Black Bridge

by Edward Sklepowich

  When the Contessa had left, Festa said in a smoke-hoarse voice: “This is my little baby. His name is Peppino.”

  She took a treat for Peppino from her purse. He gave it a few unenthusiastic nibbles.

  “You write biographies,” said Gava dolefully, as if this must be the saddest endeavor imaginable. “Barbara says you’re good at it—and at solving crimes, too. You’re looking into the threats against Bobo.”

  “Bobo told us the other night at dinner,” Festa quickly explained. “He joked about them but I’m sure he’s upset.”

  “Oh, he’s upset,” Gava said. “I knew it as soon as he said he wasn’t. Actors! You always have to assume they mean the opposite of what they say.”

  “Spoken just like a man of business! Orlando has some factories in Torino that make him a bundle of money!” Festa explained for Urbino’s benefit. “I think I’m a better judge of actors, Orlando dear. They’re more like children than anything else.”

  Suddenly, over the music and the other voices, came Bobo’s magisterial voice: “Dama Venezia is a beautiful corpse, giving off the flush of the grave. Camille of the waves, the consumptive heroine of the sea, the painted lady of—”

  They looked in Bobo’s direction. He was the center of a group of admiring women.

  “Well, he acted the spoiled child often enough with my poor sister, may God rest her soul! She never complained, not even at the very end, as you remember.”

  Gava touched his armband and tears welled in his eyes. Festa considered him with an inscrutable look that might have been irritation or uneasiness, then started to chatter about D’Annunzio and the Barone’s miraculous reincarnation of him.

  “D’Annunzio!” Gava almost spat it out. “Rosa couldn’t bear to hear his name mentioned! An immoral man!”

  Gava’s raised voice drew a long stare from Bobo.

  “D’Annunzio was mentioned in the threats,” Urbino said when Bobo returned his attention to the women with evident reluctance. “Do you have any idea who might be responsible for them?”

  “Not me, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Gava said.

  “Orlando!” Festa remonstrated. “That wasn’t what he was thinking at all. If he suspects anyone it’s me!”

  “You? But you like D’Annunzio, too, and—and you like Bobo. You were going to marry him!”

  “What I meant,” Festa said, “is that it’s great publicity—or would be if it got into the papers.”

  Festa described publicity stunts she was familiar with from her years at Cinecittà. Urbino let his eye wander around the room. The orchestra was now playing popular tunes and guests swept across the floor. Flint executed perfect steps with Oriana only a few feet away from Filippo, her husband, who was less smoothly but no less enthusiastically dancing with an American divorcée. Groups formed and dispersed according to the laws and whims that regulate such gatherings. The people lounging on sofas and chairs set against the walls seemed reluctant, either from comfort or inertia, to get up, and eyed those who were dancing or standing with the air of bored royalty.

  Festa was finishing her reminiscences when the Contessa came up and, with a barely audible apology, led Urbino away.

  “More trouble,” she said when they were out of earshot of anyone. “Another threat against Bobo. The manager from the Teatro del Ridotto just told me. Bobo wanted it kept a secret. The box office attendant found one of those sheets in the lobby before the performance. You must try harder to get to the bottom of this.”

  “I don’t know what Bobo has told you, but he made it very clear to me that he doesn’t want me snooping around.”

  “He doesn’t know what he’s saying! He needs you. We both do. See into his heart. There you’ll find his real feelings about this whole thing! Bobo—”

  “Is something the matter, Barbara?”

  It was Harriet, who had come upon them unnoticed. A slick film of moisture coated her forehead.

  “Nothing at all, my dear. Excuse me.”

  The Contessa hurried off to join the Barone, who was now talking to the theater manager again. A short distance away Festa was making flamboyant gestures at a Milanese industrialist while Gava stared straight ahead gloomily as if he were at his beloved sister’s funeral. Even from this distance the melancholy surrounding the Barone’s brother-in-law was a thick, dark curtain.

  Harriet pulled a small handkerchief from her sleeve and gently wiped her forehead.

  “How close it is in here! All this incense is cutting off my oxygen and the burning wax is making my eyes burn. I’ll have to go up to my room and put in some eyedrops.”

  Before she left, Urbino asked her for one of Bobo’s publicity photographs.

  11

  A few minutes later, when Bobo, with less composure than usual, began to recite D’Annunzio’s prayer-prologue for Debussy’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastian to a musical accompaniment, Urbino went down to the garden.

  He walked through a courtyard of Venetian brick and past statues of chained Turks in Istrian stone up to the higher level. A pebbled path lined with clipped boxwood, laurel hedges, and stone mythological figures took him toward a pergola. The pergola, sheltering a Roman bath and covered with Virginia creeper and English ivy, was the Contessa’s and Urbino’s favorite place in the garden.

  Raised, angry voices coming from the pergola stopped him short. They were those of a man and a woman, but he couldn’t make out who they were. Ironically, he might have been better able to hear if he had been farther away from the pergola. The garden had unusual acoustics, which it shared with Venice itself where sound traveled erratically and mysteriously.

  Afraid that whoever it was might abruptly leave the shelter of the pergola to find him eavesdropping, he returned along the pebbled path to the lower level and sat in a wicker chair. After five minutes Quimper and Moss appeared. Quimper was the first to see Urbino.

  “Monsieur Macintyre! I wish we knew you were here! You could have given us a tour.” She touched one of the stone Turks. “Gardens come as such a pleasant surprise in Venice. Do you have one? If it’s anything like this one, you’re very fortunate. I have only a little patch of ground off my kitchen in London but back in Paris I had a lovely garden.”

  She seemed about to continue, if only because she didn’t know how to stop, when Moss, his face still in the shadows, reminded her that they had to be on their way.

  When Urbino came through the doors of the salone, a low buzz of concerned voices had replaced the music, and the musicians and guests were staring at the far end of the room. There, a knot of people had formed. Among them was the Contessa, looking very distressed. Urbino hurried over. Gava lay prostrate on the floor near a broken water goblet, his eyes closed and his face colorless. An elderly physician from Padua, one of the Contessa’s guests, was kneeling by Gava’s side. Peppino looked down at the scene from a chair covered with his mistress’s reversed cape.

  “I—I just gave him a drink of water and he collapsed,” Festa said.

  “He has asthma and emphysema, just like his sister had,” Bobo said.

  The physician loosened Gava’s tie and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. He waved away a glass of water brought by Flint.

  “Oh, I hope he didn’t eat any of the shrimp or drink red wine, Signora Festa!” said Harriet, almost as white as Gava. “People with his condition are usually severely allergic to them, aren’t they, Doctor? Iodine and sulfites.”

  Festa glared at her.

  “It is close in here,” Bobo said. “Perhaps the incense choked him up. It was doing the same to you, Harriet.”

  “Oh, I hope it wasn’t my incense!” the Contessa lamented. “Harriet, call an ambulance.”

  Before rushing off, Harriet thrust a large envelope into Urbino’s hand.

  Gava regained consciousness and tried to raise his head. He looked confusedly at the faces peering down at him. He focused on Bobo.

  “Rosa, my dear sister,” he said before passing out again. “I’m coming.”

>   12

  The next morning, after the Contessa called to tell him that Gava was doing fairly well and was recuperating in his room at the Flora, Urbino went to the Teatro del Ridotto to inquire about the threat left in the foyer.

  “It had to be before seven,” the theater manager said. “The box office attendant noticed it when he returned from a break. I called the police immediately. We’ve added an extra guard for the rest of the Barone’s run.”

  Urbino next went to the Doges’ Palace with the Barone’s publicity photograph. The guard took one quick look at it and shook his head.

  “Nothing like the man.”

  He handed the photograph back.

  “Are you sure? This is about ten years old but the man looks very much the same.”

  “He’s not the one who was here. Excuse me. I have to make my circuit.”

  Urbino slipped the photograph back in the envelope. The guard’s response puzzled him. He had been too abrupt in dismissing the photograph and no longer seemed to want to talk about the incident.

  Urbino wouldn’t have had any doubts if the guard had identified the Barone. Was this because he was convinced that Bobo had been at the Doges’ Palace or because he was so biased against him that he wanted him to have been?

  He could see two rocks looming dangerously in the waters of his inquiries. One was his friendship with the Contessa, for whom he would do almost anything. The other was his dislike of the Barone. But why, precisely? Because the Contessa admired him and enjoyed spending time with him, might even be falling in love with him? Because Urbino’s comfortable relationship with her was endangered?

  Or did he sense something essentially false about the man? Actors often possessed an affected manner that had nothing to do with insincerity but was sometimes merely the fruit of discipline. Was this what he was responding to in Bobo?

  He must be careful. Yet not so careful that he went too far in the opposite direction and wrote off suspicion as mere unfounded prejudice. No, it wasn’t going to be easy.

  13

  That afternoon Urbino hurried over a bridge near Piazza San Marco, where gondoliers in their straw hats and striped shirts were calling out to tourists. The autumn weather was today more gray than golden. A few drops of warm rain fell as he ducked into the Libreria Sangiorgio.

  Bobo was enthroned behind a table with copies of Pomegranate and I See the Sun. A group of people, neither vulgarly large nor embarrassingly small, waited to have him sign their books. Among them were a tense-looking Marie Quimper and her companion, Hugh Moss.

  “Urbino dear!” the Contessa called. Radiant in copper-hued silk that subtly complemented Bobo’s tweeds, she stood beside him, one hand on his shoulder, the other holding an extra Mont Blanc, just as she did at Urbino’s own signings here. Urbino bought a copy of the two books and got at the end of the line behind Oriana and Flint. Flint seemed jumpy and his eyes were dilated.

  “For my folks back home,” he said, indicating the books in his arms. “Though they certainly don’t know Italian and never even heard of this D’Annunzio guy.”

  “That describes half the people here, I’m sure,” Oriana said. The two burst into laughter. Oriana’s laugh was her usual operatic one, but Flint’s sounded askew, as if he wasn’t in control of it. Livia Festa frowned. She kept shooting glances at the Barone and the Contessa—glances which, if they had been given by one of her own actors, she would most likely have asked to be brought down a few notches, even for the stage.

  When their fit of laughter was over, Flint handed Urbino the books in his arms. He dashed through the rain and into the Bauer-Grünwald Hotel on the other side of the bridge.

  When he returned ten minutes later, an interval Oriana filled with anecdotes about the Philistinism of Filippo’s family, he said: “Well, Urbino, when are you going to invite me into your inner sanctum?”

  He gave his laugh again, which was slightly out of control, his eyes even more dilated now. Urbino saw no way out but to ask him to stop by after the signing. When Oriana, pleased at the apparent rapport between the two men, resumed her anecdotes, Urbino was free to consider the others in the room.

  The person he was most surprised to see was Marco Zeoli, who had a full schedule at the thermal spa. Perhaps he had come to be with Harriet, who, however, was standing by herself. If she was indeed in love, today she seemed to be suffering the predictable pains of that state. Like one for whom true love was not running smoothly, she seemed to be finding the enamored states of others unbearable. She scrutinized the Contessa and the Barone with particular discomfort. The one person she didn’t look at was Zeoli, a sign that he was the probable source of her affliction.

  Urbino shared Harriet’s feelings of exclusion as he approached the table. It wasn’t that he wanted to deny the Contessa the gratifications of the heart. He couldn’t quite bring himself to call them, even less to think of them, as the gratifications of the flesh. But the Barone wasn’t a worthy object of her affections. Instead he seemed the kind of man to take full advantage of them.

  Bobo gave Urbino a broad smile when his turn came, and signed the books with a flourish.

  “I hope you’re coming to closing night tomorrow. We’d miss you, wouldn’t we, Barbarina?” He smiled up at the Contessa. “I always have one special person in the audience to act for. Of course, it will be Barbara, but if you’re there, too, it will be an added inspiration.”

  “Of course he’ll come! And afterward we’ll have a nightcap at the Ca’ da Capo,” the Contessa said before going off to join Oriana and Flint, who were paging through a book on Venetian jewelry.

  Festa, who was standing close enough to the table to have heard this interchange, picked up the Baron Corvo’s Desire and Pursuit of the Whole, opened it at random, and started to read with furious attention. After assuring Bobo that he would try to make the closing performance, Urbino joined Festa.

  “Impossible book!” she said with more animosity for the eccentric novel of Venice than seemed warranted. “My English isn’t up to it—or my patience!”

  She slammed the book down.

  “A strange book, I admit,” Urbino said, wondering if it was in his power to calm the woman down before she turned over the whole display, “but I’ve grown to like it. He’s buried over on San Michele. His real name was Frederick Rolfe. He wasn’t a real baron, you know.”

  Involuntarily they looked at Bobo. Moss had taken advantage of Bobo’s momentary solitary state to have a few private words with him. Quimper stood alone against a bookshelf, watching Bobo and Moss with acute anxiety.

  “Bobo’s a real barone, though,” Festa said. “For what that’s worth. Excuse me. I must go.”

  One of the owners of the bookshop came over to Urbino with copies of his books and asked him to inscribe them. They talked about Ruskin as Urbino guardedly watched Moss and the Barone. Moss was saying something to him. The Barone stiffened, looked intensely into Moss’s face, and said something in his turn. Moss answered back. Then they both looked at the Contessa. The Barone stood up abruptly as Moss walked toward her. Before he could reach her, however, Quimper grabbed his sleeve in passing and they retired against one of the bookshelves.

  Suddenly Oriana gave a little cry. She and Flint were looking at a sheet of paper in her hand. The Contessa snatched it away and stuck it into the book on jewelry and clapped the book shut. She looked over at Urbino, who excused himself and joined her.

  “He’s struck again!” Urbino would almost have laughed at the Contessa’s exclamation except for the pained look on her face. “Another threat! The same as the others. Oriana found it on the bookshelf. Oh, Urbino! I thought you were going to put a stop to all this!”

  14

  An hour later Urbino and Flint were in the library of the Palazzo Uccello. On the way from the bookshop, they had talked about the latest threat, coming to no conclusions. But now Flint’s interest was obviously only for the little palazzo.

  He appreciatively took in the rows of books,
the paintings, the refectory table, and the dark wood confessional where Urbino’s cat Serena was napping. Then he noticed the collection of sixteenth-century Venetian books. He examined them closely.

  “I know someone who would give you a small fortune for these. If you’re ever interested in selling any of them, let me know,” Flint said slowly, prolonging every single vowel.

  Flint seemed to be the kind of Southerner who thought he could charm the world if he only drawled. It had much the opposite effect on Urbino, who was, however, perhaps unfairly prejudiced against the handsome man on this point, as on others. Urbino, with probably just as much deliberation as Flint, had made a contrary effort to banish his own New Orleans accent.

  “I wouldn’t sell the least of them. They’re a gift,” Urbino said.

  “From Barbara, of course. Yes, women are sensitive when it comes to selling their gifts, but a gift no longer belongs to the giver once it’s out of her hands.”

  Urbino held his tongue as he led Flint into the parlor. At first it was the baroque stucco ceiling that caught Flint’s attention. Then he scrutinized the Bronzino portrait of a pearl-and-brocaded Florentine lady over the sofa.

  “A generous woman, isn’t she?” Flint said, at first confusing Urbino, who found the Bronzino woman more angular than ample. “Oriana has a big heart, too, but not as big a pocketbook. If I didn’t know that you inherited this place, I would have thought that Barbara had turned it over to you because she didn’t know what else to do with it.”

  “Let me make something clear. Barbara and I are only friends.”

  “One can always hope for more—but perhaps not now with the Barone in the picture.”

  Flint took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his nose, which had started to drip during the past few minutes. A network of broken capillaries marred its perfection.