Carnevale

  And how is he going to respond to that, then?

  It was badly done, the whole thing. It was not a good letter. Cecilia is unskilled in the ways of grovelling. That is one of the reasons that I like her.

  Anyway, soon she will forget about that letter because I shall be bringing her a more important one.

  I hear the acqua alta rising in the bowels of the lagoon. The humans have no idea yet, but the cats always know. When did you ever see an accidentally drowned cat?

  It is an exceptional acqua alta, this time. There will be death and damage and the smell of damp carpets and the crying of women for a long time after this one.

  I go every day to the grille where Casanova’s letter to Cecilia fell all those years ago. The water comes closer and closer.

  Chapter 16

  Chi tropo se inchina, mostra ’l culo.

  He who bows too low shows his arsehole.

  VENETIAN PROVERB

  After ten days in Venice, Teresa’s husband Count Guiccioli announced that business called him back to Ravenna. They would leave immediately. Teresa, as all Venice knew in an hour, had rushed to the theatre, and, flouting every graceful law of cicisbeo etiquette, burst into Byron’s box to tell him the lamentable news. The Guicciolis were gone within twenty-four hours.

  Teresa left, unpainted, but Byron did not come back to me. He had thrown in his lot with Teresa. The formalities had commenced.

  A Greek chorus of gossip, with its strident authority, informed me that Teresa was demanding of Byron that he become her cavalier servente, a lover who would attend her according to the very definite etiquette of Italian married life, from which Byron had already profited with Marianna and Margarita, amongst dozens of others. But Teresa was a high-born girl, with greater expectations. Byron, with Teresa’s grip on his loins, contemplated a relationship that could bind him in decorous chivalry to a society that took its hypocrisy very seriously.

  Under the laws of aristocratic serventismo, he would be expected to pretend a platonic and moral relationship with his morosa, and a civilised friendship with her husband. He would be expected to treat Teresa with extreme gallantry at all times. The trouble with this system, he had said many times, was that it seemed like polygamy, but on the woman’s side. Listening to the gossip, I found myself doubting if Byron was ready to be a mere amatory appendage, a real cicisbeo. Could he descend to being a high-class fan-and-shawl-carrying gigolo? He would not want to be tamed to house-stallion. The little Scottish boy who had unexpectedly become a lord was ever nervous of undignifying himself. He was afraid of bowing too low, of exposing himself.

  At the beginning of June Byron set off for Ravenna to find his lover. By all accounts he found her in bed, seriously ill. She had suffered a miscarriage. Now the rumours in Venice were that Byron himself had been the involuntary cause, by the violence of his copulations with her. Everyone knew that he was not the father of the foetus, for Teresa was three months’ pregnant at the time of their first encounter. It was reported to the breathless conversazione in Venice that Byron and the count feared for Teresa’s life. They waited in corridors while nuns and doctors rushed past with fearful basins and crucifixes.

  Byron need not have worried. Soon we heard that Teresa had recovered enough to resume her sexual duties. A maid, a Negro boy and a female friend conspired to create opportunities for them. Count G was perfectly aware of what was going on but continued to extend the utmost courtesy to Byron.

  Byron and Teresa had their portrait painted together. Perhaps my curses swam into the brain of the artist. For the painting of Teresa pleased her so ill that she scratched out her own face. We heard in Venice that Byron, though disliking the expense of her caprice, laughed at her vanity. It resembled his own, so he would indulge it.

  *

  I had written the wrong letter to him. I heard nothing from Byron.

  The waters were rising. There was a surge in the belly of the lagoon, a force I had not felt previously. I stood by the Canal, watching the rain pierce its thick transparent skin. At night I dreamt of sand dunes and camels, as all Venetians do when the water threatens us in our sleep.

  I waited for Byron. I tried to forget. I forgot him every hour. Wherever I was, whatever I did, I only killed the remembering time. I wished for darkness to come so that I might sleep in the hope that the next day would bring me word from Byron. But I had written the wrong letter.

  When he came into my thoughts I tried to refuse him admission. I tried to purge him. I tried to think of him in the ugly moments, which were suitable to contain and define him; I thought of him when I passed water or when I threw the sludge of my gallipot into the Grand Canal. I tried to evacuate Byron in the same way.

  I had a dream that he was dead, and for a while it really felt as if he were dead, and that felt better than before. In my dream Byron’s death was something ignominious in a cold English town, not a dramatic death with glory, but something slight and regrettable, involving drink, a scuffle, a shabby carriage. He was lying there in the gutter, like a dog tossed off the road by a horse, with empty eyes and legs inelegantly splayed. It seemed appropriate that he had left life the way he left me.

  Of course, he never quite left me. He did something worse. He returned to Venice with Teresa. They lived at La Mira. The word on the streets was that La Guiccioli did not like the Palazzo Mocenigo. Byron had filled it with too many feminine ghosts. The next thing we heard was that while Teresa waited for him at La Mira, Byron had resumed his visits to San Lazzaro.

  He never came to me now, but I still inhabited a part of Byron’s soul, and I very often knew where he was. I knew, always, the moment he woke, with Teresa’s curls in his mouth, and the moment he thought, I must go to Venice today. Then I would be waiting, under my own black felze, and would follow him as he performed his careless errands. I watched him fondling the other neglected animals at the Mocenigo. I watched him limping into La Benzona’s, and later, entering the casino of the nine enthusiastic and forgiving muses.

  I did not follow him to San Lazzaro. My work there was finished. The frescoes could not be more immaculate. I had no excuse to revisit them, not for many years. You can overplay a fresco, and I had already worked the walls to the extent that they had lost the careless grace I intended for them. The Fathers knew, but they were kind to me, as they had been kind to Byron, when he least deserved it. They still let me visit Girolamo on the pretext of giving lessons in art and calligraphy to all the novices. I hoped every day that I might meet Byron’s eyes over Girolamo’s head. But it would not happen. I had written the wrong letter. The Fathers, as if complicit in my punishment, seemed to have arranged it so that Byron and I never arrived at San Lazzaro at the same time.

  The Gondolier Speaks

  You should have seen him after La Guiccioli left that first time. Moping and dragging himself around town like a sick dog. Eyes like dead beetles you find in drawers. A great stupid expression on his face like a sheep looking over a fence. I am sure he thought he was some kind of tragic hero, but to us he looked like something stuffed and put on a post to scare the seagulls.

  I heard that her husband hired someone to beat him up. Should have finished the job, but I think they were ashamed to murder a little cripple like him.

  Then off he went to Ravenna, like a dog on the trail. He soon came back, with La Guiccioli in tow. He put her at La Mira, so he could carry on as he liked in Venice, pulling the pieces at the Zobenigo casino, and lording it over the ladies at the Benzona conversazione.

  For all he took from our women, if you ask me – and even if you don’t – the milord was a finocchio. In fact I think he really hated women and just found a cunning way to hide it. He hid his hatred inside them, if you know what I mean. (Though the word from the faxoléti was that he didn’t exactly have the equipment to go deep. Those girls have filthy mouths. But sweet, too, sometimes!)

  I saw him soon after at San Lazzaro, walking by the shore with a couple of young boys. The kids couldn’t have been m
ore than nine. He was bending over the boys, as if trying to choose the most delicious one from a tray of little cakes, and even from a hundred yards away I could smell the musk. I never saw him looking at a woman like that, though I saw his bitches trying to eat him with their eyes. They always looked hungry. Probably there’s some truth in that rumour that he wouldn’t let his women eat in front of him. I ask you – what kind of man is that who won’t share his dinner with his woman? No kind of man, I say.

  Now, look, he gets away with anything, because he’s a lord, because he’s a poet.

  So he was still hanging around San Lazzaro even after he’d brought Teresa Guiccioli back to Venice with him. Looked more like his sister than his morosa, that one. D’you think she was pleased to see him go back to the Armenian island? Don’t you think she begged him, in that porridgy Ravenna accent, ‘Oh, why do you leave me, my Biron?’ D’you think he told her why? Che sboro!

  And what were they about, those so-called Sacred Fathers? Were they stupid? Couldn’t they see what he was like? I’m a father myself; it teaches you to look out for these things. Venice has always been full of recioni, shirt-lifters, looking for a tasty young morsel to impale on their nasty sticks. I remember when they had to hire whores to stand on bridges showing their tits to keep the men off each other and doing the decent business of getting the women with child. We had a better idea about his type in the old days. We’d burn them alive between the columns in the Piazzetta and all Venice would turn out to spit and cheer.

  We gondoliers knew the names of all the novices at San Lazzaro, because they would come to the water’s edge to collect the parcels and provisions we brought to the island. That Girolamo was the sweetest child. It shone out of him. There are a few kids in the world like that, and he was one of them. He is special, that child. He really could be Our Redeemer in certain lights.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that the Armenian Fathers let pretty little Girolamo walk around the island with the English milord. Mi morti! Che sulsi! What idiots! They were dangling that kid like fish bait in front of the English milord. Didn’t they know it?

  Maybe, damn them, they did. Maybe they were sending that poor little kid to his fate, like Jesus before him. Ruin a kid and save a lord, I can see them thinking that. They act all holy, those Armenians, but I tell you that in my book they are not above human sacrifice like those heathens in the East.

  You see, I saw it all. It was hot, and water was what we call limpida that day. It was the day before the big acqua alta put Venice on her knees. I was just leaving the island. I had made my delivery and I was poling back towards San Marco. I was about two hundred yards away when I saw the two of them taking their passeggiata on the foreshore. I saw the way the English milord gripped the little boy’s shoulder. It must have hurt a lot. The kid looked up in surprise. I saw the milord taking off all his clothes, and gesturing at Girolamo to do the same.

  It was not a pretty sight, the fat English milord, white as lard, one leg shrivelled like a length of dried cod, and the little boy, wading into the water together. I saw those puffy arms closing around the boy in the water and a strange set to the milord’s body. If you had blinked you would have missed it. It’s not that he did anything; it’s just that he was in the state to do it. Anyway, before anything could happen, I saw Girolamo start out of Byron’s arms like a rabbit.

  Girolamo turned around to face Byron. The kid stayed there, without moving, just looking into the milord’s eyes. He did not seem frightened. He seemed, well, intent. I don’t know what they were saying to each other. All I could hear was the waves in my ears. The milord straightaway dropped his empty arms and staggered backwards into the deeper water.

  By this time I was poling towards them as fast as I could. The tide was against me. From a hundred yards away I made violent gestures and yelled obscenities at the milord. The wind carried my voice away. They couldn’t hear me over the water.

  Do you know the most astonishing thing? The next thing that happened was that instead of running away, the little boy held out his hand to the milord.

  After a moment, they walked together to the shore. Girolamo never let go of his hand. Byron came ploughing out of the water, shaking like an old wet dog. Then Girolamo – I can scarcely ask you to believe this – reached up to Byron’s shoulders and gently pushed him to kneel down on the sand. Then the kid kneeled down beside him. He took the milord’s two hands – it was as if he were the one in charge – and he placed them together.

  Then I got closer. I heard the kid praying, and I heard the milord repeating his words. By now they had their backs to me, two naked backs, one grey, the other rosy and perfect as a cherub on a church ceiling. They did not see me, but I heard them pray.

  I should have grabbed that bastard and killed him on the spot. But there was something going on there that I did not understand. I was way out of my depth. Nothing had really happened, and yet …

  So I left them. I poled away. I did not tell anyone. Maybe the Fathers were right. Maybe the little boy is some kind of Jesus-child. I have to say that it seemed to me as if I had witnessed a miracle.

  But why, for fuck’s sake, did the little boy have to face that, for a worthless piece of mud like Byron? Did he have to be shamed like that? Even Christ on his cross had the dignity of his loincloth, and his loins, more to the point, left alone.

  To the end of my days I myself shall feel dirty for what I have seen. Byron is luckier than me. He had Girolamo to protect him from himself and forgive him.

  But I – I can never tell anyone. Not my wife, not the priest, not the Fathers. How can I say that I saw what I did, and did nothing to stop it?

  Chapter 17

  Aqua turbia no fa specio.

  Turbulent water doesn’t make a mirror.

  VENETIAN PROVERB

  One night the sea rose in the lagoon and swept silently into the city. By morning Venice had fallen apart, humbled to a string of small islands barely holding their heads above the water. It was an acqua alta such as I had never seen. Venice fell under her old enemy, her old love, a wordless but obliterating crime of passion. Noiselessly, the sea reclaimed her own. Bridges disappeared. The tall palazzi were foreshortened by the rising water. A great democracy of little boats, torn from their moorings, rabbled in the Piazza. The muted percussion of prow against prow was the only sound. Markets, cafés and convents had been struck dumb. The city lay hushed with its hand over its mouth. The Venetians waited, feeling the nervous throb of vestigial gills in our throats. This was what we had always feared. The strange silence only made the threat seem more palpable, like a deep breath before a scream.

  Then, indeed, the water forswore its silence and became loud and angry. Now it pulsed and thrashed like the scales of a dragon.

  People climbed higher up inside their buildings, sent messages of safety to their families in other quarters. Others sent more tragic messages, We have lost our darling Gentile, the waters swept him away. Our losses, perversely, comforted us. After a day of drowning, we felt we had been punished enough, this time. We waited for the sea to subside.

  But the low tide did not come. The waters rose higher. The canals flowed towards us in tumultuous ridges, as if the Seven Plagues were writhing beneath their skins. Until now the sky had hung low and heavy, silent and empty, breathing a sick, dry light upon us. Now it bared its breast; bruised clouds were strung up like a sudden ugly gesture. A quick tongue of rain lolled down on us and a sudden slapping wind rattled over the sea just as the first roll of thunder struck. Within seconds we were besieged. Gibbets of lightning held up a swinging silver mirror to the sea. The canals boiled white with rain. The water hurled itself against our walls, was rebuffed, exploded in anger, slunk back into the dark mouth of the lagoon. There it glowered, coiled, sprang up. Again and again this happened.

  At Miracoli, the water flooded our magazzino. Sofia and Giovanni pleaded with me to evacuate my room on the lower floor and move up to the piano nobile with the rest of the
family. I had no hope of getting to my studio at the Palazzo Balbi Valier. No boatman would be mad or venal enough to take me through the surging water. I had no way of knowing if Girolamo and the Fathers were safe on San Lazzaro. I chafed and lurched around the house. Sofia and my niece kept out of my way.

  Darkness came suddenly and earlier than it should, as if the voracious waters had also swallowed up the light. We sat around the table in the dining room listening to the roar outside. No one spoke much. We thought of the drowned souls floating out to sea. We went to bed early, to be alone with the troubled thoughts we could not share. Sofia had disposed a pretty bedroom for me on the piano nobile. Sweeping aside the silk curtains I looked down at the dark churning water. It snarled up at me, spitting spray in my face from the waves that threw themselves against the wall below.

  I lay on the soft bed Sofia had prepared for me and lost consciousness in the folds of an embroidered crimson coverlet. In my sleep I heard the satiny surge and swell of the water under my window and absorbed it into my dreams without waking. I dreamt of Casanova’s cat, the grandfather of the cat who now guarded my studio. In my dream he came swimming in calm, graceful strokes to me. I dreamt he mewed at me and shook diamonds of water from his whiskers onto my face.

  I woke to find the cat on my belly, kneading the crimson coverlet to its ruination. His claws, dripping with vivid filaments of silk, tore right through the shredded fabric to my skin. His moist fur was flattened down on his spare body. ‘Stop!’ I begged him. Delicately, he stepped on to my pillow, shook himself, and sat upon it, looking down on me. I traced on his features the lines of his ancestor, Casanova’s cat. How had the brave little beast got himself across the flooded city to my family palazzo? I had imagined him safe in the studio, perched high above the waters and looking down disdainfully upon them.