The Veils of Venice

by Edward Sklepowich

  A few minutes later, Urbino ascended the staircase past the Pindar portego to the floor occupied by Apollonia, Alessandro, and Eufrosina. A man’s muffled voice came from the other side of the closed door. Urbino could not make out what it was saying, but it continued without interruption until he knocked.

  Alessandro admitted Urbino into the salotto. His attractive face was unshaved. He was dressed in a dark-blue turtleneck sweater, a maroon scarf, and brown corduroy trousers whose kneecaps were bagged and shiny with age. He held a worn leather-covered book, but his hand concealed the title.

  Apollonia, black-draped and with her head tightly wrapped in black lace, was in imperious possession of the sofa. Her face looked much more gaunt than it had at the funeral. A small electric space heater was positioned in front of the sofa. The odor of camphor was strong on the closed air in the room.

  Apollonia gave Urbino a stern nod. Eufrosina, sitting across from Apollonia in a mahogany armchair with a high back, acknowledged him with the ghost of a smile. Alessandro stood behind his mother.

  Eufrosina was wearing a brown wool trouser suit. A green knit hat was pulled down low over her auburn hair.

  If Urbino were to apply Eufrosina’s theory about hands to her own, he would have said, from the way one was grasped tightly in the other, that she was nervous and trying her best to conceal it. Her hands were gloved, not in the beige leather gloves she had been wearing at Florian’s, but black cotton ones. Eufrosina’s preference for gloves was unusual, considering her series of photographs of bare hands, but perhaps she found pleasure in emulating her mother, who was wearing her habitual gloves of black kid.

  Apollonia had not asked Urbino to sit down.

  A low table held an old brass samovar with teacups, a camera, a woodcarving knife and a gouge, a missal, a labeled pharmacy flask containing bright green liquid, and three small round lidded containers covered in Venetian paper. One of them was unlidded. Bright red pills nested inside.

  ‘Get the box for Urbino.’ Apollonia’s voice was weak.

  Eufrosina started to get up.

  ‘I meant Alessandro.’

  Alessandro went to the sideboard, which was thick with triptychs, icons, and wooden statues of saints. One of the statues was of the Blessed Virgin Mary, treading on a serpent. The other was of St Anthony. The statues had an unfinished, yet appealing quality to them precisely because of their roughness. They were most likely Alessandro’s handiwork.

  Alessandro took the shagreen box from beneath its white lace covering.

  ‘I appreciate that you’re letting me see them again despite your troubles,’ Urbino said.

  ‘We have an agreement,’ Apollonia said. ‘And the sooner you finish, the sooner my aunt’s letters can be at rest again.’

  Eufrosina, whose nervousness had only increased during the past few minutes, picked up the camera from the table. It was a traditional camera, not a digital one.

  Apollonia stared at the camera. ‘Don’t go pointing that thing at me!’

  ‘I wasn’t, mamma. I thought I’d take some photographs of Urbino’s hands carrying great aunt Efigenia’s box.’

  Eufrosina withdrew a handkerchief from her pocket and gently brushed it over the camera. ‘I wish you’d be more careful with your shavings, Alessandro. They get everywhere. You should do your carving in your room.’

  ‘He can do it where he likes. St Joseph was a carpenter. Poor devoted St Joseph. Hardly anyone thinks about him. A sadly neglected saint. And Christ was a carpenter. Our Alessandro is following their example with his woodcarving, are you not, my dear?’

  Eufrosina positioned the camera above Urbino’s hands, to one side, and then – to his surprise – kneeled on the Turkey carpet for some shots from below.

  ‘Would you like another cushion, mamma?’ Alessandro took one from a pile in a corner of the room, plumped it, and placed it behind his mother’s back. ‘Some more tea?’

  ‘No, thank you, dear.’

  ‘What you should have is another spoonful of the syrup.’

  ‘An excellent idea. I’m glad that one of my children has good sense.’

  Alessandro poured green liquid from the bottle into a teaspoon and administered the medicine to his mother, careful not to get even a droplet on the voluminous lace veil that covered her shoulders and chest. He patted her mouth with a napkin.

  Apollonia leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

  Eufrosina had been observing her brother’s attentions with an impassive face. She now stared at her mother, who was breathing smoothly. In a hoarse whisper, moving closer to Urbino, she said, ‘Please tell Barbara that the new photographs will be better. I’ll begin to take them soon.’

  Apollonia snapped to attention. ‘What’s that?’ A rattle came from her chest. ‘What are you whispering to Urbino? That is rude. Have I brought you up to be like that? If you think he is going to lend you any money, you are sadly mistaken.’

  Alessandro, who was sticking to his mother like a limpet, said, ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Apollonia reached up to pat her son’s hand. ‘You probably told him you’d pay him back with your inheritance! Don’t hold your breath, my devoted daughter. Just because you’ve thrown away your dead husband’s money is no concern of mine. Money slips through your fingers like water.’

  ‘She was talking about her photographs,’ Urbino said.

  Eufrosina gave him a grateful look as she returned to her armchair.

  ‘Her photographs!’ Apollonia said scornfully. ‘Photographs and hands! Hands and photographs! Hands reveal everything, she says. Yours are always grabbing money!’

  Eufrosina’s long face, which had turned paler, wore the weary, resigned look of someone who had become accustomed to verbal abuse.

  Apollonia started to cough. Red patches appeared on her cheeks. Alessandro brought her a glass of water, but she waved it away. She leaned back farther against the cushions. When she had recovered, she said, ‘Faces reveal everything, not hands.’ Apollonia turned her own face to Urbino, with traces of beauty lingering in it despite the ravages of age. ‘And letters. They reveal a lot about the writer and the recipient.’

  ‘That’s always been my belief,’ Urbino agreed. ‘I rely on them for my books.’

  ‘And they can be inspirational.’ Apollonia stared at Urbino. ‘St Paul’s Epistles. Very inspirational.’

  ‘They are indeed,’ Urbino agreed. ‘And so are Peter’s, John’s, James’, and Jude’s.’ Urbino managed to drag the other Epistle writers from the dark lumber-room of his Jesuit education.

  Eufrosina started to recite the recipients of Paul’s Epistles. She rolled off the names of the Corinthians and Ephesians and Galatians and Thessalonians with an enthusiasm that left her almost breathless.

  ‘The Philippians, the Colossians, and the Romans, too,’ Alessandro said. ‘You forgot them.’

  Alessandro went on to name Paul’s other Epistles. Urbino was beginning to wish for a cup of tea. Eufrosina stared down at the floor.

  It was time for Urbino to take his leave.

  ‘Once again accept my condolences for Olimpia’s death,’ he said.

  Apollonia fingered the black lace veil. ‘We see what a life without God at its head can come to. May God have mercy on her soul. And may God forgive Barbara’s wretched maid for having done His will.’

  Urbino, still wearing his cape and with his scarf wound tightly around his throat against the chill, had been in the museum for almost an hour. He had been reading the same letter all that time, or rather the first sentence, over and over again. His concentration for the letters was completely broken. He needed to save Mina. He hoped he would eventually recapture his original enthusiasm for the letters. But these days they were mainly valuable to him as an excuse to nose around the Palazzo Pindar and to try to get to the bottom of things before he had to leave with Eugene.

  Gaby, in respect for his work, was keeping to the vestibule and the other room of the museum. H
e caught her staring at him a few times when he looked up.

  Silence reigned from the apartments above.

  ‘Is everything going all right?’ Gaby asked from the doorway. ‘You keep frowning.’

  Her face was more animated than before, and her voice had lost its earlier dull and troubled notes. She had passed through one of her mood shifts in the short time he had been upstairs.

  ‘I think I always frown when I’m concentrating.’

  ‘Take your mind off work for a little while. Go look at the statue of Eufrosina.’ Gaby’s voice held a faint trace of laughter.

  ‘The statue of Eufrosina?’

  Urbino went over to Alessandro’s little theater. A new figure had been added. He picked it up. It was a woman with black hair and ungloved hands that were disproportionately large. The arms were positioned away from the body, palms outward, with the fingers widely splayed, as if she were a saint displaying her stigmata.

  ‘Eufrosina hasn’t seen it yet. She won’t like it.’ Gaby was now standing behind him.

  ‘I’m not sure about that. She might see it as an advertisement. She uses her hands to photograph hands. Do you like the one of you?’

  ‘Yes. But it makes no difference if I like it or if Eufrosina likes hers. Alessandro is an artist.’ Her eyes radiated warmth. ‘Artists can do as they wish. They see things we don’t see.’

  ‘But Eufrosina is an artist, too. She sees things in people’s hands and then helps others see them.’ Urbino replaced the Eufrosina figure. ‘And don’t forget Olimpia.’

  Both of them turned their attention to the figure of her dead sister.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Gaby readjusted the Eufrosina figure.

  ‘She was an artist, like Alessandro, like Eufrosina, although she didn’t use wood or photography. She designed clothes. As an artist of her own kind, she saw things that other people don’t see, just as you said about Alessandro.’

  Gaby gave the appearance of considering this for a few moments. ‘That may be true. But there were many things that Olimpia didn’t see.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘She couldn’t see that Mina was a danger to her, could she?’ Gaby lamented. She gazed with what seemed distaste at the figure of Olimpia. ‘She couldn’t see that Mina would kill her! And she couldn’t see that I was right when I told her that something bad was going to happen to me! It happened to her instead. But she was my sister, and so something bad did happen to me, too! It came right into the house, like a thief, and changed everything.’

  Urbino saw his opportunity to bring up the topic of the unlocked front door. ‘You know, Gaby, it would be a good idea for you and Ercule to keep the front door locked all the time.’ Urbino felt almost ridiculous stating the obvious. ‘And a security system would be an excellent idea. I can give you the name of a reliable company. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about anyone coming in and stealing your things.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of anyone stealing things. In all these years, nothing has been taken. And didn’t our ancestor, Fra Angelo, say, “When the door of the palace is locked against the needy, the family behind the door will become the needy.” And locks and a security system wouldn’t have kept Mina from slaughtering Olimpia.’

  Urbino was considering a satisfactory response, when Gaby said, ‘Give me Eufrosina.’

  ‘Eufrosina?’ He started to reach for the Eufrosina figure but then understood what she meant. ‘Eufrosina,’ he repeated, enunciating each syllable clearly.

  ‘In, fin, rose, nose, fuse, sin, as, fur, fun. And there are some words that sound the same, but are different. It’s the “a” and the “e” that makes the difference. “For” the preposition and “fore” the noun and the adjective. And there’s “or” the conjunction and “ore” like in gold and silver and “sore” like in pain and “soar” like a bird.’ Gaby was most definitely in her element. She had not finished yet. ‘There’s “surf.” Let me think … What other ones? Did I say sin?’

  ‘I believe you did.’

  ‘There’s fear and ear.’

  Gaby chuckled. Yes, she was most definitely in a different mood from her earlier one. ‘That’s funny, don’t you think so? Eufrosina has ear and nose but she has no hand! Yes, very funny!’ She looked at Alessandro’s carved figure of Eufrosina with the big hands, and laughed with such candor, and so lightly, that Urbino smiled back. Gaby watched him with wide eyes. ‘Promise me something. Don’t tell Apollonia that Eufrosina has sin in her!’

  Her eyes shining with amusement, she held her right index finger up to her lips.

  Half an hour later, after staring at the same letter and making random scribbles on a notecard just in case Gaby was observing him from the other room, he returned the letters to Alessandro, who opened the door barely a crack.

  As Urbino was leaving the landing outside the Pindar grand portego, a man’s voice said behind him, ‘You’ve been trying to sneak past.’ It was Ercule. ‘Do you have time to join me?’

  ‘With pleasure.’

  Ercule gave him a bright smile. Two kaftans were pulled over his short, plump body. One was in red cotton with gold ogival designs and had wrist-length sleeves. Over it was a short-sleeved green kaftan in velvet brocade, spotted with a design of red tulips. Perched on his head was a red and orange corno hat of the style that the Doges used to wear. It was tall and conical with a peak rising from the back. It was not an original Doge’s bonnet, but a modern version. Beneath it was a white cotton cap, a camauro, which covered his ears and tied under his chin. On his feet were brown kid slippers with appliquéd arabesques.

  The entire effect might have seemed more humorous to someone other than Urbino, who sometimes wore, while at home, pointed babouche slippers and a skullcap that he had acquired during his long stay in Morocco.

  Urbino offered his condolences for Olimpia’s death.

  ‘We’re managing, me and Gaby. Now we are only two. Many people believe that no one dies before his time, but it is difficult to accept. She died too young.’ Ercule was about three or four years younger than Olimpia had been. He moved into the portego. ‘This way.’

  He led Urbino across the draughty room. Its two long walls were flanked with dark wood chairs and covered with classical frescoes and heavy mythological tapestries. The cold seeped up through the worn carpets through the soles of Urbino’s shoes. A large Murano chandelier, missing many of its pieces, dominated the room and cast strange, flickering shadows on the walls and the ceiling. Maroon velvet drapes were drawn across four tall French doors opposite the staircase. The doors gave access to a small courtyard below them.

  The room had a somber air of happy, prosperous lives once lived in it but now pone forever.

  ‘Right through here.’ Ercule opened a door at the end of the portego.

  Ercule stepped aside. Urbino entered a large room where a fire crackled in a bronze fireplace. The air held a musty odor mixed with the aroma of sandalwood and sweet, acrid smoke. From the ceiling hung a cylindrical ottoman-style mosque lamp that shed a dusky light over colored tiles, tortoiseshell, and mother-of-pearl.

  ‘Hos geldiniz!’ Ercule said. ‘“Welcome” in Turkish!’

  Pillow-strewn divans, ottomans, carved Rococo armchairs, antique wooden screens, a tall freestanding candelabra, a backgammon table, and a single-stem nargileh created intimate areas. Turkish rugs were layered on the floor. One wall, in front of which a tall brass incense burner emitted a plume of smoke, was inlaid with worm-eaten dark woodwork. A mandolin, similar to the one in the collection, lay against the cushions of a divan.

  In his eclectic outfit, Ercule looked completely suited to the room’s furnishings. Together, they seemed to compose the personality of their owner.

  ‘You’ve created quite an environment for yourself.’

  Ercule’s round face beneath the Doge’s bonnet glowed like a bright, full moon. ‘I raided the collection years ago. Gaby would never let me near any of the things now, though you never know! I have my eye on a few o
f them.’

  ‘If you can’t get to Istanbul, this is certainly an excellent second-best.’

  ‘I’ll get there, by hook or by crook, and I won’t care what happens to this place, love it though I do.’

  By ‘this place,’ Urbino was not sure whether Ercule meant the Turkish room or the whole Palazzo Pindar.

  ‘All I need is money. I’ll say goodbye to Venice. I’ll sail away in a boat. A boat it must be.’ Ercule closed his eyes behind their round, gold-rimmed glasses. He smiled as if he were contemplating a vision of Istanbul’s domes and minarets seen from a boat.

  ‘Dreams are important to have,’ Urbino said.

  ‘Not just important to have.’ Ercule’s blue eyes opened wide. ‘But also to get rid of! I want the reality. And I’ll get it!’ He gave Urbino a sharp, assessing look. ‘You might be able to help me. But please sit down.’

  After removing his cape and his scarf, Urbino seated himself in an armchair by the fire. Beside him was a divan that was awash with a sea of books, brochures, and catalogues. From what Urbino could see, most of them dealt with Turkey, Istanbul, the Ottoman Empire, and Islamic culture. As Urbino was placing his briefcase down on the floor, his eye was caught by a large book with a worn leather cover. He picked it up. It was one of the volumes of Sir Richard Burton’s translation of The Arabian Nights.

  ‘A first edition,’ Ercule said. ‘But I have only one other volume. Let me make us some coffee.’

  Ercule went to a cupboard and took out a small metal pot with a long handle. He measured coffee into it and poured in water, and then placed the pot over some of the lower flames of the fireplace. Soon the aroma of coffee filled the air.

  ‘Here we are.’ Ercule put a tray down on a small table beside Urbino’s armchair. It held two small cups with thick, midnight black coffee.

  Urbino took a sip of his coffee. It was delicious. ‘How might I be able to help you?’