Black Bridge

by Edward Sklepowich

  “This place is small, though. When people hear you live in a palazzo, they must expect something like Barbara’s place.”

  “It’s big enough for me.” Urbino hoped they could leave the Contessa out of the conversation. “I’ve turned the top floor over to my housekeeper and her husband. I live on only this floor.”

  “What about the ground floor? Damp and flooded?”

  “Not at all. I’m using it for an art restoration workshop. I’m just an amateur, though. I restored the portrait of the Cremonese lady you saw in the library.”

  “Another gift from Barbara, I’m sure. By the way, Oriana wasn’t clear about how you inherited the building.”

  “From my mother’s side of the family,” Urbino said, trying to keep his patience. “She never saw it, unfortunately. She was born in New Orleans, always intended to go to Italy, but never did. It’s been a bit of a struggle to keep it up, with the restoration and the repairs and everything else. I do what I can but I have to let a lot of things go. If you look closely you’ll see what I mean. The chandelier has a lot of pieces missing, and those portraits on the other wall need to be cleaned.”

  “You’re breaking my heart! Less than perfect Murano chandeliers and dirty portraits!”

  “They’re all by minor Venetian painters.”

  “Yes, but the frames alone are works of art. They could bring in a pretty penny. But I’ve already taken up enough of your time, Urbino. Don’t forget now. If you ever change your mind about those books, I could put enough money in your hands so that you could make more than a few repairs around here! I feel so sorry for you having to live amid such squalor!”

  15

  On the closing night of Pomegranate some of the fog invading the city seemed to have crept into Bobo’s performance, which was vague and distracted.

  “I have some things to see to, Barbara,” Bobo said afterward. “I’ll join you and Urbino in an hour.”

  During the trip up the Grand Canal, where the fog was swirling in thick patches, the Contessa made only perfunctory remarks and eventually the two friends fell silent. But when the door of the salotto blu was closed behind them, the Contessa said in a flat, dead voice: “Something’s wrong. I saw it in Bobo’s eyes. He was planning to come right back. Maybe it’s another threat! You must have noticed that his performance was off.”

  She kept glancing at the mantel clock. Usually she nursed her wine but this evening she drank it quickly and refilled her glass. She moved restlessly about the room, but expended little of her energy in conversation. Urbino paged through magazines, content just to be her silent, understanding companion, but as the time dragged he began to feel as if he were keeping vigil with her.

  Bobo didn’t show up after an hour, or an hour and a half. There was no word, no call. The Contessa’s nervousness eventually began to affect Urbino. It was a quarter to midnight when Lucia said that the Contessa was wanted on the phone. The Contessa hurriedly left the room, having banished telephones from her salotto.

  “How very strange,” she said when she returned. “That young artist, Hugh Moss, of all people! He insists on stopping by at this ungodly hour! He sounded drunk. Whatever does he want to see me for?”

  “At Bobo’s signing yesterday he was going to come over to you but his girlfriend restrained him. And right before that when Moss was talking to him, Bobo seemed frightened and Moss looked as if he—”

  He trailed off. How could he describe Moss during those moments with Bobo?

  “Looked as if he what?” the Contessa said impatiently.

  “As if he enjoyed seeing Bobo uncomfortable, as if that was why he was talking with him and saying whatever it was he was saying. And then there was the way they both looked at you, as if you were very much a part of Moss’s enjoyment and—and Bobo’s fear and discomfort.”

  “You’ve been reading too much Henry James! Such volumes in a conversation you didn’t hear a word of! Quimper said something the other night about Moss wanting to paint my portrait and maybe the view from the loggia. That’s the extent of it, I’m sure.”

  For the next forty-five minutes the Contessa retired into a silent sulk from which she withdrew only when footsteps sounded in the hall.

  “Bobo!” she said and jumped up.

  But it wasn’t Bobo. It was Harriet, with a knit cap pulled down on her forehead and looking exhausted. She seemed to be out of breath.

  “Harriet! Are you coming in or going out?”

  “Coming in. I—I was at Marco’s. I got lost in the fog. Good night.”

  The Contessa returned to her chair and lapsed back into her own gloomy thoughts. Urbino wondered if they were going to sit like this all night.

  But once again, ten minutes later, footsteps sounded in the hall. This time it was Bobo. He stood at the door of the salotto and looked in as if searching for someone or something and fearful of what he would find. The Contessa went up to his side, her face at first smiling with relief, then drawing into a horrified expression.

  “Bobo! You’re bleeding!”

  Indeed, blood stained one end of his scarf. He looked down at it as if it had absolutely nothing to do with him.

  16

  On the other side of the Grand Canal a tourist lost her way as she hurried back to her hotel. Her head was filled with terrifying images.

  Were his lips sliced off as well as his nose and ears?

  She couldn’t remember. She had tried not to pay attention, but now she knew, as she stumbled through the fog and darkness, that it had done little good.

  Skinned alive, of that she was sure, but had that nasty little man in the church actually said something about the skin being stuffed with earth—or was it straw?—and being displayed through the streets on a cow?

  “And it’s right in there,” he said, pointing to the urn beneath the bust of the ill-fated general.

  “What is?”

  “The skin! We stole it from the damn Turks!”

  She had thrust some lire into his hands and rushed from the church. Now the memory of the encounter and the fear that the man might be following her had made her lose her way in the maze of alleys.

  She stopped. Should she continue straight on or turn left or right? She had crossed over the Rialto Bridge a few minutes ago, surprised to find how deserted the area was. In the daytime it was bustling with shops and kiosks selling souvenirs and vegetables.

  She heard footsteps behind her, but rather than being relieved, she was more frightened than before. Surely it must be the man from the church! She turned impulsively to her right and hurried over the slippery stones. The fog and the darkness were even thicker here. She stopped after a few moments and listened. Just as she feared, the footsteps made the same turn.

  She ran. Out of breath, the blood pounding in her ears, she found herself in an enclosed area, with what looked like cages around her. For a few moments she thought she had wandered into a zoo, but the city didn’t have a zoo, did it? And she didn’t hear any animals, thank God. The pursuing footsteps were now silent. What she did hear was the lapping of water and a boat chugging by, then a woman’s distant laughter. Reassured, she gave a little laugh herself at her own foolishness.

  She would walk toward the woman’s laughter. There she would find light and life. She turned too quickly and lost her footing on something slippery. She fell to her knees and her purse flew from her. On her hands and knees she groped along the paving stones for it. She touched leather but it wasn’t her purse, but something smaller, with harder edges. She withdrew her hand quickly. What was it? Fearfully, tentatively, she reached out again. This time she didn’t touch leather but the fingers of a hand. She screamed and leaped up.

  She could now see a dark figure lying on the stones. It didn’t move. She ran only a short distance before she tripped and fell again.

  A few inches from her face was another face—or what was left of it. It was now a mass of blood and tissue. Her hands slipped on something wet. She brought one hand up to her face. A
small object was sticking to her palm. A pebble, she thought. She picked it from her palm and was about to throw it back on the pavement when she looked at it more closely.

  Horrified, she realized what it was. A tooth.

  PART TWO

  The Pomegranate Tree

  1

  Next morning Urbino and the Contessa, not yet aware of the deaths on the Rialto that would affect their lives so deeply, were sitting in the Contessa’s salotto blu. The Contessa was idling paging through D’Annunzio’s Fire.

  “Bobo’s upstairs. We checked him out of the Gritti,” she added, with a slight tilt to her chin. “The threat at the signing hit him hard, but he’s being stoic.”

  “Did he say where he was last night?”

  “He and Livia had a drink at Harry’s, then he went for a walk. It’s all that unused energy after a performance.”

  “And the nosebleed?”

  “Part of his exuberance, I’m sure.” Having delivered this questionable medical opinion, she took a sip of tea and picked up the D’Annunzio novel again. When she finished a passage and looked up to find Urbino’s eyes on her, she said: “What a peculiar look! I’m not exactly reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover! And I don’t approve of everything D’Annunzio did—or wrote. But it’s his passion that captures me. He was passionate about so many things—and passion is one of the most important qualities, don’t you think? Passion and honesty—is there anything else?”

  “No, Barbarina,” came the Barone Bobo’s voice from the door, less hearty than usual, “there isn’t—unless it’s love!”

  “Bobo! I hope you found nooks and crannies for all your things.”

  “Oh, somehow I managed,” he said with a forced laugh. His eyes were pocketed with fatigue. He walked over to the bar and poured himself an anisette. When he raised the glass to his lips, a few drops of the clear liquid spattered his white shirtfront.

  “Orlando is coming along fine,” the Contessa said. “I was talking with him earlier. I told him that we would all be remembering Rosa on the Day of All Souls. She died around then, didn’t she? What day was it exactly?”

  “The twenty-eighth or the twenty-ninth. I—I forget.” Then with more conviction: “She died late at night, you see. Right before or after midnight.”

  He finished his anisette. Astonishment briefly touched the Contessa’s face. She was a woman who knew not only the year and the day but the precise hour of the deaths of her loved ones. Her decision to revive the old Venetian tradition of the bridge of boats to the cemetery island on the Day of All Souls came as much from this deep reverence for the dead as from her love for all things Venetian. Her eyes flicked in Urbino’s direction before she said: “Yes, it’s sometimes difficult to remember painful memories, I find. The mind just shuts down.” Then, with more energy and a rueful smile at Bobo: “But whatever the precise date, it means that our procession will have all that more meaning. We’ll all be remembering Rosa. She always seemed like such a dear woman.”

  It was Bobo’s opportunity to make up for his lapse of memory, but he said nothing.

  Before anyone might break the uncomfortable silence, the door of the salotto blu burst open. It was Oriana and Flint.

  “If you’re calmly sitting here like that with a book in your lap, Barbara, then you can’t possibly have heard the terrible news.” Oriana settled herself with a great deal of histrionics in one of the Louis Quinze chairs. “Tell them, John dear. I’m emotionally exhausted. This has been one of the worst days of my life.”

  Flint cast an appraising glance over the furnishings and bibelots.

  “Oriana isn’t exaggerating. It is bad news. We just found out at the Flora.”

  “Orlando!” the Contessa said, standing up. “Oh, don’t tell me the poor man is dead!”

  “Orlando? Dead?”

  Bobo’s voice held a strange note. Flint was studying the Barone’s reaction with peculiar interest. Before Oriana or Flint might further enlighten them, raised voices sounded from the hallway, followed by footsteps.

  An olive-skinned man in his late forties, dressed in a dark gray suit and tie, appeared in the doorway next to Mauro, the majordomo. Behind them was a blue-uniformed policeman. The olive-skinned man’s dark eyes quickly surveyed the room. He frowned when he saw Oriana and Flint. His expression became even more severe when his eyes alighted on the Barone, who was pouring himself another anisette.

  “Excuse us for interrupting you, Contessa, but I’d like to speak in private to the Barone Casarotto-Re.”

  “May I ask what this intrusion is all about?”

  “It’s all right, Barbara. Whatever you have to say to me, Commissario, you can say in front of my friends.”

  Bobo must have intended it for a brave pose, but his voice, though haughty, had a hollow and fearful sound.

  “Very well, then. I am Commissario Roberto Gemelli of the Venice Questura. We’d like you to come to San Lorenzo to answer some questions in reference to the deaths of Hugh Moss and Marie Quimper, who were shot to death last night in the Rialto Erberia.”

  Bobo paled.

  “Dead? Both of them?”

  “My God!” the Contessa said. “Moss called me about a quarter to twelve last night and was going to stop by. Now I see why he didn’t! To think I’ve been in a pique about it!”

  Gemelli was about to say something when Oriana said:

  “It happened much too late for the paper! We went to the Flora to see if Hugh and Marie wanted to go to Chioggia. Hugh mentioned the Carpaccio there. And—”

  Oriana broke off at a sharp look from Gemelli.

  “You and Signor Flint will be giving your statements at the Questura later, Signora Borelli. Please, Barone. Our boat is waiting.”

  2

  “I’ll never forgive you unless you do something to help Bobo!”

  Urbino was fortified with a Campari soda, the Contessa only by an anger that didn’t seem at all close to cooling. She had not very graciously asked Oriana and Flint to leave and then called the chief commissioner at the Questura to complain about the way Gemelli had taken away Bobo.

  “I don’t see what I can do, Barbara.”

  “Well, I do! Haven’t I already started the ball rolling? You can help convince Gemelli that Bobo knows absolutely nothing about this couple!”

  “Bobo will have to tell Gemelli what he does know about the couple. It might not be as little as you think.”

  “He knows even less about them than I do, and what I know can be put in one of those thimbles over there,” she said, nodding to her collection of Victorian thimbles. “Oh, how could Oriana have brought this down on our heads! If it weren’t for her, we’d never have met Moss and Quimper! And now every single one of my guests is going to be dragged over to San Lorenzo and grilled.”

  Urbino gave a nervous, involuntary smile at her unintentional pun. The name of the quarter where the Questura was located was also the name of the saint who had been martyred by grilling over an open fire.

  “I don’t find as much humor in all this as you do! Please, Urbino, do try to get over this adolescent animosity for Bobo. I need you to set things straight. First those threats, and now this new trouble. You saw the way Gemelli was treating Bobo! As if he had something to hide! Go to the Questura and see what you can do for him.”

  Urbino’s mind quickly ran over Bobo’s strange behavior last night, his bloodied scarf, and Moss’s failure to turn up at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini after his call. Could he have been looking for Bobo? But instead of coming to the Ca’ da Capo, he had gone with Marie Quimper to the deserted Rialto Market, where they had met their deaths.

  “You keep mentioning Oriana and your other guests,” Urbino said, “but Gemelli is going to be very interested in Moss’s call to you last night. That brings things even closer to you—and to Bobo.”

  “And to you as well!” she snapped. “Maybe he knew you were here and wanted to see you!”

  “It was you, Barbara. You’re going to have to start to f
ace the truth.”

  When the Contessa responded after a few moments, she spoke with a regretful smile that warmed her gray eyes. Her anger of a moment before seemed forgotten.

  “I pulled you away from the mud at Abano so that you could play one of your favorite roles, remember?—my knight in shining armor who comes to the rescue in your own quiet way. Don’t disappoint me. With these deaths there’s much more at stake than before.” Then, in a quiet but insistent voice: “And beware of your dislike for Bobo. It shows, caro, oh, it shows!”

  3

  Several hours later at the Questura, Urbino gave his statement to Commissario Gemelli while a stenographer took it down. He described how he had met Moss and Quimper at Harry’s Bar when Oriana and Flint had introduced them.

  “Quimper asked me to autograph a copy of my book on Proust. She said that she had read it but a receipt from the Libreria Sangiorgio showed that she had just bought it that day, which suggests that the book itself might have been only a pretext for meeting me. Oriana Borelli and Flint met them at the exhibit at the Palazzo Grassi. Later that same day I bumped into them in Piazza San Marco. They were standing under the arcade outside the Chinese salon.”

  “Observing the Barone and the Contessa?”

  “Perhaps. They were still sitting there. Moss asked me earlier at Harry’s if the Contessa was with me.”

  He then described the comments about their Baedeker.

  “Did you happen to look through it?”

  “No. Quimper was nervous. Moss jumped in and said that it was very expensive. He interrupted her again when I asked if it was their first trip to Venice. He said it was but I had the impression Quimper had been about to say something else. The next time I saw them was that evening. The Barone and I were on the terrace of the Gritti Palace about ten. Moss and Quimper were being rowed into the gondola landing below the terrace. They looked up at me and exchanged a few words with each other. I waved. They returned my greeting.”