Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice (9 page)

The phone rings, shattering my reverie. Too dopey and dreamy to think straight, I pick it up.

“Signor Krylov,
per piacere
,” comes a voice.

“
Un attimo
,” I say unthinkingly, and pass the receiver to a very sleepy Grigory.

“
Pronto?
” he says.

Click.
The snooper at the other end hangs up the phone, now knowing beyond doubt what he needs to know.

I leap out of bed in a fury at myself. How stupid of me! How could I have done that? I grab my robe and head for the shower, cursing my own idiocy.

By the time I am showered, Grisha has ordered breakfast, and when it comes he opens the door just wide enough so that a phalanx of waiting photographers can snap us together in our bathrobes.

I slam the door in a rage.

“You bastard!” I scream. “All you want is to ruin my reputation!” (What have I said? What reputation have I left to lose?)

Grisha laughs. “You know the old proverb, Jessichka—if your reputation is ruined, might as well have fun!”

“Some fun!” I say, sitting down to breakfast.

Grisha has called for all the Italian papers as well as the Paris
Herald Trib
,
Le Monde
, and
The Times
of London. Now I see why. The judging is not yet complete, and Grisha has already given his personal press conference.

In
Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, La Repubblica,
and
Il Giornale
, he has glommed front page headlines.

POETA SOVIETICO CONDANNA LA MOSTRA DEL CINEMA
it says in
Corriere
.
MOSTRA DEL CINEMA: IL CASO GRIGORY KRYLOV E BJÖRN PERSSON
shouts
La Stampa
.
KRYLOV E PERSSON E MOZART
says
La Repubblica. Il Giornale
heads the piece:
IL POETA SOVIETICO E IL CASO DON GIOVANNI
. The Italian papers have all put him smack in the middle of page one. Even the
Trib
says:
SOVIET POET BLASTS FILM FESTIVAL
. And
Le Monde
has a circumspect but clearly important column debating the pros and cons of his protest.

Grisha is absolutely delighted. With all the glee of a naughty child, he is reading his clippings and comparing his pictures in the various papers.

“I like the one in
Corriere
best—eh, Jessichka? A very brooding, handsome Heathcliff image.” He proudly shows me a picture of himself two columns wide.

“But this one”—he indicates
La Stampa—
“is not flattering at all.”

“You pig!” I say. “You were very busy while we were all trying to escape being trampled. How could you
do
this and then lie to Leonardo that you would not give a press conference before the judging was complete? How could you
be
such a snake?”

“My dzear Jessichka,” Grisha says, sitting back and sipping his cappuccino, “I did not lie to Leonardo at all. I merely toasted my colleagues with fine champagne. If Leonardo chose to assume that was a solemn promise to be silent, then he is more of a fool than he seems to be.” (Here Grisha does a wicked imitation of Leonardo's twitch, which makes me laugh in spite of myself.) “Besides, I will
not
give any more press conferences in the future—that much was quite true.”

“Well, why didn't you tell him you had
already
given one while everyone was worried sick about Björn?”

“He did not
ask
,” says Grisha, smiling devilishly. “Why should I volunteer information? Even we stupid bumbling Russians know never to volunteer information if it is not demanded of us. Ah, you are not much of a political animal, are you, Jessichka?”

“Compared to you, I'm a beginner,” say I. “I'm totally outclassed. Would you consider being my press agent? You're incredible. I'd rather have you on my side than against me.”

“A rare compliment coming from you, my dzear, but alas, I am already engaged. Like Leporello, my work is difficult and the hours are long, but I serve a master who will not be disobeyed.”

“And who, pray tell, is your master, Grisha?”

“Truth, Jessichka, truth above all. Ah, yes, that and free speech—the things you Westerners love so dzearly.”

I laugh again. “I'd just as soon not be there when Leonardo reads the papers.”

“And you need not be,” says Grisha, “nor need
I
be, either. Because you know what day is today?”

“No—what day is it?”

“Regatta Day in Venezia, Jessichka, and all the screenings are postponed except for one tonight—
your
film,
Women in Hell
. But until then we are free as birds, free as
lastochkiy,
free as
uccellini!
” Grisha prances up on the double bed and does an arm-flapping, birdlike little dance in his bathrobe and underwear. “And I am going to take you—how do you say?—out on the town. We shall attend several receivements—”

“Receptions,” I correct him.

Grisha blithely goes on. “The first, a very grand one given by Contessa Venier in her
incredibile
palazzo. The second, a very Bohemian one frequented by poets and artists. And the third, a very perverse one where everyone shall appear to be of another sex than the one they truly are. And many elderly, rich men shall appear with beautiful young ‘nephews'—the famed
settembrini
of Venice, if you understand my meaning. If we do all this, we shall not see Leonardo until this evening, and by then he shall be over his rage.”

Grisha gives another drastic mimetic twitch and again jumps up and down on the bed like a small boy. “Will you be so kind as to accompany me?”

“I'd do anything to be away from here when the storm breaks. But how do we get out? And then back by tonight? Unfortunately, I have to be presented when my film is shown.”

“I know just the way,” says Grisha, prancing down off the bed and gathering up his precious newspapers.

“I shall cut these later,” he says solemnly. “Meanwhile, where to hide them? Oh, yes…”

He piles them neatly on the floor of my armoire. “I would not want the maid to throw them out,” he says, “such beautiful pictures of the angry, impassioned Grisha.”

I look at him mockingly. “You're in big trouble, baby,” I say, “when you start talking about yourself in the third person. This I know for a fact. Look what happened to Salvador Dali.”

“What do you mean?” Grisha asks like a rebuked child.

“Once he started saying ‘Dali like this, Dali don't like that,' his art deteriorated. Mark my words, Grisha, it's a bad sign.”

“You are crazy, Jessichka. Crazy American cunt. You think too much. Russian women don't think so much. Makes them sexier. You
pretend
to be sexy, but you don't know how to treat a man—too aggressive, that's why we shall never fuck like bunnies.” (He pronounced it “bunn-yees.”) “Too—how you say?—castrating.”

I have been en route to the bathroom to make up my face, but now I freeze in my tracks and glare at him. “What exactly are you saying, Grigory? I challenge you to say it again really
slowly
.”

He begins. “You don't know how to treat a man—”

“Listen, buster,” I say, “if I hadn't been so damned well brought up, I'd have thrown you out on your limp dick last night and let all the
paparazzi
outside the door
photograph
it. Then I'd have called a press conference—the way you did—and announced to the world just what a bust you were as a lover. But I went to the Chapin School, and I grew up in a family where knowing which fork to use was considered
much
more important than truth, justice, honesty, and free speech. And you're damned lucky I did, because otherwise
you'd
be the sacrificial lamb in those precious papers today—not Björn Persson.”

Ah, I am beginning to warm to this monologue. I am really beginning to enjoy it. What a part! Outraged innocence is my middle name! Some actors believe—my old acting teacher Arnold used to say this often, in fact—that anger is the easiest of all emotions to play. Perhaps this is true, but it certainly is cathartic! And Grisha is not the subtlest of actors himself. He fills football fields when he reads his poems. In his own country, he is more like a movie star or soccer hero than a poet.

Propelled by my own mock fury, I go on. “You
bastard
. You have single-handedly trashed my next film, humiliated one of the world's great directors, and destroyed my own credibility at this festival—and now you have the utter gall to imply that
my
behavior, and not your boozing and your limp cock, are to blame for the fact that we didn't fuck last night. I'm
glad
we didn't fuck last night—even though the whole world will think we did, thanks to you. But when you have the nerve to call me ‘castrating,' I draw the line. You damned well know I should have thrown you out last night. The only reason I didn't is my goddam breeding, my decadent, capitalistic manners—which you are such a
putz
you don't even know to be
grateful
for!”

By the time I finish this monologue I am screaming, and Grisha, who has been standing there with his mouth hanging open, promptly falls to his knees.

“What may I do to atone, Jessichka? I am truly sorry.”

“I doubt it,” I say. “But if you can get me out of this god-awful hotel suite and to the regatta without a million reporters following, I just may forgive you.”

Let it be known that Grisha did redeem himself, at least for the moment. He hired a private
motoscafo
and had it meet us not at the Excelsior, where the press lay in wait for us everywhere, but at the back of a private villa down the road (whither he drove us by motorcycle!). Ah, yes, I embarked on my travels that Regatta Day wearing a Thierry Mugler jump suit (a futuristic silver one absolutely festooned with zippers), silver cowboy boots, a silver motorcycle helmet, and silver goggles with reflective lenses. Punk for a day! There was nowhere I couldn't go in Venice in that outfit.

And so we are off—off to the Contessa Venier's for starters, and then who knows? We shall wend our way through the city of Venice, stopping here, stopping there, like the strolling players which in fact we are.

The Contessa Venier's emporium on the Grand Canal—Palazzo Venier-Grimani, it is called—is our first stop. We enter on the water side, met by a butler in eighteenth-century livery who takes my silver helmet and silver goggles as if they were a feathered tri-corn and gilded walking stick. He bows ceremoniously and directs us up a stone stair, plushly carpeted with red.

On the cavernous first floor of the palazzo are several ancient gondolas and sedan chairs. One gondola above all is polished to a fare-thee-well and stands upon its own special rack. It is an old gondola, complete with
felse
, or cabin-covering—the sort of gondola perfect for romantic assignations or political spying (two activities that often require the same equipment).

“It belonged to Doge Andrea Venier,” says Grisha pompously, “the one who died of plague.”

“Impossible,” I whisper. “First of all, it was Doge Andrea
Vendramin
who died of plague in 1478. And secondly, if it
were
that doge's gondola, it would have long since rotted away because wooden boats don't last that long.” (I have been reading and I know my Venetian history and boat lore by now.) “Get your doges straight, pal,” I add.

Grisha says, “Not sexy to know more history than your man, Jessichka.”

“Well, then, that proves it—you're not my man.”

“Shall we go up?” asks Grisha, bowing in mock humility.

“Indeed,” I say.

We climb the stairs to the next floor and then continue on up to the
piano nobile
, where a glittering reception is in progress.

“First, you must meet the countess,” says Grisha, leading me by the hand past warty duchesses, celebrities of stage and screen and soccer field, anonymous millionaires, showy pseudomillionaires, and well-dressed paupers masquerading as millionaires. There are hairdressers and fashion designers, gossip columnists and fashion journalists, true believers and miscreants of every persuasion. All the languages of the jet set are being spoken, often simultaneously or even as part of the same sentence. For these people are the fashionable of the world who can utter the same clichés in Italian, French, German, English, and make small talk about restaurants and resorts in all these tongues, but are never called upon to plumb more difficult subjects. Indeed, they might be at a loss for words if asked to.

The Contessa Venier is sitting in a golden chair (“the barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne / Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold…”), but no Cleopatra she. She oozes in her chair, all flab and diamonds, and raises a yellowed hand, covered with freckles, warts, and rings, for me to kiss. For a moment her piggley brown eyes meet mine, but then, seeing my unconventional costume, she begins to look about the room for others more eminent.

Grisha, my appointed press agent, notes this subtle shift of eyes and all at once bursts out, “Contessa, this my dzear friend, the great American qveen of the cinema, Jessica Pruitt.”

Whereupon the contessa whips her head around and focuses upon me once more, now assured that I am important enough to be worth another millisecond of her attention.

“
Enchantée
,” she says.

“
Piacere
,” I respond, knowing the rules of the international set: never engage in a conversational exchange in less than two languages—preferably neither of them your own.

Grisha now bows to the contessa (a
most
un-Bolshevik bow, a Romanov bow, in fact), and seizes my arm to take me on a tour of the palazzo.

Arm in arm, we promenade past petronian displays of food—pyramids of glazed ducks, breads braided like the Titian hair of ancient
cortigiane
, pink prosciutto curled about open, amber figs, sculptures of the Palazzo del Cinema in sugar candy, marzipan gondolas and gondoliers. The food is so gorgeous, it hardly seems decent to eat it, but none of the other guests appear intimidated. In the crowd I spot various darlings of the international set, people one always meets in Venice, Cap d'Antibes, the Marbella Club at Dragon Bay, or else the Pelicano at Porto Ercole. I recognize several familiar faces whose names have been mysteriously detached from them and, mingling in the crowd as well, I spot Paloma P., Prince Alfonso Von H., the Maharanee of J., Tina C., Jackie O., Arianna S., Iris L., and Gloria V. Hubert de G. is there (he's so splendidly tall you cannot miss him), and the incomparable Gore V. is holding court, making everybody laugh at his legendary aphorisms. (He emerged from the pool at the Cipriani the other day, I have been told, looked around at all the British octogenarians, and said, “By God—Lourdes.”) The only International Darling occasionally wittier than he (I mean Princess Margaret, who uttered the deathless line “The trouble with Gore is: he wants my sister's job”) is not in evidence. But Grisha will not let me stop and greet my special favorites in this throng because he wants to show me something more important.