Liquid Desires

by Edward Sklepowich

  “Your cousin is a very polite man, Eugenio. He inspires me. Young people today have thrown so much to the winds.”

  “Urbino’s only a few years younger than I am, Sylvester. Are you tryin’ to tell me I was steppin’ over the mark by bein’ so palsy with you right away?”

  Occhipinti clearly didn’t follow what Eugene was saying, his answer only a shrug of his thin shoulders. The Contessa came out from the salotto verde, carrying a large woven-leather Bottega Veneta bag.

  “We should leave. Urbino and Eugene shouldn’t get back to Venice too late. Urbino, I must say you look marvelously restored in only a short time. You see how easy it is to pay me a quick visit? But let’s go to the car. If we leave now, we’ll have time to stop at the Ponte degli Alpini in Bassano del Grappa. Silvestro insists on buying Eugene a grappa at Nardini’s,” she explained with a little smile. “Terrible stuff, that grappa, but maybe it’ll attack the vestiges of that cold you have, Silvestro dear. Urbino and I can take a walk while you two indulge yourselves.”

  The Contessa’s face no longer looked as pained as it had in the giardino segreto, but was now softened with a little smile, as if she were in possession of a private joke.

  21

  On the drive from Asolo to Bassano del Grappa for their stopover at the Ponte degli Alpini, the Contessa commented on the scene outside for Eugene’s benefit, but she seemed preoccupied.

  “You know, Countess Barbara,” Eugene said as the Bentley turned into a narrow street off Piazza Libertà and continued toward the Alpine Bridge, the Ponte Vecchio of Bassano, “Urbino and I can just as easily take the train back to Venice. No criticism intended of your fine car, of course, or of Milo here. Besides, Milo told me he just returned from Venice. We wouldn’t want him scootin’ back and forth just for our convenience.”

  “He loves to drive,” the Contessa said, as if Milo wanted nothing more than to be in perpetual motion and in someone else’s service. “One of these days, Urbino,” she said quickly, reaching over to touch his shoulder, “we’re going to take a motoring tour of Europe in true turn-of-the-century style.”

  Parking was restricted in the area of the Ponte degli Alpini. The covered timber bridge itself was closed to everything except pedestrians and bicycles. Milo pulled the Bentley over on the street above the bridge.

  The four of them got out and walked the short distance to the bridge designed by Palladio in the sixteenth century. Eugene and Occhipinti went into the wooden shop on the left. Nardini’s was the oldest grappa distillery in Italy and carried the strong brandy in many flavors.

  Urbino and the Contessa walked along the bridge that spanned the Brenta River. They went past the little houses with their fading frescoes until they reached the middle. Here, a point of vantage provided a view over the Brenta. Buildings, some with wooden balconies, lined the river, which came down from the foothills of the Alps and Monte Grappa. A strong Austrian flavor permeated the scene.

  “Eugene is trying to enlist my aid in getting you to meet with Evangeline, you know. I told him that you always do exactly what you want. The worst thing was to try to pressure you, but what made your obstinacy bearable was that you usually ended up doing the right thing in the end. He was more than skeptical about that. ‘Maybe for you, Countess,’ he said. ‘I can see he wants to please you.’ Your ex—brother-in-law seems to think we have a much closer relationship in certain areas than we do. As he said last night, ‘He always did like older women. Maybe that was one of the problems with Evangeline.’”

  She stood at the rail and gazed off at the mountains for a few moments before turning back to Urbino and gently touching his bruised eye.

  “The bruise should go away in a day or two. Poverino! You don’t know how you make me worry! I know you care more about having lost the scrapbook than having been hurt like this. It’s such an infuriating loss, isn’t it? To think we’ll probably never know what was in it.”

  Quite inappropriately, a shadow of a smile curved the Contessa’s lips. It threw Urbino a little off balance.

  “But don’t feel too responsible, caro,” the Contessa continued, her words of comfort almost like a gentle chastisement. The shadow of a smile was still there on her lips. “I hope that Brollo’s not too hard on you when he finds out—or Ladislao Mirko, for that matter.”

  Urbino felt like a little boy squirming uncomfortably as he was being made to feel guilty.

  “I’ll give the police a call when I get back to Venice.”

  To his surprise, the Contessa shook her head slowly and said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, caro.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of this.”

  She opened her Bottega Veneta bag and reached inside. She took out Flavia’s scrapbook.

  “But, Barbara, however do you come to have it?”

  The Contessa was smiling now without any restraint. It made Urbino feel good, despite his puzzlement, to see her smile.

  “Because Milo went to Venice to collect it,” the Contessa explained.

  “Milo?”

  “Your housekeeper, Natalia, called La Muta a few hours ago. The police tried to get in touch with you at the Palazzo Uccello. They said they had found the scrapbook and were bringing it over. I told Natalia I would send Milo to get it from her. There was always the chance you and Eugene might stay until tomorrow, and I knew you’d want to have it. It certainly looks like the police are being accommodating. You must have impressed them with how important it might be. And I’m sure Corrado had something to do with it. He heard last night about your mugging and told me all about it when he called back with the information I asked for. He assured me that you were fine but that you were ‘molto turbato,’ as he put it, to have lost a book of some kind. I had no idea what he was talking about.”

  Urbino now realized why the Contessa hadn’t seemed surprised when he told her about the attack earlier—and why she had seemed so solicitous over the phone last night.

  He took the album from her. The back cover and the edges of some of the pages were soiled. He opened it and leafed through it quickly.

  “Anything missing?” the Contessa asked.

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Mirko took something out of it himself before he gave it to you,” the Contessa said. “I started to glance through it but decided to leave it for you. My fear was stronger than my curiosity. Go through it and let me know what you find, but don’t spare my feelings. They’re the least thing we should take into consideration. The truth above all, caro, but let it be a gentle one.” The Contessa gazed toward the mountains again. “I’ve been concerned for myself during the past two weeks, but I don’t want the truth for only myself now, but for Flavia, too. What about her? If the poor girl was murdered, who did it, and did it have anything at all to do with Alvise? And if she killed herself, did I contribute to it by how I behaved toward her? I’m afraid there’s no way that I’m not going to feel a blow from all this when the truth, whatever it is, comes out. I’m going to lose in some way in the end, I just know it.”

  Despite the gentle warmth of the early evening, she shivered, but the next moment a smile was on her face again. She looked at Urbino and touched his arm.

  “I trust you, caro. You can’t change the truth but you’ll find out what it is and be the one to tell me. Ah! there are Eugene and Silvestro.” She lifted her hand to the two men who had just emerged from Nardini’s, both of them more red-faced than they had been a short time ago. “Go back to Venice with your ex-brother-in-law and continue your sleuthing, but be careful,” she continued, putting her arm through Urbino’s. “It seems that those men who attacked you had nothing to do with Flavia since they discarded her scrapbook, but what do we really know at this point?”

  Very little, Urbino answered silently, and perhaps a great deal too much as well. As he and the Contessa walked toward Eugene and Occhipinti, he hoped that Flavia’s scrapbook would provide some insight into what had happened to her b
efore her body surfaced in the Grand Canal beneath the flamboyant Angel of the Citadel statue with its erect penis.

  “Sex and death,” Urbino said involuntarily, thinking aloud. When he said this, the image of Nicolina Ricci flashed across his eyes and he seemed to see something else flashing as well—not a face but words, brightly lit words. What were they?

  The Contessa looked up at Urbino sharply. Eugene was calling their names and waving a Tyrolean hat he had somehow come in possession of. As the Contessa and Urbino were about to join the two men, the Contessa repeated what she had said earlier, but this time much more quietly.

  “I trust you, caro.”

  More than ever before, Urbino felt the weight of the Contessa’s trust. It was very heavy indeed.

  PART THREE

  Carnivorous Flower

  1

  “Are you really sure you won’t join the fun, Urbino?” Eugene asked for what must have been the fifth time as he and Urbino had drinks on the terrace of the Danieli after returning from Asolo. “We’ll just float along for a few hours. It’s a lovely evening.”

  He indicated the cloudless early-evening sky arching over the lagoon.

  “Cooled down a bit,” he went on. “We’ll float right up the Grand Canal there. Can you imagine just lyin’ back and sailin’ past that white church with the domes? And then we’ll sneak into the pokey little canals and get a water rat’s view of the town. How about it, Urbino?”

  Once again Urbino declined, but not without a small twinge of regret. It would be the first—and possibly the last—time he would ever be part of a flotilla of six gondolas, complete with mandolins, accordions, and a serenader, plying the waters of the city. But even if he had been more tempted, he had Flavia’s scrapbook to look at tonight, and he wanted to do it as soon as possible.

  “Well, you’re not goin’ to worm out of tomorrow, I hope,” Eugene said. “Remember we’re goin’ to that lace island. I want you here tomorrow bright and early and rarin’ to go. Maybe you’ve forgotten how to enjoy yourself, my boy. Countess Barbara can’t take any of the blame for that, I can see. The old girl had me in stitches half the time though she pretended not to know what I found so funny. So until tomorrow, Urbino—and if you’re not there, I’m goin’ to come to that pathetic palace of yours and drag you out by your nose! Evie always said you needed a bit of forceful encouragement. Just a pity that her and Poppa used most of it to try to push you along into Hennepin. All I want—all I ever wanted—is for you to enjoy yourself!”

  On the vaporetto back to the Palazzo Uccello, Urbino resisted opening Flavia’s scrapbook and instead took in the passing scene from the prow of the boat. Night was falling and he caught glimpses of ceiling frescoes, chandeliers, and golden interiors of palazzi along the Grand Canal. This was one of his favorite times to be on the water, and he envied Eugene his flotilla tonight. If only the Contessa would get a gondola. She was right. He would be in it whenever possible. What had he just read in Peggy Guggenheim’s memoirs? Something about floatingness being the essential quality of life in Venice. As she had said in a letter to a friend, she adored floating around in her gondola so much that she couldn’t imagine anything as enjoyable since she had given up sex—or, she had then amended, since sex had given her up.

  Urbino would have liked to live in Venice in a previous era, preferably the end of the last century when Robert Browning, Henry James, John Singer Sargent, and other Anglo-Americans had been caught up in what James had called “palazzo-madness.” Whistler, who had taken studios in the Ca’ Rezzonico, used to be rowed all over the city in a gondola filled with prepared etching plates, boxes of pastels, and sheets of colored paper. Too much had been lost since those days. Lorenzo Brollo’s lamentations over the passing of a time of greater gentility rang in Urbino’s ears as the vaporetto continued up the Grand Canal.

  So much of the scene reminded Urbino of Flavia. It wasn’t just the Palazzo Guggenheim with Marino Marini’s equestrian statue making its ecstatic statement, but also the Gothic Palazzo Barbaro where Eleonora Duse, whom Flavia had so admired, had lived. And on the opposite side of the Grand Canal was the small Casetta Rossa, once the home of Duse’s lover, the writer Gabriele D’Annunzio. As if showing Urbino that the past was always alive, a pomegranate tree, planted during the First World War by the ugly writer, flourished next to the little red house.

  And then there was the Ca’ Volpi. Urbino looked through its iron water gates into the dark garden illuminated dimly by one lone bulb, the others apparently having burned out. Violetta Volpi’s studio was dark.

  As the vaporetto continued up the Grand Canal, Urbino realized that if he had the use of a gondola, he could glide silently up to the Volpi water steps right now and see what, if anything, he could learn from Violetta’s husband. Only something as secretive and silent as a gondola, so often compared to a floating coffin, seemed appropriate for approaching this man apparently locked away in his own world.

  Once back at the Palazzo Uccello, Urbino lost no time in giving his attention to Flavia’s scrapbook. With Serena curled in his lap and a wineglass and a bottle of chilled Bianco di Custoza next to him on the table, he opened the scrapbook.

  On the first page, centered carefully and in a large, confident hand in black ink, was written “Scrapbook of Flavia Maria Regina Brollo.”

  Urbino turned the page and started to read. He read for almost an hour and then started over again. Flavia’s scrapbook was just what Madge Lennox had said it was: an odd assortment comprising autographs, newspaper clippings, entrance tickets, programs, photographs, postcards, and pages ripped from books and magazines, though among none of these ripped pages did he find the one missing from the Guggenheim catalog. It was just what you would expect of someone who wanted to preserve the too easily forgotten details of life.

  In his work as a biographer Urbino had many occasions to pore through things like this, but never had he done so with such a sad and fearful feeling. When he finished going through it the second time, he poured himself another glass of wine and sat sipping it as he thought about the Contessa and Alvise, Alvise and Silvestro Occhipinti, and Flavia and Nicolina Ricci. Then he opened the scrapbook again to a sheet of paper about ten by twelve inches. It was Regina Brollo’s death notice, the kind that it was customary to display throughout the deceased’s parish with a photograph attached. The notice was similar to the one for Flavia that had been on the Brollo door in San Polo. Very similar.

  Despite the portrait he had seen at the Palazzo Brollo, Urbino was startled by the black-and-white photograph of Regina Brollo. He felt he was looking at Flavia. The photograph showed a Regina Brollo closer to Flavia’s twenty-six years than to the forty-five she must have been at the time of her own death. She gazed at the camera with a wistful smile. How many times had Flavia looked at this photograph of her mother, as well as at others and the portrait at the Palazzo Brollo, and seen the resemblance to herself? What kind of comfort had it given her? Might it also have filled her with some sense of premonition? Had she ever thought that this kind of beauty might eventually have its price?

  Urbino took another look at the two items he had been particularly disturbed to find in the scrapbook and considered the ones he should have found but hadn’t. He stroked the purring Serena. The Contessa was going to be upset. Once again Urbino regretted having agreed to help her. It might have been better for her to have engaged a private investigator through her Italian solicitor, someone with whom she had no relationship other than a financial one.

  Regrets would get him nowhere, however. He looked at his watch. Almost eleven. Out of consideration for the Contessa he decided to wait until morning to tell her what he had learned. Let her sleep as well as she could tonight. The time had come to tell her all the bad news—or at least most of it.

  2

  But Urbino hadn’t counted on the Contessa’s own anxiety. She called him fifteen minutes later, after he had poured the rest of the wine into his glass.

  “Either you d
idn’t look at the scrapbook yet, which I refuse to believe, or you’re afraid to tell me what you found,” the Contessa said angrily. “You’re supposed to be helping me. Didn’t I tell you that not knowing was the worst possible punishment?”

  “I’m sorry, Barbara. I was going to wait until the morning. I figured you were asleep by now.”

  The Contessa drew in her breath.

  “That means the absolute worst. No one with a heart delays telling someone good news. What did you find?”

  Urbino took a sip of wine.

  “There’s a section at the beginning of the scrapbook, Barbara. People’s signatures and their good wishes, platitudes, witty sayings—things of that kind. Flavia started keeping the scrapbook on her thirteenth birthday. There are entries over the years by her mother, Violetta Volpi, even most recently Nicolina Ricci and Madge Lennox. Flavia seems to have had a sentimental side even into her adulthood. After her mother’s entry almost half a page has been scratched out with ink. It could be what Lorenzo might have written, or entries by both Annabella and Lorenzo. I held it up to the light but couldn’t make out anything.”

  Urbino paused and took another sip of wine.

  “I can tell you’re fortifying yourself with alcohol! Would you please go on? Unless that’s the extent of the damage,” the Contessa said with a note of hope in her voice.

  “I’m afraid not, Barbara. There were two other entries. Let me read the first one.” He paged through the scrapbook until he found what he was looking for. “‘I have lived indeed, and so—(yet one more kiss)—can die!’”

  “Whatever does that mean? It sounds like a quotation of some kind. I’ve never heard it before, have you? Oh, my God, it’s Silvestro, isn’t it!”

  “Exactly. It’s signed ‘Your friend, Signor Silvestro Maurizio Ugolini Occhipinti’ and it’s dated thirteen years ago this past June.”