The City of Falling Angels

by John Berendt

“But we won’t do that to you,” she said, smiling, and her smile was perfectly symmetrical, not higher on one side than the other. The vermilion border of her lip was smooth and unpuckered.

  Bob Guthrie sat looking at Barbara Berlingieri’s still-beautiful face, admiring his own handiwork, and as he mused, he heard her say through the smile he had saved, “This is what we’re willing to give you. You can be the president of the Junior Committee. And when we create an advisory committee, we will make you president of that, too.”

  Guthrie sat in silence for a moment, mulling over Barbara Berlingieri’s purposely degrading offer and letting his mind wander a bit: What if he had stepped aside and let the surgeon at the hospital sew up her face instead of doing it himself? And what if the head surgeon, who had never performed plastic surgery before, had tightened the stitching of the muscles in her cheek a bit too much and left her with a sneer instead of her natural smile? What if he had sewn the vermilion border straight across, without first making a notch, so that it had a permanent pucker? No. It was better that Bob Guthrie had stepped into the breach. Because now and for the rest of her life, Barbara Berlingieri would look into her mirror upon rising, check her reflection as she passed shop windows, peer into her compact while refreshing her makeup, and in these and a dozen other ways every day confront her image and be reminded of Bob Guthrie’s genius and of her own towering ingratitude.

  “Barbara,” he said. “You blew it.”

  “I did what?”

  “You wasted your proxies. You should have kept quiet about them and waited until the fall meeting, after the gala, when we vote on directors. That’s the vote that counts. But by then, now that you’ve tipped your hand, I’ll have proxies of my own. Then we’ll see who really has the votes.”

  MORE THAN THREE HUNDRED PEOPLE GATHERED IN VENICE for the Save Venice gala at the end of the summer of 1997. This year, as always, jewelers in St. Mark’s extended their hours, knowing that with the Save Venice crowd in town, they were about to have the best week of the year. Ten years had passed since the first gala, when Save Venice had set its sights on restoring the Miracoli Church. The unveiling of the church was scheduled for later in the fall. In its first ten years, the organization had grown in stature and accomplishment. Its galas were always fully subscribed, despite the $3,000 ticket price, not including hotel and airfare. Its official mast-head now sported thirteen titled individuals, not just half a dozen. And this year eight royals had come to the gala as guests of honor. The four-day program included a tour of three vineyards on the mainland, parties in private palaces, and a full complement of culturally oriented treasure hunts, tours, and lectures. The Fenice opera company lent props and scenery for the décor at one of the dinners, and once again Peter Duchin and Bobby Short provided music at the formal ball.

  As usual, the weather was sultry and the atmosphere a heady mixture of wealth, luxury, privilege, and power in the midst of the glories of Venice. But this year there was an undercurrent of gossip about the growing rift within Save Venice. The charges that the Guthries had their hands in the till, although proven groundless, were nonetheless heard around the Cipriani pool. Bea Guthrie noticed, or perhaps imagined, that certain people turned their backs when she approached. During a lunch party on the island of Torcello, Bob Guthrie greeted Princess Michael of Kent, who had been a frequent guest at Save Venice parties over the past decade. He addressed her, as he had always done, with her given name, Marie-Christine. The princess stiffened and said, “You should call me ‘ma’am.’”

  At the board meeting immediately following the gala, both Bob Guthrie and Larry Lovett brought proxies, each hoping to shift the balance of power in his own favor. However, several members of the board were not ready for a showdown, and they abstained, depriving both sides of a majority. The duel of proxies ended in a compromise.

  But a brand-new controversy had arisen. It had been discovered that Larry Lovett had quietly renounced his American citizenship some years before. He was now a citizen of Ireland and no longer paid American taxes. Several board members were incensed. “If you want to be a philanthropist and lead a life of luxury, fine,” said one of them, “but first you pay your taxes.” Terry Stanfill, the chairman of the nominating committee and wife of the former head of 20th Century Fox and MGM, told Lovett she could not in good conscience renominate him for another term as chairman. Lovett protested, but it was a losing battle. The board felt it was unwise for a tax-exempt American charity to be headed by someone the IRS might view as a tax fugitive. Lovett was elected instead to the new position of “international chairman” of Save Venice.

  This, then, was the state of affairs when Lesa Marcello received the good news that the Torta Prize was going to be awarded to Save Venice and Larry Lovett.

  AFTER READING GUTHRIE’S FAX demanding that the prize be given to Save Venice as a whole or not at all, Countess Marcello sat down to write him a reply. She explained that the Torta Prize was always given to an individual, and that if an organization was intended as a recipient, it would be given “in the name of” someone who represented the organization, in this case Larry Lovett. She said she feared there was no way she could give Guthrie’s message to the prize committee without insulting them and making it obvious that an embarrassing skirmish was taking place within Save Venice. She said she hoped the organization’s internal problems could be resolved privately.

  Guthrie was not mollified. He suspected from the outset that Barbara Berlingieri had arranged for Lovett to be singled out for the Torta Prize. Alexis Gregory had admitted as much by gleefully passing the word that “Barbara engineered it all for Larry.” Guthrie saw it as yet another galling instance of Lovett’s insatiable craving for recognition. He picked up the phone, called one of the members of the Torta Prize committee, and made his position unmistakably clear.

  Word of Guthrie’s phone call spread quickly in Venice. His manner was said to have been “intimidating.” Lesa Marcello sent him another fax to say that members of the committee were “extremely upset” by his call and dumbfounded that he would even consider refusing the prize. “This is what I was anxiously hoping to avoid,” she said. “The situation is very, very bad.”

  The prize committee gave in to Guthrie, but grudgingly. They omitted Lovett’s name from the award citation but included a photograph of him, along with words of praise, in the printed program handed out at the award ceremony.

  Guthrie was now convinced that Lovett and Barbara Berlingieri had “subverted” Lesa, giving her the impression she was no longer answerable to New York. This would account, he thought, for her reluctance to convey his objections to the prize committee and for her explanation that the prize was always given to individuals, which was, in fact, the rule—but, Guthrie contended, there had been exceptions. Guthrie suspected that Lesa was being used by Larry and Barbara; she was passing information to them, spying on him. He decided to take action, and so, in a brief phone call one morning in mid-January 1998, he fired her.

  The phone call was in fact nominally made by Paul Wallace, chairman of the executive committee, but it had Guthrie’s imprimatur stamped all over it. And although Wallace made the appropriate sounds—Lesa’s work superb . . . Save Venice cutting costs . . . hope you’ll accept six-month retainer as consultant . . . want to dedicate a Save Venice restoration in your name—the message was clear: Countess Marcello had been fired without notice and would kindly clean out her desk by morning. Guthrie sent a brief fax to the UNESCO office announcing the name of the new director of the Venice office, without even mentioning Lesa Marcello.

  Within a day, news of Lesa Marcello’s abrupt dismissal had spread through the immediate Venetian circles and beyond, to people who knew none of the principals and had only a vague notion of Save Venice. The story, as told in wine bars and food shops, was shorn of detail: An organization of rich Americans had fired a blameless Venetian countess. What had begun as a petty and ignoble private squabble had turned into a public insult to Venice and Veneti
ans.

  The firing deepened the split on the board of Save Venice. One board member resigned upon hearing the news—Professor Wolf-gang Wolters, an art historian who had worked closely with Lesa Marcello on the Miracoli Church.

  Girolamo Marcello, Lesa’s husband and one of the Venetians on the board, did not resign. Instead he quietly made arrangements to come to New York for the next Save Venice board meeting. He had never before attended a board meeting in New York, only the ones in Venice. When he walked through the door of the University Club where the meeting was held, Bob and Bea Guthrie glanced at each other. Larry Lovett and Barbara Berlingieri were the only two people present who seemed to know what was about to happen.

  But first the board heard detailed reports on eighteen Save Venice projects, including the restoration of a painting by Carpaccio and work in progress on the façade of the Scuola Grande di San Marco. The board then agreed to buy a thirty-five-foot cherry picker for use in restoration projects, heard a proposal to fund a fellowship for a young conservator to work with leading restorers in Venice, and voted to share the cost of a microfilm reader/printer for the Venice State Archives.

  Then Count Marcello took the floor. He handed out copies of an English translation of his prepared remarks, which he was going to read in Italian. “My English is not so good,” he told me afterward, “and I was steamed up, so I would not have spoken very clearly.” He adjusted his reading glasses and then began.

  “I have come here today to discuss a situation of grave concern to Venice and to you. In recent months, an unpleasant internal conflict within Save Venice has spoiled the delicate relationship between Save Venice and Venice itself. And it has to stop. The damage to the reputation and image of Save Venice is far worse than it may appear to you from New York.”

  Count Marcello described as a piece of arrogance Bob Guthrie’s threat that the board of Save Venice would refuse the Torta Prize. “And as I am a member of the board of Save Venice, I know Bob Guthrie was speaking without board authorization.”

  As for the firing of his wife, Lesa, Count Marcello acknowledged the right of management to dismiss an employee, but he objected to the manner in which it was done.

  “You may not be aware,” he said, “that in Venice the termination of a work relationship that has lasted for six years, with no notice, invariably implies dishonesty by the person involved. This is what has been done to Lesa, and this is what I resent.

  “To be Venetian,” Marcello went on, “and to know how to live in Venice is an art. It is our way of living, so different from the rest of the world. Venice is built not only of stone but of a very thin web of words, spoken and remembered, of stories and legends, of eyewitness accounts and hearsay. To work and operate in Venice means first of all to understand its differences and its fragile equilibrium. In Venice we move delicately and in silence. And with great subtlety. We are a very Byzantine people, and that is certainly not easy to understand.”

  Marcello cast a glance at his audience. Except for the two or three who were able to follow his Italian, they were reading along, and the mood was uniformly solemn. The board members of Save Venice, who thought of themselves as benefactors of Venice, knowledgeable and sophisticated in the ways of their adopted city, were receiving a dressing-down, as if they were no better than an unruly mob of litterbug tourists.

  “I must tell you how the recent turmoil in Save Venice has been perceived in Venice. It is seen as evidence that a few members of the board do not consider Save Venice an association of friends who do good work for Venice but rather as a means to gain personal prestige and power. We Venetians regard our city with the same ancient civic sense with which we have built, governed, and loved it for centuries, and it is very painful to see it being used in this manner.

  “As much as we are truly grateful for Save Venice’s remarkable generosity in the past, we Venetians are loath to accept help from those who have so little respect for us.”

  Almost as an afterthought, Marcello concluded his remarks with the comment, “What course of action the board should now take is for you to decide, but I certainly feel that Dr. Guthrie should be stripped of all powers.”

  Upon his return to Venice, Marcello showed me his speech. It was a long speech, rambling at times, but unrelenting in its expression of restrained outrage.

  “And how did they react?” I asked.

  “Some shook their heads and said, ‘Finally!’ But others were angry. One man said to me in Italian, ‘You have some nerve coming here and talking like that.’ And I said, ‘You know, when it’s necessary to say such things, it’s necessary also to have some nerve.”

  I handed the speech back to him. “Strong stuff,” I said, “but you once told me that Venetians always mean the opposite of what they say.”

  Count Marcello smiled. “True, and when I told you that, I meant the opposite of what I said.”

  THE BATTLE LINES WERE DRAWN. Bob Guthrie’s three-year term as a member of the board was due to expire four months later at the September 1998 board meeting in Venice. He would then have to stand for reelection and would need a majority vote of the twenty-nine board members to retain a seat on the board. Anything less would, in effect, throw him out of Save Venice altogether.

  As the summer wore on, the board members discussed the crisis among themselves, and it became apparent that in addition to the power struggle between Guthrie and Lovett, there was a subterranean issue that only now came to the surface. Certain members sympathetic to Lovett had begun to feel that Save Venice had lost its aura of exclusivity, that the Guthries had taken control of the invitation list with the result that many of the people buying tickets and showing up at parties and galas were . . . “not our sort.” It was an echo of the social divide that had split Colonel Gray’s old Venice Committee in the early 1970s and ended with a walkout and the creation of Save Venice.

  One board member who would have been the first to admit that he might not be the Lovett “sort,” was Jack Wasserman, a New York international-trade lawyer who was an associate of corporate-takeover specialist Carl Icahn. Wasserman’s attachment to Venice had grown out of his fascination, since college, with the life and poetry of Lord Byron. Wasserman was president of the Lord Byron Society of America and owned a major collection of Byron first editions. Although deeply devoted to Byron and Byron scholarship, he was by no means an academic. “Byron was useful when I came to Italy for the first time on a student ship forty years ago,” he said. “The first two lines of Byron’s poetry got you laid every night.”

  Wasserman was having a late lunch at a corner table in Harry’s Bar when I joined him. He introduced me to a well-behaved black standard poodle sitting under the table, nursing a bowl of water. The poodle had been named after the British war secretary who had been Lord Byron’s friend, traveling companion, and executor, John Cam Hobhouse.

  “Save Venice was my first exposure to so-called high society,” said Wasserman. “My wife and I had been going to the galas for years and meeting these fancy, type-A people. Or at least looking at them. So when they asked me to be on the board, because they didn’t have a lawyer and they were growing very fast and legal questions were always coming up, I said, ‘Sure.’ I mean, I’m very impressed with myself! I’m on the board with Oscar de la Renta. That’s very impressive people, I gotta admit.

  “But these two guys, Larry and Bob, from my perspective—Larry is very glamorous, a wonderful social individual, and a very seductive man. You know, when you’re in Larry’s presence, you’re always in a little bit of awe. He seems to have this halo around him. Bob doesn’t have that. But Bob’s background, his style of living, is so extraordinary that you always listen carefully to what he says.

  “Bob and Bea Guthrie work from six o’clock in the morning till midnight, like dogs. Dogs! They’ll talk to anybody. People call up: ‘I don’t like my table, I didn’t like where I was sitting last night.’ Bob and Bea take care of it. Happy to do it, no problem. Larry doesn’t work on Save Venice
on a daily basis. He doesn’t work on a monthly basis. That isn’t his function. His function is to be Mr. Glamorous and, you know, get this fancy crowd to come to the party, so three hundred other people will pay to be in the same room with them. That’s his job, and God knows it’s valuable. But he doesn’t work at the parties, not the way Bob does. Larry’s aloof. Aloof! It’s like talking to God! I mean, he always shows up, dressed to the nines, in the back of his private motorboat with some princess or something. He gets out and pronounces himself pleased that things are going well, and then he gets back in his boat with the princess, and off he goes. It’s wonderful to watch. It’s imperial. I mean, I’m in awe. It’s like being with the fucking doge.