Frail Barrier

by Edward Sklepowich

  She gave a laugh that was more like a whinny, in which the contessa heard the release of a great deal of tension. But Olimpia’s face remained as tense as before, and the smile that spread across it now drew even more attention to her agitated state.

  ‘Whatever time I spend in your house,’ Urbino said, ‘is going to be spent reading the letters Fortuny wrote to your great aunt Efigenia.’

  Once again, Urbino’s command of the relationships in the Pindar family impressed the contessa.

  ‘And I assure you,’ the contessa said, ‘that I only have Gaby’s best interests at heart. We are all cousins, aren’t we? And you can consider Urbino family, too. We have all adopted him, haven’t we, just as he’s adopted Venice? Everyone means well, and that is what is important. Mina cares a great deal about you, and because she cares about you, she cares about Gaby. That is why she told me. You shouldn’t be upset with her.’

  ‘Did I say that I was upset with her? I think I said the opposite. I understand her very well. Better than anyone. I don’t fault the dear girl in any way.’

  ‘Most interesting,’ the contessa said after Olimpia left. ‘Needless to say, she’s quickened your interest.’

  ‘Definitely. And I’m not so sure that that wasn’t exactly her intention.’

  Three

  ‘You can take them downstairs to the museum,’ Apollonia Ballarin said to Urbino the next morning in her salotto in the Palazzo Pindar. She and her two children lived on the second floor, with Eufrosina and Alessandro, below Olimpia’s attic atelier and above the Pindar piano nobile. ‘There’s no place for you to read them here. You’d be in the way.’

  Unlike the Pindar siblings, Apollonia Ballarin made a point of speaking in quick Italian with everyone who had any knowledge of it. As she spoke, she looked at him directly and held herself straight and stiff as she always did, conveying a sense of imperial authority.

  The once beautiful woman was dressed completely in black and had a black lace veil draped over her shoulders, as if she kept it ready to draw over her head and face at any required moment. Her customary piece of black lace wrapped her head, showing not one strand of her white hair. Gloves of black kid sheathed her hands. They were certainly warranted by the cold of the room, which had only a small space heater. But perhaps they were one of the woman’s last vanities, intended to conceal her age-spotted, wrinkled hands.

  Apollonia was tall and thin to the point of emaciation, and today she looked more gaunt than usual, probably the result of her bronchitis. Urbino sometimes thought that she took most of her nourishment from her daily morning communion. If it were not a sin to have communion twice in one day, she would surely have indulged herself.

  But the elderly Apollonia, whose skin was as white and dry as parchment, would be unlikely to deviate from the straight and narrow path that she believed was bringing her to her heavenly home – even if someone had held a pistol to her head. She would have considered dying as a martyr a wonderful end to a life that had been one of great excess until her donning the equivalent of sackcloth and ashes fifteen years ago.

  A faint ammoniac odor hung on the air of the large room. Faded frescoes adorned the walls, and it was over-furnished, even cluttered, with a preponderance of religious objects – small wooden statues and portraits of saints, rosary beads, prayer books, and missals. Two corners were devoted to plants – pots of twisted cacti, sickly looking aspidistra, sharp-leaved mother-in-law tongue, and, high on the wall, a huge spider plant whose browned tips dangled and groped a few feet above the floor.

  Apollonia’s lawyer, Italo Bianchi, was standing across from his client, who occupied a sofa upholstered in. heavy damask fabric with a pattern of fleur-de-lis. Did Bianchi’s presence mean that Apollonia was going to ask Urbino to sign a statement that he had the letters in his possession for a few hours? A briefcase, unclasped, lay on the floor beside the sofa. Bianchi, as short and round and pink a contrast to his client as there could possibly be, was also the lawyer for the Pindar siblings and the contessa.

  Apollonia did not ask Urbino to sit down. When she gave a curt nod to Bianchi, he went over to an armoire and removed a white lace covering from a little shagreen box. He handed the box to Urbino.

  ‘I’ll take good care of them,’ Urbino assured Apollonia. ‘This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with valuable documents.’ Even more valuable than these, he didn’t add.

  ‘But it is the first time you are dealing with Signora Ballarin’s documents,’ Bianchi said in the excruciatingly slow Italian he affected whenever he spoke to someone who was not native to the language. ‘They are as precious as relics.’

  ‘Don’t be sacrilegious!’ Apollonia’s voice was firm and disapproving. There was cold fire in her blue eyes. ‘Mariano Fortuny was no saint. I would have burned the letters if my aunt had not cherished them. I’m letting him look at them in her memory.’

  And for a generous sum, Urbino said to himself. He was not in the habit of paying for access to important papers but Apollonia had refused to share them with him unless he agreed to a non-negotiable fee. She might have put her soul on the path to heaven but she hadn’t taken her eye off her bank account.

  ‘And don’t take them from the building and have them photocopied,’ Apollonia warned.

  ‘I have no intention of doing either. I’ll treat them with all due respect.’ Urbino got up. ‘Let me get started. Excuse me.’

  Urbino descended the marble staircase to the ground floor, which had once been a warehouse for the Pindar shipping company. The walls of the vestibule exuded an atmosphere of damp. Gaby was at the far end of the room by the heavily secured entrance to a small, rear courtyard. The Pindars were just as diligent about keeping the courtyard entrance barred as they were lax about keeping the front door open. Gaby’s back was turned, and she was sweeping the floor with brisk, energetic movements. She had greeted him when he had arrived, but she did not raise her head now from her work.

  Two connecting rooms to the right of the embankment entrance were given over to the Pindar collection, which was accessible only through one door. The other door had been plastered over.

  Two other rooms were directly across from the collection on the other side of the vestibule. Their doors had been painted blue once upon a time, but the color had long since faded. The contessa had told him that, as far as she knew, the rooms were usually locked.

  Urbino entered the first room of the museum and came to a halt a few feet from the door.

  The room, like the one beyond it, was crammed. The museum had a motley collection of objects. Among them were old carved chests with gilt ornamentation, heavy wooden armchairs, Turkish tiles, shells and fossils, carnival masks, a Doge’s baton, antique cooking utensils, an array of pens that the Pindar family had used to sign various business agreements, ledgers, musical instruments including an exquisite mandolin, a large seventeenth-century globe, a lamp from one of the ships of the Pindar line, small daggers, navigation charts, a small tapestry, a suit of armor, an Egyptian cat mummy partly wrapped in its winding cloth, and two oil paintings.

  One of the paintings hung on the left-hand side of the door into the second room. It was a large portrait, by a Bolognese painter of no renown, of the ancestor who had started the family on its upward climb in the seventeenth century, Creonte Pindar. His severe, pinched ascetic look and the sharp blue eyes staring at the viewer in a superior manner, along with a monkish fringe of black hair, gave him more the appearance of a member of the clergy than a merchant.

  The other painting, which occupied most of the space on the right side of the door, was a Gabriele Bella. It depicted a procession in the Piazza San Marco following the election of a Doge. It was similar to one at the Querini-Stampalia Gallery near the Campo Santa Maria Formosa. It was probably the most valuable item in the collection.

  In no way had the Pindar family been astute collectors, and a large number of the objects were the gifts of business partners and clients in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Many
of the objects were little more than curiosities.

  The collection was displayed in cases and cabinets, affixed to the walls or propped against them, hanging from the ceiling, and standing on the floor. The arrangement was haphazard. Descriptions for the objects were written on small slips of white paper in a spidery hand. The black ink had become gray and the description was often indecipherable.

  Urbino passed through the first room into the second, where a large carved wooden table with four chairs was set up in a corner. He placed the box of letters on the table and seated himself in one of the uncomfortable chairs. The room was chilly, as was the other one. The lack of proper heating in the winter and of air-conditioning in the hot weather must be slowly doing its damage to the objects.

  Against one wall was a carved and gilded chaise longue, upholstered in a worn and faded pink floral pattern, which looked like something Marie Antoinette or the Marquise de Pompadour might have reclined in. A red woollen blanket was rumpled at one end of the sofa. Gaby took her naps in the chaise longue during the long and many hours of silence when no one rang the museum bell. He also suspected that she often slept in it at night, finding comfort surrounded by all her treasured things.

  Urbino took out a pencil, a sharpener, and a pile of white blank note cards from his satchel and laid them in front of him on the table. He opened the box. The letters, all on the same white paper, now faded, were neatly folded and stacked on top of each other. The envelopes were no longer with them. Had they been lost? Destroyed?

  ‘You’ve come back down quickly,’ Gaby said. She was standing beside the doorway at an angle that gave her a view of both rooms and the door into the vestibule.

  Gaby, with her long face, large mouth, and reddish blond hair, closely resembled her sister, but she was heavier by about twenty pounds and her blue eyes were slightly hooded. Almost as tall as Olimpia, she habitually kept her shoulders hunched and her head slightly pulled down. She had once been as attractive as her sister, but her emotional problems had taken their toll on her face, which was heavily lined. She had a death-like pallor, as a consequence of having stayed inside the house for the past two decades.

  He did notice, as he had on other occasions, that Gaby never had her back turned to the entrance of a room for longer than necessary. Her eyes had a habit of surveying doorways and she never went closer than five or six feet to the main entrance out to the calle, even when admitting visitors.

  She wore a gray smock-like dress that almost reached her ankles. An indigo-colored scarf was wrapped around her throat, and pulled down on her long, unkempt hair was a small red woollen cap that vaguely gave her the look of a female cardinal. A damp, musty smell wafted from her that reminded Urbino of the scent that her cousin Alessandro’s clothes had given off at Florian’s the other day.

  She screwed up her face and managed to get a handkerchief to her nose a second before the sneeze came, followed in rapid succession by two others.

  ‘God bless you,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind that I’ll be spending some time in the museum. I will try to keep out of your way and out of the way of visitors. I think you know that I’m reading letters that were written to your relative Efigenia. They were written by –’

  ‘Fortuny!’ she shouted, cutting Urbino off and startling him.

  The name echoed off the walls.

  He was about to say that the letters were indeed from Mariano Fortuny when Gaby showed that her enthusiasm wasn’t limited to identifying the Spaniard so vociferously, but that it had been the prelude for one of her favorite games. It was a word game.

  ‘Fort! Rot! Turn! Urn! Nut! Your! Our! For! Or! Nor! Toy! Run! To! On! No! Not! Fun!’ The words rushed out of her. Gaby was in one of her excessively energetic phases, which alternated with periods of almost complete lethargy. This particular word game probably gave her a needed feeling of control.

  When she recaptured her breath, she said, ‘Fortuny’s a good one! Who would think that there are so many words in only those seven letters? Oh, I forgot two. Tour! Runt! I think that’s the end.’

  She was filled with energy today, but she would fall, unfortunately and inescapably, into her other state tomorrow or next week, maybe later today. Whenever it would be, it was as inevitable as were these excited, light-hearted states. Probably she had confided in Mina in one of her dark and down moods.

  ‘Give me another word. Please!’

  ‘Gabriella,’ he said.

  She frowned. ‘That’s too easy. I’ve done it many times.’

  ‘What about Mina Longo?’

  She stared back at him. Her face broke into a smile.

  ‘A very good name! Two names. How clever of you.’

  She took a deep breath, but before she could utter one word concealed within the names, a man’s hearty voice called out, ‘It’s you, Urbino! I heard voices. I thought that we had a visitor at our little museum. It has been a long time, hasn’t it, Gaby dear?’

  It was Ercule Pindar. His moon-shaped face was open and candid, with the Pindar blue eyes almost always twinkling behind his round, gold-rimmed glasses.

  Gaby ignored him, took an orange-colored rag from her pocket, and started to rub the freestanding globe in quick movements.

  Ercule, who was portly and short, wore an oversized dark brown wool coat. A thick black scarf was wound round his throat. His large coat pockets bulged. If Urbino had been forced to bet money on what was inside them, he would have said that they were books – and not only books, but exotic travel volumes and most probably about Turkey. The Pindar family’s connection with that country and the Venetian Republic’s long relationship with Constantinople had ignited his interest years ago. It was still burning strong and bright.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. I have some work to do here.’ Urbino indicated the box of letters. ‘I’ll be working so silently everyone will think I’m one of the exhibits.’

  ‘If anyone comes by to notice. Gaby wanders around all by herself most of the time. Just her and the things, and not one solitary soul putting down any money. These things are not doing anybody any good. There are better ways to make money from them.’

  Gaby stiffened. He smiled with unmistakable affection. It was possible that both Olimpia and Ercule were engaged on a program of not coddling their sister, as Olimpia had warned Urbino and the contessa against doing. But Ercule’s comment struck Urbino’s ears as cruel. The museum meant everything to Gaby. Being parted from it would be a calamity.

  ‘Those are Apollonia’s letters,’ Ercule said, turning back to Urbino.

  ‘Great aunt Efigenia’s letters,’ Gaby corrected him sharply.

  Gaby’s respect for provenance amused Urbino. It was what you would expect of the curator of a museum, although Urbino doubted that she could provide the origin for even half of the objects in the Pindar collection, no matter how much she treasured and needed them.

  ‘Right, Gaby,’ her brother agreed. ‘Great aunt Efigenia’s letters. And that’s great great grandfather Oreste’s globe, dear sister. But it is ours now. Yours, Olimpia’s, and mine, like everything else in our little museum. Oreste was before our illustrious association with Barbara’s family, Urbino.’

  The Pindar clan’s fondness for the Italian versions of classical Greek forenames was one of their idiosyncrasies, but it was not consistently applied. It was like some uncontrollable impulse that struck Pindar parents in unpredictable attacks and could end up with comical results, as in the case of Ercule, who could not have been more different from his namesake.

  Gaby put the cloth back into her pocket. She stood looking at Urbino and Ercule.

  ‘Ask me where I am today, Urbino.’ A mischievous smile played on Ercule’s round face.

  If Gaby had her word game, Ercule had his own little game. He frequently asked the same question, ‘Where am I today?’

  Urbino, who knew the answer because it was invariable, decided to give the appearance of mulling it over. He cast his eyes in the direction of Oreste Pindar’s globe.<
br />
  ‘Could it be … Istanbul?’

  ‘Good! But to be more exact, let us say Constantinople and Istanbul.’ He reached into one of his coat pockets and pulled out a book with the title Imperial Istanbul.

  ‘Exquisite,’ Ercule said. ‘You see how I prefer the stones of Istanbul to the stones of Venice!’ He slipped the book back into his pocket. ‘Come by and visit me one of these days. We’ll have a nice chat.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to your work,’ Gaby said when Ercule’s footsteps faded away up the stairwell. ‘If you need anything, just let me know. I shall be in either the next room or the vestibule. I –’

  The buzzing of the doorbell interrupted her. Her face brightened. ‘Oh, my! The bell for the museum! A visitor! You’ve brought it good luck.’ She hurried into the vestibule. ‘Avanti, per favore!’

  Gaby was going through her usual procedure for admitting people to the building. She would cry out for them to enter through the unlocked door after they rang the bell. She never went to the door and opened it for anyone.

  Low voices came from the vestibule. Gaby guided two middle-aged women, who spoke English with a German accent, into the first room. She described the objects in a voice that thrilled with notes of happiness. After the women had expended their curiosity over the cat mummy, they admired the Gabriele Bella before passing into the second room. Urbino picked up the first letter and did his best to create an air of industriousness. Perhaps their opinion of the museum would be higher if they thought that it held important documents.

  Urbino suddenly felt protective toward the Pindar collection. It was a way of expressing his desire to protect Gaby from disappointment or something much worse.

  When Urbino was alone, he started to give the letters his attention in earnest. Even given his methodical way of working, he should have no difficulty getting through them all before leaving for America.