‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s part of the poetry of life. God’s Word created the world. Man’s Word, this effervescing liquid that gushes out of us in our joyful congress, this makes the babies to repopulate God’s world. For this reason, I spill it outside you, because, at this moment, we have no need of more Cecilias. This one in my arms is sufficient joy for me. We have other contrivances at our disposal, too, to keep our love to ourselves.’
Then he showed me a little device which he called ‘my English Overcoat’. He explained that this pale pink transparent pouch fitted over the steed in its rampant state. Fastened with a satin ribbon at the hilt, it would capture the Word as it threw itself inside me.
‘And we have this!’ From a leather pouch he produced a small golden ball, shining like a firelit mirror. He warmed it in his palms for a moment, and then parted my legs and pushed it gently inside me. When he removed his fingers, without the ball, I could not feel it inside me at all.
‘Why … Where’s it gone?’
‘It’s deep inside you. When we use this ball the Word is dazzled by the gold, and forgets about its duties in your womb.’
I think we slept. Yes, we must have done so, for I remember waking and turning to him. It was the golden bells of Venice that tore us from each other in the end. Entwined like a pair of eels, fastened lip to lip and thigh to thigh, we heard the mattutin strike an hour before sunrise. Then, it seemed mere seconds later, marangona of San Marco intoned the dawn, calling people less privileged than ourselves to work. When it was nearly light, Casanova walked me home. We lurched a little. We were drunk with copulation, reeling with it, loose-limbed under its tooth-numbing influence. We passed through the streets where people stood muttering their morning prayers in front of shrines in tattered walls, pushing shabby flowers through the grilles, which framed paintings and small sculptures of the Virgin. Automatically, I curtsied as we passed. Each time, Casanova kissed the top of my head. ‘My little saint!’
We arrived at the Campiello Santa Maria Nova at Miracoli, the street entrance to my home, and I wondered what would happen next. But Casanova had planned, in what I was to learn was his meticulous way, every moment of our encounter, including the final one, in which I, wrapped in his cloak, was to creep into the house behind the sleepy servants arriving to make the fires. He delighted in every detail of our night, including this final triumph of discretion. He, of course, already knew which was my room in our palazzo, and the chamber of every other creature who dwelled in it too.
‘Will we be together again?’ I whispered at the last moment. I had no conception of modesty or coquetry. My new-found needs were simple, and simple to express.
Casanova understood. He took responsibility for the desires he had aroused; he knew their implacable nature. ‘Do not worry. My flesh will suffer too, Saint Cecilia, without yours. I have only the beauty of Venice to comfort me until I can see you again.’
That, I was to find, was a lie, but like all Casanova’s lies, it was a beautiful and practical and necessary one.
Casanova was a true son of Venice in this. La Serenissima, as we Venetians call our city, is as beautiful and practical as a peacock’s tail: her beauty is serviceable. It’s a beauty that seduces people to admire, respect – and to pay. Our beautiful Venetian palazzi are pragmatic. My family’s little palazzo, which now stood in front of us, was a microcosm of those vast airy dwellings wading on the edges of the Grand Canal. Like them, beneath the decadent, useless loveliness of its facade was a kind of private manufactory, a living creature, efficient as a battleship, economical as a convent.
So our palazzo consisted of four floors, starting with a magazzino, or warehouse, at water level where my father’s goods came in and out at the landing stage on the canal. Above this was a low-ceilinged mezzanino floor where his clerks slaved over the ledgers and the precious articles were stored away from the damp depredations of acqua alta. Above this was the piano nobile, which housed the frescoed reception rooms and large, light bedrooms of my family. Finally, beneath the roof, the servants had their hot, high domain. The palazzi on the Grand Canal often had two piani nobili, one for public and one for private use. My family could afford such a palazzo, but our position, on a distant and relatively lowly limb of the noble Cornaro family tree, would have rendered that extra piano nobile ostentatious, something my father would never countenance.
Even before I met Casanova, I had claimed an eccentricity in my family’s home. I had moved from my grand bedroom on the piano nobile to a large room on the lower mezzanino floor, just a few feet above the garden. There had been no little difficulty about it, but in the end my family consented. Perhaps it would be more truthful to say that I coerced them. After my first request was rejected, I spent hours of the night pacing the creaking floorboards of the piano nobile. I could not sleep, I told my parents, when they came with candles to take me back to bed. I told them that I dreamt monstrosities, and sometimes I hallucinated. I told them that I saw pantegane, huge water rats, swarming in front of me. Some nights I ran, as if flying over their soft pointy heads, into my parents’ bedroom, where I would bite my mother’s toes through the coverlet to wake her up. Still, they would not let me live downstairs.
I escalated my campaign. I told them that the piano nobile was most certainly haunted – that palpable evil spirits glided through its corridors at night. I even drew a few such horrors to show them. My sketches, which I still have, showed a precocious talent for obscenity. Many and bulbous were the extremities of my monsters, and I borrowed the palette of Tintoretto’s apocalypses to colour their bruised and scaly flesh.
‘She might show them at the convent,’ my mother said to my father, in terrified whispers. ‘Don’t let Sofia see them.’
I told my parents that I was uniquely sensitive to these manifestations for they sought me out. After this, I was forced to submit to the ministrations of an exorcising priest. I endured his mumbling rites and prodding fingers with all the appearance of touching and hopeful acquiescence but the next night I was screaming in the corridors again. In the end, I told my parents that it had come to me in a dream that I would be safe from the floating spirits on the mezzanino, closer to the ground. I saw my mother clutch my father’s arm; I concealed a smile as I watched their tired eyes meet over my head. A servant was sent for. The best room on the mezzanino, looking over the courtyard garden on one side and over the church of Miracoli on the other, was lime-washed and cleaned for me and my small chest of possessions carried down there. My victory was worth all the sleepless nights. Finally, I had my own little kingdom where I might draw and read all night if I wished. I knew that no one would hear me.
This was how Casanova had managed to find me and to catch me in his arms. I had just a few feet to drop into the garden, and no one to watch me. When he brought me back, I was able to return to my room without passing the chambers of my parents or my sister.
I was thirteen years old, and I had already claimed my privacy and my liberty. Now, in one night with Casanova, I had glimpsed the kind of happiness Venice offered her true children. I had taken my place in the happy city. I had no regrets for the innocence I left behind. My self-confidence and happiness were insuperable. It would be a long time before anyone made me realise that this feeling could be taken away from me.
In my room, that important morning, I stood in front of my mirror and saw that my body was entirely unmarked by its great and new experiences. Casanova had been so gentle. I wondered if the golden ball was still inside me. I investigated and decided that it probably was not. I smelt the Word on my fingers, smiled to myself, and rubbed it behind my ears. There was no time to go to bed. I dressed. I went to the convent, I studied the lives of two minor saints and three irregular French verbs, I came home, I ate, or at least the girl whose body I inhabited did so. My prim little classmates, with their sensitive pubescent noses, must have scented something corrupted in me, for that day they avoided me more than usual. I had never been pop
ular: my tongue was too mordant and my behaviour too erratic. But today they shunned me as if I were a Turk.
I took no notice. I myself was somewhere else, a good place. I passed the day in the company of my re-lived pleasures, each recollection a wave of sensation crashing against my skin. I was over-sensitive to light, and to noise. I shrank back from the world and retreated inside my memories. There was almost too much to remember, of feeling, of taste, of words. So much of it had happened in the dark that I had only to shut my eyes to re-enter the world of Casanova’s gondola.
By the afternoon, when I returned home and to my mirror, my naked body had started to change again. Some slight bruising was marking my thighs. And my chin flaked, revealing tender shiny skin underneath; Casanova’s kisses, his saliva, the rasp of his cheeks, the buffeting of his hips, had marked me after all.
By that night I was anxious. I had been awake for too many hours. My eyes felt peppery. Was I to know just once what it was to be the morosa of Casanova? Would I see him again? He had made many declarations, but no promises and no appointment. I remembered the doll-girl in the doorway. I wondered if she had seen him again. Perhaps she was with him that minute! I sniffed my bottle of fragolino and was swept with lust, and a sudden pain of a colour and quality I had never known before: erotic jealousy. I took my bath again, hoping childishly for the same results. The maid would not meet my eye as she left the room. When she had gone, I waited naked by the window. The water droplets cooled and dried on my skin, which became prickly with anticipation. Still, he did not come. Finally I went to bed, exhausted by disappointment.
But at midnight, cradling the fragolino bottle between my thighs, I heard the violin again. It was not easy for him, but for the entire duration of our time together Casanova would never again let me be lonely or insecure for him. When he saw how I hungered for them he would never willingly deprive me of a compliment, a caress or an endearment. He would never leave me wondering where I stood in his heart.
It was the same that second night, but more so. Because I had lost him, albeit for a day, I treasured him more.
Every morning, we were exhausted but not satisfied. Each night just taught us better how to love each other. Any night I did not spend with him was a mortification of my flesh.
And every evening, before I fell into his arms, I took my bath.
In it, like Saint Cecilia, I sang.
The Story of Saint Cecilia
FROM AN AGIOGRAFIA (LIVES OF THE SAINTS), DATED 1780,
FOUND IN THE MARCIANA LIBRARY, VENICE.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This edition is annotated with a variety of obscene sketches in colour. It has been put forward that the faces, remarkable for the sensuous pallor of the complexions and the unmistakably concupiscent lustre of the eyes, hear a marked similarity to the work of the famous Venetian portrait painter, Cecilia Cornaro, but this theory remains unsubstantiated.
Saint Cecilia was a Roman noblewoman who lived in the third century of our millennium, under the reign of the Emperor Alexander Severus. Her parents, secret Christians, brought her up in their faith, and from childhood she was exceptionally devout. She was never without a copy of the Gospel concealed in the folds of her robe, no matter how uncomfortable it made her.
After a certain conversation with her mother, Cecilia made a secret vow of chastity. From that moment, she also shunned all the pleasures and vanities of the world. Instead, she devoted her considerable musical skills to the glory of God. She sang hymns of her own composition with such ravishing melodies that the angels descended from Paradise to hear her, and joined their voices with hers. She made herself mistress of every musical instrument they gave her. But she could find none noble enough to express the heavenly harmonies which flooded her soul. To relieve that frustration, Cecilia invented the organ.
When she was sixteen, Cecilia’s parents married her to Valerian. He was young, virtuous, rich and aristocratic. His only defect – but it was a large one – was that he still practised the old heathen faith.
Cecilia accepted the choice of her parents. But inside her wedding robes, as she walked to the temple, her breasts chafed against a coarse hair-chemise of penance, smarting like the bites of a thousand caterpillars. Cecilia renewed her vow of chastity, imploring God to help her keep it.
At a certain moment on their wedding night, Cecilia told Valerian that her guardian angel, who fluttered constantly above her, required her to reserve her body for God. Valerian was instantly converted by her piety, empowered to see the angel, and to respect her vow of chastity.
Valerian soon introduced his brother Tiburtius to the true faith. Then all three went about together doing good deeds, including the honorable burials of Christian martyrs.
At this time, the Emperor was absent from Rome. A wicked prefect, Almachius, had taken charge of the State. He summoned the three young people to him, and forbade them to continue their public practices of Christian charity. They could not accede. The two brothers were thrown into prison, where they converted their guard. When the brothers refused to take part in the sacrifice to Jupiter, they were executed.
Poor Cecilia washed their bodies with her tears. Then she wrapped them in her own robes and buried them together in the cemetery of Calixtus.
Prefect Almachius now called for Cecilia, and commanded her to make sacrifice to the old gods, threatening appalling tortures if she failed to comply. She stood before him, pale, silent, doomed. The court wept to see such youth and beauty so stubborn and in such danger. She converted forty souls on the spot.
Almachius was enraged to see his court turning Christian under Cecilia’s charms. He commanded that she should be carried back to her own house and plunged in a bath of boiling water. But for Cecilia the scalding liquid was as spring water.
So Almachius sent an executioner to decapitate her with a sword. But at the sight of her, the executioner’s hand trembled. He struck her three times, clumsily, in the neck and breast. It was enough to mutilate but not to kill her. Cecilia took three days in dying, during which time she prayed and distributed her possessions to the poor. She sang sweet hymns until the moment she expired.
Chapter 2
Bela coa, trista cavala.
Women with long hair can go either way.
VENETIAN PROVERB
‘Paint me,’ he had said. Well, I did. Many times, at first, with chocolate and fragolino. With peach juice, with crushed rose petals, with conserved plums from France, with dream-dusted jellies from Turkey, with white truffles from Piedmont, with Lucca oil, with Four Thieves vinegar, with honeyed almond orgeat, with plump opalescent oysters from the lagoon. These last we exchanged from one mouth to another. The saliva of a lover was the best sauce for an oyster, Casanova always said, and the act of exchange was rendered yet more delicious by its comedy.
I asked, as he fed me, ‘But isn’t it cruel to eat them? Aren’t they alive?’
He licked a droplet of the salty nectar from my lip. ‘Oh my darling, do not worry. They do not feel anything. They are sleeping.’
Once, I baptised him with water from my sister’s bath.
‘Where are you going with that?’ screamed Sofia, attempting to cover herself when I burst in upon her and dipped my phial into the water.
‘To Santa Maria Formosa, to the gargoyle, so his ghost can know your smell when he comes hunting through the city for virgin blood,’ I told her, grinning implacably, holding the dripping bottle aloft. ‘The expiring remnants of your virtue will stain his bloody teeth.’ I left the palazzo with her cries echoing in the shuttered corridors. Above me, I heard the footsteps of my mother, hastening to discover what had befallen her pet, doubting not that it was at my hands, whatever it was.
Casanova enjoyed the story along with the bath water. ‘Conversazione,’ he murmured, nuzzling my shoulder. ‘But Cecilia, don’t mistake a lingua biforcuta for wit. A barbed tongue is a sorry substitute.’
We lay naked within the close-lipped curtains of the gondola for hours, in between what he l
iked to call ‘our delicious combats’. What sweet war we waged every night! We threw our bodies against each other, with all our strength. Once, when I reached for my chemise afterwards, he stayed my hand.
‘There’s no need to be ashamed of your body, Cecilia. Look at the cat – how he stretches and rolls, and enjoys his every muscle. Look at the dogs in the street: have you never envied the way they can lay their private organs upon the cool stones of the pavement when the sun roasts their fur? Don’t you think they enjoy it? Why should we deny ourselves the pleasures of the beasts? Simply because we think we are better than they are?’
Casanova insisted we should accept our bodies the way the animals do, not judge them harshly or harass ourselves for the things they want and the imagined embarrassments they cause. He was not surprised to find indigenous erotic sapience in a thirteen-year-old girl. He found it natural.
He kept, in the gondola, a certain little book by Pietro Aretino, which demonstrated, in verse and illustration, the thirty-four ways in which we humans are more fortunate than animals. ‘In the thirty-fifth, as you see, we are like the beasts,’ said Casanova, pointing to a picture.
I lay on my stomach, gazing at each picture, aroused but also intrigued by the way the bodies were depicted upon the page. Aretino’s protagonists were fine, vigorous beasts. I traced the fleshly curvatures and protuberances with my finger, pausing here and there.
While I did so, Casanova, smoothing my hair, told me about the supple young Jewess, Leah, daughter of his landlord in Ancona. He had tempted her with goose-liver and old Muscat from Cyprus, but what finally drew her to his bed was this very volume of Aretino. On the pretext of bringing him his hot chocolate each morning, she spent hours in his room. She induced him to discuss every picture in detail until he was palpitating with scarcely manageable lusts. Later, he had spied upon her trying out the positions with her would-be lover, without actually coming to the natural conclusion. Still a technical virgin, she had memorised every page.