The Veils of Venice (19 page)

‘I'm sure. Never.'

The rains continued most of the evening, although they did not prevent Urbino from going on one of his walks. He went to the Piazza San Marco, where he stopped in at Florian's. In the great square, the water falling from the skies was joining the water bubbling up through the paving stones. Already a sheet of water extended from the front of the Basilica to the Molo. Deep puddles were scattered at other points in the Piazza. Urbino was able to wade through the water in his high boots, but others – and there were few of them out tonight even in the Piazza – took to the wooden planks.

Urbino's thoughts during his walk were about the Pindar drownings and Nedda's secret engagement to Ercule. Had their engagement been as close as Ercule had ever ventured in the direction of marriage? And what had motivated him? What had made him choose Nedda? Had it been some family tradition that encouraged a brother to marry the fiancée of his deceased brother? Urbino had read of such things. Perhaps Ercule had also read about it in one of his travel accounts and had been inspired to emulate it. It would be in character.

And had Nedda broken off the engagement because Ercule was, as Natalia had said, ‘nothing like his brother'? This was certainly true, at least from what Urbino knew about the resourceful, pragmatic Achille, but had there been something more specific than this, something Ercule had done or said, that had ended the engagement?

But had Nedda even been the one to break things off? Or had Ercule done it, for some personal reasons? Or because of something about Nedda he might have learned, something she had concealed from him? It might have been one of his sisters or his cousins who had discovered her secret, if she had one, and passed it on to him.

From this thought, it was only a short distance for Urbino to move to re-examine blackmail as a possible motive for Olimpia's death – blackmail in which she was either the blackmailer or the blackmailer's victim.

Questions surrounding the Pindars were continuing to proliferate the more he learned about the family. So many of them wouldn't be answered. So many, if answered, would lead him nowhere. But just one of those he was running through his mind tonight, or one of the ones he had been contemplating for the past few weeks, could provide the key to open the door.

For the first hours after getting into bed, Urbino could not sleep, as his mind formulated new questions, reviewed the old ones, and tried, unsuccessfully, to reach some tentative answers. Imprinted on his inner eyelids was a vision of the blue doors of the locked rooms. Even if blue had not been the color of the imagination, he would have still lain restlessly in his bed, imagining what lay behind the doors. For Urbino, at an impressionable age, had read stories, as had the contessa, of the darkness and evil that was contained behind locked doors and was just waiting to be released by the curious.

With all these thoughts streaming through his mind, it was not unusual that he was fully awake when the sirens shrilled, warning the city's residents of
acqua alta
.

Nine

‘I feel real guilty about it,' Eugene said to Urbino the next morning. ‘But I'm enjoyin' myself.'

The two men were walking on the wooden planks set up beneath the Basilica. All around them – and at other points in the Piazza San Marco, the Piazzetta, and the Molo – there was water, in some places almost a foot high, much higher than it had been last night.

The rains had ended earlier in the morning. The sky was dark gray, but Urbino didn't think the rain would return, not for a while yet. He suspected that some very cold weather would soon be setting in. But the rains had already done their damage to the city, as had been evidenced by his walk last night and the one this morning to the Danieli.

‘I heard sirens last night,' Eugene said as he and Urbino drew closer to the edge of the plank to let a young woman going in the opposite direction pass. ‘Were they blarin' because of the flood?'

‘I'm afraid so.'

‘Thought it was a fire.'

They stepped down from the planks to the dry ground beneath the Clock Tower and entered the Mercerie. Most of the fashionable shops were empty of customers. Eugene stopped to look in their windows for something that he might get for May-Foy – or something more he might get her. When Urbino had gone up to Eugene's suite, all the things Eugene had managed to buy in the short time he had been in Venice had surprised him. When Urbino had been showing him the sights, he had bought quite a few things, but it was obvious he had gone foraging for things when Urbino had left him on his own and when he had been with the Chins yesterday.

By the time they reached the Campo San Luca he had bought a silk scarf, a necklace of glass beads, and a feathered half-mask.

‘So tell me more about this Fortune fellow,' Eugene said as they walked toward the Campo Manin, stepping aside as a clerk swept water out of the door of her shop. They had already been obliged a few times to retrace their steps because of deep puddles.

‘Fortuny.' Urbino had decided to take Eugene to the Fortuny Museum. He would be killing two birds with one stone. Eugene would be seeing something he had not seen before – something not on his list – and Urbino would have another opportunity to surround himself with Fortuny's spirit. Most of his biographical subjects had not left many physical traces of themselves in the city. But the House of the Magician, as Fortuny's palazzo had been known during his lifetime, had been carefully preserved in the San Beneto area near the Grand Canal. It held his workshop, library, and living quarters, and was furnished with many of his designs and creations.

‘Did you know him?' Eugene asked.

‘He died in 1949.'

Urbino tried to provide Eugene with an accurate picture of the Spaniard without overwhelming him with too many details. It was also a good exercise for Urbino to isolate the essential features of the man. One of the dangers for biographers was obscuring the essence of their subject beneath too many layers of circumstantial details, which were among the things that Urbino found most fascinating.

Therefore, Urbino emphasized Fortuny as a clothing and textile designer. As for all the other things that could be said about the man's accomplishments, Urbino could always provide more information when they were at the Palazzo Fortuny, depending on what caught Eugene's attention.

‘You'll be able to see an excellent selection of the clothes he designed at Barbara's,' Urbino said as they came to a stop by the wellhead of a small square. ‘She's putting together an exhibition at the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini.'

The Palazzo Fortuny, which managed to be elegant despite its large size, occupied one entire side of the square. Like the Palazzo Pindar, it consisted of two stories above the ground level, with an attic story at the top. The building, in the Venetian Gothic style, had a magnificent façade, with seven mullioned windows in two tiers, balconies ornamented with arabesques, floral details on the cornices, and large, weathered wooden doors. The Palazzo Fortuny was also known as the Ca' Pesaro degli Orfei, carrying associations with both the Pesaro family who were the original owners, and the philharmonic academy that established its headquarters in the building in the late eighteenth century.

‘We'll enter through the side entrance,' Urbino said. ‘I prefer to go in that way. And there's an exhibition on the ground floor that we don't need to see. It doesn't have anything to do with Fortuny.'

Urbino had been a frequent visitor to the Palazzo Fortuny even before he had decided to commit himself to his new project. He would go there to be carried back to a different time, the first decades of the twentieth century – just as he like to wander through the Ca' Rezzonico and be taken back to the eighteenth century.

Urbino and Eugene went to the left of the building to a
calle
where there was an entrance into a small courtyard. An attendant, who was sitting muffled against the cold in a corner in the courtyard and who was there to prevent anyone from entering the building from this point, recognized Urbino from previous visits. Urbino paid admission for himself and Eugene, and the attendant said he would get receipts from the front and give them to Urbino and Eugene when they left, along with all of Eugene's packages.

Urbino and Eugene went up the partly roofed outer staircase to the loggia on the first floor. They passed into the
portego
of the building.

‘Good morning, Signor Macintyre.'The middle-aged attendant gave them both a smile. She handed them charts to the objects in the room.

Urbino thought it best to let Eugene wander on his own through the two floors, while he remained only a short distance away in case he had any questions.

The
portego
, like the salon above it, extended the length of the building and was proportionately long for its width. It had an old wood beamed ceiling and marble floor, with long, low sofas piled with cushions at both ends. The sofas and the cushions were covered in Fortuny fabric, and the walls were draped in it. Gold framed oil paintings by Fortuny were arranged above each sofa. There was a Wagnerian cycle, copies of works by Italian masters, and two self-portraits of Fortuny, one of him in his youth, the other in late middle age.

Gilded mirrors, easel paintings, small work tables, screens, ceramic jars with dried flowers and paintbrushes, lamps, heavy leather armchairs, old chests, folding chairs, reading desks, and sculptures graced the large room. Fortuny's lamps were everywhere. There were silk ceiling lamps, metal table lamps, miniscule reading lamps, and metal floor lamps. Everything showed either the taste or the inventive hand and mind of the magician of the house. For Urbino the room was a dream. It was a perfect space for living and working.

‘Look at it,' Eugene said, indicating one of the lamps. ‘Looks like an upside down umbrella!' He started to consult his chart.

‘It's called a Scheherazade lamp. Scheherazade is a character in
The Arabian Nights
. Fortuny loved Arab designs and architecture.'

Eugene walked around the room, taking in the different objects. He spent several minutes staring at a large projector. Urbino explained that it was used to illuminate ceilings, paintings, and wall decorations.

‘Never saw a painting like this one before.' He indicated a painting over one of the sofas that depicted the back of a woman's head, her neck, shoulders, and naked back. ‘And who is that?' He pointed to a small portrait of a distinguished-looking man with a well-trimmed white beard and moustache.

‘Fortuny.'

‘Well, Mr Fortuny,' Eugene said, addressing the portrait, ‘you have quite a place. Wish May-Foy was here. She could get some ideas for the big house. All these drapes and stuff are real nice. I'd like to bring some back home.'

‘You can get some fabric in his authentic designs at the Fortuny factory in Venice. They make the fabric just the way it was always done. And there's a shop that sells cushions and lamps and other things done in his style.'

‘And the dresses you were tellin' me about? Can I get one for May-Foy?'

‘They're hard to come by. And when you can find them, they can be forty or fifty thousand dollars.'

Eugene gave a low whistle and raised his eyebrows.

‘I guess Fortuny knew what he was doin', didn't he? I'll take a look at them at Countess Barbara's. Maybe if there's one I like, she can sell it to me.'

‘She would never sell hers, and the others are on temporary loan. But we might be able to find one for you.' Urbino was thinking of Apollonia's Fortuny. From what the contessa had said, it did not seem that she was sentimental about passing the Fortuny on to Eufrosina the way her aunt had passed it on to her.

Urbino and Eugene went up to the second-floor salon by way of the inner staircase. The upstairs attendant, who was speaking with an elderly man carrying a guidebook, smiled and nodded.

The room had a similar beamed ceiling, but its walls were painted plaster and it did not have the separate areas and the artistic domestic clutter of the room below it. This space, along with the atelier above it, as Urbino explained to Eugene, was where Fortuny and his large group of skilled workers had produced his fabrics.

Urbino guided Eugene to the small library in a corner of the room. It was usually locked to visitors, who had to be content with viewing its contents through a large glass window. But the attendant unlocked it for him, Eugene, and the elderly man.

While the attendant stood by the door, the three of them stepped inside the small space crowded with objects. It was as if Fortuny had just finished working in the room and would soon return.

The eye rapidly moved from object to object, trying to take in as many as possible: a desk, wooden shelves with Arabic script on the panels of their sliding doors, copies of classical busts, books, catalogues, photographs, unwashed paintbrushes, tubes of paint, bottles of ink and dye, an old easel, a wooden frame waiting for its picture, a printing press, transformers, coils, lenses, drill bits, a wicker-wood chaise longue, a silk lamp, and numerous implements and contraptions that Fortuny had used in his work.

The three men walked around the room slowly, carefully. There was little space to turn around in.

Fifteen minutes later Urbino and Eugene were outside again under the gray sky, walking toward the San Silvestro boat station and avoiding the deep puddles. When Urbino saw a woman resembling Eufrosina coming out of a shop, his mind started to wander to the case. He pulled his attention back to Eugene.

‘He's a very interestin' man, that Fortuny,' Eugene observed as they stepped off a flood plank. ‘Sort of reminds me of that strange Guggenheim gal, collectin' all those modern paintings I couldn't make head or tail out of. She wasn't Venetian either. Guess there's something about this place that draws people like that in. They probably flock here, don't they? I suppose you fit into the category. Birds of a feather and all that. Evie always says – oh, but I promised I wouldn't talk about her, didn't I? Sorry about that.'