The City of Falling Angels Read Online Free PDF Page A

She arrived at St. Mark’s by gondola, topless, and climbed up onto the horse, proclaiming herself a living work of art surmounting an inanimate one. Parliamentary immunity protected Cicciolina from prosecution for obscene acts in public, so De Luigi was charged instead. He told the presiding judge, who happened to be a woman, that he had not expected Cicciolina to take her clothes off.
     
     
    “But, knowing Miss Staller’s history, Signor De Luigi,” the judge said, “couldn’t you imagine she would take her clothes off?”
     
     
    “Your Honor, I am an artist. I have a lively imagination. I can imagine you taking your clothes off right here in court. But I don’t expect you to do it.”
     
     
    “Signor De Luigi,” said the judge, “I, too, have an imagination, and I can imagine sending you to jail for five years for contempt of court.” In the end, she gave him a sentence of five months in jail, which was vacated in a general amnesty a short time later. In any case, tonight in the Rainbow Room, Ludovico De Luigi was going to paint a picture of the Miracoli Church as a tribute to Save Venice’s current, and most ambitious, restoration project. As he went back to mixing colors on his palette, Lesa Marcello picked up the telephone and turned toward the windows and the view of Manhattan.
     
     
    Countess Marcello was a dark-haired woman with a quiet manner and an expression of infinite patience. She pressed her free hand against her ear to shut out the noise and heard Girolamo Marcello say that the Fenice had caught fire and was burning out of control. “It’s gone,” he said. “There is nothing anybody can do. But at least we are all safe, and so far the fire has not spread.”
     
     
    Lesa sank into a chair by the window, dazed. Tears welled in her eyes as she tried to absorb the news. For generations, her family had played a prominent role in the affairs of Venice. Her grandfather had been mayor between the wars. She gazed blankly out the window. The setting sun cast shimmering red-and-orange reflections on the glass skyscrapers of Wall Street, creating an effect that made it look, to her eyes, as though the city were on fire. She turned away.
     
     
    “God, no!” Bea Guthrie gasped when Lesa told her about the Fenice. Mrs. Guthrie was the executive director of Save Venice. She put down the centerpiece she had been working on as a look of panic crossed her face. In an instant, the masked ball had been reduced to a horribly inappropriate frivolity, and it was too late to cancel it. Six hundred costumed merrymakers would be arriving at the Rainbow Room in a matter of hours, dressed as gondoliers, popes, doges, courtesans, Marco Polos, Shylocks, Casanovas, and Tadzios, and there was nothing anybody could do to head them off. The guest of honor, Signora Lamberto Dini, the wife of Italy’s prime minister, would certainly have to bow out, and that would only emphasize the inappropriateness of the ball. Clearly the party would turn into a wake. Something had to be done. But what?
     
     
    Bea Guthrie called her husband, Bob Guthrie, who was president of Save Venice and chief of reconstructive and plastic surgery at New York Downtown Hospital. Dr. Guthrie was in the operating room. She then called Larry Lovett, the chairman of Save Venice. Lovett had been chairman of both the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In recent years, he had bought a palace on the Grand Canal and made it his principal residence. He reacted to the news with as much anger as sadness. Whatever the cause had been, he was certain that negligence had been a contributing factor, knowing the way things worked in Venice. Dr. Guthrie heard the news as he was coming out of the operating room. His shock was tempered by a dash of pragmatism. “Well,” he said, “there goes the curtain we just restored for a hundred thousand dollars.”
     
     
    Neither Larry Lovett nor Bob Guthrie could suggest any