I made up my lips with vermilion and overlaid my face with white powder. I had no need to add a beauty spot, having one of my own in just the right place. I wore my yellow Casino breeches with the stripe down each side of the leg and a pirate’s shirt that concealed my breasts. This was required, but the moustache I added was for my own amusement. And perhaps for my own protection. There are too many dark alleys and too many drunken hands on festival nights.
Across our matchless square that Bonaparte had contemptuously called the finest drawing-room in Europe, our engineers had rigged a wooden frame alive with gunpowder. This was to be triggered at midnight and I was optimistic that, with so many heads looking up, so many pockets would be vulnerable.
The ball began at eight o’clock and I began my night drawing cards in the booth of chance.
Queen of spades you win, Ace of clubs you lose. Play again. What will you risk? Your watch? Your house? Your mistress? I like to smell the urgency on them. Even the calmest, the richest, have that smell. It’s somewhere between fear and sex. Passion I suppose.
There’s a man who comes to play Chance with me most nights at the Casino. A large man with pads of flesh on his palms like baker’s dough. When he squeezes my neck from behind, the sweat on his palms makes them squeak. I always carry a handkerchief. He wears a green waistcoat and I’ve seen him stripped to that waistcoat because he can’t let the dice roll without following it. He has funds. He must have. He spends in a moment what I earn in a month. He’s cunning though, for all his madness at the table. Most men wear their pockets or their purses on their sleeves when they’re drunk. They want everyone to know how rich they are, how fat with gold. Not him. He has a bag down his trousers and he dips into it with his back turned. I’ll never pick that one.
I don’t know what else might be down there.
He wonders the same thing about me. I catch him staring at my crotch and now and again I wear a codpiece to taunt him. My breasts are small, so there’s no cleavage to give me away, and I’m tall for a girl, especially a Venetian.
I wonder what he’d say to my feet.
Tonight, he’s wearing his best suit and his moustache gleams. I fan the cards before him; close them, shuffle them, fan them again. He chooses. Too low to win. Choose again. Too high. Forfeit. He laughs and tosses a coin across the counter.
‘You’ve grown a moustache since two days ago.’
‘I come from a hairy family.’
‘It suits you.’ His eyes stray as usual, but I am firmly behind the booth. He takes out another coin. I spread. The Jack of hearts. An ill-omened card but he doesn’t think so, he promises to return and taking the Jack with him for luck moves over to the gaming table. His bottom strains his jacket. They’re always taking the cards. I wonder whether to get out another pack or just cheat the next customer. I think that will depend on who the next customer might be.
I love the night. In Venice, a long time ago, when we had our own calendar and stayed aloof from the world, we began the days at night. What use was the sun to us when our trade and our secrets and our diplomacy depended on darkness? In the dark you are in disguise and this is the city of disguises. In those days (I cannot place them in time because time is to do with daylight), in those days when the sun went down we opened our doors and slid along the eely waters with a hooded light in our prow. All our boats were black then and left no mark on the water where they sat. We were dealing in perfume and silk. Emeralds and diamonds. Affairs of State. We didn’t build our bridges simply to avoid walking on water. Nothing so obvious. A bridge is a meeting place. A neutral place. A casual place. Enemies will choose to meet on a bridge and end their quarrel in that void. One will cross to the other side. The other will not return. For lovers, a bridge is a possibility, a metaphor of their chances. And for the traffic in whispered goods, where else but a bridge in the night?
We are a philosophical people, conversant with the nature of greed and desire, holding hands with the Devil and God. We would not wish to let go of either. This living bridge is tempting to all and you may lose your soul or find it here.
And our own souls?
They are Siamese.
Nowadays, the dark has more light than in the old days. There are flares everywhere and soldiers like to see the streets lit up, like to see some reflection on the canals. They don’t trust our soft feet and thin knives. None the less, darkness can be found; in the under-used waterways or out on the lagoon. There’s no dark like it. It’s soft to the touch and heavy in the hands. You can open your mouth and let it sink into you till it makes a close ball in your belly. You can juggle with it, dodge it, swim in it. You can open it like a door.
The old Venetians had eyes like cats that cut the densest night and took them through impenetrable ways without stumbling. Even now, if you look at us closely you will find that some of us have slit eyes in the daylight.
I used to think that darkness and death were probably the same. That death was the absence of light. That death was nothing more than the shadow-lands where people bought and sold and loved as usual but with less conviction. The night seems more temporary than the day, especially to lovers, and it also seems more uncertain. In this way it sums up our lives, which are uncertain and temporary. We forget about that in the day. In the day we go on for ever. This is the city of uncertainty, where routes and faces look alike and are not. Death will be like that. We will be forever recognising people we have never met.
But darkness and death are not the same.
The one is temporary, the other is not.
Our funerals are fabulous affairs. We hold them at night, returning to our dark roots. The black boats skim the water and the coffin is crossed with jet. From my upper window that overlooks two intersecting canals, I once saw a rich man’s cortège of fifteen boats (the number must be odd) glide out to the lagoon. At the same moment, a pauper’s boat, carrying a coffin not varnished but covered in pitch, floated out too, rowed by an old woman with scarcely enough strength to drag the oars. I thought they would collide, but the rich man’s boatmen pulled away. Then his widow motioned with her hand and the cortège opened the line at the eleventh boat and made room for the pauper, tossing a rope round the prow so that the old woman had only to guide her craft. They continued thus towards the terrible island of San Michele and I lost sight of them.
For myself, if I am to die, I would like to do it alone, far from the world. I would like to lie on the warm stone in May until my strength is gone, then drop gently into the canal. Such things are still possible in Venice.
Nowadays, the night is designed for the pleasure-seekers and tonight, by their reckoning, is a tour de force. There are fire-eaters frothing at the mouth with yellow tongues. There is a dancing bear. There is a troupe of little girls, their sweet bodies hairless and pink, carrying sugared almonds in copper dishes. There are women of every kind and not all of them are women. In the centre of the square, the workers on Murano have fashioned a huge glass slipper that is constantly filled and re-filled with champagne. To drink from it you must lap like a dog and how these visitors love it. One has already drowned, but what is one death in the midst of so much life?
From the wooden frame above where the gunpowder waits there are also suspended a number of nets and trapezes. From here acrobats swing over the square, casting grotesque shadows on the dancers below. Now and again, one will dangle by the knees and snatch a kiss from whoever is standing below. I like such kisses. They fill the mouth and leave the body free. To kiss well one must kiss solely. No groping hands or stammering hearts. The lips and the lips alone are the pleasure. Passion is sweeter split strand by strand. Divided and re-divided like mercury then gathered up only at the last moment.
You see, I am no stranger to love.
It’s getting late, who comes here with a mask over her face? Will she try the cards?
She does. She holds a coin in her palm so that I have to pick it out. Her skin is warm. I spread the cards. She chooses. The ten of diamonds. T
he three of clubs. Then the Queen of spades.
‘A lucky card. The symbol of Venice. You win.’
She smiled at me and pulling away her mask revealed a pair of grey-green eyes with flecks of gold. Her cheekbones were high and rouged. Her hair, darker and redder than mine.
‘Play again?’
She shook her head and had a waiter bring over a bottle of champagne. Not any champagne. Madame Clicquot. The only good thing to come out of France. She held the glass in a silent toast, perhaps to her own good fortune. The Queen of spades is a serious win and one we are usually careful to avoid. Still she did not speak, but watched me through the crystal and suddenly draining her glass stroked the side of my face. Only for a second she touched me and then she was gone and I was left with my heart smashing at my chest and three-quarters of a bottle of the best champagne. I was careful to conceal both.
I am pragmatic about love and have taken my pleasure with both men and women, but I have never needed a guard for my heart. My heart is a reliable organ.
At midnight the gunpowder was triggered and the sky above St Mark’s broke into a million coloured pieces. The fireworks lasted perhaps half an hour and during that time I was able to finger enough money to bribe a friend to take over my booth for a while. I slipped through the press towards the still bubbling glass slipper looking for her.
She had vanished. There were faces and dresses and masks and kisses to be had and a hand at every turn but she was not there. I was detained by an infantryman who held up two glass balls and asked if I would exchange them for mine. But I was in no mood for charming games and pushed past him, my eyes begging for a sign.
The roulette table. The gaming table. The fortune tellers. The fabulous three-breasted woman. The singing ape. The double-speed dominoes and the tarot.
She was not there.
She was nowhere.
My time was up and I went back to the booth of chance full of champagne and an empty heart.
‘There was a woman looking for you,’ said my friend. ‘She left this.’
On the table was an earring. Roman by the look of it, curiously shaped, made of that distinct old yellow gold that these times do not know.
I put it in my ear and, spreading the cards in a perfect fan, took out the Queen of spades. No one else should win tonight. I would keep her card until she needed it.
Gaiety soon ages.
By three o’clock the revellers were drifting away through the arches around St Mark’s or lying in piles by the cafés, opening early to provide strong coffee. The gaming was over. The Casino tellers were packing away their gaudy stripes and optimistic baize. I was off-duty and it was almost dawn. Usually, I go straight home and meet my stepfather on his way to the bakery. He slaps me about the shoulder and makes some joke about how much money I’m making. He’s a curious man; a shrug of the shoulders and a wink and that’s him. He’s never thought it odd that his daughter cross-dresses for a living and sells second-hand purses on the side. But then, he’s never thought it odd that his daughter was born with webbed feet.
‘There are stranger things,’ he said.
And I suppose there are.
This morning, there’s no going home. I’m bolt upright, my legs are restless and the only sensible thing is to borrow a boat and calm myself in the Venetian way; on the water.
The Grand Canal is already busy with vegetable boats. I am the only one who seems intent on recreation and the others eye me curiously, in between steadying a load or arguing with a friend. These are my people, they can eye me as much as they wish.
I push on, under the Rialto, that strange half-bridge that can be drawn up to stop one half of this city warring with the other. They’ll seal it eventually and we’ll be brothers and mothers. But that will be the doom of paradox.
Bridges join but they also separate.
Out now, past the houses that lean into the water. Past the Casino itself. Past the money-lenders and the churches and the buildings of state. Out now into the lagoon with only the wind and the seagulls for company.
There is a certainty that comes with the oars, with the sense of generation after generation standing up like this and rowing like this with rhythm and ease. This city is littered with ghosts seeing to their own. No family would be complete without its ancestors.
Our ancestors. Our belonging. The future is foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial. All time is eternally present and so all time is ours. There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming. Thus the present is made rich. Thus the present is made whole. On the lagoon this morning, with the past at my elbow, rowing beside me, I see the future glittering on the water. I catch sight of myself in the water and see in the distortions of my face what I might become.
If I find her, how will my future be?
I will find her.
Somewhere between fear and sex passion is.
Passion is not so much an emotion as a destiny. What choice have I in the face of this wind but to put up sail and rest my oars?
Dawn breaks.
I spent the weeks that followed in a hectic stupor.
Is there such a thing? There is. It is the condition that most resembles a particular kind of mental disorder. I have seen ones like me in San Servelo. It manifests itself as a compulsion to be forever doing something, however meaningless. The body must move but the mind is blank.
I walked the streets, rowed circles around Venice, woke up in the middle of the night with my covers in impossible knots and my muscles rigid. I took to working double shifts at the Casino, dressing as a woman in the afternoon and a young man in the evenings. I ate when food was put in front of me and slept when my body was throbbing with exhaustion.
I lost weight.
I found myself staring into space, forgetting where I was going.
I was cold.
I never go to confession; God doesn’t want us to confess, he wants us to challenge him, but for a while I went into our churches because they were built from the heart. Improbable hearts that I had never understood before. Hearts so full of longing that these old stones still cry out with their extasy. These are warm churches, built in the sun.
I sat at the back, listening to the music or mumbling through the service. I’m never tempted by God but I like his trappings. Not tempted but I begin to understand why others are. With this feeling inside, with this wild love that threatens, what safe places might there be? Where do you store gunpowder? How do you sleep at night again? If I were a little different I might turn passion into something holy and then I would sleep again. And then my extasy would be my extasy but I would not be afraid.
My flabby friend, who has decided I’m a woman, has asked me to marry him. He has promised to keep me in luxury and all kinds of fancy goods, provided I go on dressing as a young man in the comfort of our own home. He likes that. He says he’ll get my moustaches and codpieces specially made and a rare old time we’ll have of it, playing games and getting drunk. I was thinking of pulling a knife on him right there in the middle of the Casino, but my Venetian pragmatism stepped in and I thought I might have a little game myself. Anything now to relieve the ache of never finding her.
I’ve always wondered where his money comes from. Is it inherited? Does his mother still settle his bills?
No. He earns his money. He earns his money supplying the French army with meat and horses. Meat and horses he tells me that wouldn’t normally feed a cat or mount a beggar.
How does he get away with it?
There’s no one else who can supply so much so fast, anywhere; as soon as his orders arrive, the supplies are on their way.
It seems that Bonaparte wins his battles quickly or not at all. That’s his way. He doesn’t need quality, he needs action. He needs his men on their feet for a few days’ march and a few days’ battle. He needs horses for a single charge. That’s enough. What does it matter if the horses are lame and the men are
poisoned so long as they last so long as they’re needed?
I’d be marrying a meat man.
I let him buy me champagne. Only the best. I hadn’t tasted Madame Clicquot since the hot night in August. The rush of it along my tongue and into my throat brought back other memories. Memories of a single touch. How could anything so passing be so pervasive?
But Christ said, ‘Follow me,’ and it was done.
Sunk in these dreams, I hardly felt his hand along my leg, his fingers on my belly. Then I was reminded vividly of squid and their suckers and I shook him off shouting that I’d never marry him, not for all the Veuve Clicquot in France nor a Venice full of codpieces. His face was always red so it was hard to tell what he felt about these insults. He got up from where he’d been kneeling and straightened his waistcoat. He asked me if I wanted to keep my job.
‘I’ll keep my job because I’m good at it and clients like you come through the door every day.’
He hit me then. Not hard but I was shocked. I’d never been hit before. I hit him back. Hard.
He started to laugh and coming towards me squashed me flat against the wall. It was like being under a pile of fish. I didn’t try to move, he was twice my weight at least and I’m no heroine. I’d nothing to lose either, having lost it already in happier times.
He left a stain on my shirt and threw a coin at me by way of goodbye.
What did I expect from a meat man?
I went back to the gaming floor.
November in Venice is the beginning of the catarrh season. Catarrh is part of our heritage like St Mark’s. Long ago, when the Council of Three ruled in mysterious ways, any traitor or hapless one done away with was usually announced to have died of catarrh. In this way, no one was embarrassed. It’s the fog that rolls in from the lagoon and hides one end of the Piazza from another that brings on our hateful congestion. It rains too, mournfully and quietly, and the boatmen sit under sodden rags and stare helplessly into the canals. Such weather drives away the foreigners and that’s the only good thing that can be said of it. Even the brilliant water-gate at the Fenice turns grey.