What Casanova Told Me (8 page)
Read What Casanova Told Me Online
Authors: Susan Swan
Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction, #General, #Historical, #Psychological
Luce had just opened the journal when she noticed Lee coming towards her across the square. How frustrating to have company at breakfast when she wanted to read. She was still tired from their flight and she felt slightly achy, as if she was
coming down with the flu. At least the regatta would relieve her of the burden of making conversation. Hundreds of boats were already jockeying for a starting place in the Basin of San Marco. The hotel clerk had told her the regatta was late this year, postponed because of high winds and unexpected cold weather.
“Ah, you’re looking at the family documents. Is this one of Casanova’s letters?” Lee pointed at the journal as she sat down.
“No. It’s my ancestor’s travel journal. I have to deliver it to the Sansovinian at noon, along with the other documents.”
“May I see it?” Lee picked it up in her plump fingers and peered inside. “The writing’s so quaint.”
“You shouldn’t touch it without gloves,” Luce said.
“What’s that?”
“I shouldn’t even be looking at it in the open air,” Luce said. She took the journal back and put it in her archival box, resting her hand possessively on its lid.
“I wouldn’t worry about the journal—it’s Casanova’s letters everyone will be interested in. Too bad. He was a reflection of a patriarchal age.”
“Casanova’s reputation is unfair. He wrote novels and operas and saw women as his equals.”
“It sounds like you’ve been taken in by Flem and her defence of Casanova.”
“You’ve read Lydia Flem?”
“Only a review of her book in
The Times,”
Lee said, reaching for the menu. “Interesting idea, that Casanova saw desire as an expression of a mother’s omnipotence. But the man was a predator, who, even from his own account, deliberately misled women. I can tell by your frown that you don’t agree. Here—let me order for you. The menu is in Italian.”
Ignoring Luce’s frown, Lee placed the order for their costly breakfast: eggs Benedict with Bellinis, the Venetian concoction
of champagne and peach juice served in a flute. When the food arrived, they ate in an uncomfortable silence. The only sound was the flapping of their tablecloth in the damp spring wind and the noise of the crowd, some in gaudy medieval costumes, gathering in the bleachers to watch the start of the thirty-kilometre Vogalonga. Out on the Basin of San Marco, thousands of boats with rowers the size of stick figures now swarmed across the milky green waters of the lagoon. Beyond the Basin glistened the domes and church spires of San Giorgio Maggiore and Il Redentore.
“Luce, are you feeling all right? You’ve hardly touched your breakfast,” Lee asked.
Luce nodded vaguely. A tourist at a nearby table was photographing a birchbark canoe gliding past a cluster of rowing skiffs. “I was just thinking about—about Casanova. His birthplace is somewhere near here, isn’t it?”
“Maybe so,” Lee replied. “We could try to find it. After that we can drop off your family papers at the library and visit a museum.”
“I guess.” Luce rose and followed Lee out of the café. It was warm now and she felt slightly light-headed in the heat. She thought of Dino Fabbiani and wondered if he would be waiting for her in the Piazza San Marco at one o’clock. She wanted to tell him he was mistaken about Casanova faking his escape from the Ducal Palace. If he would listen. There was a good-natured confidence about Dino that suggested he wasn’t used to women disagreeing with his views.
Ten minutes later, the two women were walking up the narrow lane by the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. Their waiter had said Casanova’s house was near the Salute Cathedral on the Giudecca, but he had been vague about the street address. Following his instructions, they veered first left, then right,
and ended up in a jewellery store. A salesgirl said the waiter was wrong—Casanova had been born near the San Samuele Cathedral. Starting over, Lee paid for tickets on the
vaporetto
to San Samuele and the two women found themselves in a lane where glassblowers sat working at the open windows of their studios. Each glassblower pointed them further down the lane past the stores whose windows were jammed with glass polychrome flowers and carnival masks.
At the end of the lane, Lee and Luce found a house with a plaque declaring it to be the birthplace of the artist Giorgio Vasari, who had lived two centuries before Casanova.
“I feel dizzy,” Luce murmured.
“What did you say?” Turning towards Luce, Lee dropped the guidebook, and without thinking, Luce bent quickly to pick it up—too quickly. She saw the curious little square with its empty water fountain and then, of all things, stars. Such a cliché, she thought afterwards. Moments later, she heard a woman’s voice calling her, and she saw a little oval window in the shape of an eye. Lee’s face appeared in this aperture of light, tiny and frightened and Luce heard Lee’s voice ask if she was all right.
Luce struggled to her feet as her vision cleared.
“Sometimes an overnight flight does this,” Lee said.
She grasped Luce’s arm and guided her through the crowd who turned to stare at the sight they made: the short, fierce middle-aged tourist in a dove-coloured fedora and the tall, bewildered young woman in a pretty chiffon blouse and bright turquoise jeans.
At a water taxi stand, Lee found a young gondolier who said he was glad to help and called them an ambulance boat.
“Better now?” As the launch sped along the Grand Canal, Lee rested her hand lightly on the girl’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry to be a burden,” Luce whispered.
“Oh, balls!” Lee said, and removed her hand from Luce’s shoulder. They sat in silence while the ambulance boat roared down a canal whose edges were lined with peculiar blue-tipped barge poles; in the distance lay the ghostly island of San Michele, with the famous cemetery created by Napoleon. Their launch swerved under a small bridge and came to a stop inside the hospital buildings, next to a door marked with a red cross. They disembarked and found themselves in the emergency room where a doctor in baby blue clogs confirmed that the disorientation caused by jet lag sometimes led to dizziness and fainting.
“The rule of thumb for jet lag is one day for every time zone you cross.”
He gave Luce a Valium and told Lee to go off and watch the regatta.
“Thanks, but I’m staying with her,” Lee said.
“No, please! I’m fine.” Luce stared imploringly at the doctor.
“She needs rest,” the doctor said.
“All right, Luce. I’ll come back for you later—we’ll make plans for dinner then.”
Closing her eyes, Luce waited for Lee’s footsteps to die away in the hall. When she was sure Lee and the doctor were gone, she brought out the old journal and settled down to read on the hospital cot.
May 4, 1797
I look for evidence of Jacob Casanova.
I took Finette with me when I accompanied Father to the Ducal Palace today. Father met with General Junot,
Napoleons aide-de-camp last night, and the General asked him to make a report on the prisoners in Venetian gaols to assure our government of the good intentions of the French. It was a lucky coincidence because I was eager to see the gaol where the man Jacob Casanova was imprisoned. My parent knows nothing of my tête-à-tête in the Campanile with the old Venetian. Nor had I ever told him who had given me the dog. I had said I found Finette in the street, and Father was too preoccupied to bother with a stray.
The old justice building hides beneath its frilly Gothic façade three prisons: the Wells, a horrible sewer beneath the edifice of Istrian marble, where prisoners float in sea water; the Fours, which Father refused to describe to me; and the Leads, built directly under the lead roof of the Ducal Palace. Because the lead heats up in the summer sun, the cells are deadly during the warmer months.
We entered the Palace of the Doge by an old door called the Porta della Carta, ornamented with slender pillars, statues and the inevitable winged lion of San Marco. Father puffed and sighed as we made our way through a series of rooms—too beautiful to be properly described—rooms such as the Sala dell’Anticollegio, the waiting room of the ambassadors, and the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, the banquet hall where the Doge gives state dinners. The walls of the banquet hall were hung with portraits by Tintoretto and Bassano. Father noticed only the rills of stinking water on the stairs. He looks poorly. There are dark rings under his eyes and from time to time I glimpse an empty look in his eyes.
The news of war has upset my parent who hoped the sea air in Venice would do him good. Instead, he claims
his constitution is bothered by the filth of its stopped-up gutters and the slops the Venetians empty onto the roofs of their neighbours’ houses. And he misses the Boston newsrooms where men gather to talk politics.
“Venice is the Grave of Virtue,” Father said as we made our way into the Great Council Hall, his eyes alert for human offal.
“Oh, Father!” I cried, hoping to distract him. “Look at Tintoretto’s portrait of Heaven! Is it not beautiful?”
As we stopped by the painting, the Doge’s minion, Marino Faliero, introduced himself. He told us he was a descendant of the first Doge who had built the Ducal Palace.
Monsieur Faliero led us first to the cells in the east overlooking the canal, the Rio di Palazzo, and the famous Bridge of Sighs where for centuries prisoners have taken their last look at Venice before descending into the watery quarters of the Wells. The little arched bridge was picturesque but I was interested in the Leads, where Finette’s owner had been kept prisoner, and was relieved when Monsieur Faliero took us there directly afterwards, Father wheezing beside me. As we peered into these empty rooms, I tried to caution myself about accepting the old Venetian’s tale. You see, I possess a gullible nature and am only too eager to believe whatever marvellous things I am told—simply because they are marvellous.
I told Father I did not see how any prisoner could escape from the Ducal Palace. He laughed and asked why any prisoner would wish to escape. With their easy chairs and pillow beds, and despite the low ceilings—both Father and I had to stoop as we entered the rooms—the gaol is more comfortable than the parlours of many farms in Quincy.
I asked Monsieur Faliero if he knew Jacob Casanova and he said that many years ago he’d seen the Chevalier de Seingalt taking a hot chocolate drink at the Florian.
“What did Monsieur Casanova look like?” I asked.
“A dandy of the first order! Very tall, with a strange, sunburnt complexion.”
“Why are you interested in this man?” Father asked me.
“It is part of the lore of the Palace,” I said, pleased Monsieur Faliero had described someone resembling Monsieur Casanova. I spoke not a word more in case Father noticed my excitable state. I wanted to see the inscription under the plank in the seventh cell that Monsieur Casanova described. But the little dog trotting ahead of me began to pull and strain at her leash, sniffing the floor. She led me past the small airless passage where former prisoners like my new friend had taken their exercise, and into a large room heaped with dusty furniture. Finette began to whine and pull me towards some household goods piled in the corner. Among the pieces of furniture, I saw a warming pan, a kettle, brass tongs, old candlesticks, a chest and a pile of papers sewn into a large manuscript. I picked up the old papers that looked to be records of legal trials dating back several centuries. Finette would not let me read, sniffing and bumping the trunk with her nose, and when I opened it, she leapt inside. A moment later, she leapt back out, and I was obliged to retrieve an old bone from her mouth. In the corridor outside, Father was calling my name.
“Our inspection is over!” He poked his head under the door frame. “There is only one prisoner left up here.”
A Greek, very old and stooped, was locked up in the seventh cell—the one Casanova claimed had been his.
Moaning in fear, the poor creature withdrew into a corner and put his head on his knees. Father said the bewildered fellow must think we had come to lead him to his execution so we made our excuses to Monsieur Faliero and departed. My spirits fell when I realized I would not be able to search for the inscription under the plank.
“General Junot will not be pleased,” Father said. “There are few prisoners here for him to liberate.”
“Perhaps there are more down in the Fours.”
“There are only two. I heard that from the Doge himself.” Outside the Palace we met Francis, who had spent the morning in Torcello talking with lobster fishermen. My betrothed took my arm, and we strolled together as if we were the loving couple my parent wishes us to be. Meanwhile, Father lectured us on the advantages of married life—the delightful business of acting as gardeners to small children, the wifely safety for a plain female like myself, and a husband’s need for a female companion who will nurse him in his old age—an earthly blessing denied Father. Francis nodded while I said not a word, staring past the Doge’s Palace to the sea, thinking of the wonders of the Levant awaiting the traveller who dares to go.
A Fruitful Question to Be Considered: Is Jacob Casanova who he says he is? And why does this matter to me?
Undertaking Left Undone: I am chagrined that I could not peer under the plank to see if Jacob Casanova told the truth about his inscription:
I love, Jacob Casanova, 1756.
And yet I feel relief. Why? Is it because I do not care to find out if my new friend is a liar? On our way out of the Leads, Father and I passed a tavern in the
Ducal Palace. It was a tavern for the prisoners, and a much pleasanter one, Father said, stopping to inspect it, than the taverns he used to frequent in Quincy before the death of my mother when he became an abstainer. If Mother no longer experienced the joys of existence, he had reasoned, then neither should he indulge in habits that gave him pleasure.
From her hospital cot, Luce saw nurses in light blue clogs hurrying up and down the corridor. They glanced at Luce and she stared back at them over the top of the journal. It was so cool and peaceful in the hospital, and she still had a few minutes to spare. Her appointment at the Sansovinian was more than an hour away. Why not read on for a few more pages?
