The Veils of Venice (33 page)

Apollonia's face was as unreadable in death as it had often been in her later days. But this did not prevent Urbino, any more than it has millions of others when confronted by a script, from interpreting it for his own convenience.

He read approval in it. He read the call for justice, stern and implacable.

Apollonia wore a simple black dress. Eufrosina had found it in the back of her mother's closet, enclosed in clear plastic, with a note that indicated she wanted to be buried in it. The dead woman's hands, ungloved for the first time in many years as far as Urbino could remember, clasped a worn Latin missal that had belonged to her mother. Her head was wrapped in a piece of black lace, as usual, but the covering looked new and fresh.

The wake was being held in the Pindar
grand portego
. The large space, with its high-backed chairs, broken chandelier, and flaking plaster, no longer had the somber air of neglect, of having long since passed the time of its utility. Quite the contrary. This evening it seemed to have come into its own.

Alessandro, after great thought and effort, and with the help of the funeral director, had organized a wake that he considered befitting a woman of his mother's reputation and interests as well as a wake that bore his particular, peculiar stamp.

He had engaged three of the funeral director's employees to admit mourners before they made even one indecorous push of the bell and to usher them up to the
portego
. A large armoire had been moved down from Apollonia's apartment and placed on the staircase outside the portego entrance for outer garments – although many of the mourners had preferred to keep them on because of the frigid temperature in the large room.

The casket, which stood at the far end in front of the windows, had been placed on a bier about four feet high that had been constructed for the purpose. Alessandro had spared no expense for his mother's last appearance before the world. The bier was draped in rich dull black satin. Through some inner arrangement of the casket which was concealed from even the most observant eye, Apollonia's body had been raised above the sides of the casket so that she could more easily be viewed in profile.

At either end of the casket, on high dark wood pedestals, were majolica turquoise urns that must have been pulled from some dark corner of the Palazzo Pindar. They were filled with lilies that rose above Apollonia's head and feet. A brass incense burner stood between the casket and the windows behind it, snaking the smoky scent of amber into the room. On either side of the incense burner, long candles in large silver candlesticks flickered their cold light on Apollonia's face. Rows of dark wood chairs, arranged in a gentle curve rather than a straight line, had been set up in front of the catafalque to accommodate the mourners.

Because the casket was raised high, the mourners who went up to the catafalque were almost on a level with Apollonia's face. Those sitting in the chairs had to look upward. A black curtain of the same material as the draping further reinforced the effect of Apollonia being on a stage. It was attached by golden rings to a wheeled frame of metal piping, painted black, which Alessandro had also had specially constructed for the occasion. The curtain had been pulled as far as it would go to one side, to give an unobstructed view of the deceased.

It was now close to ten o'clock in the evening. A small number of Apollonia's friends, most of them elderly women, had come earlier and left. Among them had been the two women from San Polo who had been Olimpia's customers. The seamstresses Teresa Sorbi and Rosa Custodi, more out of curiosity than respect, had made a brief appearance.

Oriana had put herself through the effort, despite her crutches, for old time's sake. She had been helped upstairs by the two employees of the funeral director and then down again an hour later.

Apollonia's confessor from the Church of San Giacomo dell'Orio, gaunt and white-haired, had led them in what had seemed to be interminable prayers. He had left, followed soon afterward by Dr Santo and the funeral director, who would be back in the morning with a funeral gondola to take Apollonia first to the church, then to San Michele for the burial.

At Alessandro's request, the mourners who had remained – Urbino, the contessa, Eufrosina, Gaby, Ercule, Bianchi, Nedda and Evelina – had retired to the first semi-circle of chairs in the middle of the room.

Alessandro sat beside his sister with Gaby and Ercule on his other side at one end of the row. Urbino and the contessa occupied the next two chairs. An empty chair stood between them and the next grouping of Nedda, Evelina, and Bianchi. The lawyer had been unusually silent since arriving, but his eyes had been taking in the scene and the other mourners with quick, bird-like movements.

Small tables had been placed among the chairs. On the tables were vases of white roses and framed photographs of Apollonia at different points in her life. They included childhood photographs of her playing in the sea on the Lido and eating a cone of gelato on the Zattere, a wedding photograph of her and her husband reclining in the twin seats of a gondola, and a recent one of her sitting stiffly on the sofa in her living room in the Palazzo Pindar.

Urbino and the others were passing the photos around, commenting on them, and exchanging reminiscences about the woman lying on display.

So far, everything was conspiring with Urbino's plan, even this sentimental touch of the photographs that he considered one of the more thoughtful of Alessandro's details.

Urbino reached for the wedding photograph again and gave the appearance of studying it more closely than he had before.

‘I may be mistaken,' he said. ‘But isn't her wedding veil the same one that's in one of the blue rooms? I saw it yesterday. It's very distinctive.'

‘Absolutely not,' came Alessandro's quick reply. He tugged at his blond moustache. ‘Mother never wanted anything of hers to be put in there and she never took anything out. I wouldn't violate her wishes, may God rest her soul.'

‘And I wouldn't either,' Eufrosina made clear. ‘None of mother's clothes will go anywhere near the blue rooms.'

‘As the one in charge of everything,' Alessandro said, with a sharp glance at his sister, ‘that is my responsibility. It's one of the promises I made to her the last time I saw her, just the two of us.'

Eufrosina glared at her brother. Dressed all in black but, like her mother, gloveless for the occasion, she looked weary, as if all her energy had been taken out of her. She was being forced to endure the wake and tomorrow's funeral with the knowledge of her mother's rejection. It could not be easy. Bianchi looked back and forth between Eufrosina and Alessandro, with a closed expression on his face.

Alessandro had been doing nothing to conceal an unmistakably superior air as the architect of the ceremonies and as his mother's champion in death as, apparently, he had been in life. Bianchi's revelations had obviously empowered Apollonia's son in ways that went beyond a huge bank account. Gaby was fawning over him, almost clinging to him at times. She had lost no opportunity to praise the arrangements he had made for Apollonia's wake.

‘Most of mother's things,' Alessandro went on, ‘will go to San Giacomo. They will be able to distribute them among the needy. Eufrosina is taking some of them and will use them in the way our mother wanted, won't you, Eufrosina?' It was not really a question and he did not wait for any response, but said, ‘I assure you our mother will have nothing to do with the blue rooms in death anymore than she did in life.'

The contessa took this opportunity to say, ‘Urbino was telling me about the rooms. I wish I could see them, since they represent so much of the history of the family.
Our
family. Oh, not now,' she added, as if someone had started to get up to bring her downstairs. ‘I mean no disrespect,' she said to Alessandro and Eufrosina, lowering her head and her voice.

‘There must be so many interesting things in the rooms,' she went on. ‘And valuable ones – though I understand why dear Apollonia' – her eyes slid in the direction of the catafalque – ‘felt about them the way she did. All those clothes that once saw so much life and light are buried there.'

Eufrosina nodded.

‘They aren't buried,' Gaby said, with a petulant note in her voice. ‘They're being preserved.'

‘Of course they are,' the contessa agreed, steering a delicate course. ‘And when something can be retrieved after it's been forgotten about for a long time, you could say that it's redeemed. It can have a new life.'

This philosophy did the double service of soothing Gaby and being in the spirit of the solemn occasion. Once again the contessa, this time joined by most of the little group, looked at the catafalque. There, the dead, pious Apollonia, who had already embarked on her journey to a new life, served as an excellent example of what the contessa had said.

‘Olimpia once showed me some things she had retrieved from one of the blue rooms.' The contessa was addressing Gaby, but her gray eyes included the other members of the group. ‘She said they belonged to her grandmother, her mother, and Achille.'

Urbino observed the other mourners as covertly as he could manage. The only one who showed any reaction was Nedda, who sat a bit straighter in her seat at the mention of Achille. When she had arrived, Urbino had noted a slight glaze in her eyes. And there was the unmistakable scent of anisette on her breath, too strong to have been left over from the previous evening.

‘I always told Olimpia I didn't want her to go ripping the clothes up and sewing them into something else,' Gaby said with exasperation. ‘They should stay the way they are.' She paused before adding, ‘And where they are.'

‘I don't know what she was doing with them.' The contessa's voice was soft and calming. ‘Maybe she just used them for inspiration.'

‘Inspiration, hah!' was Gaby's response. Contrary to what one might expect of a person who had recently expressed her fear of something terrible happening to her, Gaby seemed to be energized by the wake. She gave no sign – actually quite the opposite – that she was disturbed by this inescapable evidence that death not only comes to us all but also can come directly into the house she was burying herself in. It had come to Apollonia. It had come to Olimpia. And neither had had to leave the house to find it.

‘Whatever Olimpia did, Gaby, I'm sure she did it with good intentions,' the contessa said.

‘Apollonia had the right spirit about her things.' Urbino threw in. ‘The way she wanted either the family to use them or have them donated to the needy.'

‘She also said that what was left over should be burned,' Ercule pointed out, although Urbino sensed that his comment was not so much directed at him as at Alessandro. Ercule looked at his cousin, opening his blue eyes wide behind his spectacles.

Dressed in a simple dark gray suit and a plain maroon tie, Ercule appeared to be more in costume than he did when he was wearing his Turkish outfits, and he seemed to have lost a vital part of his identity.

‘Burning has always been a form of purification among many religions,' Urbino observed.

‘For the sinful,' Alessandro said. ‘My mother wasn't sinful.'

Alessandro's defense of his mother could not help but start a brief train of thought in Urbino – and possibly in others present – about Apollonia's more profane life before her sacred conversion. Had she distributed the clothes from that epoch among the poor or had she burned them, assuming that she had indeed mentioned the virtues of consumption by fire to Ercule?

‘Of course she wasn't sinful, Sandro dear.' Gaby reached out to pat his hand. But this was not enough for her to show her concern. She also leaned over and pressed her lips to his cheek. Alessandro, screwing up his face like a child receiving an unwelcome kiss, seemed to endure her attention more than find consolation in it.

‘I wasn't suggesting that she was,' Urbino said. ‘Your mother was a model to us all. And she would be proud of you, Alessandro. And you, too, Eufrosina. You've planned her departure from her earthly life with a great deal of love and thought.'

Eufrosina cast down her eyes at the praise, assuming a humble expression. Alessandro rearranged some of the photographs on the table beside him, smiled, and nodded.

The group fell into a long, dead silence during which a slight creak seemed to sound from the direction of the catafalque, as if the casket were settling its weight more firmly.

Nedda broke the silence. ‘Achille had some lovely clothes.' Each word of this apparent non sequitur sounded as if she were forcing it out of her.

Her comment, which was a most fortuitous one from the point of view of Urbino and the contessa, did not encourage anyone to speak.

Once again Urbino watched the other mourners. Eufrosina shifted uneasily in her seat. A reminiscent expression came over Gaby's face. Ercule frowned. Evelina stared nervously at her friend. Alessandro was staring in the direction of the catafalque, his good-looking face stony. Bianchi wore a puzzled expression, which might have been because he was finding it a little difficult to follow what was being said, since everyone was speaking English.

‘He had a beautiful sweater. A lovely blue.' Nedda glanced at Evelina, who continued to stare at her and seemed to want to say something. Her lips moved silently.

‘Blue like the blue doors?' Ercule, whose moon-shaped face had become flushed, loosened his tie and opened the top button of his shirt, despite the chill in the room. Alessandro noticed it and glowered at him. Ercule redid the button and tightened his tie even more snugly than before.

‘No,' Nedda said. ‘It was like the blue of his eyes. You remember how blue his eyes were, don't you, Ercule?'

Ercule must have been thinking of something else, because he didn't seem to hear Nedda's question. Then after a few moments, the question must have registered. ‘Of course I do,' he said. ‘He – he was my brother. Blue eyes run in the family. I have them and so does Gaby. So did Olimpia.'