14 JUNE 1987
8:45 caffè latte, pane al cioccolato
10:15 Dr. Giannotti
14:30 computer
15:40 phone call — U.S.
16:20 Debenedetti
17:00 seamstress
20:0 °Celine
hair heaven glimmer thread error reflect pillow binding
Seamstress? Why would Arnold see a seamstress? Paul shivered a little as the gathering shadows overtook the afternoon sun. Then he returned to his reading. On Monday he was going to meet Ida Perkins. He had lots of questions and he wanted to be prepared.
IX. Dorsoduro 434
The gloomy “false Byzantium” of the Hotel Danieli bar at three o’clock on an October afternoon was only partly offset by the blaze in the fireplace reflected in the room’s high-hung, aged mirrors. The upholstery of the couches, gray peau de soie moiré, suited Paul’s mood. Outside was burnished Venice autumn weather — pure cloudless blue, sixty-eight degrees in the sun on the Riva degli Schiavoni; but he was trapped inside, overcoat beside him on the couch, waiting for Ida Perkins.
He was taut and indrawn, the way he tended to be when meeting someone new, but especially so today. He was about to come face-to-face with the Person, the Goddess, the One and Only … he was winding himself up, he knew; he had to stop.
Why was he here? He had a sudden urge to hightail it back to New York and forget the whole thing. Instead, he played with his BlackBerry, scanning but not reading his messages.
Suddenly, a slender figure turned the corner from the foyer and peered into the mote-filled semi-gloom before making her way toward him, negotiating among the islands of furniture that filled the room.
Ida was here.
But no, it was an elderly Italian woman in a heavy pea jacket, not Ida at all.
“Signor Dukach, La Contessa Moro is not well today, mi dispiace davvero,” the woman offered. “She asked me to see if instead you might come see her tomorrow afternoon.”
“Yes, of course, ma’am. I can do that.” Paul felt a thrill. He was going to visit Ida at home! Over the years on his trips to Venice, he’d scoped out her address, hoping for a glimpse of her in a window or, better yet, on the street. Now he was going to see for himself.
“A che ora, signora?” he asked, as nonchalantly as he could.
“Alle quattro del pomeriggio, per piacere. Dorsoduro 434, presso San Gabriele. Grazie, grazie tante.”
The woman looked around anxiously, rubbing her hands together as if from the cold, though the room was pleasantly warm. Nodding apologetically, she backed away, turned, and disappeared.
Paul was reprieved! He was going to see Ida, but not yet. Carefree, he strolled in the thinning light past the Arsenale, all the way to San Pietro di Castello; then he meandered back through a warren of backwater rios to San Marco and over the Accademia Bridge. After a stint in the museum with his favorite Carpaccios, he found his way to Montin, a simple trattoria on a de Chiricoesque canal where the maître d’ was only too happy to show him the table where Ezra Pound had sat with his back to the crowd every evening with Olga Rudge — and occasionally, in his last years, with Arnold and Ida.
He had a couple of limoncellos after his fegato alla veneziana and polenta and then wandered back to his hotel on a small canal that gave onto the Giudecca, passing the monument to Dmitry Chavchavadze on the way. Dmitry, who had died of a heart attack in Atlanta a few years before, had, like other émigrés, chosen to spend his immortality in Venice, the ultimate way station of the exile.
Paul fell asleep immediately. In the morning, he lit out for the Ghetto and the farther reaches of Cannaregio with his dog-eared Red Guide, paying an obligatory visit on the way to barrel-vaulted Santa Maria dei Miracoli, nestled like a marble boat in the harbor of small canals surrounding her.
* * *
The nondescript entrance to Palazzo Moro di Schiuma fronted on a narrow alley that ended unceremoniously at the Grand Canal. Paul rang the bell at precisely 4:00 and a small door clicked open. After walking down a short brick passageway between high stucco walls with shards of broken bottles at the top, he found himself in a disused garden. Climbing vines just losing their reddened leaves covered the back of the house. Paul entered the portico to the right as directed and took the small elevator to the fourth floor.
It opened onto a squarish marble entryway in which a tall, frail woman with pure white hair coiled on top of her head was leaning on a cane with a carved, yellowed ivory handle. She wore a stylishly cut brown wool shift, with no jewelry except a round brooch of rough gold, and brown velvet slippers.
Yes, Ida was still Ida, Paul surmised, taking her measure once he’d recovered from the shock of her presence. Her high cheekbones retained their almost Mongol glamour, though the skin was drawn thin across them.
“Come in, Mr. Dukach.”
“Ms. Perkins, it is such an honor to meet you.”
She half bowed and indicated a pair of couches in the middle of the room, then led him slowly to them, sitting facing him, with a tea table between them.
As he moved through the low-ceilinged room furnished with commodiously grouped, low-slung Venetian fauteuils and lit here and there in the failing daylight by Murano glass lamps glowing red and green like signal lights, Paul noticed a closed-in gallery at the far end, overlooking what had to be the Grand Canal. It was here he had read somewhere that Wagner had written the third act of Tristan und Isolde. The walls of the room were covered in beige dam ask, overhung not with the expected Venetian scenes but with paintings by Severini and Morandi and, to his delight, a surreal seascape, the largest and most captivating Paul had ever seen, by the Italian Post-Impressionist De Pisis. Where, he wondered, was Leonello Moro’s notorious contemporary collection?
A few logs smoldered in a small fireplace near the door, and a lamp was lit on the desk near the east end of the room overlooking the gallery, where Ida had been working, or so it appeared.
“Would you like some tea, Mr. Dukach?” Ida’s unreconstructed Brahmin accent, with its broad extended vowels, was out of another era.
He nodded distractedly. Being here was making him forget what he’d so carefully planned to say.
Ida rang a small bell on the table beside her. The woman from yesterday appeared.
“Tè, per cortesia, Adriana,” Ida instructed her servant.
“So. Now how can I help you?” she asked, turning to Paul. She was firm, maybe a little brusque as she patted the pillows behind her back, making herself comfortable. Paul was surprised to find that instead of the expansiveness he’d endowed her with in his fantasies, the Ida in front of him was old-fashioned, restrained, no-nonsense. And guarded.
“Rosalind Horowitz, as I believe you know, suggested I come see you,” he began. “I’m working with Sterling Wainwright on Arnold Outerbridge’s red notebooks. We’re trying … well, I’m trying to figure them out.”
“Oh yes.” Ida nodded. “Roz wrote me all about you.” She seemed to relax a bit. “And Sterling tells me you know more about me — about my work, anyway — than anyone, apart from him, of course. Which is more than a little frightening, I have to admit.” Ida laughed an uncomfortable little laugh. “I’ve certainly never heard him talk that way about another publisher — and one who works for Homer Stern to boot!”