The dog paused and seemed to consider two desires—to follow the departing woman or to obey his mistress. After what seemed inordinately long seconds of indecisiveness, Catullus turned around and came to the Contessa’s side. The Contessa, her face now etched with all the years of the decade she could usually deny having lived, breathed a sigh of relief completely disproportionate to the smallness of this victory over the beautiful young woman who had shattered the Watteau of her garden party.
3
It was sunday. Urbino and the Contessa were sitting on the terrace of the Caffè Centrale in the main square of Asolo. Usually they were content to enjoy the idyllic scene in Piazza Garibaldi—the liquid music of the fifteenth-century winged-lion fountain, the profusion of bright flowers hanging from the arcade windows, the arrival and departure of the jitney buses from the bottom of the hill, the people strolling on the pink and yellow marble pavements, and the view of the golden-stoned castle and the green hills beyond.
Today, however, not even the charms of this town so beloved by Browning that he had named his last volume of poems after it could soothe them, especially not the Contessa. To an even less discerning and affectionate eye than Urbino’s own, she was very troubled.
“Even its name mocks me today,” she said wearily, staring with sleep-deprived eyes at the arcade opposite. The seafoam of her dress, usually a flattering shade for her, this afternoon drained her of color. Urbino knew what she meant. The town in whose rose gardens Giorgione had lingered with his lute and where the Venetian Queen of Cyprus had held fabled court had bequeathed its name to a verb. Pietro Bembo, the Renaissance humanist who had used Asolo as the setting for his dialogues on love, had coined the verb asolare to describe spending one’s time in pleasurable inactivity.
One of the Contessa’s favorite phrases during her summers here was Asolo in Asolo, whose meaning lost its wit when translated into any other language as “I’m doing sweet nothing in Asolo.”
“I won’t have a peaceful moment until this is resolved, Urbino,” she said, abandoning her spoon beside her barely touched Coppa Tartufo and absently fingering her strand of freshwater pearls. “I’m devastated. She’s not playing a prank, I assure you. She meant everything she was saying. I could see it in her eyes.”
Because Urbino had been struck with just how little Flavia’s eyes had seemed to reveal—unless it was their very vacuousness that had been so voluble—he found the Contessa’s comment puzzling.
“Oh, I don’t mean that I believe she was telling the truth—I have absolutely no reason to believe that—absolutely none,” she emphasized, not meeting his eye. “But she was convinced of what she said.”
“The best way to convince someone else of your lies is to believe them yourself,” he said, feeling foolish even before the words were out of his mouth.
The Contessa managed a wry smile.
“I don’t have the energy or the desire to try to figure out if that’s a platitude or a profundity, caro, but I accept the intended consolation. Perhaps our Flavia is herself not aware of her own intentions.”
“She said she only wants a picture of Alvise.”
“Don’t play the role of the naïf, Urbino. It doesn’t really suit you—or maybe it suits you all too well! But you’re wrong. She wants more than a picture. She must be thinking of lire—unless she just wants to smash Alvise’s—and my—reputations out of pure maliciousness. I’ve already put my solicitor here on alert. He says to do nothing, of course, and I’ve advised him to do the same. In any case, to give her a picture would be to give her everything, don’t you think? It would be the great acknowledgment, the painful admission. It would be admitting that she was right. I can’t even say that I ever suspected such a thing, that I even considered it a possibility. Perhaps I’m the one who’s naïve—who’s been naïve for the past twenty or more years. I’m sure this Flavia isn’t much over twenty-five. That would make it about nine years after we were married.”
The Contessa narrowed her eyes as she apparently tried to remember the period in question, then shook her head and picked up her spoon, only to put it down again.
“It would have been around the time of the maze. Alvise never really wanted one. I should have respected his wishes.”
As if this might be the original sin for which she was now suffering, she sighed deeply.
“Of course, if there’s anything in all this,” she said in a low voice, as if speaking only to herself, “it could have begun before then, long before then.”
Urbino didn’t interrupt the Contessa’s thoughts, but plucked and ate the grapes in his iced bowl and absently watched the people descending from the jitney bus. Among them was a smiling, broad-faced man who for a few startling moments Urbino thought he recognized. But the man’s loud German spoken to a stout woman behind him dispelled the unexpected possibility that his ex-brother-in-law Eugene had somehow found his way at not the best of moments to Urbino’s retreat in Asolo.
“I can’t go on like this,” the Contessa said. “I refuse to! I must know.”
Silvestro Occhipinti’s thin, reedy voice sounded in Urbino’s ears from yesterday—the birdlike man’s quotation from his beloved Browning about the danger of losing our Edens by prying where the apple reddens. The Contessa was obviously not going to be satisfied until she had pried in the orchard of her own past with Alvise. But after the satisfaction of that would come—what? Urbino shared the fear on his friend’s face.
“You can help me, caro. You can find out if this young woman could conceivably be telling the truth. If she is, I owe her something more than only the picture she says she wants. And if she isn’t—oh, if she isn’t, Urbino, I’ll never stop thanking you!”
But what might he get instead of gratitude if he had to tell her that Flavia was Alvise’s daughter?
“I must know, caro,” the Contessa said again, this time reaching out to press his hand gently as if he were the one in need of consolation. “Don’t be afraid just because I am. It will be your chance to live out one of your fantasies,” she said, her face lightening as she gave him a little smile. “‘The knight in shining armor’ rescuing a lady in distress. And whatever you end up finding out, there’s going to be a lady grateful for a rescue, isn’t there? You can’t lose. Don’t you see that? It’s a mission made in heaven!”
“I can see that I’m in a difficult position.”
“Because you think you have no choice? You can always say no.”
“And forever be made to regret it.”
“So you’re going to help me! You can’t hide anything from me, you see, no matter how hard you might try. And I know what I have to do. I’m going to have to tell you all about Alvise and me again, not just what I already have, but other things. It’s not that I’ve intentionally held anything back from you—not the way you have, you sly thing!—but that I’ve kept much of it to myself. It’s not quite the same, caro, so don’t give me that look!”
As far as Urbino knew, he was giving her no look except one of sincere interest. He had always wondered about the Contessa’s marriage, had always felt that there was something that he didn’t understand even though he knew so much about it. Perhaps he was going to learn what it was now. Yet he felt uneasy. This wasn’t quite the way he wanted to find out, not when so much was at stake for the Contessa and so much was expected of him. As a biographer, he was wary of any strong personal involvement that made him reluctant to discover unpleasant truths or eager to find their opposite.
“I assure you that I won’t hold you responsible for anything I might end up regretting I’ve told you—or anything that you dig up in your inimitable way. But before I begin I’m going to need a fresh coppa,” she said, looking down at her almost completely melted gelato.
After ordering another Coppa Tartufo and a Campari soda for himself, Urbino waited for the Contessa to begin, but first she ate her gelato slowly and silently, as if fortifying herself for a difficult ordeal.
4
“When
I came to Venice from London to study music at the conservatory,” she began, “I was just a green girl, hard though it might be for you to believe now. I thought I was the most sophisticated little thing who had ever come along. I fought like a tigress with my parents to go to Italy. They finally relented only because I agreed to stay with their friends the Wilverlys and because the director of the conservatory promised to take special care of me. Even my sister Patricia tried to keep me from going, saying all sorts of terrible things would happen. But I was determined. Venice was going to be my adventure. So I came here, and as it turned out, I never really went back, not to live. Once I left, I left for good.
“As you know, I studied voice and piano at the Palazzo Pisani,” she went on. “I was one of those hopeful girls you can hear when you’re walking past or sitting in Campo Morosini, one of the ones whose soprano trills never quite reach high C. I was better at piano. In fact, it was my piano-playing that brought Alvise and me together. It was at the Wilverlys’. I was practicing the barcarolle from I Quattro Rusteghi by Wolf-Ferrari who used to be director of the conservatory.”
The Contessa had charmed a small group several years ago at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini playing her rendition of the barcarolle intermezzo. At the time, however, she had said nothing about its association with Alvise.
“It caught Alvise’s ear. He had always loved the piece, he said, because it captures the movement of a gondola so well. The windows of the salone were open that particular evening. After I finished the barcarolle, the doorbell rang. I went down and found a handsome man standing there with a girl around my age. He was about forty, with black hair, light Venetian skin, and blue eyes. At first I thought he might be the girl’s father but I soon realized he wasn’t by the way she looked at him. He gave me a boyish smile and apologized for disturbing me but said, in grammatical English with only a slight accent, that he had to know who was playing the barcarolle so divinely. He and the young lady had been passing by and he had been startled to hear it for the second time that day. Surely I had been playing it at the conservatory that morning? My touch was unmistakable, he said. By this time the girl was getting impatient. I thought that she might not understand English so I said something to her in Italian. She answered in English in a haughty way. They didn’t stay long after that, but he gave me his card before they left. I was upset when I realized that I hadn’t told him what my name was—and by that I knew that I was interested in him. It wasn’t until I read his card that I saw that he was a count. He had introduced himself as simply Alvise da Capo-Zendrini.”
A soft look had come over the Contessa’s face as she recounted her first meeting with her future husband. Urbino believed that the seeds of the destruction of a relationship might be found in the circumstances of its origin. If this was true, then what might the Contessa’s romantic little story reveal so far?
What the Contessa had to face presently, now that the young woman had intruded into her life, was a possibly dark side to the romance of her marriage. But here on the terrace of the Caffè Centrale, even though she must be fully aware of where reminiscence might eventually lead her—and Urbino in her wake—she was slightly flushed with the pleasure of remembrance.
It was a long time since Urbino had reminisced in this way about his own first meeting with Evangeline. Would he too feel a similar pleasure? Eugene’s arrival tomorrow might give him a chance to find out—or make it difficult for him to continue to evade thoughts of his marriage.
Any kind of evasion seemed far from the Contessa’s intentions, however, as she continued after taking a sip of her mineral water.
“I wanted to see him again, but I wasn’t about to ring him or pay him a call. I did go to see where he lived, though—and was disturbed to find it one of the biggest, if not the best kept, palazzi on the Grand Canal. I was prepared for a penurious Italian count marrying a young woman with enough money to keep them both comfortable, though not luxurious—oh! my imagination was racing even after only our brief encounter. It was the stuff of the novels I couldn’t get enough of. It was what my parents feared would happen to me. But a count who lived in a real palazzo, no matter how much in need of repair, was something else entirely! I was convinced I’d never see him again. But he knew where to find me, and he did,” she said with a smile of satisfaction.
“The Wilverlys’?”
“No, the conservatory. A few days later I had just finished vocalizing in the drawing room when who came in but Alvise! He was dressed impeccably in a beige linen suit and was carrying a rose. He handed it to me and asked if I would join him for coffee. We went to Caffè Paolin and I ordered pistachio ice cream. It never tasted so good!
“That was the first of many meetings. Alvise did things the proper way, however. He soon came to the Wilverlys’ when they were at home. It caused quite a stir. ‘Do you know who he is, Barbara? He’s the best catch in Venice, one of the best in Italy. Three generations of women have been trying to get him to marry—but he’s old enough to be your father!’ I suppose it was true—he was forty-one—and I—I was much younger, but I never thought of him in that way. We seemed almost the same age. I was mature for my years, and he was young for his. We met in the middle.
“We went all around Venice together. My studies suffered, but I was learning so much else that it didn’t matter. I don’t mean what you might be thinking, caro—I mean things about Venice, things I never would have learned if left on my own. Alvise seemed to know everything about it, as you would expect someone who said he could trace his family history back to the eighth century. On New Year’s Eve he asked me to marry him and I said yes. I didn’t learn until later that he had been considering marrying the girl who was with him when he rang the Wilverlys’ bell. I met her several times when Alvise and I were going about Venice, and she was as cold as ice. She started to go out with Silvestro but soon despaired of ever getting him to the altar. He was even older than Alvise and a confirmed bachelor. She’d still be waiting. As it was, she didn’t marry until about ten years after we did.”
She took a sip of her mineral water.
“I was warned by Patricia, warned by my parents and friends, but I didn’t listen. I was certain there was no first Contessa lurking in the attic of the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini, nothing but a lot of furniture, paintings, and clothing. And so, as Jane Eyre said, ‘Reader’—or ‘Listener’ I should say—’I married him.’ And I never regretted it. Oh, we had our disagreements. I don’t want to give the impression that we lived in a Venetian version of Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. The most difficult time was about ten years after we married, not long before the flood. The doctors in Geneva told us that I would never be able to conceive. It was a blow even though we had suspected it by then. That was the lowest point in our marriage. Alvise was wonderful. He said it really didn’t matter, that he was only concerned about me, that he knew how much I wanted to have a child.
“I threw myself into getting the La Muta garden back to the way it once had been and planning a maze. Alvise wasn’t as enthusiastic about it all, although he never came right out and said so. He must have thought all this business with the garden was a form of therapy for me, as I suppose it was, and for that he was grateful.
“I went to England in July with Tommaso Beni”—Beni was the landscape architect who had been at her party yesterday—“to show him the English mazes. I was determined to have a Victorian puzzle maze. Tommaso threw himself into the project. He studied the mazes at Hampton Court, Breamore House, Somerlyton Hall—all the famous ones and quite a few of the ones most people haven’t heard of. Tommaso was taking photographs, sketching, poring through garden and estate books the entire time.
“I don’t think Alvise was very happy about the idea of Tommaso and me being together even though he trusted me. Alvise didn’t want to stay at La Muta while I was away, so he and Silvestro went to Silvestro’s villa on Lago di Garda. Alvise and I would talk several times a week on the phone. He was noncommittal, not giving me many details.
> “While I was away I got two strange phone calls. One was from Silvestro. Alvise was lost without me, he said, and when was I planning to put the poor man out of his misery? The other call was from Oriana.” Oriana Borelli was a friend of the Contessa’s who lived in Venice on the Island of Giudecca. “Oriana said that as a friend she advised me to come back immediately. When I asked her what she meant, she paused and said that people were talking, ‘people who mattered,’ she emphasized. You can imagine how puzzled I was. Oriana worrying about what people thought, when she and Filippo conduct their extramarital affairs like an opera buffa! But I assumed she was concerned about my reputation even if she never seemed to be about hers. I left England within forty-eight hours. Tommaso stayed on for another week.
“Alvise came back from Lago di Garda and hardly ever mentioned my trip to England with Tommaso. He had a gift waiting for me—the nymph that’s now at the center of the maze.” Her face clouded. “Not having children puts a tremendous strain on a relationship when the two people want to have them, but I never felt that Alvise blamed me.”
“Surely it wasn’t a question of blame.”
“You know what I mean. He never made me feel that it was because of me that he—that we,” she emphasized, “were being denied something. But I’ve felt it as just that, caro—a denial, a deprivation. I thought it would get better as the years went by but it’s become worse since Alvise died.”
Urbino had always believed that the Contessa’s not having children had been the only real deficiency in her otherwise idyllic marriage, one that she and Alvise had adjusted to down through the years. But now Flavia had come into the picture—had, in fact, rudely intruded herself into it. How drastic an adjustment might the Contessa have to make in the way she viewed her marriage?
The Contessa was nearing the end of her story, speaking more quickly, as if eager to get her part over with so that Urbino could begin his.
Liquid Desires Page 3