Liquid Desires (8 page)

“So you're the one who did all that stuff we saw yesterday!” Eugene said. “I bought one of them. I hope Zuin here doesn't hold back on any of the lire with you. Just jokin', Zuin. I'm sure you're on the up-and-up.”

Novembrini smiled.

“I trust Massimo completely—and so can you. Is your name Macintyre, too?”

“Hennepin—Eugene Hennepin. Urbino and me aren't related, except through marriage.” Eugene gave Urbino a knowing look. “I don't want to hurt your feelings, Mr. Novembrini—am I pronouncin' it right?—but I'm not here to get another one of your paintings. Variety is what I want. You see, I plan to buy something nice every day, like that Guggenheim lady from the palace with the top sliced off.”

Novembrini's surprise was so mild that either he was an accomplished actor or Zuin had already told him about Eugene's quota.

“Look here, Urbino, what do you think of this? It isn't anything like Mr. Novembrini's stuff.”

It was a portrait of a girl of thirteen or fourteen with brown eyes and a pale face. She was sitting on the side of a rock near a pool of water and was carrying an armful of flowers. The execution was simple but there was something haunting about it, mainly, Urbino felt, because of the melancholy expression in the girl's eyes.

“Real pretty,” Eugene went on. “May-Foy loves flowers, and she's nuts about pictures of girls. You know what she thinks of that
Pink Lady
she has. What's this one called?”

“The artist didn't name it,” Zuin said, “but I call her ‘Young Ophelia,' for obvious reasons.”

Eugene squinted at the portrait. Urbino explained about Ophelia's mad scene with flowers and her death by drowning.

“I wish you hadn't told me that. Kind of takes away from the picture. But why don't you just run along, Urbino? Don't worry about me. Mr. Zuin and I know exactly where we stand with each other, don't we, Mr. Zuin? We don't need you standin' around and gawkin' at us.”

Zuin added nothing but Urbino was sure that he agreed.

12

Urbino and Novembrini were sitting at an outdoor café next to the Accademia Bridge. From their vantage point they could take in the boats going up and down the Grand Canal and the people thronging the wooden bridge for a view. The sky was still leaden and the air oppressive. Novembrini sat with a pensive expression on his bony face and a cigarette in his hand. Urbino wondered how anyone could smoke in this heat.

“So you'd like to know the name of the model for
Nude in a Funeral Gondola
,” he said after draining his espresso in one swallow. He took a last drag of his cigarette, stubbed it out, and flicked it into the Grand Canal. He smiled. “It'll be washed out by the tide, Macintyre. About my model, I'm sure you understand that I have a responsibility to protect her from unwelcome attention.”

“I do. She came to a party in Asolo last weekend at the villa of my friend, the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini.” Novembrini gave no sign that he recognized the name. “She left hurriedly and the Contessa would like to contact her.”

A smile curved one side of the artist's broad, sensuous mouth.

“The Contessa doesn't know who her own guest was? What about you?” he asked.

“She looked familiar. I realized yesterday that she was probably the model in your painting. I know her first name.” Urbino hoped that the woman had given her real one. “Flavia.”

Novembrini raised an eyebrow.

“But she didn't mention her last name? Obviously that's the way she wanted it. Flavia must have her reasons.”

Urbino decided on a different tack.

“Are you afraid of her getting more attention than she's had already? I mean because the painting was slashed?”

“Yes, there's that.”

“The woman who slashed the painting got away, didn't she? I was at the Biennale when it happened. She pushed past me and escaped into the crowd.”

Novembrini looked at him sharply just as Urbino had expected him to.

“Massimo told me you saw her. The painting wasn't damaged much. It all happened very fast. The guards couldn't do anything. She sprayed them with a chemical. I don't know whether she was a feminist or an art critic—maybe both!” he added with a strained laugh.

“I may be wrong, Signor Novembrini, but I think that you
do
know. It was Flavia, wasn't it? Flavia in dark glasses and a scarf. When I saw her at the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini's, she looked familiar mainly because of your painting, but it was also because of the glimpse I had of her. I realize that now.”

“Is that why you're asking all these questions? You come to me with some story about a party up in Asolo and all along you just want to get Flavia in trouble—
and
me, too!”

“I'm not free to tell you why I'm interested in Flavia, but it has nothing to do with the slashing. And I have no intention of informing the authorities, although surely someone else recognized her.”

Novembrini shook his head.

“As I said, it happened very fast, and, as you yourself saw, her hair and her eyes were covered. But of course I knew it was Flavia.”

“What about Zuin?”

“He wasn't there, and I didn't tell him it was Flavia. He has mixed feelings about her,” he added with a laugh.

“What's her last name?”

“Brollo.”

The name meant nothing to Urbino but perhaps it would to the Contessa.

“Is she from Venice?”

“Yes, from San Polo. Flavia's mother is dead, and her father lives in the San Polo house with his sister, but Flavia prefers to stay in a pensione near here—the Casa Trieste. She says she's in search of the ideal home, although what she sees in the Casa Trieste is beyond me. It's a rattrap run by a guy called Ladislao Mirko, a drug addict just like his father was, but Flavia won't listen to a word against him. Listen! I don't want her to know that I've told you any of this—or even that we've spoken. We've had a stormy relationship. I wouldn't want to make it any worse.” The fear and uneasiness were back in his deep-set eyes. “She's been upset enough lately, as you can tell from what she did at the Italy Pavilion. She was friends with that girl murdered on Sant'Elena. It hit her pretty hard. I'm sure it had a lot to do with slashing my painting.”

“What do you know about her father?”

There was no hesitation in Novembrini's response.

“Very little, considering Flavia and I have been so close. He's a pianist. His family used to own one of those petrochemical plants in Marghera that spew their filth into the air. He still has a lot of his money invested in petrochemicals. Flavia hates that—says he's helping to pollute Old Mother Earth and destroy our museum city here! Flavia refuses to take any money from him.”

“Have you ever met him?”

“No. Flavia's made it obvious that she wants me to steer clear of him. But I thought it was Flavia you were interested in? Listen, Macintyre, if you say anything to the police about Flavia doing the slashing, I'll deny it.”

A few moments later a small, dark-haired young woman came up to their table and asked Novembrini if she could speak to him. Novembrini was about to get up and draw the young woman aside, but Urbino said that he had to be leaving. As Urbino walked over the Accademia Bridge, he saw the woman start to lift her face to Novembrini's, but the artist said something to her and she put her head down.

13

Half an hour later Urbino walked into a little square near Campo Santa Margherita. Lines of laundry crisscrossed the square and plastic bags of refuse hung from the doorknobs of the buildings. A cat sat in a corner beneath a street shrine of the Blessed Virgin, eyeing a pigeon making its way over the uneven paving stones.

The Casa Trieste looked little different from the other flaking buildings around it except for a small wooden sign announcing its name above its bell. Many of these inexpensive lodging houses were scattered throughout the city. They fell somewhere between
pensioni
, with their obligatory breakfast, and youth hostels.

Urbino pushed the bell several times before the lock was released. He went in. Disinfectant was heavy on the dead air. A dark wooden staircase rose in front of him.

“Upstairs,” said a man's nasal voice in Italian.

A figure detached itself from the darkness. The man was in his early thirties, of less than average height, and extremely thin. Large, lusterless eyes watched Urbino's ascent as thin fingers reached up to tug down a black knit skullcap. The nostrils of his nose were large. Urbino immediately recognized him as the man with Flavia Brollo on Saturday afternoon. He didn't seem to recognize Urbino.

“May I help you?”

“I'd like to speak to Signorina Flavia Brollo.”

Something flashed in the man's dull eyes, but still not recognition. Urbino had the impression the man was either drugged or drunk. He seemed a little unsteady on his feet. Novembrini had said that he took drugs.

“She's not here.”

“When will she be back?”

“She didn't tell me. She comes and she goes.”

“Is she back in Asolo?”

The man looked at Urbino more sharply. He sniffled and ran a finger under his red nose.

“I don't know her business, signore! And if I did, I wouldn't tell a stranger! It isn't easy having a
pensione
,” he whined. “Just this week a woman comes in and wants a room. I ask for her
carta d'identità
. Later, she says, and goes to her room. She takes a bath. Then what does she do? She leaves! How can I pay my bills with guests like that?”

“Is that the kind of guest Signorina Brollo is?”

The man seemed confused. Before he could answer, a woman with a Neapolitan accent came down the hall to retrieve something from the
pensione
's safe. After he gave it to her, he turned back to Urbino and, sniffling again, said, “Signorina Brollo is my friend. I don't consider her a guest. Good day, signore.”

As Urbino was leaving, a small, fair-haired woman in her fifties was ringing the bell. She slipped in before the door closed, looking at Urbino sideways with pale blue, bloodshot eyes. The sweet odor of anisette wafted behind her.

In the
campo
Urbino stopped an elderly man letting himself into his apartment.

“The
padrone
? Ladislao Mirko—a strange name, yes? He and his family came here from Trieste years ago. He's on his own now. He's going to lose that place one of these days. Money problems—always looking for
la grana
!”

The man rubbed his thumb and first finger together.

“Have you noticed a very attractive young woman with auburn hair coming and going to the Casa Trieste?”

The man broke into a big smile.

“Have I! She's a beauty! Mirko is always sniffing after her like a dog. Half the boys and men in the neighborhood would like to get at her.”

Urbino thanked him and started off in the direction of the Danieli to have lunch with Eugene.

14

But eugene had left a message saying that he had gone to Murano with Zuin to visit the glass showrooms.

Outside the Danieli, Urbino joined the press surging along the sun-beaten Riva degli Schiavoni toward the Piazza. An occasional breeze from the lagoon blew hot and humid against Urbino's sweating face, and he felt assaulted by the smell and the noise of the crowd. Urbino always warned friends and relatives against coming to Venice during the summer. It was impossible. Tourists, ravenous for their promised portion of Venice, overran the city like an invading army, pointing cameras like guns and mounting attacks on the sights with a ferocity that had little to do with genuine interest and appreciation.

As Urbino inched his way past a group shoving each other for a glimpse of the Bridge of Sighs, he remembered what Madge Lennox had said about these tourists being like the dead on holiday. She was right. Delirium and desperation were adding their burden to the already thick, almost unbreathable air.

A group of street musicians were performing under the pillar of St. Mark. Their folk song, vaguely familiar to Urbino, emanated in a melancholy stream from a wooden flute, bagpipes, and a drum and cymbals worked with a foot pedal. Letting the swarm of people pass around him, Urbino stopped to listen and then dropped a ten-thousand-lira note into the proffered hat of one of the performers.

The man, unshaven and snaggly-toothed, smiled at him and said in a thick Neapolitan accent, “May you be as far from death as you are from poverty, signore.”

In Piazza San Marco long queues inched toward the Basilica and the Campanile. Hundreds of weary heads were craned toward the Torre dell'Orologio—the clock tower—waiting for the bronze Moors to strike the hour. On the Lido last week Urbino had fantasized about the clock tower melting down into the Piazza like a Dalí painting, but now its brick and blue tile were hard-edged in the glare of the sunshine.

People crowded under the arcades, sat and sprawled on the steps and against the columns, and danced and milled in the large open space of the Piazza as the orchestras outside Florian's and Quadri's played Broadway show tunes. This was not for him, Urbino decided. Turning his back on the Piazza, he made his slow way through the clogged arteries surrounding the historic heart of the city until he reached the quieter alleys and squares and could breathe a sigh of relief. Soon he would be back at the Palazzo Uccello, which even in high season was blessedly remote from all the hubbub, a comfortable ark within the greater ark that was Venice. Behind its walls he could remain apart from what the Contessa called the “faceless hordes of high season,” yet close enough to the flow of life not to feel isolated. The result was that he felt snug, if also a little selfsatisfied, in his solitude.

A long time ago he had read a French novel about a neurotic
fin de siècle
aristocrat who retired to his mansion outside Paris to lead a self-contained, eccentric life of the mind and senses. Urbino liked to think that he was doing something similar at the Palazzo Uccello although he shared very little of the hero's decadent sensibility. But like that aristocratic hero he, too, preferred to distance himself somewhat from vulgar reality. Yet, ironically, Urbino was often in quest of this same “vulgar reality” in his investigations and in his
Venetian Lives
. He told himself, however, that this wasn't perhaps inconsistent at all, since the end result of both endeavors was the kind of order that he craved.