A Venetian Affair (14 page)

Andrea himself was not quite as sanguine as Consul Smith. Mrs. Anna’s attitude toward the lovers remained cold, and he was irritated by the way she spoke about his family in public and felt strongly that her behavior was not helping their cause. “You do remember, don’t you, how your mother went about saying that my close relations were horribly critical about us and how they were slandering her behind my back. Smith asked her what those accusations were based on since he knows the Memmos to be upright and wise and he is very much aware of our thinking on this whole matter. She was quite embarrassed and admitted she had no proof. She had heard . . . she had thought . . . so there. It turns out we Memmos are gentlemen after all, we have not dishonored her, we have not caused her family’s ruin, its collapse, its violent death.”

As Andrea drew the consul into the picture, he also edged himself back into the consul’s life, offering advice on how to disentangle himself from new legal disputes. Once again Andrea was at his most Machiavellian. He instructed Giustiniana “to cultivate Mr. Smith and his wife,” bearing in mind that “they probably believe we are already married one way or another, for I have done my best to excite their suspicion without ever stating things clearly.” Soon Andrea was able to report that he was once more “at the very center” of the consul’s activity. “Here I am, necessary to him, willing and helpful.”

There was a cruel edge to Andrea’s treatment of the consul. It was not just the arrogance of the young dealing with the old. There was a lingering hint of resentment, a suggestion that all was not entirely forgotten. Their rapprochement was borne of mutual convenience, and the two did not really recover their close relationship. Here is how Andrea described him to Giustiniana in a particularly mean-spirited letter: “I tell you: Smith is bound to do all he can for us unless he is the most ungrateful man on earth. For he surely would have lost at least fifteen thousand sequins, not to mention his peace of mind and his honor, if it had not been for my advice, which was the opposite of what he and his counselors had argued. So I will not ease the pressure on him. The worst part of it is that he really is an ass, that he doesn’t know how to handle a deal, that he’s English and old.”

The consul may have lost his ability to handle a deal, but his word still carried weight with Mrs. Anna, who was mindful that the young Chavannes had been sucked back into the Parisian whirlwind and no longer seemed seriously interested in Giustiniana. Besides, she had found out that, contrary to his claim, he was not really a count. After a long winter lull, negotiations suddenly began to move forward again. In the early spring of 1758 Mrs. Anna, under pressure from the Memmos, finally instructed Signor Faccini to present a draft of the marriage contract to Signor Bonzio, the
primario,
for preliminary scrutiny. Andrea was thrilled: “How happy we shall be. Yes, I am sure of it now, my little one.”

Anticipating a wedding agreement, the lovers’ temptation to see each other became irresistible. Andrea paraded up and down the Grand Canal in his gondola two or three times a day. He was delighted to see her at her balcony again: “. . . and with that nightcap of yours, oh dearest, oh my rarest Giustiniana, my desire for you. . . . I feel I cannot resist it.” Yet a treacherous winter chill was still in the air, and he warned her to be careful. “ For heaven’s sake, don’t come to the window,” he pleaded one morning. “It is still too cold.” A few days later he sent another worried note: “Ask one of the maids or a houseboy to watch for me in your place. They can call you as soon as they see me from afar. Otherwise I will worry too much.”

It started with a splitting headache. Then a fever set in and Giustiniana’s temperature rose, and then came the dreaded stomach pains. Andrea followed the progress of the illness from the window at the Tiepolos’ with increasing agitation: “You seemed to be burning last night, and the way you repeatedly put your hand to your forehead gave me so much grief.” Andrea was in a state of great agitation. It was the second time Giustiniana had fallen seriously ill in the space of six months. She was again subjected to a debilitating cycle of leech-induced bloodletting by Dr. Trivellati, one of Venice’s leading physicians. Her mother force-fed her the usual supplement of garlic, which Andrea insisted was “really very bad” for her. It was hard for him to communicate with her and to get credible news on her health. His sister Marina’s death was recent enough that a creeping fear reinforced Andrea’s anxiety about Giustiniana’s health. Most nights he returned home late after wandering aimlessly around town, stopping at friends’ “and talking about you while the others played cards.” In his room he would battle the cold and his sleeplessness by pacing back and forth in front of the fire. Or he would wrap himself in blankets and stay up writing by the stove until the chiming of the first call to mass. Images of Giustiniana kept him awake: “You cannot imagine how my heart is filled with worries and endless pangs of anxiety and how my mind is full of thoughts of terrible things that surely will not happen. . . . Now I see my Giustiniana in a bed, her head so hot, her body wracked by fluxions and fever and pains and debilities of all sorts . . . without her Memmo, without a hope of having him near even for a moment.”

A chance encounter with Dr. Trivellati in the street provided the first relief: “He told me your pulse had slackened after the last bout of fever. He said he had decided to go ahead and draw more blood now that your headache has subsided somewhat and you have had a copious clearing out. How his words, so precise and truthful, have consoled me.”

In spite of all the bloodletting, which probably weakened Giustiniana more than the actual ailment, her health gradually improved. As the weather warmed, she returned to the balcony. She looked pale and thin under her beribboned nightcap, but she smiled in the bright sunshine and squinted and waved to her lover down below. As she recovered, deeper stirrings came back to her as well, and with them the usual logistical problems. Ever since Andrea was spotted leaving her house, Rosa had been reluctant to help the two lovers. She claimed to be ill and made herself generally unavailable. Andrea pleaded with her so forcefully she finally agreed to let them use their room “one more time,” with the understanding that it would be the last.

Other friends now willingly stepped in. Johann Adolph Hasse, the German composer, and his wife, Faustina, the celebrated diva, had always had a tender spot for Andrea since the days when Uncle Andrea, the old patriarch, had still been alive and they had been frequent guests at Ca’ Memmo. Their daughters, Beppina and Cattina, had grown, and now they too had become friends of Andrea and Giustiniana. The Hasses were a joyous, fun-loving family, and they were more than happy to connive with the two young lovers. On the appointed day, Giustiniana would tell her mother she was going to pay a visit “to the Hasse girls.” Andrea would arrive there shortly before her, to be whisked up to the girls’ room on the second floor. This way Giustiniana could go upstairs and meet Andrea even if she had the misfortune of being accompanied by her mother.

More surprisingly, the consul himself agreed to give Andrea the keys to his box at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, a rather traditional establishment with an uninspiring program—which suited Andrea and Giustiniana just fine. They met there at their leisure and made sure the little curtain was drawn. They were seldom tempted to watch the play. “Of course it has become my favorite theater,” Andrea now said after having criticized the San Giovanni Grisostomo for years. “That box is very comfortable indeed. Oh, I hope we shall go there often. . . . There is such peace and quiet. . . . And of course the privilege of not having to listen to the performances, which are usually so bad.”

Now that the marriage cavalcade was moving again, Andrea was “immersed in the pleasure of our present condition.” He could not get enough, even when they were not together:

As I lay in bed alone for so long I thought of the days when we
will be together, comforting each other at night. This idea led to
another and then to another and soon I was so fired up I could see
you in bed with me. You wore that nightcap of yours I like so
much, and a certain ribbon I gave you adorned your face so
sweetly. You were so near to me and so seductive I took in your
tender fragrance and felt your breath. You were in a deep sleep—
you even snored at times. You had kept me company all evening
long with such grace that I really didn’t have the heart to wake
you up . . . but then a most fortunate little accident occurred just
as my discretion was exhausting itself. You turned to me at the
very moment in which you dreamed of being in my arms. Nature,
perhaps encouraged by habit, led you to embrace me. So there we
were, next to each other, face to face and mouth to mouth! Your
right leg was leaning on my left leg. Little by little the beak of the
baby dove began to prick you so forcefully that in your sleep you
moved your hand in such a way the thirsty little creature found
the door wide open. Trembling from both fear and delight, it
entered oh so gently into that little cage and after quenching its
thirst it began to have some fun, flying about those spaces and
trying to penetrate them as far as it could. It was so eager and
made such a fuss that in the end you woke up.

The greatest intimacy came naturally to them. The playful tone softened the raw sexual desire. And the writing too, one feels, prolonged and completed their pleasure. Andrea returned to his room at Ca’ Memmo one evening, his head filled with sexual thoughts about Giustiniana. He considered masturbating but then thought better of it: “I felt terribly in love with you. . . . But I didn’t want to force nature for a third time, having it forced with such profit in the morning.”

During the spring of 1758 Andrea’s letters were filled with a mixture of sexual exuberance and serious talk about their future life as husband and wife. When the lighthearted side of his personality took over, Andrea reveled in the pursuit of pleasure. But his serious side, which carried the weight of tradition and family responsibility, was never far behind. He begged Giustiniana, for the sake of his reputation as well as her own, to be more circumspect in her public demeanor and always wary of that “malicious world” out there, which preyed on the smallest glimmer of gossip. Sometimes this sanctimonious carping irritated Giustiniana’s rebellious spirit, but Andrea pressed on regardless, teaching her the ways “of this Venetian world of ours, as a good friend would.” When he did not write to her as a playful lover, he took the approach of a philosopher-husband whose passion should always remain firmly fastened to reason: “Believe me, my little one, a simple rapture would not have led me to risk everything I have in order to marry you. What led me to do it was the clear and perfect picture I have of my Giustiniana, the deep and well-founded respect I have for her, and a sentiment far stronger than the most virtuous and sincerest of friendships. And all of this has led me to pursue my goal with as much prudence and patience and industry and foresight as I could muster.” Had he been more fickle, had his love been “not as deep as it is,” he might have tempted her “to run away” with him during one of their many moments of despair. Or he could have found “an honorable way” out of their relationship: “Yet these thoughts never even entered my mind. I have remained constant. I feel as strong and resolute as I did on the very first day—before which I had already reflected on our fate far more than you could possibly imagine.”

In early summer Venetian society prepared itself once again for the yearly ritual of the
villeggiatura.
But it was hard for the Memmos and especially the Wynnes, who did not own an estate in the country, to firm up their plans at a time when the negotiations on the marriage seemed to be reaching a critical stage. Mrs. Anna discarded the idea of renting a place, instead accepting another invitation from the Reniers to spend some time at their house in Padua. Andrea decided he would stay in Venice, where Signor Bonzio would be examining the marriage contract, and made plans to ensure he and Giustiniana could be in constant communication while they were apart. After four and a half years of subterfuge, Andrea had become a master at handling the intricacies of maintaining the flow of their correspondence: “I will draw two small lines under the name of the county. That will tell the postmen in Venice [the letters are from me]. . . . They will deliver them in the morning. . . . If anyone should check at the Padua post office or the Venice post office, they will find nothing—it will not be your writing, the letter will be addressed to a Venetian gentleman, there will be no
poste restante,
hence no reason to suspect anything.”

The rest of the Memmo family left town to seek respite from the heat. Pietro was so frail that Andrea wondered if he’d make it through the summer. He gave Giustiniana a touching description of their leave-taking: “I think he will stay out at our villa for a long time because it is good for his health. . . . After lunch I kissed his hand, which is not something we Memmos usually do. After that blessed moment we were unable to speak because our eyes filled with tears.”
¹²

Life in the city slowed down considerably. Except for the great Festa del Redentore on the third Sunday of July, there were no major festivities. The theaters were closed. The palaces on the Grand Canal were empty. The
botteghe
and the
malvas
ì
e
were less crowded than usual. Andrea did not have much to do except run a few errands, browse among the picture dealers, and make sure Signor Bonzio had everything he needed. “Early this morning I went by Tonnin Zanetti’s shop
¹³
to see some drawings by Titian and cultivate a priest who might prove useful to us one day. As I savored those magnificent drawings I thought, ‘If only I could have Giustiniana, who is so far away from me.’ That’s the way it always is. You’re always in my heart, and I would feel so undeserving of you if I did not think about you constantly.” Alone in the stifling heat of the city, he marveled at how things were turning their way: “Do you know that it is nearly impossible to be blessed by that good fortune that God is preparing to bestow upon us after all our grief? To discover such kinship between us, to see reason and virtue guide our love and give true and everlasting pleasure . . . these are things that don’t often come along. Oh, when will we be together, my dearest little one? And what delight I shall feel in pleasing you, in making you happy, in loving you! How sweet your company will be.”