The Girl Behind the Mask (4 page)

Luciana had tried to explain her mother’s point of view to her father only once. It earned her the threat of a year in a convent. Being shut up at home was bad enough, but at least she had the view of the canal from her window. The convent her father spoke of was on a desolate scrap of an island way out near Torcello. There were thick bars on the windows there and no one passed by but the seabirds.

So, Luciana became a creature of the night. By day, she was the perfect daughter. She read her Bible and sewed dresses for the poor. But she lived for the moment when the house grew quiet and she would creep from her bed to sit on her windowsill and watch and learn about the big bad world outside.

She soon came to know the routines of the people in her immediate vicinity. For example, every evening at nine, the gentleman of the house directly across the canal would kiss his wife on the forehead and send her off to bed. Half an hour later, he would leave the house for what could only be an illicit rendezvous. He certainly had a shifty look about him as he pulled his hat down over his face and set out in a rowing boat. Half an hour later still, the wife would appear on her bedroom balcony and watch for the arrival of her lover, who stayed until one o’clock in the morning, leaving moments before the husband returned. Their shenanigans filled Luciana with delight as they timed their comings and goings like characters in a play.

Luciana also timed her night by a boatful of revellers who could be heard long before they were seen. The boat carried three musicians who played the same tunes every evening, while the passengers sang along in voices that got louder the more they drank. They were always much noisier when they made their return journey. Luciana came to know the songs by heart and once earned herself a switch across the hand by humming the tune to a particularly lewd one as she went about the house.

‘Where did you learn such filth?’ Maria asked her.

‘I must have heard it in my sleep. I didn’t even know what the words meant,’ Luciana lied.

The people across the canal and the singing boat were some of Luciana’s favourites. She also loved to watch the gondolas carrying grand ladies and their menfolk to the opera. Though Luciana herself was always dressed plainly, modest as any novitiate, she soon had a very broad knowledge of the fashions of the day and longed to swathe herself in an extravagant red domino cloak.

But the boat Luciana most looked forward to seeing was a stealthy affair. A simple black gondola propelled by a single, black-clad gondolier, it moved through the water with nary a sound. The gondolier was so skilled he made not the slightest splash as he rowed. Luciana was fascinated by the simple craft, which was such a contrast to the flagged and flounced pleasure boats that thronged the canals every night. Whom did it belong to? Where was it going? Who hid beneath the plain black canopy of the gondola’s
felce
?

Luciana imagined a widower, like her father, who in the grip of his grief had turned his back on frivolity and lightness. But then her imagination roamed further from what she knew. Was the occupant of the gondola a wealthy courtesan, keen to deflect attention on her way to visit a notable lover? Was it a straying husband on his way to see a courtesan? Was it a nobleman? Perhaps even the Doge? Luciana leaned as far out of her window as she could to watch the gondola pass by.

She was so absorbed in the tableaux that unfolded beyond her window each night, she gave no thought to the notion that she too might be observed. From beneath the canopy of the simple black gondola, Luciana’s admirer looked forward to seeing her just as much as she longed to see him.

Chapter 5

January, last year

The next morning – my first full day in Venice – I headed in to the university to meet the people who would be my colleagues for the next few months. I followed the directions Nick had scribbled down after half a bottle of prosecco and got lost three times. I had to make a pit stop at a coffee shop.

Fortified by the coffee – and boy, it was strong – I continued on my way. It was another bright and beautiful day, despite being so early in the year. The sunshine soon bleached out the slight sense of dread with which I had woken. Venice was doing its utmost to make me welcome. A stallholder, setting up for the day, proffered a freshly caught mackerel in my direction, as though the shining fish were an ornament cast in silver just for me. Using my best Italian, I promised I would be back later and the fishmonger gave me such a wicked grin, I started to worry I had inadvertently promised I would drop by for more than the ingredients for that night’s supper.

The university was situated on the Fondamenta Soccorso, in a beautiful building that made even the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge seem ugly. The students were beautiful too. Even the security guards, like almost everyone I had seen in Venice so far, looked as though they were actors, cast in the part, rather than ordinary men doing an ordinary job. No wonder Nick Marsden felt the need to up his game when he came to do his sabbatical in the city.

Nick was already in the office. Unlike me, he didn’t seem in the least worse for wear for the previous day’s bottle of prosecco. As enthusiastically as he’d shown me the flat, he showed me the tiny cubbyhole that had been allocated to me and explained everything I might need to know, from the procedure for taking books out of the university library to how to persuade the temperamental coffee machine to serve up something faintly drinkable.

‘Actually,’ he said, having gone through the complicated sequence of punches and kicks the machine required before it would spit out an approximation of an espresso, ‘don’t bother. Far easier to go to the café on the corner.’

I was happy with that.

Later, he introduced me to other new colleagues, including Beatrice from Rome. I was especially keen to meet her as our areas of interest overlapped. Beatrice, known to her friends (which definition now seemed to include me) as Bea, was writing a thesis on the legendary Giacomo Casanova, concentrating on his intellectual achievements rather than his romantic conquests. We’d already corresponded by email about the possibility of my getting access to the Donato library. Bea was sure that some of Casanova’s letters must be languishing there too.

‘I’m going to the library tomorrow morning,’ I told her.

‘You’re kidding,’ said Bea. ‘How on earth did you swing it? Did you find the magic word? I’ve been trying to get into that library for years. Never heard a thing.’

‘I just wrote a letter.’

‘A letter? Not an email?’

‘Not an email. Not in the first instance, anyway. I thought perhaps I might be writing to someone who appreciates tradition.’

‘But what did you say?’

‘Nothing unusual. I just went on and on about how Luciana’s correspondence might hold the clue to one of the biggest literary mysteries of all time.’

‘
The Lover’s Lessons
,’ said Bea, referring to the novel that had obsessed me since I’d first heard about it five years earlier. ‘Well, I suppose if you decide Luciana isn’t the author, it will at least lend some more weight to my theory that Casanova is.’

‘I will report back on everything,’ I assured her. ‘And I’ll do my best to make sure you get access to the library too.’

‘Well, I don’t know how you did it, but I am very envious indeed.’

‘It’s like you’ve scored an invitation to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory,’ Nick added.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘I mean,’ said Nick, ‘that nobody ever goes in and nobody ever comes out. The Donato library is as much a mystery as your anonymous novel.’

‘As is the owner,’ Bea told me. ‘No one has seen him in nearly fifteen years.’

‘They say he only comes out at night to drink the blood of young virgins,’ Nick continued, really warming to his theme.

‘Oh well,’ I said. ‘In that case, I’ll be
perfectly
safe.’

Nick’s blush was a delight to behold.

Despite his curious reputation, now that we had made contact Marco Donato could not have seemed, to me anyway, more helpful. That afternoon, I received further instructions regarding my first visit to his library. The building in which it was housed was on the Grand Canal, in one of the few significant houses that remained under private ownership and had not been turned into apartments, a gallery or a luxury hotel. I was instructed to arrive at ten o’clock precisely. The letters and some pages from Luciana’s only surviving diary would be ready for me. I would be allowed to remain in the library for exactly two hours.

I understand that very few people would think a morning spent looking at old letters could possibly be exciting, but I anticipated the following day as eagerly as a child looking forward to Christmas. I felt certain that Luciana’s correspondence would provide the missing piece of the jigsaw I had been putting together for years.

The Lover’s Lessons
, an anonymous erotic novel about a young girl’s sexual awakening, caused an absolute scandal when it was first published in 1755. It claimed to be written by the young woman herself, a virgin at the time she began the life journey that led to the creation of the extraordinary work. The good people of Venice, licentious though the rest of the world believed them to be, were still shocked to read such a candid account of female sexuality. Members of the church called for the work to be burned, which naturally ensured its notoriety, popularity and numerous reprints.

It wasn’t long, however, before people began to wonder if the book was in fact a hoax. Intellectuals of the time debated whether it was really possible for a young woman to have such a hearty sexual appetite; the narrator claimed she was befriended by a courtesan and indulged in a lesbian affair just a few weeks after losing her virginity. They concluded that it would have been highly unusual. Far more likely was that a man had written the book in the guise of a woman to extract maximum outrage from his musings. For months on end, the gossip in the coffee shops and gambling houses concentrated on the true identity of the author. Venice already had a long history of erotic writing, beginning with fifteenth-century writer Pietro Aretino. Giorgio Baffo, a well-known erotic poet of the time, was flattered by the gossip but denied any involvement. Eventually, Casanova himself emerged as the most likely candidate. When asked if he was the person behind the novel, he neither confirmed nor denied it.

As the centuries passed, Casanova’s name was so often associated with
The Lover’s Lessons
that the theory of his authorship of the work passed into fact. However, I was not convinced. For my master’s degree, I had made long study of Casanova’s work and I felt instinctively that
The Lover’s Lessons
came from a different pen. The phraseology and the vocabulary were subtly different. Though he had risen to dizzy heights in Venetian society, even partying with the Doge before he wound up in prison, Casanova’s beginnings were quite humble. I felt there were qualities in
The Lover’s Lessons
that betokened a more refined upbringing and a genuine feminine sensibility.

Luciana Giordano came to my attention shortly after I first suggested that Casanova was not the author of
Lessons
. I had been trawling through Casanova’s diaries again, matching the acronyms he used to describe certain of his lovers with women known to have lived in Venice at the time. At first Luciana seemed an unlikely associate of the well-known bad boy, but further investigation into her life suggested that the highly born girl had gone right off the rails. She was admitted to a convent in 1754. Back then, a girl of her class didn’t end up in a convent unless she was orphaned, or she was in
serious
trouble. Since records suggested that Luciana’s own father had sent her to the island convent near Torcello, disgrace was the only possible motive. But how had she disgraced herself? I felt there had to be a man involved. With my very own history of falling for bad boys, I was determined to find out.

At the end of my first day in my new office, Nick wandered over to my desk and suggested I join him for dinner. I happily accepted his invitation. Despite my enthusiastic promise to the fishmonger, I really didn’t feel like cooking for myself. To be honest, I also wouldn’t have known where to start with a fish that didn’t come in fingers. Neither did I feel like being alone. No matter how many times I checked my email, I had to accept that Steven was in no hurry to make contact. Left to my own devices, I knew, I would dwell on his continued silence. Dwelling is never a good idea when you’re on your own in a strange city.

So I went with Nick to a bar on the Campo Santa Margherita, where we drank cold white wine, despite the chilly weather, and ate yet more prosciutto. Fearing I might well start oinking if I had to eat any more ham, I tried to slip a piece to the bar’s resident dog. The dog turned its nose up at my offering.

‘Ah,’ Nick observed. ‘He only eats beef. Unlike me. Prosciutto, chicken, fish; I can’t resist any of it. Italy has made me into a dustbin.’

‘You look very well on it,’ I said, as Nick patted his stomach. It was true. He did. And the enthusiasm with which he tucked into whatever was put before him was actually rather attractive. A healthy appetite in one area usually translates into others, after all. While Nick tried to catch the eye of the waitress, I remembered a conversation I’d once overheard on the Tube. Two girls were discussing one’s latest boyfriend.