Sophie and the Sibyl (34 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

takes place in Venice.

Max managed to reduce their baggage train to three servants: a nursemaid for Leo, a lady’s maid for Sophie – and Karl. Karl served as Max’s valet, and the family’s
garde-du-corps
, but he also dealt with the luggage, tipped the boatmen and porters, even if they were unhelpful and rude, sought out their carriage on trains and shovelled them all in, one by one, procured fresh horses as necessary, and purchased cigarettes for Max. Karl fixed broken things, from parasols to carriage wheels. His shifty, flickering eyes passed over everything at speed, judging scale, volume, distance. The luggage – two huge trunks, several leather cases, three voluminous hatboxes, and a carpetbag – always fitted perfectly into increasingly smaller spaces. Thus, when their party disembarked at the last station before the railway bridge across the lagoon, accompanied by a vulgar horde of jolly English tourists, all screaming with pleasure at their first sight of the distant city, floating in mist, Karl had already located the tiny port, secured the first two gondolas and stacked their chests and boxes neatly in each prow, while the gondoliers leaned on their oars, smoking.

The city, transformed during the Austrian occupation, now had a brand-new railway station and a new bridge, levelled like an arrow to its heart. But the old Count, whose memories of Venice were at least thirty years out of date, insisted that they must approach the city across the green waters and see it first as the painters did, Serenissima, caught between water and sky, palaces and towers rising from the mud. Be sure you take the gondolas, there’s nothing like it. You’ll be floating into Paradise. So here they were, negotiating a musky little channel between flags and bulrushes; the solid waterlogged stakes, which marked out the deeper waterways, sticking up like cloves. The prows’ silver teeth wheeled towards the rocking open deep of the lagoon. Sophie ripped off her gloves, leaned out of the closed black cabin, and trailed her fingers in the lapping green.

‘Oh Max!’ She gazed at him, her eyes blazing. ‘It’s warm. It’s actually warm.’

All the long northern winter dissolved into this extraordinary wash of opaque green. He gazed at her sensual white fingers stroking the water, the other arm firmly coiled around her son, whose desire to plunge into the deepening lagoon now expressed itself in a series of shouts. Leo could almost speak clearly, albeit with a very limited vocabulary, and was beginning, at fourteen months, to totter at alarming speeds. He now banged his heels against the red-carpeted boards of the gondola.

‘
Schnuh, Schnuh
!’ he clamoured, his version of ‘
Schnell! Schnell!
’ in a demand for more speed. He had inherited Sophie’s decisiveness.

The second gondola, at first close behind, now surged past them. The two maids, neither of whom could swim, clutched one another in distress. The gondoliers, whooping across the heads of their passengers, proposed a race to amuse the gentry, and increased the pace and the strange, sweeping scoop of their oars. Karl lashed the trunks with an extra cord and told the shrieking maids to shut up. The two gondolas, now side by side, bucked and dipped, pummelling the swell. The terrified maids wailed in horror, but their cries, engulfed by the warm wind, faded and died. Max lit a cigar, steadied his hat and grinned at Sophie, who pushed open the slats and the little doors so that the warm air of the green lagoon blew through the cabin. Still clutching Leo with one arm, she waved the other high above her head, her lace sleeve falling back to the elbow, her skin white from winter. Then suddenly, with fabulous ferocity, she screamed, ‘
Vai, Vai, Vai
!’ at the gondolier, as if she had wagered all her fortune on the outcome of the race. A little rush of spray caught the wind; the oarsman leaned into the curve as the gondola skimmed and shuddered over the gentle, rocking tide. Max watched her face, white and flickering beneath her veils, her features awash with joy.

The Hotel Danieli turned its blind, shuttered eyes across the lagoon towards the ivory façade of San Giorgio Maggiore. The gondolas slipped into a tiny channel on the right of the hotel before a damp green jetty where a fleet of uniformed staff fought one another to bear the family and all their luggage into an Oriental interior of arcades, decorated pierced screens, and a lopsided flight of stone stairs. Max checked the guest list to see who was already there. To whom should he send his card? Here were one or two acquaintances, better known to the Countess, and an elderly Professor of Natural History, whose lectures he had attended in Leipzig. The usual medley of rich English aristocrats and a welter of bourgeois names, some of whom they had already encountered at the various resorts, from Interlaken onwards, into the Austrian Alps. He decided on French as the more tactful language in which to address the receptionists, despite the evident invasion of Prussian tourists, and enquired after the sea-bathing facilities on the Lido. Sophie had taken up swimming, equipped with a hat that looked like a fruit basket, and could not be dissuaded from experimenting with bathing machines.

And so began their long warm days of idleness and insouciance. Sophie conducted her usual arguments with the hotel kitchens. What should Leo be allowed to eat, and what, under no circumstances, should he be allowed to touch? She had her fish brought to her at the table, in a raw state, then sniffed and prodded the blank-eyed slab, before giving her gladiator’s thumb that all was well and that the sturgeon, turbot, tunny, mullet or sole, for which the lagoon was famous, could now be safely cooked. She listened carefully to the chef’s suggestions at breakfast every day, then countered him with proposals of her own. The kitchen staff cheekily called her ‘la Contessa’, with a roll of the eyes, and were all delighted when it turned out that Frau Maximilian Reinhardt August Duncker and Sophie, Gräfin von Hahn, were actually one and the same. Were they really married? Dozens of clients in the hotel were not who they claimed to be. Everyone, from the manager downwards, shrugged and carried on. Is their cash real and is their credit good? What else matters?

But some very surprising guests strolled into the main salon to enjoy the small chamber orchestra, which performed on a little dais, surrounded by palms in gigantic Asiatic jars. Max found himself bowing to Hans Meyrick, now a rich and successful society portrait painter, on holiday in Venice with a lavish, if elderly, English widow.

‘Stroke of luck for me, old chap,’ grinned Meyrick, unashamed. ‘She wanted a portrait of her dog, and I’d almost finished it when the dog died. So now we’re in Venice to assuage her grief. I think she’s already mightily consoled.’

‘Who on earth is that?’ Sophie noted the painter’s easy familiarity with all the English, and his expensive, glossy clothes. But she no longer recognised her Homburg dancing partner.

‘I suppose we can’t be too particular about the company we keep when we’re on holiday,’ said Max ruefully. ‘This hotel takes in all sorts.’

‘
Glocken! Glocken
!’ yelled Leo, who possessed his own set of bells, and adored the bells of Venice, which sounded on the hour, all across the city.

John Murray’s
Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy
(1877, fourteenth edition) noted the Danieli’s slippage from the first rank of hotels in Venice and recommended six other establishments, including the Hôtel de l’Europe (good situation, fine view – no pension). Professor Kurt Marek, accompanied by his London entourage, intended timing their arrival to coincide with Max and Sophie’s visit to the Paradise of Cities. But they had decided against the Danieli and were booked into the Hôtel de l’Europe. And so Max set out through the labyrinth of streets and bridges to find out when they were expected. He plunged down a tiny slit between two leaning walls of stone. Within minutes he was lost.

And then another kind of Venice, not the one described in Ruskin, or in Murray’s
Handbook
, began to observe him carefully, from behind the shutters and from the top of damp steps. Mid-morning, and a bright blue day far above, yet even the thunderous church bells seemed to retreat and withdraw. The filth underfoot matched the strange stench from the canals, now narrow as arrow shafts and bloodily discoloured, not the fabulous shimmering green which stretched away into the haze, visible from their balconies on the Riva degli Schiavoni. Max stopped, looked deliberately about him to make sure that he was not being followed, and lit a cigarette. He sensed at once that he was being watched.

But no one else appeared behind him. He was alone in an obscure narrow
calle
in a city he did not understand. He waited for a moment, trying to identify the smells, and shrinking in disgust from the piles of discarded clothing, paper and faeces heaped in damp corners. A rat, unhurried and unafraid, slunk past his boots and sank into the canal.

‘
Scusi, signor
.’ The low voice materialised beside him in the doorway. A thin black hand with painted red nails and many bracelets presented an unlit cigarette. Max smiled. So! He had discovered the Venetian pleasure grounds, quite by accident. No immediate danger threatened, and all he stood to lose was a match. The hand brushed his fingers with practised and suggestive gentleness. The voice tried several languages.

‘
Merci
. Thank you.
Danke schön
.’

I should walk on now. Nod. Bow very slightly. But something about the prostitute’s throat caught his attention; a sequence of smooth dark hollows, visible through the fine white lace across the shoulders. The figure in the doorway, veiled, exotically plumed, overdressed in red satin with white lace trim, that had, in places, seen better days, leaned back, blowing a fine white puff of smoke into his face. The tobacco masked the putrid odour of the canal. He glimpsed two red eyes behind the dim lace, patterned with tiny flowers, summing him up. I am being priced. The rich German visitor is hooked and landed. How much should I ask? Then one hand reached up to lift the veil and he found himself gazing into an extraordinary black face, exquisitely fine, wide, high bones, Oriental rather than European, with a long curved nose, huge eyes, the lids painted red.

‘How much?’ asked Max, mesmerised.

‘The signor will pay.’

Then the black hand shot out like a clamp, catching Max’s grey-gloved fingers and forcing them downwards into the satin folds. Max fumbled for the prostitute’s genitals, alarmed at his own instant arousal, and without thinking, stepped into the shadowed doorway. A shiver of shock and pure, unambiguous desire flooded through his arse and legs as he clasped two swinging testicles and a hardening penis. The creature before him, both woman and man, looked up into his face, offering a challenging flash of gold, the lower lip pierced. Max’s hat slipped back and wedged between his head and the wall as he sucked the dark mouth and smooth cheeks. The prostitute flicked the un-smoked cigarette into the narrow channel of water, unbuttoned the client’s trousers with three swift tugs, then rubbed the engorged pink tip of his sex up to a groaning climax, as rapid as it was intense. Max’s mind clung to the last sane thought he had. I should walk on now. Nod. Bow very slightly. Leave at once. The sharp smell of the prostitute’s body mingled with the rotting stench from the alley’s corners.

He parted with many more Reichsmarks than he would have given in Germany and received in return some sweetly whispered directions to the Hôtel de l’Europe, that fronted the Grand Canal, but whose back door opened on to another little
calle
, less than ten minutes’ walk away. The Venetian pleasure grounds were all around him, nuzzling the theatres, galleries, churches, restaurants, hotels. One step aside from the thronging sights, the miraculous monuments to Art and God, lay the unlit places, where the gas light never came, where no one swept the stone pavements, where the gleaming belly of the city thrived on piled refuse and passing wealth.

Dazed and horrified at himself, Max strolled into the grand foyer of the Hôtel de l’Europe, aware that he had stepped on to a stage lit for the performance, and that he was only playing a part. Professor Marek and his family, five in all, were expected within days. They had reached Innsbruck on 31st May. Max flicked through the list of visitors, looking for German guests. As his eyes skimmed down the residents he passed over a common enough English name; among the seven families who had checked into the hotel the day before, Wednesday 2nd June 1880, was a couple without children: Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Cross.

Apart from brief canters round the paddock on her aunt’s estate and one abortive trip to the opera where her concern for her son forced her to abandon the celebrated soprano in the interval, Sophie never let Leo out of her sight. They employed a nursemaid, who adored him, and accompanied her to church and on walks through the parks and gardens. They both enjoyed pushing the new, London-built perambulator, a Gothic device, with a menacing black hood and giant wheels, suspended like a carriage, to ensure maximum comfort and a rocking sensation for the miraculous infant. The old Countess viewed the contraption with horror and declared that it resembled a sarcophagus on wheels.

‘Nonsense, Mama. It’s the latest thing.’

Sophie was determined to raise a modern baby. She investigated all the most recent methods and gadgets. Her son shared pride of place with the horses as her greatest love, to be fed, groomed, watered and exercised. He accompanied her everywhere. Where he could not be received, she would not go. Max found himself diminished in consequence; she asked for Leo first.