the opposite side of the Grand Canal, taking in its classical facade of Istrian stone with a frieze of lions, its veranda, its garden wall covered with Virginia creeper. He took the
traghetto
to the other side and spent several minutes contemplating the humble back of the building. Almost sixty years before he had passed through the first of the iron doors into the small, formal garden and then through the doors of the palazzo itself.

Back then there had been a different contessaâan Italian one. Her house party had ended in death. Love and loss all those years ago, and now he was returning.

A face appeared at one of the windows. For a fleeting moment it was Renata's proud, beautiful face. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. The window was empty. He turned away and walked wearily down the
calle
.

Why had he agreed to come back?

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Elizabeth Connor

ISBN: 978-1-5040-0132-8

This 2015 edition published by
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/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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