Liquid Desires (21 page)

Brollo said this with an unemphatic air, as if the only way it was of concern to him was as an easement of the Contessa's apprehensions. His assurance, however, did not address itself to another related question, other than murder, that Urbino felt hanging in the air between them.

Brollo must have felt it as well, for he added, “Dear, dead Flavia was
my
daughter.” This time there was an emphasis clearly on the possessive. He steepled his long, thin fingers by his lips and looked evenly at Urbino. “
Our
daughter.”

Urbino's eyes flicked in the direction of the portrait of the beautiful Regina Brollo, so much like her daughter. When he looked back at Brollo, the pianist was staring at him with a blank, inscrutable look.

“Where my daughter got such a notion is beyond me, Signor Macintyre,” Brollo said, his fingers still steepled. Brollo threw this off too casually for Urbino not to suspect the opposite of what the man was saying. “She had an extraordinary imagination, always telling tales and making up the most preposterous stories. She was quite histrionic. Some people say that all women are actresses and that we men are to blame, but I reject such theories. For my part, and in my own willing way, I have been a victim of women. It has been one of the best-kept secrets of my life that only of late do I find comfortable to admit. My Flavia was a real Sarah Bernhardt—or Eleonora Duse, I should say, an actress she admired. Flavia created a role for herself—how and with whose help I can only guess at. I hope this last role gave her some pleasure, considering the pain it's brought to a fine woman like the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini.”

Urbino found it hard to believe that Brollo was quite so unconcerned that Flavia had had what he called a “notion” that the Conte da Capo-Zendrini was her father. Surely Lorenzo was reining in his true reaction and feeling. Control seemed to be very important to Brollo, a control not only over himself but perhaps over Regina and Flavia as well.

“Could some idle talk she overheard as a child have become magnified in her mind over the years?” Urbino asked, thinking of the argument that Ladislao Mirko and Flavia had overheard the summer of Regina Brollo's death. “This might have been the start of what you call her ‘notion.'”

“Idle talk? But no one had anything but the best to say about Regina.”

“Excuse me for having to bring this up, Signor Brollo,” Urbino said, remembering what Mirko had told him about Regina, “but was it at all possible that your wife might have said something to Flavia?”

Brollo looked at him as if Urbino had slapped his face. In fact, two red spots appeared on his cheeks. Urbino sensed that the man's control was being put to the test now.

“Perhaps you've heard that my beautiful wife was emotionally unstable, Signor Macintyre. There's no dispute that
she
committed suicide. But to imply that she could have corrupted our daughter with such a filthy lie is to strike the lowest blow at not only me but especially at her!”

Brollo stood up. So did Urbino. Brollo held himself imperially, somehow succeeding in looking down at Urbino even though they were about the same height.

“If you are in the habit of affronting people in such a manner, it is no wonder that you have a bruise under your eye! My wife barely knew the Conte da Capo-Zendrini!”

In an attempt to assuage Brollo, Urbino said, “Sometimes a child likes to think he's a kind of changeling, dropped in the midst of the wrong family. You say that Flavia had a great imagination. Maybe a fantasy persisted from her childhood and—”

“Such a child with such a thought can only be one who is unhappy with his home. My Flavia had a perfectly happy childhood! Perfectly happy!” Brollo insisted. Urbino saw that he had in no way assuaged Brollo. Quite the opposite. “I can see that I was wrong to assume you were a man of
gentilezza
, Signor Macintyre. Perhaps you have been misled into these lapses of decorum by the lies of someone. That's it, isn't it, Signor Macintyre? Who was it who suggested that my wife would ever have told such stories to Flavia? Was it that artist fellow who doesn't care how he exploited my daughter? Or Ladislao Mirko who doesn't know what day of the week or what year it is—who wheedled money out of Flavia to put up that big nose of his and inject into his scrawny arms?”

“You mention Ladislao Mirko. What kind of relationship did your daughter have with him?”

Brollo stared at him coldly, his thin lips looking like a knife wound.

“‘Relationship'! My daughter befriended that fool, pitied him, and poured out her pocketbook to him time after time, but that was it! Flavia had no interest in him other than what a child would have for an ugly little dog found in the street. She had a good heart—too good!”

“But what about Mirko's interest in her?”

“I take it you've met that sad excuse for a man! Well, just look at him. Just smell him! I called him a dog and that's just what he is, and like a dog he—”

Brollo didn't finish expressing his thought but shook his head slowly.

“This world is full of animals, Signor Macintyre. Pleasure and sensation are all most people seem to think about. If I were a younger man—younger than you”—he added with a cold smile—“I would despair. Now that my Flavia is gone, I can face what the world will become with more equanimity, but it disturbs me to my soul. It should disturb us all.” Brollo stared at Urbino silently for a few moments, several long fingers tapping the side of his cheek. “There are many kinds of animals, Signor Macintyre. And Bruno Novembrini is just as much one, despite his paint brushes and canvases, as Ladislao Mirko. Poor Flavia was as misled by him as she was by that drug addict.”

“Are you aware that it was Flavia who slashed Bruno Novembrini's painting at the Biennale?”

“I suspected as much. It's the kind of thing she would do—and in the case of that painting, just the thing it deserved, and don't think it wasn't!”

“Have you ever seen the painting?”

“Certainly not! My taste inclines to more conventional portraits”—he nodded in the direction of the walls—“and most certainly not to nudes of my own daughter! I think the time has come for you to leave.”

Annabella had slipped back into the room during the last few minutes and was standing tentatively in front of the open door. Brollo didn't seem to notice her. Once again he managed to master his anger. He looked over at his wife's portrait again.

“So you see, Signor Macintyre, even though I'm concerned about this story my daughter told you and the Contessa, not for a moment do I believe that she was anything but the victim of someone's malice toward her—or toward my wife and myself, or the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini—and I certainly don't give any credence to this ‘feeling' of yours that she was murdered. Flavia was
my
daughter—
our
daughter. It's a cruel joke that you can prove only that a man is
not
someone's father, but where can proof be found that he
is
? I never needed any. I certainly wasn't going to have my belief and trust turned upside down by a silly notion.”

It was an impassioned little speech, but Urbino found something strained and calculated breaking through it.

As Brollo turned from the portrait, he noticed his sister.

“Oh, it's you, Annabella dear. I hope we're not taking you away from your lovely flowers but Signor Macintyre was just leaving. Perhaps you could show him to the door.”

“He found his way up by himself,” Annabella Brollo said in Italian in a thin, whispery voice. She went over to pick up the tray, looking pointedly at the anisette bottle. A grim smile only made her face seem more pinched and sharp.

“The mother always knows,” she said. Her voice was a suffocated whisper, but yet distinct enough for both Urbino and Brollo to hear. As she walked toward the open door, she added a bit more loudly, “It would be a strange mother who did not know, yes?”

She went through the door and closed it quietly.

“Words of womanly wisdom!” Brollo said with a forced laugh. “My sister doesn't speak much but when she does she gets to the heart of things. Annabella is right. Only the mother really knows. Many men with wives different from my faithful Regina are at their mercy. Didn't Ibsen write a tragedy about just such a situation, Signor Macintyre?”

“I believe it was Strindberg,” Urbino said, once again supplying the correct dramatist as he had yesterday for Violetta Volpi.

Before he left Brollo alone in the dark
sala
, Urbino asked what funeral arrangements were being planned for Flavia. Brollo gave a skeptical little smile when Urbino added that the Contessa might like to pay her respects.

“Flavia didn't believe in wakes or funerals. Only the immediate family will be present for the cremation on San Michele. Both Flavia and her mother had a horror of burial. Cremation is the sensible choice for beautiful women, don't you think? Good day, Signor Macintyre.”

As Urbino walked away from the Palazzo Brollo in the enervating heat, he realized that he might not have learned anything new about Flavia, but he had certainly learned a great deal about Lorenzo Brollo. This could only be an asset as he continued to piece together Flavia's twisted and confusing life. What must it have been like for her to grow up with Brollo as her father—a man who seemed to believe that control was always a virtue? He could better understand now why Flavia had not got along with her father—had, in fact, according to both Bruno Novembrini and Ladislao Mirko, despised him.

There was another aspect to Brollo's need for control that disturbed Urbino. This was the possessive way he spoke about his dead wife—and, to a certain extent, about his dead daughter. “That's my late wife on the wall there,” he had said, pointing to Regina's portrait. A perfectly normal thing to say, perhaps, but it had made Urbino feel as if Brollo were reducing his wife to an object. It was completely possible that Urbino was reading these things into Brollo's words and behavior because he didn't like the man, but he didn't think so. There was something about him that was “off,” like some faint but nonetheless bad odor. That was the only way Urbino could express it. It was there when Brollo had talked about Novembrini's nude portrait of Flavia and when he had fumed against the possibility that his wife could have been sick enough to fill Flavia's mind with the story about the Conte da Capo-Zendrini.

And what about Annabella Brollo and her puzzling comment? Brollo had laughed it off but it had obviously bothered him. Mirko said that Annabella had been coming up the stairs during the argument at Lago di Garda. Had she heard anything?

Something Urbino had been thinking about yesterday came back to trouble him now as, only a few minutes away from where he had been mugged yesterday, he entered the almost deserted Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio. Why had Flavia only recently started to act on her belief that the Conte was her father? Had something compelled her to face the truth finally? What had happened in her life recently that might offer some explanation?

Urbino stopped for some wine and crustless
tramezzini
sandwiches at a crowded, air-conditioned bar across from the Church of San Giacomo dell'Orio. The patrons, most of them workingmen, sat around discussing their upcoming Ferragosto trips to the seaside and the country, the recent arrests in Mestre of a counterfeiting ring, and, of course, soccer and the lottery.

Urbino found the normalcy of their conversation a needed reminder that life has an ordinary side lived by most people. It was the part of life he himself enjoyed at the Palazzo Uccello and with his friends. An act like Flavia's murder turned all this upside down and cried out for a solution so that life could return, at least for a time, to the way it had been.

After one more glass of wine Urbino went out into the oppressive heat, asking himself again what could have happened recently to Flavia to explain her descent on the Contessa's garden party.

Two things stood out. One was Flavia's slashing of Bruno Novembrini's
Nude in a Funeral Gondola
exactly a week before her death. The other was the rape and murder of her friend Nicolina Ricci ten days before the slashing. This had happened in the Sant'Elena district adjacent to the Giardini Pubblici where the Biennale modern art show was held.

Urbino realized it was time for him to learn something about the relationship between Flavia and the fifteen-year-old Nicolina. He hurried toward the nearest boat landing.

16

An hour later Emma Ricci, the mother of the murdered Nicolina, led Urbino into a small, airless parlor crowded with worn furniture and a television set. She was a small, dark-haired woman in her forties. Fatigue pocketed the area beneath her brown eyes.

On an old bureau a votive candle flickered in front of a black-and-white photograph. It was the same photograph of Nicolina that had appeared in the paper, showing a sweet-faced girl with dark hair and large, timid eyes.

Signora Ricci indicated a sagging armchair for Urbino to take. She sat down on the sofa. The Ricci apartment was on the top floor of a modern block of flats in the Sant'Elena quarter at the easternmost extreme of the city. Urbino, who was sweating from his long climb up the windowless, littered stairs, took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

“Yes, I was acquainted with Flavia Brollo,” Urbino explained again, after having given his condolences on the death of her daughter. “I'm an American living in Venice. My friend the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini, who also knew Flavia, would like to try to understand what happened to her. It's possible she was murdered like your own daughter.”

Signora Ricci blessed herself.

“If that's true, it doesn't surprise me, signore, not the way the world has become.” Signora Ricci had a quiet, meek voice. “But suicide is what I thought. Flavia was very upset over my Nicolina's death.”