Liquid Desires

by Edward Sklepowich

  The Contessa broke the spell by bringing up Flavia’s tape recording of the nurse Graziella Gnocato’s statement.

  “It must be somewhere at the bottom of the Grand Canal or sucked into the mouth of a trash boat,” Urbino said. “But it doesn’t matter now. It never really did. It had nothing to do with the truth.”

  “And the attack on you in San Polo?”

  “It wasn’t connected with the scrapbook—or with Flavia. It was just one of those things.”

  “Listen to you! Just one of those things! You’re aiming for a blasé note but it falls flat, caro. I know you were terrified, as well you should have been!”

  The Contessa looked at Urbino with a bemused expression for a few moments. Urbino sensed that she wanted to say something but wasn’t quite sure how to bring it up. When she spoke, he realized she was taking the direct approach.

  “Tell me, caro, what are you going to do with Novembrini’s painting of Flavia when Massimo Zuin delivers it to you after the Biennale?”

  “Keep it. Will that bother you?” Urbino said, being as direct in his answer as she had been in her question.

  “I’m not a Philistine, Urbino. I think you know that, even if I can’t bear Dalí and his ilk. It’s just that it makes me sad to think of that painting. Poor Flavia! To think that Lorenzo wanted it for his private collection. But maybe you’re right about it, Urbino. Keep it as a grim memento. Who knows whose hands it might get into otherwise? At least we’re sympathetic to its history. As time goes by we might be able to look at it without a pang although I know I’ll never be able to like it.”

  The waiter brought over the Contessa’s second Coppa Duse.

  “Could we put aside this whole sad story for a while, caro?” the Contessa said with a sigh as she picked up her spoon. “Let’s put the rock back down in place.”

  The Contessa dipped her spoon into the blue-drenched whipped cream. A yellow and black butterfly landed momentarily on her shoulder, perhaps mistaking her floral print for the real thing, and then fluttered off toward the geranium plants across the square.

  “Tell me, wasn’t Evangeline supposed to have come to Venice?” she said teasingly. “Don’t tell me you’ve left the poor girl languishing, albeit in luxury, at the Cipriani while you stay cool and aloof here in Asolo!”

  Urbino told her that Evangeline had decided against coming to Venice and had gone to Rome instead. When he explained about Keats, Shelley, and the Protestant Cemetery, the Contessa’s well-arched eyebrows rose fractionally.

  She finished another spoonful of the coppa before saying, “My! Two graveyard romantics! How could such a marriage of true minds ever have foundered? Tell me, then. Will this meeting in thunder and lightning take place?”

  Urbino had had little time to think about Evangeline during the past few days. Since Monday when Eugene told him about her move to Rome, he had been busy with the authorities in Asolo and Venice. Last night at the Palazzo Uccello he had tried to think things through, but hadn’t been able to get far before Flavia inevitably intruded. Only toward the end of his solitary hours, with Serena in his lap and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony on the player, had he made a decision.

  “I’m going to Rome for a few days,” he now told the Contessa, “but there won’t be any trip to the cemetery.”

  “Should I be relieved? Why aren’t you making a ghoulish visit?”

  “Because I know Evangeline. I know how she thinks. If I were to go to the cemetery, it would be an acknowledgment that I wanted to begin something with her again or that I might be considering it—and neither is true.”

  “I see! You don’t want to keep your ghoulish appointment because you loathe being manipulated.”

  The Contessa nodded her head, as if she had found the skeleton key to all her friend’s peculiarities.

  “But I’ve decided to go to Rome, haven’t I? She’s manipulated me into that.”

  “So that’s how you do see it! In that case, you should stay right in Asolo and not budge an inch. Summer is absolutely marvelous here, you have to agree. We’ll ‘do the social’ together, take walks, hide away in the giardino segreto where I’ll tell you over and over again how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me and how I’d never do anything to hurt you. Maybe we can even plan another fête champêtre together to make up for my garden party.”

  “I have to go, Barbara,” Urbino said, surprised at his apologetic tone. “If I don’t, Evangeline will misinterpret it. She’ll think I still have some romantic feelings for her that I would rather not deal with. Besides, I have no ill will toward her. She might have hurt me at the time by taking up with Reid and I wish she had been honest with me instead of having me find out the way I did, but I take a lot of the responsibility. I wanted to protect her more than I loved her. I see that more clearly now than I ever have.”

  “It’s amazing what even an intelligent man won’t allow himself to see until he has to!” the Contessa interjected.

  “And now I finally want to put it all behind me,” Urbino persisted, “and the best way is to see her. I’ll take the train to Rome tomorrow with Eugene. Evangeline and I will go to dinner, spend some civilized hours with each other, maybe go to the Borghese Gardens or the Villa Farnesina, and talk about the good times. She’ll see that I care about her and wish her well, but nothing more. Perhaps I am being presumptuous to assume that she has something else in mind now that her marriage to Reid seems to be over, but if I stay up here it won’t do either of us any good. Things would be unresolved between us. I don’t want her to wonder why I didn’t come to Rome. And I don’t want to wonder why either!”

  Urbino and the Contessa remained silent for several moments. Then, under his breath so that the Contessa only heard an indistinguishable mumble, Urbino whispered, “Colla famiglia—the family glue.” Urbino had long been fascinated by this play on words which also meant con la famiglia or “with the family.” The expression had more resonance for Urbino now than it ever had.

  In Italy so much was done with the family, so much was done for the family and, most decidedly, because of it. The family was, indeed, like a glue that held its members together, but not always for their own emotional health. One of the light-emitting diode signs from the previous Biennale came back to Urbino again: “Even Your Family Can Betray You.” The history of Flavia Brollo’s family revealed this clearly and tragically—as did Ladislao Mirko’s relationship with his abusive father in which both father and son had betrayed each other.

  And the family glue was there also in the Hennepin family, although admittedly to a lesser extent, where it was as thick as the molasses made at the Hennepin sugar houses.

  Yes, the family glue. Urbino had resisted it, and he didn’t regret that he had.

  “I’ll have Milo drive you and Eugene down, caro,” the Contessa said, apparently accepting his decision to go to see Evangeline in Rome. “Perhaps I can come along, too. August is an atrocious time for Rome, but I haven’t seen Alvise’s cousin Nerina in ages.”

  “It would be better if I went alone, Barbara.”

  “Believe me! I have no wish to intrude on ‘auld lang syne’! But remember, it can be a somewhat bitter brew. As you wish, caro, but my squadron of Roman spies will tell me if you slip off to the cemetery,” she added with a smile, apparently having recovered from her brief high dudgeon.

  The waiter came to their table for the empty goblets.

  “Un’altra Coppa Duse per il signore,” the Contessa told the waiter.

  “But, Barbara, I don’t want another one.”

  “Wanting has nothing to do with it! You need a lot of soothing this afternoon, caro. I’m concerned that you make your descent on Rome cool, calm, and collected. If you don’t, who knows what will happen?” The Contessa looked at him earnestly, as if to show him how much it would pain her if certain things were to happen in the Eternal City. Then her gray eyes became mischievous. “And if by chance you can’t quite finish your coppa, I’ll help you. Don’t you know that’s o
ne of the things I want most in the world to do?”

  Perhaps seeing the confusion he felt, she quickly added, “I mean, of course, my desire to help you. Poor, muddled, well-meaning men like you bring that out in a woman.”

  “If you really mean that, Barbara, would you tell me something?”

  Urbino made a long pause.

  “Well, what is it, caro?” the Contessa asked with a touch of impatience.

  “Would you tell me why I’m really going to Rome?”

  The Contessa laughed, seeming to take his question less seriously than he had intended it.

  “I thought you’d never ask, but let’s wait for the coppa,” the Contessa said, reaching across the table and touching his hand.

  When the coppa came, however, the Contessa delayed giving Urbino the benefit of her opinion until he turned the whole concoction over to her, permitting himself only an initial spoonful. Then, with a smile on her attractive face that made Urbino wonder whether it was in anticipatory relish of the gelato or of her imminent illumination of him, the Contessa launched into just why she thought he was going to Rome to meet Evangeline—and a long, involved explanation it proved to be.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Mysteries of Venice series

  1

  Wrapped in a canvas sheet and covered in one-hundred-and-ten-degree mud, Urbino lay on a gurney in one of the therapy rooms in Abano Terme. He felt as if he were in a secret room of the Marquis de Sade’s château, surrounded as he was by antiseptic tiles, grotesque protrusions of spigots and hoses, and an ominous gaping drain in the floor. Only his face, chest, and right arm were free. The therapist had said he would be back in twenty minutes.

  Urbino hoped so. Only five minutes had passed and he already felt like calling for help. Thank God for his free hand, which was intended to give the guests—never were they “patients”—the sense that they weren’t completely restrained. He raised it to wipe beads of sweat from his forehead and tried to think pleasant thoughts.

  He wasn’t successful. How could he be, wrapped up like a corpse in a morgue? He was also dead tired, having tossed and turned for two nights in his overheated room, where a sulfurous odor had seeped under the door—the same sulfurous odor that was all around him now and that seemed to suffuse everything and everyone at the spa.

  Why not just admit it? He had made a mistake. It would have been better to have checked into the Grand Hotel des Bains on the Lido or the Hassler Villa Medici down in Rome for a complete change of scene, but he’d stick things through for two more days. The Contessa wasn’t expecting him back until then. In fact, she might not be that pleased to see him, occupied as she was with the Barone Bobo.

  Two hours later, after a spell of sweating induced by the mud therapy that was supposed to “rid his body of its toxicity,” Urbino had a massage, then went to the pool. As he finished his last lap, he looked up to see Marco Zeoli’s long, thin face, etched as it always seemed to be with fatigue. The assistant medical director of the spa held out a towel.

  Zeoli was doing everything to make Urbino’s stay as enjoyable as possible, in the hope that he would praise the spa to the Anglo-American community in Venice. If all went well for him, Zeoli, only forty-one, would soon be made chief medical director. He had been there for almost fifteen years, commuting the twenty-five miles from Venice, where he lived with his widowed mother.

  “You seem in fine form, Urbino.”

  Zeoli’s cold, exact voice suited his severe look. He had always reminded Urbino of a figure out of a Goya painting. It was amusing, if not also a little disconcerting, that a man in his position didn’t emanate more of an air of healthiness, unless it was to be found in the ever so faint whiff of the spa’s salubrious sulfur that clung to his sallow skin.

  “Not everyone comes here because of a problem, and yours is quite minor as far as these things go,” Zeoli quickly added. His professional eye made a quick examination of Urbino’s right big toe as Urbino dried himself off. “Quite a few come just for rest and recreation—from as far away as England and Germany. That man and woman over there”—he indicated a late-middle-aged couple with round, healthy faces and reddish hair—“come all the way from Finland every year, and they’re in the best of health. Remember that Abano’s mud and thermal waters have drawn people since the time of the Romans. Maybe you can come back and work on your newest book. Our library is the best in Abano. If you have any problems or suggestions, let me know. Good day.”

  Zeoli left.

  As he sat in a poolside chair, Urbino thought about what Zeoli had said about the Romans and smiled to himself. The men and women in their white robes, in fact, did look a little like toga-clad Romans, especially an overweight, homely man taking off his robe at the other end of the pool. With his round, completely bald head and pendulous lower lip, he resembled a corrupt senator from the time of the Caesars. It was only his unmistakable aura of sorrow and preoccupation that softened the edges of the image. He caught Urbino staring at him and frowned.

  Urbino turned his attention to Fire, D’Annunzio’s novel about Venice, a fictionalized account of his affair with the actress Eleonora Duse. The hero was delivering a paeon to Venice at the Doges’ Palace while his aging mistress gazed adoringly at him from the crowd. The scene was filled with passion and bombast, poetry and prophecy, which managed to be somehow both inspiring and ridiculous at the same time.

  Despite all D’Annunzio’s excesses, you could easily be drawn in, as Urbino was now. This was D’Annunzio’s power, a power that the unattractive little man had exerted not only on the page but in the bedroom. All this made Urbino apprehensive about the Barone Casarotto-Re, who supposedly resurrected D’Annunzio’s spirit, though obviously not his homely flesh.

  “Excuse me, Signor Macintyre.” It was the pool attendant with a portable phone. “You have a call.”

  “Urbino!” Urgency charged the Contessa’s voice. “I hate to bother you in the midst of your mud”—her light laugh sounded strained—“but there’s a problem. Everything is at sixes and sevens! Bobo is being threatened! You have to come back to Venice immediately and do something!”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Have some sense! I can’t go into detail over the phone. Come back to Venice. I’m counting on you.”

  Urbino sighed. Suddenly, illogically, he didn’t want to leave Abano. What was the Contessa pulling him back to? And what did it have to do with the Barone Bobo?

  “All right, Barbara. The train will get me in at seven-fifteen. Have Milo meet me with the boat.”

  Urbino could feel the Contessa’s relief over the line.

  “I’ll make up for dragging you out of the mud like this, caro. I promise.”

  2

  When Urbino joined the Contessa in her salotto blu at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini, her face was becomingly flushed and the bridge of her nose was slightly sunburned, something she had never allowed to happen for as long as he had known her.

  “Bobo is resting at the Gritti. He’s been through so much in the past six hours, poor dear—and so have I! There we were at the Cipriani, having such a pleasant time with Oriana and John! Little did we know what was brewing for poor Bobo!” She sighed and shook her head, displaying brighter highlights in her hair than three days ago. “Would you make me another g-and-t?”

  The Contessa’s request and the empty glass she held out to him were the most vivid evidence she could have given of her strange state, for tea, mineral water, and wine were her accustomed drinks. Gin-and-tonic was for only special and not always the most auspicious occasions. Urbino knew very well that he should avoid alcohol because of his condition, but he felt he needed a drink to get him through whatever lay ahead. He fixed two gin-and-tonics. The Contessa took a sip of hers and narrowed her gray eyes as if she had just had a dose of medicine.

  “Some envious, mean-spirited person is trying to undermine Bobo’s success.”

  She stared at Urbino for a few moments as if she suspected him of th
e deed.

  “You mentioned that he received threats.”

  “Not directly—not yet anyway. One was put in the bocca di leone at the Doges’ Palace.”

  Bocche dei leoni—or Lion’s Mouths—had been placed throughout the city during the iron rule of the notorious Council of Ten. Denunciations against citizens had been deposited in the marble boxes sculpted with lions and had often led to inquisitions, torture, and death. The ones at the Doges’ Palace were among the few still left in the city, these days usually crammed with gum and cigarette wrappers.

  “Here’s a copy.”

  She unfolded a white sheet the size of typewriter paper and handed it to him. Several sentences were printed in Italian in block letters in the middle of the sheet:

  THE BARONE ROBERTO CASAROTTO-RE IS AS IMMORAL AS GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO, THE MAN HE USES FOR A MASK. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT D’ANNUNZIO IS DEAD AND CAN NO LONGER HARM ANYONE. THE TRUTH WILL COME OUT.

  “The original was on red paper, folded, and slipped into the bocca,” the Contessa explained. “The director of the Doges’ Palace called the police. The Gazzettino got the same sheet in the mail with fifty thousand lire. The manager assumed it was meant to cover the cost of an ad but he didn’t print it. He called the Questura, too.”

  “What does the Barone say about it?” Urbino asked, handing the sheet back.

  “Bobo is being brave, the dear man! He’s trying to brush it off as a prank but he’s upset. Who wouldn’t be?”

  “And he has no idea what it’s about?”

  “Absolutely none! How could he? There’s nothing in those things but envy and mean-spiritedness! He’s one of the most upright people I know. I have a nose for falseness”—she had a fine patrician nose which did, indeed, seem made for scenting out the undesirable—“and Bobo is as true as they come. He’s being done an abominable injustice and I want you to get to the bottom of it. You will, won’t you?”