The Honeymoon (21 page)

“Afraid to? What do you mean?”

“I was afraid to try to go to sleep because … what if I couldn’t?”

“ ’What if you couldn’t?’ ”

“Then I’d know for sure.”

“You’d know — what?”

“I’d know that I couldn’t.”

She couldn’t think what to say to this.

“Why don’t you sit down and have some breakfast?”

“I don’t need breakfast.”

“To give you a good start to the day.”

“I’m fine,” he said, perambulating the room.

“I see,” she said, sitting down at the table and trying to pretend that he wasn’t walking restlessly about. Gerita poured her tea. “A roll, Madame?”

“Yes, thank you. Are they warm?”

“Yes, Signora. I make sure of it.”

“And a little jam, please. You’re exhausted,” she said to Johnnie.

“I need exercise. I’m not getting enough exercise. That’s the problem.” She felt guilty now because she’d deprived him of his exercise. She was old and holding him back.

“Let’s go to the Lido!” he said, smiling for the first time, as if to get her to agree with him.

“But it’s already hot out, I think, and it’s only nine-thirty. Won’t it be much hotter on the beach?”

“It’ll be cooler there. I’ve just got to get some exercise,” he said. “That’s the answer.” His brow furrowed.

“Let’s take the steamer,” she said. “I don’t much like that gondolier, do you? Perhaps we should try to get another one?”

“We could try,” he said. “But I think they’re all the same. They work for the hotel. I don’t know if we can change.”

“I think there’s a boat every twenty minutes from the quay,” she said. “We could go to the Hebrew cemetery,” she said. “I’ve never been.”

“Good,” he said. “Then we’ll have lunch. There’s to be a big new hotel there, the Angleterre.”

He made for the door.

“Just let me finish,” she said. “Aren’t you going to change?”

“I don’t need to change,” he said.

“But should you go like that?”

He looked down at himself, at his evening clothes from the night before, his formal shirt unbuttoned, his striped trousers creased. “This is all right.”

He stood impatiently, waiting for her. She hurriedly sipped her tea and ate her roll. He watched her, his jaw tight, his fists clenched. “Coming, coming,” she said. “Almost finished!” She was in a panic, pushed by his urgency.

In her own room, she completed her toilette and dressed. She put on the mantilla and off they walked to the Riva degli Schiavoni, where the ferry was docked and a long line of tourists and excited children with buckets and spades was waiting to board.

The boatman unhooked the rope, the crowd surged forward, and people jostled one another to get up the gangplank.

On board, she took a seat in the stern, on the bench under the canopy, but he stood apart from her at the railing, an odd figure in his formal trousers, disheveled, without a jacket, his shirt unbuttoned and half out, unkempt, his red curls uncombed.

The sun was already high. As the boat gained speed and vibrated beneath her, she felt the soft, briny mist of the water on her skin, and it cooled her. The engine was too loud to talk over it.

Nearby was a family of Germans, the father, sitting on the bench, legs crossed, absorbed in his newspaper, the mother with her white dress and bonnet, and two boys in identical blue sailor suits with white collars. The boys kept running up to the railings and looking down into the water, bouncing up and down and trying to climb up on them. The mother dragged them over to the bench and forced them to sit.

The boat crossed the Bacino. To their right was San Giorgio, to the left, the public gardens. Out on the water were boats with sails of different colors. On the misty horizon, the Euganean hills were visible. The silvery city, Venice, with its spires and campaniles, receded.

It was a twenty-minute journey. In front of them, the Lido drew closer, and they could begin to make out low buildings and hillocks.

The boat was approaching the landing at Santa Maria Elisabetta, where conveyances drawn by frayed-looking donkeys waited for the tourists.

They disembarked and Johnnie hailed a driver and instructed him in his crude Italian to take them to the cemetery on the north end of the island. The wagon ambled along a tree-lined dirt road past little houses and gardens, the lagoon on their left and the Adriatic over the rise on their right.

They came to an overgrown meadow, scattered with trees and bushes, filled with gravestones, crumbled and fallen. Just beyond was the church of San Nicolò and the fort, its cannons trained toward the sea, protecting Venice from its enemies.

The cemetery was neglected, but it was cool and shadowy here, the light filtering through the trees. They strolled
along the overgrown paths among the faded monuments, the Hebrew lettering washed away by wind and water, the toppled gravestones lying half buried in the sand. On the far side of the cemetery, two young men were lounging on upended gravestones, having a picnic, a loaf of bread on a newspaper and a bottle of wine resting on one of the tablets.

“How could they eat here?” she asked. “It’s desecrating it.”

She stopped to decipher the melancholy letters on the graves. “ ‘Rabbi Leone da Modena,’ from 1648,” she said, translating for him the Hebrew inscription. “ ‘Words of the dead,’ it says. ‘Four arm’s length of land in this enclosure, possessed for eternity, were acquired from above for Giuda Leone da Modena. Be gentle with him and give him peace.’ ”

As they strolled along the broken stones and thick-grown weeds, she thought how the history of the Jews is written in a minor key, in the key of loss and disappearance. She’d written
Daniel Deronda
in that key, Mirah searching for her lost brother.

He interrupted her, impatient. “We should get on to the beach.”

They made their way back in the conveyance. It turned toward the Adriatic, jostling along the road, and the sea came into view, sluggish and gray and somnolent in the heat.

There was a big white stucco building on a rise overlooking the sea, with a columned portico and
HOTEL D’ANGLETERRE
engraved in gold letters on the pediment. It was one of the new, grand palaces being built along the Lido.

They made their way to the terrace above the sea and sat down at one of the tables under an umbrella. Johnnie ordered lunch from the waiter, who was in formal dress
with white gloves. Below them a tunnel led to the beach, and beyond that were rows of cabanas and men in their striped bathing costumes and women in bathing dresses and bloomers.

“I’d like to swim,” he said.

“But you don’t have a bathing costume,” she said.

“I’m boiling hot. Would you deny me that?” he asked.

“I’m not denying it to you. But you’re still in your evening clothes from last night, Johnnie.”

The sun had moved high in the sky, it was hot, and he squinted angrily out at the beach.

Suddenly, he sprang from his seat and strode down the steps into a tunnel. Before she could stop him, he’d disappeared.

She went to the balustrade. Below her, she could just make out amid the crowd of bathers Johnnie marching toward the shoreline.

She rushed down after him into the dark tunnel and then out into the blinding light of the beach, struggling through the crowds in her long dress, her feet sinking into the sand, to where he was standing with his back to her, looking out at the water.

When she was a few feet from him, she saw him begin to tear off his shirt. He pulled off his boots, then he unbuttoned his trousers. He was down to his combinations. It seemed at first in the heat and glare that nobody was noticing him.

Then he began wading into the waves.

“Johnnie,” she shouted, “what on earth are you doing?” Her voice was muffled by the sea sounds, the wind, and the
din of bathers shrieking and splashing. She ran after him into the water, soaking her boots and the hem of her dress.

He stepped away from her, farther into the water. “Leave me alone!” he cried.

“You can’t undress here, Johnnie!”

“Why not! Everyone else is undressed. Look around you. Do you see anyone who’s dressed? Why must you order me about all the time? Why can’t I do as I wish?”

He pushed her shoulder and she almost fell backward into the water. She just managed to catch herself.

“Johnnie!” she cried. “You pushed me!” The realization of what he’d done seemed to penetrate his anger and he hesitated.

She stepped back, afraid to go nearer to him. Her boots were waterlogged, the hem of her dress hung limply. “What’s happened to you, Johnnie?”

Looking bewildered, he moved toward the water’s edge, where she stood.

She bent down and picked up his shirt and trousers lying sodden and pulsing in the waves, everything covered in wet sand. She tried to beat it off.

“Put these on,” she commanded, holding them out. He stepped into his trousers, as if dazed.

“They’re unbuttoned,” she said. He made no move to button them himself, so she did it for him, conscious of the intimacy of it, of her hands on his middle there, only wanting to get him off the beach and away from the crowd.

Carrying his boots and shirt, she led him by the arm back through the tunnel. His jaws were clenched, his eyes afire. While she paid the bill for lunch, he stood there, a tall, wet, red-haired man in soaking clothes, barefoot.

She dragged him to a carriage parked in front and made him get in.

On the way back to the boat, he sat there unspeaking, an immovable object. At the dock while they waited for the steamer, he slouched sullenly. When the boat arrived, he followed her, obediently now.

As they crossed the lagoon, she persuaded him to put on his boots. When he made no move to tie the laces she knelt before him and tied them.

The steamer pulled up at the Riva degli Schiavoni and bumped to a stop. He followed her down the gangplank, furious and silent. She took his hand and led him, like a big, glowering child, back to the hotel. She prayed that they could just make it without his lashing out at her again in public.

Inside the
appartement
, he began to pace again.

She rang for the maid and asked her to prepare a bath.

“You must take a bath, Johnnie, the sea water’s filthy and salty. You’ll feel better.” Mutely, he went into the bathroom.

While Gerita stood by, she pulled a chair up to the bathroom door and sat listening for him. She could hear the splash of water. He seemed to be bathing himself. “Have you finished?” she called.

“Yes,” he answered curtly, through the door. She opened it a few inches and handed him his dressing gown. He emerged, clean and dry, his mouth still tight with resentment.

The thought flashed through her mind of sending a telegram to his brother, Willie, in England, telling him what was happening. But, no — that was impossible, she couldn’t bear to let anyone know that something was wrong.

Instead, she took a piece of hotel stationery from the sleeve in the desk, wrote
“Laudano per dormire,”
and handed it to the maid. “Please go to the
farmacia
and show them this.”

When Gerita had left, she said to him, “Johnnie, you pushed me.”

“Oh, God.” He squeezed his eyes shut, clutched his brow, and shook his head. “I am so sorry.”

“I’ve never seen that in you. I was frightened, Johnnie. What is the matter with you?”

“I was so hot. I longed for the water.” He looked up at her, his eyes red from the salt. He seemed as if he was going to cry. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” he said. “I just can’t help it. It comes over me …”

“The girl will be back in a minute. And then you’ll sleep and you’ll be all better. It’s because you’re exhausted; you must rest.”

Gerita arrived with the medicine. Marian poured some of his whiskey into a glass and carefully put the drops of laudanum into it while he silently watched her.

She handed him the glass and he drank. Hopefully, sleep would come, and it would bring with it a miraculous cure — for whatever it was that had besieged him.

As he drank down the whiskey, she went up to him and stroked his hair, trying to soothe him. His stillness and regret had given her permission to touch him. She could feel his oily curls beneath her fingertips. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back.

Then, suddenly, he opened his eyes again and sat up. Deliberately, he took her hand in his, drew it away from his head, and placed it gently but firmly down at her side.

T
hat night she slept restlessly. At four in the morning, she sat up in bed. It was still dark out. There was someone in the room with her. What was it? Had she heard something? She listened. There was only the soft sound outside the windows of water lapping on stone.

But she wasn’t alone.

There was a full moon in the window. In a few seconds her eyes adjusted to the gloom and she could make out the blue-gray forms of the furniture. The windows were open to let in the cool air. Venice was full of beggars and Gypsies. Had someone climbed up onto the balcony, and into the room?

Opposite the bed, the double doors leading into the
sala
were closed tight. To her left were two other doors, one to the water closet, which she could see was closed. Next to that, the door to the bathroom was open a crack.