5

On his way to the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini on the Grand Canal, Urbino felt alternately warmed and chilled, depending on whether he was walking in the sunshine or through the shadows of the damp alleys. Even on the hottest days of summer, they never seemed to relinquish their dankness.

The streets were busy, especially when he reached the Rio Terrà Maddalena on the main route to the train station. He greeted friends and acquaintances, and stopped in a bar for a quick glass of Cynar. This brown liqueur brewed from artichokes, with its medicinal taste, was particularly effective in restoring the warmth stolen from him by the narrow Venetian streets.

He paused afterward on a bridge and looked toward the Grand Canal. A gondola, making its way from the large waterway deeper into the Cannaregio district, passed beneath the bridge. It took a few moments to recognize the gondola as his own and the gondolier as Gildo, with an abstracted expression clouding his handsome face. Urbino called out to him, but he couldn’t attract the young man’s attention. Urbino went to the other side of the bridge and called again, but the self-absorbed gondolier kept staring straight ahead from the poop.

Then Urbino noticed a large, curved piece of wood lying against the cushions of the gondola. It was a forcola or the oarlock of a gondola. Another forcola was properly attached to the gunwale of Urbino’s gondola, and Gildo was maneuvering the oar in the waters of the canal with the help of its surfaces.

Urbino watched the gondola until it passed out of sight in the direction of the Palazzo Uccello. He left the bridge and turned down an alley that would bring him to the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini more quickly than the broad street of shops and hotels.

He wondered what Gildo was doing with the forcola. Could it be a replacement for the one already on the gondola? If so, why hadn’t he mentioned it? And why did the young man look so melancholy these days? He had caught the same expression on his face several times recently when the gondolier had been doing work around the Palazzo Uccello or guiding the boat.

He made a reminder to himself to look into the situation.