5

Half an hour later Urbino climbed the paint-splattered ladder in the right nave of the Church of San Gabriele. He stood on the wooden platform, not even six feet square, and looked down at the uneven stone floor more than twenty feet below. The longer he looked at it the farther away it seemed. It had an almost hypnotic effect and only with some effort was he able to turn his attention to the fresco.

It was a sixteenth-century work by one of Titian’s followers and depicted Saint Gabriel in three of his heavenly missions: to Daniel, Zachary, and—most prominent of all in the center—to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Giulio Licino had had only a faint glimmer of the robustness and magical color of his master, but the fresco, dimmed now by the years and the pollution that managed to invade even the church itself, deserved to shine with its original beauty, inferior though it might be to Titian’s.

Urbino had looked up at the fresco dozens of times since he had moved to Venice. Never had it occurred to him that someday he would be helping to restore it.

He smiled at his exaggeration. He was more in the position of only observing the restoration of the fresco. Lubonski, however, let him do some of the less difficult things that a skilled workman might be trusted with, such as applying the first coat of lime plaster, the trullisatio, to the severely damaged areas. Sometimes Urbino felt the way he had one long ago summer fetching and handing tools to his father as he had built a gazebo in their backyard.

Last summer he had studied art restoration on the lagoon island of San Servolo and at the Palazzo Spinelli in Florence to prepare himself for a brief biography of the Minolfis, a renowned Venetian family of restorers. He had taken the commission at the request of the Contessa, who was close to the family.

The courses on San Servolo and at the Palazzo Spinelli would have been more than enough for his purposes, but he had become interested in restoration for its own sake and enjoyed helping, in his small way, to bring things back to the way they once had been.

“I want to do something more,” he had said to the Contessa last September as they waited for the Regatta to begin. He had just finished telling her how thrilled he had been the other day on San Servolo when, his face covered with a plastic mask, he had removed some corrosion from the hem of a stone Madonna with the quartz cutter. “I want to do something more than what I’ve already done here in Venice.”

“You’ve done enough already, caro, and you’ll continue to,” she said. “You’ve fixed up the Palazzo Uccello and you’re writing your biographies. And just think of all the pleasure you give me! My life would be empty without you. What more could you possibly want than all that?”

“Maybe I’d like to be able to see some change—however small—that I’ve made here. A change for the better that I could reach out and touch. Something that other people could see, too. You’re right about restoring the Palazzo Uccello but I live there. It wasn’t completely selfless.”

The Contessa shook her head and looked down at the Grand Canal.

“Are you speaking from some strange kind of American guilt? You’ve already turned over the top floor to Natalia and her husband.”

“I just want to do something more,” he repeated.

“You Americans and your doing!” she said with the air of a person whose greater years and British heredity had allowed her to see so much ill-conceived American activity. “Work harder on your biographies! You’ve got the one on Proust to finish. Find another case to sleuth! Did you know that someone has been stealing the votive candles from the street shrine of the Madonna by the Ca’ da Capo? Try your hand at that. Until something better comes along you’re going to have to just sit tight and go through the motions of being content. Just don’t do anything drastic. Whenever I hear someone talking the way you are and see that same look on their face I think: Beware! You’re on the brink of a big mistake. If I didn’t know you had a few more years to go, I’d say that you were having a mid-life crisis.”

Although the Contessa had continued to chide him about his dissatisfaction, she had ended up providing a solution. A month after the Regatta she decided to finance the restoration of the San Gabriele fresco. She secured the appointment of Josef Lubonski and arranged to have Urbino help him. Everything seemed to be working out well, except that both Urbino and the Pole had come down with the flu. Lubonski’s case was much more serious and he was being tended by the sisters at the Casa Crispina across the campo.

Actually the San Gabriele fresco wasn’t in particularly bad shape compared to other frescoes more exposed to air currents but the pastor wanted to bring the church’s patron saint back to a semblance of what the older parishioners could remember as its much greater vividness.

An architect and two contractors had dealt with the problem of the water-soaked plaster on the latticework behind the fresco, and now Lubonski was several weeks into what the Contessa liked to call the “cosmetics.”

“If we could only restore ourselves to our original luster!” she had lamented. “Now that would be something! Every couple of years we could hang a sign on our doors that says ‘In restauro’ and emerge as fresh as we were at forty!”

This afternoon Urbino had climbed the ladder to be alone with the fresco for a few moments. The small areas that Lubonski had worked on glowed with vitality. Several people, including the photographer Porfirio said that some of the paint was being taken off, that the colors originally hadn’t been so bright. From what he had learned and what he knew about the restoration of the Sistine frescoes, however, Urbino disagreed.

He went down the ladder. He should stop by to see Lubonski before going to Florian’s to meet the Contessa.

The English photographer staying at the Casa Crispina was standing near the foot of the ladder looking up at him as he descended the last few rungs. The photographer was burdened with several cameras. Behind him was Paolo, the sexton.

Urbino had met Val Gibbon several times. Because he was lodging in the Casa Crispina and taking some photographs for the sisters, Sister Teresa had pressed the Contessa to have him take the photographs of the fresco for the church records. The Contessa, always easily swayed by Sister Teresa, had agreed, not taking into consideration Porfirio’s air of proprietorship about all things Venetian.

Val Gibbon was a handsome man in his late thirties, Urbino’s own age, with short, curly dark hair and dark eyes and almost-dead-white skin. The first time Urbino had met him he had been reminded of Caesar’s words about Cassius but he was fairly certain that Gibbon’s lean and hungry look usually evoked thoughts other than those of danger in the minds of impressionable women.

“Finished dabbling for the day?” Gibbon said with an even, innocent gaze.

“Just having a look. I only ‘dabble’ when Lubonski is here.”

“That might be a while. He was looking like death yesterday. You’d think a Pole would be more hardy. I can’t say I mind having him out of the way for a time though. It makes my work easier.”

“I thought you were finished with the fresco.”

“Not quite. There are still a few things I want to do. I’m also photographing a few of the other frescoes and paintings as a favor to Sister Teresa—although I think I’d do it just to rile that pompous fool Porfirio. He doesn’t like the idea of my poaching in his territory—and by that I don’t mean only the church but the whole damn city.” He looked around the dark Gothic building. His eye rested on a statue of the Virgin to the left of the altar. One of the old women of the parish was arranging a fresh urn of flowers. “I’m also thinking of taking some time-lapse of the Virgin over there. The ridiculous Italian woman staying at the Casa Crispina says she saw a bright halo around the head yesterday. I’d like to give her proof of how foolish she is.”

“I doubt if Xenia Campi would accept photographs as proof of anything but what happened not to be there at the time they were taken.”

Gibbon’s immediate laugh had an unpleasant, conspiratorial ring to it. Before Urbino could make it clear that they didn’t share a condescending attitude toward Xenia Campi, however, the photographer excused himself and started up the ladder.