The Honeymoon (2 page)

He’d probably done this job for many years. The gondoliers held the tourists captive. They were their first contact with the city. Only the gondoliers knew how to navigate its labyrinthine ways.

All around them now, on the Grand Canal, the boats, full of people who’d gotten off the train from Padua, were crowded together and banging up against one another. The gondoliers were trying to separate them.
“Premi! Premi!”
they cried.
“Stali! Stali!”

At last untangled, the gondolas spread out across the water. The journey to the hotels was under way.

It was suddenly quiet, as if everyone was too exhausted and stunned by the sights, and too busy absorbing the strangeness of the place, to speak. In the boat, Johnnie sat perpendicular to her, his long legs drawn up awkwardly in the small space, silent, absorbed in looking across at the shore.

To their right was San Simeone Piccolo — Ruskin called it a huge “gasometer,” with its great, dark dome, like a
Greek temple oddly attached to a plain red-brick building. They passed silently among the columned palaces with their Moorish arches and red-and-white-striped mooring poles, their facades of marble and Istrian stone, their inlay of jasper and alabaster and porphyry, faded by sun and water; their foundations darkened and stained green with algae from the flux and retreat of the tides over the centuries. As always, she was surprised at their small scale, given the expectation of what Venice would be.

The gondolier stood erect in the stern, feathering the water with his oar, moving from one side to the other, swerving his hips. His skin looked as if it had been oiled. His striped shirt and black trousers fit tightly to his body, but there was a softness around his waist that betrayed his age.

Ahead of them loomed the humpbacked Rialto, its archways and shops packed with tourists. As they passed under it, in the confined space the smell of putrid effluence rose up and engulfed them. She could see brownish things bobbing in the water. She held her handkerchief to her nose to block the smell.

As they emerged again into the pink light, she breathed in the salty, brackish air with relief. When the real heat came, the smell would be insufferable. Well, she thought, along with everything glorious and holy, there had to exist its opposite: decay and death. For there to be light, there must be darkness, mystery.

The canal curved southwest, then bent again eastward. She glimpsed on the shore the white marble Hôtel de la Ville where once she and George had stayed. As they passed it, she glanced back, but said nothing to Johnnie.

At last they came to the sign for the Hotel Europa. It was in the old Palazzo Giustinian, an umber-colored brick building with white Gothic arches and balconies overlooking the canal. Just beyond it was the Piazza San Marco.

“There!” Johnnie called to the gondolier. They stopped, and a grizzled old
ganser
reached down from the
riva
with his pole and pulled them over to the steps.

The gondolier threw up his rope and the man tied it. Johnnie gripped her tightly under the arms and raised her up from her seat. She was dizzy from standing up too quickly, and tired from the journey. Johnnie held on to her a moment, then leapt to the shore, reached down and lifted her up onto ground. “We’ve made it!” he cried.

He handed the gondolier a coin. But the man didn’t move. He stood there with his palm open, looking down ostentatiously at the coin, then up at Johnnie again. Flustered, Johnnie dug down again into his pocket and offered him more coins. At this, the gondolier clamped his hand shut and got back into his boat.

“Greedy swine!” Johnnie muttered, clenching his teeth, as they made their way to the
portego
.

Inside the hotel, they climbed the stairs into an immense, marble-columned lobby with a high, coffered ceiling, gilded and blue, and glass chandeliers and potted palms. At one end was a reception desk with a sign,
TELEGRAFO
. Other tourists, scattered about on chairs and settees, stared at them as they entered.

Johnnie led her to a settee and went to register. Was she imagining it, or did he welcome this bodily distance from her, being away from her for these few minutes?

After a brief period, he came back across the lobby followed by a man in a black morning coat. “This is Monsieur Marseille, the manager. He wanted to meet you. Madame Cross,” Johnnie said.

“Madame … George Eliot!” said the manager, hesitating a moment as if puzzled by the man’s name for a woman. He bowed. He was wearing a wig of flat black hair and he had a handlebar mustache, waxed and pointed at the tips.

“Of course, you know we have had many famous writers staying with us,” he said. “Chateaubriand, Mr. Ruskin. Many famous people, Mr. Turner, and Wagner, also Verdi. You are in excellent company.”

“How did you know who I was? she asked.

“The English lady over there.” He indicated a woman sitting across the lobby on one of the settees, watching them. “She inform us of who you were. She say she recognize you. She tell us we have a great English authoress in our midst —”

Johnnie interrupted, “Mrs. Cross doesn’t want to be bothered. She’s on a private holiday. We’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone else she’s here.”

“Of course, Monsieur.”

This had happened many times. George used to sign their hotel registers with false names to prevent them from being bothered. But people knew her, even though, after she became famous, she almost always refused to be painted or photographed. Still, when they went to the Pop Concerts at St. James’s Hall, people sketched her. George would glare, but it didn’t stop them. None other than Princess Louise once drew her likeness on the back of her program at a benefit
concert for the Music School of the Blind. Truthfully, there were times when she didn’t mind the attention. Sometimes the fame, being recognized, was like a match being struck, a temporary light, a moment of pleasure, forgetting all her doubts, the lack of confidence, the headaches and kidney pains. But now she dreaded it. At this very moment in London she imagined there was a new scandal unfolding.

As people read the wedding announcement in the
Times
, they were laughing and twittering over their morning coffee about the besotted old woman marrying the handsome man young enough to be her son.

To alleviate the manager’s chagrin, she asked politely, “You are French?”

“My grandfather, Monsieur Arnold Marseille, bought this palazzo in 1817. This year, we install private baths. Very grand, very convenient.”

A footman was hovering behind him. “The footman will show you to your room. We have here today six English families. There is the table d’hôte at five o’clock. Perhaps you and your son would care to join us?”

Her chest plunged. Johnnie’s face reddened.

“Please!” Johnnie cried. “The signora is my wife!”

“Oh!” the manager said.
“Vous devez me pardonner!”
But his mortification only magnified the insult. He was mirroring back to them the truth. She did look like Johnnie’s mother.

As they ascended the stairs to the
piano nobile
and their rooms, she said, “We knew this would happen sooner or later. Imagine what they’re saying in London.”

“We don’t mind what they’re saying,” he said firmly, his jaw set, gripping her arm.

They came to the landing, and the footman threw open the gleaming mahogany doors to their
appartement
. It was hung with chandeliers, gilded mirrors, and oil paintings, and furnished with silk-covered
fauteuils
. There were great, mullioned windows which looked out directly over the canal and crimson velvet drapes fastened with braided silk ties and tassels.

On either side of the
sala
was a bedroom. Johnnie went to the door of each one and peaked inside. He pointed to the one on the right. “This is the best room,” he told the footman. “The lady’s trunk goes in there. The other trunk’s mine. In there, please,” he said, indicating the second bedroom across the way.

It was their usual ritual.

While the footman put their luggage away, Johnnie stepped out onto the balcony. She followed him. To their left was the landing of San Marco, the black gondolas parked in front of it swaying in the water. To their right was the view down the Grand Canal.

He began enumerating the sights, as if learning them himself. “There’s the Dogana,” he said, indicating the customhouse across the canal, its gold weathervane, the figure of the goddess Fortuna, moving faintly in the late afternoon sun. “The Salute,” he said, sweeping his arm across to the imposing dome behind it. “And San Giorgio,” he said, across the Bacino, the little island on their left.

He stopped and looked down at the canal, suddenly silent.

She touched his shoulder. “Please,” she said, “don’t mind the stupid manager. I’m perfectly all right. You shouldn’t feel sad for me. We expected this. We knew it would happen.
I’m so happy to be here. Everything’s going to be all right now, you’ll see.”

He continued staring down into the water as if he hadn’t heard her.

“Johnnie, did you hear me?”

He nodded, still not looking at her.

“Please, Johnnie, smile for me,” she begged. “Let me see you smile.”

He looked around at her and forced his mouth into a thin smile.

“Shouldn’t I be the one who’s angry?” she asked. “Not you. It’s not your fault, is it? It’s I who look old!”

He didn’t respond. He seemed to be looking right through her. She reached up and touched his red curls — she was allowed to do that, wasn’t she? He was so tall. She loved the moments when she could touch him with impunity. His hair was so soft and silky, like a boy’s.

Behind them there was a knock on the door.
“Chi è?”
he called out irritably.

“Sono la cameriera,”
a woman’s voice answered.

“Entra!”
he commanded. He sighed. “They’re always bothering you.”

A maid entered. She was a girl of about sixteen, in a black dress, white cap, collar, and pinafore. She had a mass of dark blond curls tied behind her neck, green, heavy-lidded eyes, and a prominent aquiline nose. A Northern face.

“I unpack for Madame?” she asked in English.

“Yes, please. Thank you,” Marian said. “That one.” She pointed to her bedroom.

On the balcony, Johnnie said, “You can smell it from here. That smell of putrefaction underneath everything.”

“You forget about it,” she said. “You get used to it. When the wind shifts, we won’t notice it at all. And when the tide comes in, the water’s very clear.”

The sky was darkening, burnished with gold. “Look at the light,” she exclaimed. “The sun’s going down. This is the glory of the place.”

He put his arm around her waist and drew her to him, a protective gesture, warm and kind. She was acutely conscious of his touch. She looked up at his face. It was the familiar posture of a woman looking up at the man she loves, she thought, her life’s companion, his face in profile, the face she possesses as her own, but the face of someone separate, unknowable. All men were mysterious to her, except George. She and George had been like one person. Johnnie’s was a handsomer face than George’s of course, an ideal of masculine beauty. Before she and George had come together, she’d heard people call him “the ugliest man in London” — not true! But Johnnie’s face was troubled. His forehead was drawn in a frown.

By now George would have been animated with excitement. “Look, Polly!” he’d cry, calling her by her girlhood nickname. Always full of enthusiasm, rousing her from tiredness and worry and depression. “Can’t wait till morning!” he’d say. And he’d awaken her into his own joy. He was irresistible. When he pulled her close, her body melded completely into his. No distance between them, the line of his wiry thigh against hers, he, who relished her body continually, her slenderness, always, with each new day and night as if he’d never known it before and it was a constant surprise to him, whatever it was he saw in it, distorted by blind love.

Now, behind them in the hotel room, there were sudden, soft bursts of light. The chambermaid was lighting the oil lamps, leaving the edges of the room in shadow.

“Let’s have supper brought up,” he said. “Someone else might recognize you and that would be a bother.”

“Yes,” she said. “Do let’s. I can’t bear to see anyone else tonight.”

T
he maid brought their supper up to the room on a cart, set the table with thick white linens, and lit the candles. As they ate and it grew dark out, the sounds of the canal began to quiet, except for the occasional raucous cries of the gondoliers intruding on the calm and the whisper of voices and footsteps on the
calle
.

Johnnie picked at his veal and cuttlefish. “You aren’t eating anything,” she said, like a mother.

“I’m just not hungry.”

“But the fish is perfect. Very light.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got to eat, Johnnie. You must.”

“I know,” he said, without interest.

“Tomorrow we should go in the morning to the Accademia,” she said. “And visit Ruskin’s man, Bunney.” Ruskin had spotted their wedding announcement in the paper and sent a note congratulating her. People saw little of Ruskin these days. He was supposedly sequestered in a house in the Lake District where, Thomas Carlyle said, he’d gone mad. Hearing that they were going to Venice on their honeymoon, Ruskin had written to them, however, to say they
must
visit his employee, John Wharlton Bunney, a painter who worked for him in his St. George’s Guild. Ruskin was
on a campaign to stop the restoration of the ancient buildings of Venice, and he was paying Bunney to paint pictures of them before they were destroyed. He wanted to enlist Marian in his cause, and he had sent a letter to Bunney telling him that “Mr. and Mrs. Cross” would soon be calling.