25

Urbino’s brisk pace soon had him crossing the small bridge that brought him to the squero of San Trovaso, one of the few remaining gondola workshops in Venice and reputedly the best. The Contessa had commissioned his own gondola here.

A man in a beret had his easel set up and was evoking the dark wood buildings that were more Alpine than Venetian. Beneath a long balcony filled with bright geraniums, three of the keel-less boats stood on the canal bank. One was upright, the other two turned over, showing their green-painted flat bottoms. All three were positioned on trestles like the ones holding Possle’s gondola. To complete the scene—to the painter’s delight, Urbino was sure—was laundry fluttering on a line, a leaning ladder, and two industrious craftsmen or squerarioli.

Urbino greeted one of the men. He had struck up an acquaintance with him over the years. Long before the Contessa had given him the gondola, he had been fascinated with their construction and would sometimes come here to this squero to watch the men at their work. Making a gondola was an elaborate and time-consuming process that involved cutting and shaping two hundred and eighty pieces of mahogany, cherry, elm, and five other kinds of wood, then bending the long pieces for the sides after they have been heated on open fires.

The walnut forcole weren’t made in the boatyards but in special workshops elsewhere in the city.

“Is everything all right with the gondola, Signor Urbino?” the squerariolo asked him.

“Perfect.”

“It had to be. The Contessa was here two or three times a week to check up on us,” the man said with a laugh. “I don’t know how she kept it a secret from you. We were going to ask her if she wanted a room in the house so she could keep better watch.”

The man carried a paint-splattered sawhorse into the enclosed workshop. Urbino let him go about his work for a few minutes, then mentioned that he had just seen a forcola that an apprentice had made.

“Even I could spot some flaws, but it was fine nonetheless.”

“The young man should keep at it.”

This was almost the same thing Urbino had said to Gildo, and now he told the craftsman what Gildo had told him—that his friend, the apprentice, was dead.

The man made commiserating sounds as he brought a pile of lagoon cane, used for the fires, to a corner of the building.

“Do you know an oar and forcola maker from the Castello district?” Urbino asked him.

“He’s almost ready to retire. We don’t get our forcole from him, but he’s one of the best.”

Urbino got the name of the remero and his Castello address and let the man go about his work.