It was as though we had picked up the threads of some earlier conversation, the way his voice just kept sailing smoothly along through the peaks and troughs of his words. It was mesmerising, lulling me into some sense of, I don’t what, but I was pretty happy just standing there listening. Plus, my tongue was still stuck to the roof of my mouth, which kind of stymied my chances of joining in anyway.
‘So there are only three of us left who know how to make boats the old way now — and two of them are nearly past it — and not among us can we find a single apprentice who is interested in learning what we have to teach about the craft. So, the tradition is already lost. It’s a tragedy. Simple as that. It’s a goddamn tragedy. Don’t you think?’
He stopped what he was doing, and turned around to look at me. I nodded as vigorously as I could without falling over. My bones felt like dead weights. I blinked to make sure I still had some sort of control.
‘I mean, they’re not just any boats, they’re gondolas!’ He had gone back to work. ‘They’re the symbol of Venice, for crissakes, our emblem, our logo. You see them in pictures painted a thousand years ago and they are still the same today as they were then. They’re what stop us from being a big wet amusement park for fat tourists who for the most part don’t spend more than one precious day of their whole miserable lives here. But the gondola’s era is over. It’s finished. Finito. And every now and then someone stands up and asks, ‘Why is this tradition dying out?’ but nobody does a goddamned thing about it. Our sons are still more interested in making 100 euro an hour paddling around that swimming pool of a canal than they are protecting a tradition that’s survived 10 centuries but won’t last another two decades. And when it has gone, when it has died out, there will be such a hue and cry, let me tell you, it’ll be all “Oh, how could they?” and “If only somebody had done something.” And you know what else, once these beautiful boats have gone you may as well sink the whole damn city or drain it dry and stick taxi cabs on every corner because once the gondola has disappeared we’re just the same as every other tourist town on the planet.’
He put his tools down again and stood up, stretching his back and lifting his arm to wipe the sweat off his brow, catching sight of me as he did. He wore faded blue jeans and had narrow hips and broad shoulders that were tight with muscle. He wasn’t bitter. I could tell that. But there was a sorrow in him, a disenchantment that resonated in me in ways I could not understand.
I thought about Marco and his cheap gondolas from Switzerland. It made sense to me now why talk of them had irked me so much. I believed in tradition too. I just hadn’t known it.
‘I’m sorry,’ Luca said. ‘Didn’t mean to get on my soap box.’
I swayed slightly on my feet.
‘Hey,’ he cried, alarmed, leaping forward and grabbing my elbow. ‘Are you all right? Connie? Is there anything I can get you?’
‘A glass of water,’ I croaked. ‘Could I have a glass of water?’ Not so much as a please or thank you.
‘I’m sorry, I should have asked if you wanted anything,’ he said. ‘You looked kind of parched when you arrived. Here, come outside, get some fresh air. I was just about to take a break anyway.’
He led me back out to the opening of the workshop and pulled two rickety chairs into the shade then disappeared inside again, returning with a bottle of water and two glasses.
I gulped down the first glass of water he poured me like I’d been in the desert for 40 days, then drained a second, a third and a fourth, yet still felt as dry as a chip, that odd taste penetrating my cheeks with an acridness I couldn’t place.
‘That’s quite some thirst you have there,’ Luca said, leaning back in his chair. ‘So, want to tell me what’s happening?’
‘I’m on the world’s worst second honeymoon,’ I found myself saying. My tongue was obviously no longer stuck to the roof of my mouth. The water had loosened it. ‘My husband Tom and I have been going through a bit of a down time and so he didn’t come with me. He’s at home in New York. So, it’s just been me here on my own in your big wet amusement park, which believe me is not ideal when you’re having a second honeymoon on your own, even with gondolas.’
Luca laughed and my chill started to evaporate.
‘He wants to have children, I mean that’s basically the problem, I guess, when I think about it, but I’m just not sure.’ So, my tongue had not only come unstuck, it was now flapping about in the breeze, blowing any which way it wanted.
‘The thing is, I know it’s a cliché and I know plenty women like me are probably all lamenting the same stupid thing but I don’t know what I want these days. I know what everyone else wants. I know what everyone else wants me to want. Just not me. I have a great job and I love where I live, I really do “heart” New York, but everything else in the equation doesn’t seem to add up.’
‘What’s the job?’ Luca asked.
‘I write restaurant reviews for the Village Voice,’ I said, my aching chest swelling with pride the way it always did when I heard myself saying those words. ‘I’m a critic.’
Luca raised his eyebrows. ‘So you know about food.’
‘Uh-huh,’ I answered. ‘I’m an eating machine.’
He laughed again and I smiled along with him. ‘Sounds like you should be the happiest woman on the planet.’
‘Well, work’s not everything,’ I surprised myself by saying, because my job meant the world to me. ‘I should be thinking about having a family but I have a lousy mother so I guess I’m scared I’ll end up being one myself.’
‘Just about every woman I’ve ever met has survived a lousy mother,’ Luca said matter-of-factly, staring out across the lagoon, ‘and gone on to be a good one herself. Makes you think maybe all those mothers weren’t so lousy in the first place.’
‘Puh-leease,’ I felt forced to point out. ‘My mother told me she was changing the name of her dog to Connie because she wanted to try calling out that name and for once have someone pay her some attention.’
Luca laughed again and filled my glass with water. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Marco.’
‘You know him?’ I asked. In truth, the fire in my loins for Marco had been doused somewhat by the man sitting next to me and I could not for the life of me tell you why. I mean all I knew about him was that he had a heart full of passion for something that he didn’t believe anyone else cared about, which struck a chord with me. But he certainly didn’t radiate hot sex like my gondolier.
‘Oh, I know Marco all right,’ said Luca. ‘Where did he take you?’
‘Do’ Mori,’ I said, ‘for cichetti.’
‘You have the polpette?’ he wanted to know.
‘Did I heck,’ I told him, ‘and the tuna and the sardines and Signora Marinello’s fresh bread with fried shrimp and zucchini.’
‘Ah,’ Luca sighed appreciatively. ‘Signora Marinello. And then where?’
‘We went to Bentigodi in the Cannaregio and I had more sardines with pine nuts and breadcrumbs and fondi, my God, the most exquisite artichoke hearts. Have you been there?’
‘Of course. And then?’
Well, I did not want to answer that question. I blushed thinking of what Marco and I had done in that plump cloud of a bed at the Hotel Gritti and skipped straight to the next meal.
‘And then we went to Alla Madonna and had hard-shelled clams and sausages with bean stew and green beans cooked with peas and —’
‘Chocolate torte,’ Luca finished for me. ‘The Madonna’s chocolate torte. So good just one mouthful is enough, huh?’
I nodded.
‘You are a woman who loves to eat,’ Luca said softly. Marco had said the same thing but without such tenderness. Tenderness. The word bounced around in my head like a dry bean in an empty can bringing a lump to my throat. Why would the simple words of a kindly stranger make me feel like a dried-up little flower getting its first drop of rain after a long hard drought?
I nodded again and Luca moved his chair over to me, put one taut arm
around my shoulders, pulling me closer to him. ‘You love to eat but nothing tastes right,’ he whispered, leaning into me, his lips so close to my ear I could feel his words as well as hear them. I kept nodding, tears splashing down my face onto hands that lay uselessly in my lap. What was happening to me? How did he know that?
‘You love to eat but nothing tastes the way it should. Nothing explodes on your tongue. Nothing dances in your mouth.’
I was sobbing now, big-time, that great big ball of grief I didn’t know I had trying to dynamite its way out of me.
‘Oh, Connie,’ sighed Luca and my name had never sounded so soft, so much like me. ‘I know what you need,’ I heard him say. ‘And you’re not going to find it in any trattoria or four-star restaurant or on a fancy white plate with a dozen different flavours. I’ve got what you want. Trust me. I’ve got it right here and it is so simple, Connie. So perfect. And when you taste it, everything will be all right again. Trust me. Everything will be all right.’
I turned my body toward him, lifted my face and looked straight into those green eyes, which were so clear and so true I felt I could dive into them. I believed that he knew what I wanted. That he could be trusted. That he could make everything all right. It was truly the weirdest thing. My thirst was gone, the throbbing in my temples had subsided to a distant roll of thunder instead of a deafening roar, I felt a calm the likes of which was totally unfamiliar to me descend around me, wrap me in its arms. Then Luca lifted his hand to my face and stroked my cheek so gently it was like a butterfly kiss, tracing the line of my jaw, running his fingers softly up the other side of my face, then tucking my hair behind my ear. His fingers stopped on my neck, his thumb on my cheek, his eyes on mine. It was a moment of such intimacy words are barely adequate to describe it. In that split second I felt that I knew Luca like I knew no one else in the world and that he knew me, that we were somehow entwined at some deep unconscious level that until then I hadn’t known anything about. Yes, I know it sounds all crystal-gazing and kooky and he was old and I didn’t feel well but I’m just trying to explain what that moment was like, trying to give you an idea of the wonder of it, the magic, the way I just sank into it, closing my eyes and letting my mind explode with possibilities. None of which included opening them again to find Marco standing there staring at us with a look as sour as vinegar — for which, let’s face it, he could really not be blamed.
‘Eerggh,’ I said, pulling myself away from Luca’s touch, nearly falling off my chair in the process. Its legs scraped cruelly along the concrete and my butt caught the edge of the seat, sending a shooting pain up my spine.
‘I see you’ve met someone else, Constanzia,’ Marco said. ‘Although perhaps “met” isn’t quite the right word.’
‘Plagh, plagh.’ My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth again. My head was spinning. I felt so hot I thought I would explode. The magic was gone. My back was killing me.
‘So has he been giving you the old sob story about no one wanting to build gondolas any more? About the end of the era?’ His voice was snide and cold. He meant to be cruel but I looked at Luca and could see that he was not hurt, not defiant, not embarrassed, just full of that same disenchantment I had seen in him earlier.
‘I think I —’ I didn’t know what I thought. I was dizzy and hot and my back hurt, my chest hurt.
‘Marco,’ Luca said softly. ‘What do you want with her? Leave her alone.’
There was a loud buzzing in my ears. I wasn’t hearing properly.
‘What do you know?’ Marco asked, his voice so full of rage that even in my feverish state it was easy to recognise. ‘You don’t know anything.’
‘I don’t need to know anything, Marco. That’s the difference between you and me.’ Luca’s voice was calm and smooth. He shared none of Marco’s ire.
‘Oh, here we go,’ my gondolier spat. ‘Let me guess — the love-or-money speech? Well you can fuck off because I have heard it all before and it still sounds like bullshit to me.’
I felt so weak I could barely keep my eyes open, yet my heart was hammering in my chest. What the hell were they talking about?
‘Do the right thing, Marco,’ Luca said softly. ‘Please. Do the right thing.’
‘I can’t,’ I interrupted them, even though the words didn’t sound quite right. ‘It doesn’t.’
‘Just look at her,’ Luca said with that extraordinary tenderness. ‘Have you ever stopped to think about her? Who she is? If she’s ever been truly loved? Who out there she might mean the world to?’
His words broke my heart. Just broke it. They really did. Because I didn’t know the answers to his questions myself. I didn’t know if I had ever been truly loved, if there was anyone out there to whom I meant the world. And it was too tragic to contemplate.
‘You don’t know shit, Dad,’ Marco said.
‘I know you like playing God, son,’ Luca replied levelly. ‘But you’re not.’
The realisation descended on me like a Roadrunner one-ton brick. Dad? Son? What the heck was going on? I had slept with Marco, was obsessed with Marco, but had just shared something unbelievably intimate with his father? I wasn’t sure how bad a sin that added up to but I was certain I would rot in hell for it, my mother would make sure of it. I would burn in the flames of eternity. I would roast, I would cook, I would char. I was already so hot I thought I knew what it felt like.
‘You’re a stupid old man, stuck in the past, refusing to move forward with the times,’ Marco spat.
‘I’m 51, you little shit,’ Luca replied calmly. ‘And I choose to stick with what I believe in, which is what your grandfather and your great-grandfather before you believed in. It took a while for me to work it out, so you should learn from my mistakes. There are two types of people in this town, Marco, in this world. There are the ones who do it for love and the ones who do it for money.’
‘Oh,’ Marco snarled, ‘here we go. And I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re doing her for love?’
Luca jumped to his feet. I could tell that he was not a violent man but that he wanted to give Marco — his son! — a decent pop. I knew I should stand up and get between them, that it was somehow my fault and I should stop whatever was happening. But my bones were so heavy, my body would not obey instruction. Luca stood, the veins bulging in his arms, his fists clenched at his sides, energy radiating from him. He was not as tall as Marco but there were similarities, I should have seen them earlier.
‘I say,’ I heard a familiar voice. ‘What on earth is going on here?’ It was Ty Wheatley again. He’d appeared out of nowhere and stood, hands on hips, surveying the scene. The pain in my chest was getting worse, I thought perhaps I was starting to choke, my breath was getting swallowed short of my lungs. It was terrifying.
‘You know,’ I started to say again, but I felt icy fingers around my throat, that splitting pain in my sternum, pressure from my blood to get more oxygen.
‘What’s she saying?’ I heard a voice that made my starved blood run cold. ‘Can’t you tell me what she’s saying? Did she call for her father? I think she called for her father.’
Darkness was clawing at the edge of my eyes again but I turned out to the lagoon, that big bobbly blue blanket of sea, the brilliant sunshine all but blinding me. There was no mistaking that voice. ‘What’s she saying?’ I heard it again. And unlike the discombobulated voice I had heard earlier, this one had an image to go with it.
‘I’m warning you, Mary-Constance,’ my mother was looming over me, her eyes dark and unreadable. ‘Don’t do this to me, Mary-Constance. Oh, what am I saying? Of course she’s going to do it. She always does it.’
I looked around for Luca, I wanted to find his hand, I needed his calm and his strength, but he had disappeared into a vast whiteness that roared around me in a deafening growl.
I turned my head the other way and Signora Marinello appeared behind my mother.
‘Give her time,’ Signora Marinello said. ‘She need time.’
My mind raced, flicking back to that airplane, to Ashlee, the water-taxi driver, the mushroom-seller in the Pucci shirt, cool sexy Marco, the waitress at Bentigodi, Fleur in a gondola, Luca — the man who looked at me the first time and saw all there was to see — and Ty.
Oh my God, I thought, as I tried to breathe but no air could get in. I gasped in terror, thinking this must be what it’s like to drown, to suffocate, to die, to leave everyone behind forever.
‘Breathe,’ I heard Signora Marinello urge. ‘For goodness’ sake! Breathe, Connie, breathe.’
And with a shudder that jerked every bone in my body, I breathed.
Sound exploded in my ears, my eyes flew open. A vast bright whiteness still surrounded me, a twisted collection of shiny metal reflected painfully in my face, the hisses and whirrs of unfamiliar machines echoed around my head like white noise.
It did not seem possible. Truly. Not possible. But a terrifying comprehension ran through my blood like hot chocolate in the snow.
I was not in Venice on a failed second honeymoon.
I was not sitting in the shadows on the Giudecca being fought over by the handsome Italian I had slept with and his disenchanted father whose fingers I could still feel on my face.
I was nowhere near any of that.
I was in a hospital room. And I was not a visitor.
Six
Well, don’t look at me — I was as surprised as you are. I mean, one minute I am having the time of my life in the most romantic city in the world and the next I am lying in a strange single bed — attached to machines, for crying out loud — my mother’s angry voice buzzing in my ears and my mind unable to capture anything more than a fragment of a thought.