Black Bridge Read Free

a sulfurous odor had seeped under the door—the same sulfurous odor that was all around him now and that seemed to suffuse everything and everyone at the spa.
    Why not just admit it? He had made a mistake. It would have been better to have checked into the Grand Hotel des Bains on the Lido or the Hassler Villa Medici down in Rome for a complete change of scene, but he’d stick things through for two more days. The Contessa wasn’t expecting him back until then. In fact, she might not be that pleased to see him, occupied as she was with the Barone Bobo.
    Two hours later, after a spell of sweating induced by the mud therapy that was supposed to “rid his body of its toxicity,” Urbino had a massage, then went to the pool. As he finished his last lap, he looked up to see Marco Zeoli’s long, thin face, etched as it always seemed to be with fatigue. The assistant medical director of the spa held out a towel.
    Zeoli was doing everything to make Urbino’s stay as enjoyable as possible, in the hope that he would praise the spa to the Anglo-American community in Venice. If all went well for him, Zeoli, only forty-one, would soon be made chief medical director. He had been there for almost fifteen years, commuting the twenty-five miles from Venice, where he lived with his widowed mother.
    â€œYou seem in fine form, Urbino.”
    Zeoli’s cold, exact voice suited his severe look. He had always reminded Urbino of a figure out of a Goya painting. It was amusing, if not also a little disconcerting, that a man in his position didn’t emanate more of an air of healthiness, unless it was to be found in the ever so faint whiff of the spa’s salubrious sulfur that clung to his sallow skin.
    â€œNot everyone comes here because of a problem, and yours is quite minor as far as these things go,” Zeoli quickly added. His professional eye made a quick examination of Urbino’s right big toe as Urbino dried himself off. “Quite a few come just for rest and recreation—from as far away as England and Germany. That man and woman over there”—he indicated a late-middle-aged couple with round, healthy faces and reddish hair—“come all the way from Finland every year, and they’re in the best of health. Remember that Abano’s mud and thermal waters have drawn people since the time of the Romans. Maybe you can come back and work on your newest book. Our library is the best in Abano. If you have any problems or suggestions, let me know. Good day.”
    Zeoli left.
    As he sat in a poolside chair, Urbino thought about what Zeoli had said about the Romans and smiled to himself. The men and women in their white robes, in fact, did look a little like toga-clad Romans, especially an overweight, homely man taking off his robe at the other end of the pool. With his round, completely bald head and pendulous lower lip, he resembled a corrupt senator from the time of the Caesars. It was only his unmistakable aura of sorrow and preoccupation that softened the edges of the image. He caught Urbino staring at him and frowned.
    Urbino turned his attention to Fire , D’Annunzio’s novel about Venice, a fictionalized account of his affair with the actress Eleonora Duse. The hero was delivering a paeon to Venice at the Doges’ Palace while his aging mistress gazed adoringly at him from the crowd. The scene was filled with passion and bombast, poetry and prophecy, which managed to be somehow both inspiring and ridiculous at the same time.
    Despite all D’Annunzio’s excesses, you could easily be drawn in, as Urbino was now. This was D’Annunzio’s power, a power that the unattractive little man had exerted not only on the page but in the bedroom. All this made Urbino apprehensive about the Barone Casarotto-Re, who supposedly resurrected D’Annunzio’s spirit, though obviously not his homely flesh.
    â€œExcuse me, Signor Macintyre.” It was the pool