A Venetian Affair (17 page)

In the end, Murray did not receive either of the letters (Giustiniana’s was held back after Mrs. Anna’s had been intercepted), though he was probably informed about the incident in detail. Meanwhile, the
rappresentante
sent his military aide to the prison at the Castello to work on Zandiri, who finally caved in and wrote a submissive letter of apology to his sworn enemy. Andrea promptly pardoned Zandiri. Giustiniana was delighted and sent Andrea a short adulatory note: “You are a great man in every respect, my Memmo! And such cold blood, such dexterity, such quick and firm decisions in moments of great pressure! Oh, I shall never find another man like you if I live a thousand years.”

The next day a grumbling Zandiri returned to the inn. “No one spoke,” Giustiniana noted. “He and my mother appear to be fairly calm. . . . No secret meetings so far and no new letters.” Victory made her bold again, even reckless. “I am dying to see you. . . . If per chance this evening you should feel inclined to come visit me in the same room as last night, be sure that I would feel infinite comfort in seeing you.”

The lovers spent the night together—the last before they parted ways.

On October 12 the Wynnes headed for Milan. Ten days had passed since the carriage had broken down. Andrea and Giustiniana had to go through a painful separation all over again. “Everything that has happened in between has made me feel that I belong to you even more,” Giustiniana wrote. “I feel this separation very deeply. . . . I’ve never felt such pain, my Memmo—not even in Padua.” There, at least, they had had more time to take leave from each other. Their parting in Brescia was a rushed and brutal affair. After a long day on the road that left her exhausted and “completely battered,” she began to take stock. As in her first letter from Vicenza, she reverted to addressing her lover as her dear brother:

Mon cher frère,

I am far from you, my dear Memmo, I will not see you again,
and I am so sure of it now that all I feel is pain and desperation. It
was so difficult to leave [this morning]! They had to call for me
ten times because I had locked myself in a room and had spread
out your letters and was crying and feeling completely desolate.
But what’s the point? In the end I had to leave, and now you are
so far away that I have finally come to realize I will not see you
for a very long time. But I had to tear myself away without even a
farewell, an embrace, a few shared tears! Oh God! . . . Oh, my
Memmo, why do I love you so? Your friendship is such a rare
thing that I would have felt bound to you forever even without
having any other feelings for you. Oh, wretched circumstances!
And you, Memmo, will you still love me? Yes, you will; but do
not tell me, or else just tell me with the coldest words. I feel I could
become extravagant: so far away that I cannot lay a claim on you
nor give in to my feelings. Ah, if only you knew how torn I am!
The past, your kindness, your friendship. All this love I have for
you, it startles me, it fills me completely. I love you more and
more, and more and more I see the miserable difficulties ahead. . . .
Oh God! Memmo, my Memmo, still forever mine, oh God, pity
me. And you, my heart, how will you remember me? Forget the
past; be generous to me the way only you can be, and promise to
think of me only the way I will be from now on. I will tell you
everything, do not doubt that; I will keep you informed of my
conduct, my opportunities, my feelings, my prudence. Yes, I shall
be prudent—you mustn’t doubt that any longer. If only you knew
how I feel now about caprice and weakness, I think you would be
satisfied; but do not worry: my prudence will not be excessive; it
is wise, well founded; and it will not vanish. Think well of me, if
you still can, and expect to think even better of me yet. Tell me
everything; continue to lend me your tender assistance. I will
depend on it: I am yours. My dearest Memmo,
mon aimable frère,
you are such a rare being. Where else to find you if not in
you? And will I not look for you and find you again? Wait for me,
wherever you want.

It was typical of Giustiniana to address her letter to her
cher frère
and ramble on for pages, as if the actual scribbling of all those words dulled the pain and provided a small measure of relief. Invariably, however, the indulgent musing stopped as she reminded Andrea—and herself—that circumstances called for more disciplined behavior. After all, there were things to be done in Paris, urgent matters to attend to:

I will also take a keen interest in La Pouplinière and my future
state, which will depend entirely upon myself and my reputation. . . . With my good manners, my cleverness, and my talent in
eliciting the sympathy of others, I will make the catch; and then,
Memmo, others will depend on me as I now depend on others, for,
believe me, I will have a name and all the rest. . . . Trust me; I
will tell you everything; I have given you my sacred word, and I
intend to keep it. Look over me, my heart, and help me, but above
all love me always.

The Wynnes arrived in Milan on the evening of October 13 and took rooms at Il Pozzo, a fashionable inn not far from the Duomo. It was the first time Giustiniana had left Venetian territory since her trip to London after her father’s death, when she had been fifteen. Once she was outside the Republic, her distance from Andrea seemed even greater. In her thoughts she traveled back to him constantly in order “to penetrate his being,” as she was fond of writing. She conjured, as a lover will against all odds, Andrea’s magical appearance in the most unlikely places: at street corners, in shops, even in the foyer of the inn where she was staying. To free herself from the suffocating presence of Mrs. Anna, Zandiri, Toinon, and her four younger siblings, she went out to explore the city in Andrea’s imaginary company.

Squeezed between the Venetian Republic and the rising Kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia, the Duchy of Milan was a shadow of its former self—little more than a city-state on the southern rim of the Austrian Empire, which had extended its authority over the duchy after the War of the Spanish Succession. The city was fairly prosperous, yet its morale had long been sapped by the rule of the invaders. “There seems to be a provincial atmosphere everywhere here,” Giustiniana wrote, complaining that people stared at her “as if they had never seen a foreigner.”

She visited the Duomo, watched charlatans sell their miraculous balsams and unguents in the square, wandered around the streets, peered into fancy stores, observed the clothes people wore. She was struck by the great number of elegant carriages congregating in the main square for the evening stroll, and she also noticed the poverty and filth and the high number of beggars in the streets. As for the ladies, always the object of her special attention, her verdict was rather damning: “Mostly ugly, mostly clumsy.”

One way or another, the Milanese always came up short in her running conversation with Andrea. “I had a different idea of Milan,” she concluded petulantly. “. . . I make comparisons, and at present I like Venice in the extreme.”

Giustiniana went to the theater with Mrs. Anna and thought the show so boring that she stared blankly at the stage until she was overwhelmed by a wave of nostalgia: “It occurred to me I was in a
theater,
and so I was taken over by the strongest melancholy. I remembered . . . Oh, what I remembered. . . . Do you remember all that I remember? If you can, then surely you will pity my state.”

The Venetian Resident, Giuseppe Imberti, offered the Wynnes a seat in his box at the Opera. On her first night there, Giustiniana loudly complained that the singing was “dreadful.” The Resident agreed, and since he knew Andrea well, he showed himself more eager to catch up on the latest twist of their love saga than to listen to the music. Mrs. Anna, still recovering from the jolting trip from Brescia, arrived late at the opera, so Imberti had plenty of time to tease Giustiniana.

I confessed to him that I love you, but I also told him we are
now bound only by friendship. He asked me if I had your portrait.
I showed it to him and kissed it in his presence. . . . Then he
wanted to know how much I was willing to pay in order to see you
and I said: Everything. And I said it with all my heart! He asked
how much I would give him if he produced you in less than
twenty-four hours. . . . In the end he only promised to show me a
letter of yours tomorrow. Still, I hope to God he will. He then
tried to make me believe that you were hidden somewhere inside
the hall. At that point, I must confess, I began to fantasize that
you might actually be there, and much to my embarrassment I
started looking for you in every box. You can imagine my state
when I couldn’t find you! How terrible I felt until the opera was
over! I feel miserable, Memmo. . . . If you love me, if you are my
friend, arrange things in such a way that you can visit me soon,
and I will not fail to come looking for you.

The Wynnes stayed three full days in Milan while their carriages were refitted for the next leg of the trip—straight west toward Piedmont and its capital, Turin. Giustiniana was incapable of reviving her initial curiosity about the city and grew more miserable with each day. She got up late, went to mass with Mrs. Anna before lunch, and took uninspired walks around the neighborhood. She had little interest in the people she met. “Everything bores me . . .”

For lack of anything better to do, she went to the “dreadful” opera again, figuring Imberti would be there—as indeed he was— and they could talk about Andrea: “I came home in the Resident’s carriage, and I talked about you along the way, telling him, as always, part of our story. I had talked to him about you at the Opera as well—during the first act and the dancing part.”

The solicitous Resident enjoyed Giustiniana’s company, not to mention the whiff of Venetian intrigue she had brought with her. He gave a dinner party for the Wynnes on their last evening in town (since he knew they had not unpacked their trunks entirely and did not have their evening gowns available, he downgraded the formal dinner to a more casual affair—but still “with many guests”). Despite her melancholy mood, Giustiniana was a breath of fresh air in that musty Milanese crowd of retired generals and diplomats and crumbling aristocrats. She was the object of everyone’s curiosity: even strangers came up to her and asked shamelessly about her “well-known passion.” And when her mother was not within earshot, Giustiniana indulged in Andrea-talk, which invariably brought on a familiar mixture of pleasure and pain: “The few I choose to speak to all know I adore you.”

Imberti was sorry to see Giustiniana leave. The night before the Wynnes’ scheduled departure, he begged her to stay on a few days and even offered to hide Andrea in his house. Andrea was in fact on his way to Milan on business, but he was waiting for the Wynnes to leave Italy before making an appearance there. It was unthinkable that the two lovers should find themselves again in the same city so soon after the Zandiri incident—and with Mrs. Anna still in a rage. “I explained to him your justified worries, as well as the dangers for me.” Still, Giustiniana now had a useful ally in the Resident, who agreed to handle their secret correspondence in the days ahead.

It was a gray, dreary afternoon on October 17 when the Wynnes drove away from Milan. Before leaving the inn, Giustiniana scribbled one more note to Andrea and pressed it into the hands of Imberti, who had come to say farewell:

If you do come to Milan and you don’t stay at the Resident’s,
come here and take the room I was in. . . . Come to [Il Pozzo] and
ask for the San Carlo room. There are two beds, and you must
sleep in the one next to the wall. . . . Remember that from that
bed I sent you a million sighs, and in that bed I shed a few tears
as well. . . . Tell me everything about your life. . . . Be mine forever. . . . Love me as much as you can and as long as you can.

And off they clattered toward the Alps. It took them three days and three nights to reach Turin, where they planned to rest a few days and make the inevitable repairs to the carriages. The journey was especially tiring and uncomfortable. “Always rain and always this awful cold,” Giustiniana complained. They were knocked about against the hard wood of the coach till the bruising became “unbearable.” Their feet were damp, their clothes splattered with mud:

And with all that, my mother still insisted on keeping a window open all the time. I pretended to sleep in order not to have to
talk or pray with the others, but I was always in the blackest
mood. I can only think about how to be near you again.

Her mood did not improve. They spent one night in the “dreadful” village of Bussalova. The following day they stopped for an “awful meal” in Novara. They left the plains of Lombardy and drove through the soggy rice fields of eastern Piedmont. Giustiniana scarcely looked out the window. She had only one thing on her mind: Andrea’s letter waiting for her in Turin.

You will have received mine from Milan. When will I have
one from you? Can I hope to receive one the day after tomorrow?
Where are you? How many questions I have for you. Do you love
me now? Will you always love me? . . . Come to me, please. I
make myself crazy; I want my Memmo absolutely. The ambassador told me the other evening that we really are made for each
other. And it would be so true if only I had been a better person.
How much I have lost! But will I have your love again? I tell
everyone we have established a simple friendship between us; but
then I immediately add that I adore you . . . Yes, I adore you, and
with greater strength than I want to.