The Last Gondola by Edward Sklepowich

something Proust said.”
    â€œI’m well aware of that. But tell me, do you feel disillusioned now? In this year of your life in Venice?”
    â€œIn some ways Venice has become more special than ever,” Urbino replied, expressing only a small portion of what was a very personal feeling these days about his adopted city.
    â€œSince your return from Morocco, you mean, with your Moroccan friend.” Possle gave a nod of his purple-swathed head. “The enthusiasm of the young can help a jaded appetite, don’t you find? I believe he has gone home for a visit. I hope it won’t be for too long. You must miss him terribly. Your house must seem emptier than it used to be before he came to stay with you. But I’m becoming distracted, I fear. We were speaking about Venice and Proust. So tell me, my friend, do you also agree with Proust about Venice being sinister and deceptive and—what do you call it?—a mendacious fiction?”
    Urbino, who was both uncomfortable and irritated by Possle’s references to Habib, responded coolly, “There’s something of that.”
    â€œOf course there is,” Possle replied with a sly smile. “What else would one expect from a person of imagination like yourself, not to mention a person who has your other line of work? As for me, Venice has never disappointed. But our sherry has arrived.”
    Armando entered with a tray and deposited it on the small inlaid table in front of the gondola. He poured the pale wine into two cups of translucent Chinese porcelain. He handed one cup to Possle, then the other, with considerably less ceremony, to Urbino.
    â€œThank you, Armando,” Possle said in Italian. “If we need anything else, I’ll ring for you.”
    Armando gave an almost imperceptible bow and left the room.
    Possle raised his cup. “To deep ventures and a good death,” he said.
    As Urbino sipped the dry wine, he was reminded of Poe’s story of the man walled up by his enemy in a cellar filled with casks of Amontillado.
    â€œSuch a gentle wine for such a troubling story,” Possle said, yet again startling Urbino by the echo of what he had himself been thinking. “Ah, stories! One of my sorrows is that my eyes have worsened during the past few years along with my hearing. If only Armando might read to me, but as you’ve noticed, he’s mute, though his hearing is very acute.”
    â€œI see. I…” Urbino trailed off.
    â€œYou thought he was reticent, the ideal servant? He is that. And also once the best gondolier I could have wanted, even better than your Gildo.”
    First Habib, and now Gildo , Urbino thought. Possle wanted to make a point of showing him how much he knew about him.
    â€œHe became mute recently?” Urbino asked, choosing to show as little reaction as possible to Possle’s reference to Gildo. “Since you retired your gondola?”
    â€œNo, long before I even had the gondola.”
    â€œSurely muteness must have been a handicap for a gondolier.”
    â€œArmando has no handicaps that I’ve ever discovered. Don’t underestimate him. He could make all the warning cries.”
    The air in the room began to feel more close and oppressive. Urbino set his cup down.
    â€œDoes Armando live here?”
    â€œHe’s more at home here than I am. He has his little nooks and crannies everywhere. You might have noticed one of them in the entrance hallway. He thinks of himself as my silent Cerberus when he’s there. We are well matched, the two of us. He has nowhere to go, and I can go nowhere. Alone together. We are most inseparable.”
    He ran a hand slowly along the gleaming wood of the gondola. “Armando is part of my daily life,” he continued, “my double, my shadow, as someone once said of gondoliers. People either like their gondoliers or they hate them, Mr. Macintyre, and if they like them, they like them very much. Or,