The Last Gondola

by Edward Sklepowich

  Having shown such remarkable patience, Urbino hoped that Father Nazar, when they were out in the cloister, forgave him when he didn’t ask about the old cedar of Lebanon tree looking so noble against the gray sky, but instead broke out with, “I meant to ask you earlier, Father. Has the monastery ever heard about any unpublished poems by Byron?”

  A look of interest sharpened the monk’s face.

  “Wouldn’t that be a find?” he responded in colloquial English, holding his hands against the skirt of his black cassock, which was blowing in the wind. “But it’s strange that you should ask,” he continued, now in excellent, though accented Italian. “Years ago there was talk of unpublished Byron poems. As many as half a dozen, maybe more.”

  “When was this?”

  “Twenty, twenty-five years ago.”

  “What kind of rumor?”

  Father Nazar gave Urbino a narrow, glinting glance.

  “I call it a rumor even though a man swore to me up and down that he had poems written by our Lord Byron.”

  “Did you examine them?” Urbino asked, suppressing a smile at Father Nazar’s use of the title and the pronoun to refer to the poet.

  “I never saw them, if there were any to see,” he responded in English, which he continued to use for the rest of their conversation. “Although one day when I came into the library, this man was sitting at a table with sheets of paper. They had handwriting on them and looked old. He put them away quickly. I wasn’t close enough to see the language, but it wasn’t Armenian. The writing wasn’t like what you’d find in a letter or a story, but in a poem. Maybe they were the Byron poems he was always talking about. All the monks know about your books, Signor Macintyre. We have copies in our library. Is that your interest in these poems?”

  “Call it curiosity. Tell me, Father, who was this man?”

  “His name was Mechitar.”

  “Mechitar?” Urbino repeated. “The same name as your founder?”

  “The same. Mechitar Dilsizian. Dilsizian means the son of the tongueless one. Many years ago an ancestor must have had his tongue cut out by the Turks for speaking Armenian.”

  Urbino couldn’t help but think of Armando who was unable to speak, he assumed, for less gruesome reasons.

  “Was he from Venice?” he asked.

  “Vienna. There are many Armenians there.”

  Urbino waited for Father Nazar to give him more details. The monk stroked his beard and looked thoughtful, gazing off toward the Roman statue on the far wall of the cloister.

  “His son Zakariya was one of our students.”

  San Lazzaro had about a dozen students in addition to the same number of seminarians.

  “His father wanted him to study Armenian culture.”

  “He could have done it in Vienna.”

  “True, but his father had a love for Venice. And Lord Byron. And for Armenian poetry, too. He had a good memory. Always quoting lines of poetry.”

  “What was his son like?”

  “An intelligent boy and an excellent pianist. But he was worldly. He had a passion for cardplaying that he got from his father. Mechitar was a real gambler. He lost a lot of money. Zakariya was headed in the same direction, I could see. Well, it all came to a bad end, may God have mercy on their souls.”

  Urbino’s interest quickened even more.

  “What happened?”

  “About twenty years ago, maybe a little less, they drowned in a boating accident off the Lido—a young Italian woman did, too—during a pleasure trip arranged by one of your countrymen. Such a sad funeral at Santa Croce. Two coffins, father and son. It was the end of that branch of the Dilsizians.”

  59

  The wind whipped the gondola and Gildo’s lithe figure on the poop as Gildo rowed it past the island of San Servolo, once the site of a psychiatric hospital. Soon the gondola was moving parallel to the broad embankment that eventually became the Riva degli Schiavoni. Everything around them was suffused with cold color, except for the rosy bricks of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Doge’s Palace, which captured the gray light and somehow transformed it into something almost phosphorescent.

  Sheltered in the cabin, Urbino went over what he had learned from Father Nazar. It had been more than he had expected. Now he had the task of trying to make sense of it.

  On an impulse, as they were approaching the Church of La Pietà, its doors closed to preserve the warmth for the evening concert, Urbino asked Gildo to make a detour. He wanted to see the old street of the Armenians had.

  Gildo steered the black craft out of the lagoon and away from the mouth of the Canalazzo into a small waterway. The temperature dropped several degrees as they passed through the shadows of buildings and under the vaults of bridges that threw back the plash of their movement and the strokes of the oar. Soon Gildo was bringing them to a gentle stop at a little square behind the Piazza San Marco.

  Urbino got out.

  He crossed over a bridge and entered the first calle on his right. Narrow, dark, and short, this was the Calle degli Armeni. It had once been busy with Armenians who had established the first foreign community in Venice and had built the small church under the sottoportico ahead.

  In the covered passageway he stopped in front of the unassuming church wedged in among the other buildings. A simple cross marked the door. Mechitar and Zakariya had been buried from the church. Nowadays it was closed indefinitely.

  He continued to the end of the calle and retraced his steps back to the larger street. No sooner did he do this, however, then he turned around and went back again, pausing as he had a few moments before in front of the church.

  He encountered perhaps half a dozen people, some of them advanced in age. He was tempted to stop two or three of them who had a distinctly non-Venetian look and ask if they were Armenian and, if they were, whether they had ever heard of a man named Mechitar Dilsizian and his son, Zakariya.

  But he kept his distance, having already drawn attention as he paced up and down the small street. He leaned against one of the buildings, wondering how often Mechitar and Zakariya might have passed this way and if they might not have even stayed in one of the houses. He imagined Mechitar sitting in a room above all the street activity, taking out the Byron poems, and reading them over and over again.

  That is, if he had indeed had any Byron poems.

  Father Nazar said that Mechitar had never shown any of the poems to him or the other monks. This could be because they didn’t exist or because Mechitar might have been afraid that his precious poems were vulnerable. He had shuffled sheets of handwritten poetry out of sight in the library as soon as Father Nazar had come in.

  But Mechitar no longer had the poems. He was dead, and so was his son. And Possle said that he was in possession of them. Possle had been on the boat off the Lido when Mechitar and his son had drowned, and along with them, Adriana Abdon, if Urbino were to make the obvious connection between what he had learned from Cipri and from the monk.

  Urbino headed back to where Gildo was waiting with the gondola. He was preoccupied with thoughts of Mechitar and Zakariya, Samuel Possle and Adriana, Hilda and Armando, and of the connection that each of them had, in life or in death, with the poems that might be hidden away in the Ca’ Pozza. Three of them were still alive; three were long dead.

  Perhaps he would learn something about Armando and Adriana this evening from Demetrio Emo at Harry’s Bar that might shed light on the question of the Byron poems and how they had come into Possle’s hands.

  60

  When Urbino came through the swinging doors of Harry’s Bar that evening at eight-fifteen, he almost expected to find Emo running up a tab but the locksmith was nowhere in the crowded, smoke-filled room. Urbino ordered a drink and started to read the copy of today’s International Herald Tribune, which someone had left at the bar.

  He kept glancing at the entrance and the large round clock over the bar. When half an hour had passed and Emo hadn’t come, Urbino went upstairs to the dining room. Almost
all the tables were taken. Urbino was glad he had made reservations. The maitre d’ escorted Urbino to a table by the windows with a splendid nighttime view of the Basin of San Marco and the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

  Urbino ordered another drink and a plate of antipasti as he waited for Emo to arrive. When another half hour had passed, Urbino assumed he was being stood up. Although he didn’t have much of an appetite, he couldn’t very well leave after having reserved a table at such a busy time. He ordered several items and did his best to enjoy them, all the while trying to figure out what Emo’s absence might mean.

  As he stared absently out at the evening scene beyond the window, his mind wandered without focus over his last visit to Possle and the prospect of his visit tomorrow. He knew that his meeting with Possle tomorrow would be crucial, and he tried to work out the strategy he would use. But he kept glancing at the door for Emo and becoming more and more distracted.

  “Excuse me, signore,” the waiter said, after Urbino had managed to get through a plate of pasta and a chicken dish. Under any other circumstances it would have been delicious. “There’s a young man downstairs who’s asking for you. I asked him to come up, but he prefers to stay in the bar.”

  Urbino went downstairs.

  Gildo was standing by the entrance, his cap in his hands, his tousled head of curls bowed.

  “What’s the matter?” Urbino asked him.

  The gondolier’s handsome face was tense. “My Uncle Demetrio had an accident. He was attacked in San Polo. He was hit on the head and knocked to the ground.”

  “How terrible. Is he in the hospital?”

  “At home. He wasn’t hurt badly, thank God.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He’ll be all right. He wants you to make another reservation.”

  Urbino was disturbed by this turn of affairs, but he didn’t want to show it any more than he already had. He asked Gildo if he would like some dinner.

  “No thank you,” he said quickly.

  “Very well. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Urbino went upstairs and settled the bill. When he returned to the ground floor, Gildo was outside in the Calle Vallaresso. They boarded the vaporetto.

  On their way up the Grand Canal, Gildo assured Urbino that his uncle was fine despite bruises. When Urbino asked why Emo had been in San Polo, Gildo said that he had gone there to change a lock.

  Urbino regretted that his talk with Emo was delayed and hoped that what had happened to him in San Polo had nothing to do with the Ca’ Pozza. It seemed a feeble hope.

  Gildo was withdrawn. He kept looking through the window at the passing scene. When he spied some friends walking along the Rialto embankment when the vaporetto was about to pull away, he said a hurried good-bye to Urbino and jumped off to join them. As he threw his arm around one of his companions, he cast a quick glance back at Urbino.

  61

  Early the next morning, Urbino crossed the long, wooden bridge that led to the island of San Pietro di Castello in the eastern part of the city.

  On the other side of the canal a man in a boat repair yard was applying bright green paint to a sandalo. Nets were stretched out in the sun under the blue sky. Near the boatyard was a row of simple houses with chimney pots. The gleaming white campanile of the church, leaning at a precarious angle, beckoned Urbino, for on this small island he might fill in some gaps in the story of Marco Carelli.

  Consulting the address provided by the gondola maker at the square in San Trovaso, he went to one of the quaint houses on the canal where a man and a woman were sitting in chairs in the sunshine. When he asked them where he could find Carlo the remero, the man smiled and said that he was Carlo. He was a thin, friendly faced man in his late sixties. The stout, bespectacled woman, who was embroidering a handkerchief, was his wife.

  Urbino explained that his gondolier had been Marco Carelli’s friend. “He has the forcola that Marco worked on.”

  “So you’re the American gentleman with the gondola!” the wife exclaimed, looking more closely at Urbino now.

  “Did you know Marco?” the remero asked.

  “No. Gildo has told me about him. He treasures the forcola. It’s good.”

  “Marco made some mistakes. He was still learning. I gave it to his friend to comfort him after the accident.” His eyes filled with tears. “He was one of my best apprentices. He could have had his own workshop some day. Maybe this one. I’ll be retiring in a few years; we have no children.”

  His wife busied herself with her needle, glancing at Urbino from time to time.

  “I’d like to make a gift on Marco’s behalf,” he said. “For the forcola.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Carlo began, evidently surprised. “We—”

  “How kind of you, signore,” his wife interrupted him.

  Urbino took out his checkbook and started to write a check for a sum that he believed would more than satisfy them.

  “Marco was generous, like you, signore,” Carlo’s wife said. “Sometimes he gave us extra money. He knew we had our difficulties. We still do.”

  Urbino gave Carlo the check. He thanked Urbino and handed it to his wife. She looked at the amount written on it and smiled.

  “Thank you, signore,” she said. She folded it and put it in her pocket.

  Urbino described Armando and asked if they had seen him around the quarter or anyone else who had asked them about Marco.

  “No,” Carlo said. His wife shook her head. “Maybe you’re asking because someone spoke against him. A neighbor said something about drugs and a wild crowd in San Polo, but he was an angel from what we could see.”

  “And even if it were true, signore,” his wife added, “we wouldn’t have cared. How he behaved somewhere else wasn’t our business.”

  62

  That evening Urbino, the Contessa, and Rebecca went out to dinner together at a trattoria in the Santa Croce district.

  It had everything a trattoria should have. A roaring fire, simple, delicious food, an acceptable house wine, good company, and a family that did all the cooking and serving. There was even a group of men in a corner playing cards amicably.

  As if by a common agreement, no one brought up Possle and the Ca’ Pozza. Urbino appreciated this brief respite from something that he had been living and sleeping with for many weeks now. Whenever it intruded on his thoughts in the course of the evening, as it inevitably did, especially since his next visit to the Ca’ Pozza was tomorrow, he pushed it away.

  Rebecca shared her impressions of the newly restored Giotto frescoes at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. The Contessa discussed the music program she was putting together for the Contessa’s last conversazione. Both Rebecca and Urbino would be attending, he having received her carte blanche to be there on this occasion.

  For his part, Urbino, who had called Habib the previous evening after returning from Harry’s Bar, told them about the young man’s recent activities in Morocco. They included the sale of some of his paintings to a Barcelona dealer and an outing to Marrakesh in the Deux Chevaux Urbino had bought for his own use when he was in the country and left for the family.

  Urbino had them laughing when he described how Habib had put, not only his mother on the line, but also each of his six sisters and two brothers.

  All in all, the only disappointment of their evening was that their bill wasn’t toted up with chalk on a slate to make the spell complete. Urbino got home feeling less fatigued than energized for tomorrow’s visit to the Ca’ Pozza.

  But as it turned out the evening, or rather the night, was not to be without its far less pleasant side, for the dream of Possle and the fire was more vivid and disturbing than ever.

  63

  The next day was Thursday, March 21. Urbino had his rendezvous with Possle at four-thirty.

  Before he left the Palazzo Uccello, he called Corrado Scarpa about the boat accident report. Scarpa was having trouble locating it, he said. He would keep trying.

  Urb
ino then telephoned his friend Paola, who coordinated social services at the municipal hospital. It had been a week since he had asked her to have someone at her office make a visit to Elvira Carelli to see what might be done for her. Paola said that she had arranged to have her assistant stop by Elvira’s apartment a few days ago. Elvira had allowed her in, and they had had a brief conversation. Elvira had ended up crying and screaming about Marco and had made incoherent comments about the neighboring building.

  The assistant’s observations confirmed Urbino’s impression on his own visit. Despite her emotional problems, Elvira kept the apartment in fairly good order. The refrigerator and pantry had been well stocked and a pot of food had been cooking on the stove. The social service worker had given Elvira her phone number and had said that she would stop by again. Elvira hadn’t given any indication that this would be unwelcome to her.

  This was the most that Paola’s services could do for Elvira at this point. She would let him know when her assistant made another visit.

  As he was leaving the Palazzo Uccello, Gildo was coming in. Urbino asked him how his uncle was doing and learned that he had returned to work yesterday, the day after the attack.

  64

  Armando’s sharp eyes, his loud silence, his cold smile, and even his unhurried passage up the staircase of the Ca’ Pozza, although all no different than usual, were nothing less than accusations. Urbino was amazed at how much the man communicated without words, unless what he should have been amazed at, as well as warned by, was his own facility for reading meanings where there might not be any. But this was surely a circumstance in which it was better to think and believe the worst.