Frail Barrier

by Edward Sklepowich

  She collected a key from the desk in the entrance behind the dining room and led him up a dark, rickety staircase to the end of the hallway. She had some difficulty unlocking the door of one of the rooms, and the door needed to be pushed slightly to open. The room held a double bed with a lithograph of St. Rita over the headboard, a chest of drawers, a small table and chair, a chipped sink, and a bidet. It was all rather drab and uninspiring, and certainly not what Croy was accustomed to in her room in Dorsoduro. The smell of the tripe had seeped into the room where it joined forces with a strong odor of mildew.

  The woman, sensing Urbino’s reaction, went over to the window, pulled aside the heavy drapes, and threw open the wooden shutters.

  Light bathed the room. The effect was somehow not to reveal more of the room’s drawbacks but to make it much more desirable.

  The window provided a view of a narrow canal, a stone bridge, and an iron-railed balcony from which a profusion of flowers cascaded. An artist’s eye would be unable to resist the charm of the scene.

  When the woman quoted a price that was a fourth of what Croy was paying in Dorsoduro, he said that he would reserve it on behalf of his friend, starting with the next day. The woman insisted that he also engage it for that night since her chances of finding someone to take it for only one night would be slim. Urbino didn’t argue. He left a deposit to cover three days. After getting his receipt and thanking the two sisters, he took a water taxi from the Riva dei Sette Martiri to Croy’s hotel in Dorsoduro.

  Croy wasn’t there. He left her a note about the pensione, telling her that she could take occupancy at any time today and giving her the address and explicit directions to reach it. He enclosed the receipt in the envelope along with the note. The woman at the desk assured him that Croy would get it as soon as she returned.

  As soon as he got back to the Palazzo Uccello, Urbino called the Gritti Palace Hotel. Hollander wasn’t in his room. Urbino left a message, with the necessary information about the estate agent.

  After lunch, which was served by the morose Natalia, Urbino went down to Gildo’s apartment. Natalia had told him that Claudio was with the gondolier. Urbino took two copies of Regate e Regatanti with him.

  Claudio sat on the sofa watching Gildo repair an umbrella for Natalia at the table. Claudio’s face looked more drawn today than it had yesterday.

  ‘I thought I’d check and see how you two were doing. And give you these.’ He handed them each a copy of the book. ‘I think you’ll find it interesting.’

  The two men thanked Urbino. Gildo put aside the umbrella, dropped into the chair by the canal-side window, and soon became absorbed by the list of champions of the gondolini competitions. Claudio looked at the cover, which had a photograph of two stripe-shirted rowers in the disdotona race, and then opened the book at random to a photograph of the 1881 regatta. He stared at it for a few moments before putting the book down on the sofa.

  ‘How are you feeling, Claudio?’ Urbino asked.

  ‘I’m fine. You don’t have to worry.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ Claudio stood up. ‘You’re worried about me because of Albina. But I’ll tell you something. I have more energy than I did before she died. More energy to row in the race. Maybe even win it. Do you know what she told me before she died?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She had a dream that Gildo and I were far ahead in the race. She was watching from the contessa’s palazzo. She got so excited that she fell into the Canalazzo. We stopped rowing and went to help her and pulled her into the gondolino. But she was angry in the dream, she said. She wanted us to stay in the race.’

  ‘You understand the dream, don’t you, Signor Urbino?’ Gildo asked, looking up from the book. ‘Albina knew she was sick. She felt she was going to die. She was telling him to go on. She was telling us both to go on.’

  Gildo put Regate e Regatanti down on a little table that held a large blue glass gondola. He went over to Claudio and threw his arm companionably around his shoulder.

  ‘And we’re going to do even better now, because of Albina, aren’t we!’ Gildo said.

  Claudio gave his friend a weak smile.

  Yet again that day Urbino felt the irrational pull of superstition. Albina’s dream appeared to be both a veiled prediction of disaster and an encouragement to see beyond some calamity, depending on how you interpreted it.

  ‘When did she tell you about the dream?’

  ‘Three days before she died.’ Claudio paused. ‘The last time I saw her alive.’

  ‘She was a good woman,’ Urbino said. ‘Everyone seems to have liked her.’

  ‘Everyone did like her,’ Claudio corrected him sharply. ‘I never heard one bad word about her. Not from anyone. Everyone loved her at Florian’s, the staff and every single customer.’

  ‘Yes, she was good-tempered and kind. And generous. She didn’t provoke anyone, and wasn’t the type to complain, even if she might have had reason to.’

  Claudio’s face tensed.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Just that things may have been difficult from time to time with her sister and her other job at Da Valdo. And with problems that we might not have been aware of. Life doesn’t always go smoothly for the good.’

  Claudio seemed to consider this before saying, ‘You’re right that she never complained. Not to me, anyway. And as you see from her dream, she had no fears for herself, but only for other people.’

  Six

  The next morning, after a long sleep, Urbino felt restored. He had been worried that he would fall sick. Illness was something that preoccupied him even though he enjoyed remarkably good health, except for the embarrassment of his gout.

  He was in the habit of going up to the altana some mornings with his coffee, a book, and his thoughts, and he had hoped to spend some time doing that today with his Goethe, but a light, misty rain was falling. There had been thunderstorms overnight and prolonged periods of rain that had awakened him intermittently for a few seconds, until he had drifted back into a dreamless sleep.

  After spending an hour in his library, he lost concentration on what the German writer had called his irresistible need to set out on his long, solitary journey to Italy. The death of Albina Gonella had given Urbino his own irresistible need and, in its own way, it was a journey just as solitary as Goethe’s. He hoped that it would be just as fruitful.

  He abandoned the Palazzo Uccello and set out at a brisk stride to San Marco. Deep puddles along his route, where no wooden planks were set up, made it necessary to backtrack. He soon found himself among two sorts of tourists, the lost and the adventurous. The former he directed to the main streets or the nearest boat landing. As for the latter, he gave them what he hoped they realized were encouraging smiles, for he admired their spirit and imagination, and vicariously enjoyed their discovery of odd corners of the city, something that his long residency had deprived him of.

  By the time he neared the Grand Canal, or more precisely the Bacino of San Marco, his pace was slackened by the corso di gente which he had been obliged to rejoin. Eventually, he reached the Riva degli Schiavoni and stood beside the Danieli Hotel.

  The lagoon stretched before him beneath a sky not so much gray as opalescent. Vaporetti, motorboats, yachts, and barges crisscrossed the lagoon and moved in and out of the channels of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca. A tanker flying the Lebanese flag plied its way toward Marghera and passed a car ferry moving in the opposite direction toward the Lido.

  At the mouth of the Grand Canal, the Dogana da Mare resembled the prow of a ship with the baroque whiteness of the Salute gleaming wetly behind it in the rain. Farther in the distance the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, with its classical brick façade and bell tower, was in serene possession of its own little island, and the Church of the Redeemer rose chaste and dignified from the buildings clustered around it on the Giudecca Island.

  Despite all the noise and activity on the water and the Riva i
n front of him, Urbino felt a few moments of peace as he always did in contemplating this panorama. He hardly even heard the raucous song of a group of Turkish sailors dancing a few feet away from him. The balance and harmony of the two Palladian churches and the extravagance of the Salute to created a marvelously unified composition. It encouraged him in the hope that the two different sides of his nature could be just as compatible.

  A few minutes later, on the Riva degli Schiavoni, without much trouble, he found the person he was looking for. Giulietta had identified him for Urbino among the mourners at the Carmini. Maurizio, Albina’s young neighbor who had sometimes walked her home from Da Valdo, was tending one of the souvenir kiosks close to the Ponte della Paglia. Tourists encumbered the bridge, gazing at the Bridge of Sighs and taking photographs.

  Like the other kiosks, Maurizio’s was bursting with guide books, T-shirts, fans, masks, prints of Venice, glass and plastic Rialto bridges and gondolas, postcards, straw hats, key chains, and other trinkets and souvenirs.

  Maurizio was about nineteen, with short dark hair styled in spikes, an angular face, and clear blue eyes.

  ‘Yes, I helped Signorina Albina get home many times,’ he said in a low, quiet voice when he had finished with a customer. They stood under the plastic tenting of the kiosk. ‘If I was passing that way, I’d stop by, sometimes help her with her work. She was a nice lady.’ He looked away toward San Giorgio for a moment. ‘We were together during the bad storm before the one she died in. We had fun laughing and being pushed by the wind. She was like a little girl.’

  ‘She told me about that night. She said you were a good boy.’ Urbino turned the wheel of postcards idly, being treated to a kaleidoscope of the Bridge of Sighs, the Piazza San Marco, the Basilica, the Salute, the Rialto Bridge, the leaning campanile of Santo Stefano, and the Grand Canal. ‘Do you know that her apartment was broken into on the day of her funeral?’

  ‘My mother told me.’

  Three French women approached the kiosk. Maurizio unfolded some T-shirts for them. He wished them good day when they left without buying anything.

  ‘Albina’s sister is very disturbed about the break-in,’ Urbino said as Maurizio refolded the T-shirts. ‘As I’m sure everyone in the area is. She’s afraid that someone might have been angry with Albina and broke into the apartment because of that.’ This wasn’t exactly what Giulietta had indicated but it might serve Urbino’s purpose to say it. ‘Did Albina ever complain about anyone bothering her? Any of the customers?’

  ‘Never. But after I heard about the break-in, I remembered something. How I was frightened the night of the storm.’ He seemed embarrassed, and added, ‘Not because of the storm. And not really frightened.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I thought someone was following us. But it was a crazy night. We both got home safely. It was probably my imagination. I had been drinking a little.’

  ‘Did you notice if it was a man or a woman?’

  ‘I just saw a dark figure, maybe more than one, different ones. Who knows? I didn’t think about it too much at the time. At one point a gondolier’s hat blew against us. One like these.’ He indicated the hats with their red ribbons hanging from his kiosk. ‘Signorina Albina got so scared because it hit her in the face, though it didn’t do any damage. It just blew out of nowhere.’

  ‘From the direction that you thought someone was following you?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Did Albina seem to be aware that someone might be following you?’

  Maurizio shrugged.

  ‘She didn’t say anything. And, as I said, it was a crazy night. So much noise and confusion.’

  An hour later when Giulietta led Urbino into her living room, he found Perla Beato on the sofa with a glass of Cynar. The bruise on her face had almost faded.

  ‘Urbino!’ she cried. ‘Giulietta was just telling me how helpful you were with the locks and keys. Her guardian angel, she called you. Isn’t that what you said, Giulietta? Your guardian angel?’

  Perla gave a high-pitched laugh. In deference to Giulietta, whose knowledge of English was almost non-existent, she was speaking in Italian. She seemed charged with nervous energy.

  Giulietta poured Urbino a generous portion of Cynar without asking if he wanted any on this occasion. As she handed him the glass, he noted again the two broken fingernails on her hand. Perhaps now that Albina was gone, she was obliged to endanger her manicures in doing more chores.

  ‘I think it’s wonderful when we can help each other in little ways as well as big ones,’ Perla rushed on. ‘Giulietta has enough food to open a restaurant, don’t you, Giulietta dear? One woman brought her more sarde in saor than the Venetian sailors used to take with them on their voyages. No chance of you getting scurvy, my dear.’ Perla stopped only long enough for a sip of the Cynar. ‘And all I brought her was a basket of herbs and some bottles of aromas from the shop.’

  Perla owned an erboristeria in Dorsoduro near the Church of the Carmini.

  She began to describe the herbs and aromas. Urbino let her run on, wondering if her high level of energy this morning was the result of one of her concoctions. His eye wandered around the room. The dressmaker’s dummy was now standing upright. The flowered blue material was neatly draped on it. The box of cartons had been neatened, the brightly colored garments refolded and placed inside. Natalia, who had helped Giulietta put the apartment in better order, had said that the boxes contained carnival costumes in need of repair. These must have been the boxes Albina mentioned the night she died, the ones she had carried upstairs for her sister to prevent her from breaking her fingernails.

  According to Natalia, although she and Giulietta had spent a lot of time on the rest of the apartment, they hadn’t done anything with Albina’s room. Urbino hoped that Giulietta hadn’t thrown away anything from it as he had advised her.

  The basket of herbs and aromas that Perla had brought lay on the end table beside his chair. The dark green bottles had identifying labels in elegant handwriting on the erboristeria’s violet paper with a wheat sheaf logo.

  Giulietta had a blank look on her face as Perla spoke. She seemed to be somewhere else, and she was staring at the dressmaker’s dummy. She had applied a lot of make-up, and bright coins of rouge on her cheeks made her look almost clown-like. Her lips were vivid red.

  Perla brought her description to an abrupt end. She put down her glass of Cynar and stood up.

  ‘If you need anything at all, Giulietta, don’t be shy. Just ask Romolo or me. We don’t live far away and the shop is even closer. Why don’t I take this into the kitchen?’ She picked up the basket. ‘If you leave it in here, you might think it’s a decoration and forget it has things for you to use every day. Things that will keep our dear Giulietta fit. But from what I saw you doing outside the apartment, you’re very fit.’

  Giulietta looked embarrassed.

  ‘Do you know what I found her doing as I was on my way here? She was under the sottoportico sweeping and washing away. You would think the municipality had employed her. She had a bucket, a broom, a brush, rags, and a little shovel, and the most terrible smelling liquid. I hope you didn’t inhale much of it, Giulietta.’

  ‘I – I was only trying to clean the place where Albina died.’

  ‘And bless you for that, but don’t you think you were overdoing it? You need to take the best care of yourself. Well, as I said, my gift will help you. You stay right where you are, Giulietta, and keep Urbino company. I’ll be back as soon as I find a good place for this in the kitchen.’

  After Perla left the room, Urbino mentioned that he had seen Maurizio.

  ‘He’s a nice young man,’ he said.

  They spent a few minutes talking about Maurizio and his kindness to Albina. Giulietta told him that he was now doing errands for her before he went to work in the morning. She kept looking in the direction of the kitchen. She was starting to get up when Perla reappeared.

  ‘I found the perfect spot for it o
n the little table under the window. I’m afraid I had to move a few things. Take care of yourself, Giulietta. See you soon, Urbino. No, Giulietta, I’ll find my own way out.’

  When Perla left, Giulietta thanked Urbino again for his help with the locks, but she struck him again as being abstracted. Perhaps she was starting to feel the full force of her sister’s death and what it meant to her, being all alone.

  After declining some more Cynar, Urbino withdrew the two keys on the chain from his pocket.

  ‘Valdo found these at his place.’ He held them out to Giulietta. ‘Are they Albina’s?’

  Giulietta took the keys.

  ‘They’re hers, but the ones for the doors are no use any more, now that you had the new locks put in. Should I keep them or throw them away? I only ask because you said that I shouldn’t get rid of any of her things for a while.’

  ‘Just put them in her room with all her other things. We can decide what to do with everything later.’

  ‘As you think best, Signor Urbino.’

  ‘By the way, Giulietta, during the past few weeks have you noticed anyone unfamiliar, someone who isn’t from the neighborhood, lingering around your building?’

  ‘Tourists are always coming into the calle and turning around because it’s a dead end. Some stay long enough to take a picture, but that’s it. Once in a while painters will come for a few hours, cluttering the way with all their stuff. There was one a few weeks ago, a big, fat man. They’re a nuisance. They should leave us alone.’

  ‘Wish you were here, caro,’ the contessa said on the telephone that evening. She had returned to Asolo after the funeral. ‘We haven’t had any rain. The air is delightful.’

  ‘I’d love to be there. The rest would be nice.’

  Urbino filled her in on most of what he had accomplished yesterday and today. When he finished, the contessa, who had allowed him to recount his activities with only a few clarifying questions, said, ‘You’re feeling guilty.’