She nodded toward a man around seventy-five sitting in a chair in the sunshine of a garden. Behind him was bougainvillaea and ivy, a pergola of vines, and a white stone wall, beyond which sparkled the waters of the Grand Canal.
The contrast between Bernardo Volpi and his wife could hardly have been greater. He had a fragile-looking face, and beneath his parchment-colored skin the contours of his skull were visible. Dressed in a beige Prince of Wales linen jacket and linen trousers, with an ascot around his neck, Bernardo Volpi sat immobile and gave no sign of greeting.
Violetta started to cut the canvas around the stretching frame with a knife, her bracelets jangling. A beam of sunlight from the open door struck red highlights in her graying brown hair.
“Please sit down, Signor Macintyre. You won’t mind if I continue with this? It’s important that I throw myself into my work. All I can think about is my niece.”
Violetta was speaking in Italian even though, according to the Contessa, she knew English—or had known it thirty years ago.
Urbino sat on a small sofa against the wall.
“But I’m not going to get any respite from thoughts of Flavia with you, am I, Signor Macintyre? You’re here about her, aren’t you?”
Violetta Volpi, tucking her paint-spattered robe around her more tightly to get it out of the way, stared at him. Urbino saw grief written in her face but, as he continued to look at her, it was as if she banished the grief by an act of will. Her strong features exerted their influence and once again Urbino felt the power of her sensuality. He remembered what Occhipinti had said the other night at the Contessa’s villa about Violetta having been at all of the balls in her youth. Seeing her now Urbino didn’t doubt it.
Violetta bent over and continued to cut the canvas.
“I’m afraid you’re right, Signora Volpi. I am here about Flavia—more precisely about Flavia and the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini.”
“But surely that goes without saying! I’ve been expecting either you or the Contessa ever since Flavia told me she paid the Contessa a visit. It’s all pure and simple nonsense!” she said dismissively in her throaty voice. “When Flavia told me that she had mentioned this business of Alvise da Capo-Zendrini being her father to the Contessa, I was appalled, and, I admit, I felt a little responsible. After her mother—my sister—died, I looked after her, gave her what advice and help I could. Bernardo was a second father to her. We’ve never been blessed with children, and what time I could spare from my Bernardo and my art, I gave to her. She was certainly getting nothing from her other aunt.”
She finished cutting the canvas and dropped the knife on the floor.
“Her other aunt?”
“No relation to me, thank God! Annabella Brollo, her father’s sister.” Violetta almost sniffed with disapproval as she put the stretching frame to one side and started to shave down the knots and slub threads of the canvas with a large pumice. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Flavia got her crazy idea about Alvise from Annabella. Poor, poor Alvise,” she added in an affectionately commiserative tone. “He was a good man. He deserved better.”
The ambiguity of this comment would in no way please the Contessa.
“But Annabella! She did everything she could to turn Flavia against me—and against her own mother! Always scheming behind the scenes! All she cares about is her brother and that jungle of flowers she grows up on their altana.”
“But surely she wouldn’t have led Flavia to believe that her brother wasn’t Flavia’s father, would she? Not if she cares so much for him.”
Violetta Volpi rubbed with the pumice at a recalcitrant imperfection in the canvas before answering. Urbino suspected that Violetta’s activity was a way of not giving him a clear view of her face.
“Who knows?” Violetta said. “Maybe she was trying to poison Lorenzo’s mind against my sister. He was devoted to Regina. He still is.” She looked over at Bernardo, who was still sitting silently in the garden. “Two sisters got two good husbands. Annabella never married. That’s the source of her problems. She’s all twisted up and resentful. You can see it in her face. She might be trying to drive her brother crazy for some reason by spreading a story like that. Didn’t that happen in a play by Ibsen?”
“I believe it was Strindberg. But isn’t that a bit far-fetched? Perhaps Annabella knows something you don’t.”
Violetta Volpi stopped rubbing and stiffened.
“If I believed that, I’d slit my wrists! Annabella has always lived in a dreamworld. The happiest day of her life was when my sister died. She just moved right in with Lorenzo and hasn’t moved out since! No, she couldn’t know anything about my sister that I don’t.”
Although Urbino had gone to see Violetta Volpi in quest of information, he was somewhat surprised at her willingness to give it out.
“Did your sister know Alvise da Capo-Zendrini?”
“Hardly. He was my friend until he married. Even after that, I saw him from time to time because of Silvestro Occhipinti.”
Violetta Volpi’s brow was beaded with perspiration. She put down the pumice and ran the back of her hand across her forehead.
“I’m sorry, Bernardo dear,” she said, looking at her husband and pushing back her hair. The man had said nothing although he was close enough to hear their conversation. “I know you don’t want me to go on.” She turned her face to Urbino fully now and smiled, once again unabashedly revealing the space between her teeth. “My husband doesn’t like me to criticize others, Signor Macintyre. Such high morals in the world of business is one of life’s mysteries! And he’s been extremely upset since Flavia died. Ever since Saturday, he doesn’t want to go anywhere near our water gate.” She lowered her husky voice. “You can see the Palazzo Guggenheim from there.”
She returned to the piece of cut canvas, picking up a hammer lying beside some nails on the floor.
“Of course, the Contessa needs to have her mind put at ease. Such a terrible shock to the system to be told that your dead husband might have been unfaithful—and with such a beautiful woman, too.”
Violetta Volpi hammered a nail through the canvas and wood in the middle of one of the horizontal pieces of the stretching frame. She did the same on the opposite side.
“My brother-in-law treated Flavia like a princess! All this foolishness about Alvise and Regina has come close to breaking his heart—all the more so since it was Flavia who brought up the whole silly thing years ago.”
Urbino found this a strange way for Violetta Volpi to describe her niece’s belief that Alvise da Capo-Zendrini had been her father. The almost offhand, cold manner in which she referred to Flavia seemed not only inappropriate but also inconsistent with the grief Urbino had glimpsed on her face earlier. Someone listening to their conversation would find it hard to believe that she had just lost a niece in such tragic circumstances.
“But where did she get this idea?” Urbino asked. “You call it silly but it was obviously anything but silly to her. She believed it. It had to come from somewhere.”
“I honestly don’t know. I’ve asked myself a hundred times and I’ve never come up with an answer.”
“Did you ever ask your niece?”
Violetta shot a dark look at Urbino.
“Of course! This was my sister she was talking about, and a man I had a high regard for! But no, Flavia would never tell me where she got her idea. She would just say she got it from the best source possible.”
“Which would be either your sister or Alvise, wouldn’t it?”
“Are you asking me or telling me? It wasn’t my sister or Alvise because there was no truth to it. I tell you I don’t know where she got her crazy idea from!”
She pulled the canvas taut with a bit more force than was necessary and hammered nails in, alternately, on each side of the stretching frame.
Perhaps having reconsidered her outburst, Violetta looked at Urbino again with her bright smile.
“Believe me, Signor Macintyre, I have no idea. And I don’t think
that my niece had any firm grasp on things. She had a lot of strange fantasies. Sometimes I used to worry that she might have inherited her mother’s illness. My sister Regina might have had almost everything—certainly beauty and intelligence—but she was most sadly disturbed.” Violetta gave the euphemism an ominous emphasis and shook her head slowly. “As for me, I’m no beauty, as you can see, but I got most of the strength in the family—and the talent.”
Urbino detected a mixture of pride and resentment in the comment.
“When was the last time you saw your niece alive?”
The question sounded abrupt even to Urbino’s own ears. When Violetta looked at him there wasn’t even a trace of her former smile. Her lips were set in a straight line.
“I find that a most peculiar question, Signor Macintyre. I’ve already spoken with the police. Are you suggesting I need an alibi? It’s not as if my niece had been murdered!” She gave a hollow laugh. Urbino was about to tell her that he did, indeed, suspect murder, but she rushed on to say in her throaty voice, “Suicide is horrible enough, maybe even worse! It leaves everyone feeling so guilty, so powerless. I know I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to her—nothing at all—but yet—” The grief slipped back into place for a few moments before it was once again banished. “She must have been disoriented from that drug they found in her room at the pensione. Flavia was a good swimmer, you see, although she refused to swim after my sister drowned. The drug must have totally confused her, might have even destroyed her instinct to stay afloat.”
When Urbino left Violetta and Bernardo Volpi shortly afterward, he tried to sort out what he had learned. Violetta had denied any liaison between her sister and Alvise and claimed not to know where Flavia had got the idea that Alvise was her father. But why had she been willing to give him the information she had? To end any further speculation about her sister? To protect her niece? But she hadn’t gone out of her way to give a good picture of Flavia, suggesting that she might have been almost as emotionally disturbed as Regina. And the controlled coolness in her manner toward her niece disturbed Urbino. But then he remembered the unmistakable look of grief that had come and gone several times.
Urbino didn’t in any way believe that Violetta Volpi had been completely frank. She was withholding information—and, it seemed, concealing her real feelings over the death of her niece. The question was, why. Could it have something to do with whatever resentment and envy she still might feel for her sister?
The Contessa might be able to help him. He needed to know more about whom Flavia had seen the night she died. Violetta Volpi had avoided telling him when she had last seen her niece, but she had told the police. The Contessa had a friend attached to the Questura whom she had contacted recently to help smooth things between Urbino and Commissario Gemelli over the autopsy. She would have to give Corrado Scarpa another call.
9
“I don’t believe a syllable of what she told you!” the Contessa’s usually dulcet voice crackled over the telephone line an hour later. “She must know why Flavia thought Alvise was her father. No, I don’t trust her. She’s still seething with resentment after all these years.”
The Contessa’s lack of logic on this point might have amused Urbino under other circumstances.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense for her to feed your fear that Alvise was Flavia’s daughter?” Urbino asked her. “Wouldn’t she have greater satisfaction in doing that?”
“The woman is devious. She might not want to admit that her own sister had a relationship with a man she had wanted to marry herself. We can’t see what she’s up to. She may be trying to lull me so that the blow will be even heavier when it comes. She’s planning some embarrassing way for it all to crash down on me. No, Urbino, I don’t trust Violetta Volpi any more than I ever trusted Violetta Grespi! Even if she’s not lying, how can we assume she would know about something her sister was determined to keep secret from her? Any way you look at it, we can’t put much trust in what Violetta Volpi has to say.”
Urbino mentioned Corrado Scarpa, asking the Contessa to give her friend a call and find out about Flavia’s last night. They then discussed what they knew so far about Flavia Brollo’s life and death but came to no conclusions. The only thing they both agreed on was that they weren’t being told the whole truth by anyone so far—except, the Contessa was quick to assure him, Occhipinti. Urbino said nothing in response to this.
It was almost with an audible sigh of relief that the Contessa changed the topic to Eugene, who had stayed in Asolo at Villa La Muta.
“By the way, caro, your former brother-in-law may be a little upset with me since I’ve had to refuse his very generous offers for my fan collection, determined as he is to bring it back for his wife. The dear man seems driven to appropriate as much of Italy as he can. He’s asked me to look around for another doge’s ring like the gold and lapis lazuli one I gave you. He’s one of the most acquisitive—and inquisitive—persons I’ve ever met.”
“I’m sure you outdo him in inquisitiveness, Barbara. Weren’t the Sisters at Saint Brigid’s a Dominican order and didn’t the Dominicans run the whole Spanish Inquisition? Eugene has probably had question after question volleyed at him. He’s being made to sing for his supper, I’m sure.”
“Urbino! I’ve never volleyed a question at a person in my life! You’ve brought all this on yourself, at any rate. Your reticence has created an insatiable curiosity, and if Eugene wants to feed it, then who I am to stop him? We’ve had some interesting talks since you’ve left, you can be sure. I can’t wait to hear what else he has to say, but first I’ll call Corrado. Until later, caro.”
10
Ten minutes later Urbino, in both a restless and contemplative mood, took a walk. He first went into the northern part of the Cannaregio where many of the buildings were flaking from age, dampness, and the cancerous exhalations of mainland industries like Riva Petrochemicals, which the Brollo family used to own. This was mainly a workingman’s part of town, and seldom visited by tourists except those seeking out the Church of the Madonna dell’Orto or those who had strayed from the Ghetto.
Laughter and cooking odors drifted down to Urbino as he passed beneath the open windows of the houses, making him feel even more alone and excluded as he pursued his thoughts.
Who might have killed Flavia? And why? Urbino asked himself. And what, if anything, did her death have to do with the Conte da Capo-Zendrini? He hoped that the Contessa would be able to get information from Corrado Scarpa. He needed to know more about Flavia’s last night.
Where had she met her death? Had it been in a deserted area on the Grand Canal or one of the many small canals that fed into it? The tide would have been strong enough to drag her body into the Grand Canal and eventually to the Palazzo Guggenheim, where it had surfaced. She might even have drowned right at the Palazzo Guggenheim itself.
Seeing two teenagers kissing in a doorway made Urbino wonder what romance Flavia had had in her life. What had her relationship been with Bruno Novembrini, who had painted the nude portrait of her? Flavia had been stunning. She must have had her choice of men. Ladislao Mirko, who ran the pensione where Flavia had stayed, said that they were only friends, but how did he really feel about her?
And what about Madge Lennox, the actress who “had been loved by Garbo and Huston”? Had Lennox been anything more to Flavia than just a surrogate mother? She had said that Flavia felt safe and secure whenever she stayed with her at Villa Pippa. Safe and secure from what? From Mirko? Her family? Life in general?
Violetta Volpi had assured Urbino that there had never been anything between her sister and Alvise, but if Regina Brollo had shared Violetta’s sensuality, who was to say what might have happened between Alvise and her under the right—or the wrong—circumstances?
Urbino realized that the thrust of almost all these ruminations was sex. Flavia’s life and death, in fact, seemed saturated with sexuality. Not only had she been an object of desire but also there was her e
rotic portrait, the rape and murder of her friend Nicolina Ricci, the possibility of her mother’s adultery, and even the surfacing of her body under the metal gaze of The Angel of the Citadel, the Guggenheim’s tumescent horseman.
What had Occhipinti said about Flavia the day after she showed up at the Contessa’s garden party? It was from Browning: “A face to lose youth for, to occupy age with the dream of, meet death with.”
“A face to meet death with.” But that face didn’t seem to have given Flavia herself the kind of solace Occhipinti meant. Quite the opposite. It could have been her face—and her body—that led her to her death.
Urbino reached a boat landing with a view of the lagoon. Out in the smooth, gray waters floated Murano and the brick-walled, cypress-clad cemetery island of San Michele where Flavia’s body had undergone an autopsy. Was her body still there? The papers had said nothing about a funeral. As Urbino turned away from the lagoon to continue his walk, not wanting to return to the Palazzo Uccello yet, he decided to call Lorenzo Brollo about the funeral arrangements. It might give him an opportunity to ask the man other questions.
Urbino walked along, mulling over all the unanswered questions about Flavia. As they multiplied in his mind so did the crowds, so that by the time he was crossing over the Rialto Bridge to the other side of the Grand Canal the swirl of tourists around him approximated the state of his mind. He bought a bunch of grapes from one of the vegetable stands. The clerk washed them off for him, and Urbino plucked at them as he walked deeper into the maze that was the San Polo quarter. It was the area where Lorenzo Brollo lived.
Urbino stopped in a bar and looked through the phone directory for the address of the Palazzo Brollo. The barman told him that he would find the building in a campo not far from the Church of San Giacomo dell’Orio. Novembrini had said that Flavia had spent little time in the San Polo house, staying instead with Ladislao Mirko in the Casa Trieste.
The Palazzo Brollo was a tall, narrow building covered with uneven, pinkish-gray stucco. A small stone and iron balcony with pots of plants protruded from the piano nobile. A wicker basket, to be lowered for newspapers or bread or whatever the occupants of the house didn’t care to descend for, hung a few feet over the balcony railings from a thick rope. All the shutters were closed even though the campo was sunless and empty of people except for Urbino and a few local residents who paid no attention to him as they went about their business.
Liquid Desires Page 12