What Casanova Told Me (12 page)

At the other end of the piazza, a small crowd had gathered at the base of a second tower. The people were staring up at the richly ornamented clock face. Following their gaze, Luce saw three little kings and an angel trundling out of the doors on either side of the tower—the angel raising its trumpet to its lips and the kings bowing as they bobbed past the Virgin and the Christ Child in the niche above the clock.

“The three Magi always draw an audience,” Dino said, bringing out his Mayima and aiming it at the clock. “Would you like to go inside and see its mechanism? My friend Alberto lives there.”

He lowered his camera and without waiting for her answer, he took her by the hand and drew her towards the archway under the clock tower. He knocked on a door partly hidden by the scaffolding.

“Dino!” A young man with a receding hairline stood before them.

“Alberto!” Dino kissed the young man on both cheeks and they proceeded up a set of stairs and into a kitchen.

The room pulsed with a sound like the beat of a giant heart. The muffled bang was broken every few minutes by a frenzy of whirling and crashing flywheels and ratchets. Loops of chains and ropes ran through the wooden ceiling and floor. Sleeping on a table in the midst of this immense mechanical toy lay a three-legged cat.

“She’s missing a foreleg so I named her Venus,” Alberto said. “I think she is what you English call Siamese.”

“Ciao, Venus!” Dino made a mock bow towards the cat, who sat up and yawned at the sound of their voices.

Looking closer, she saw that the cat’s right eye was the opalescent blue of a Siamese, but its left was shut tight. A yellow ooze ran from the corner of the eye. “You poor thing!” she said.

“Alas, I can’t take her to Milano.”

“You are going on holiday, Alberto?” Dino smiled.

“I’m staying with my sister while they repair my big baby.” Alberto waved grandly at the clock. “My sister is allergic to cats. If you know anyone who would like Venus, be my guest, as you say in English.”

The cat leapt off the table and hopped in a funny little lopsided motion over towards Luce. She could hear the rattle of its purr as it rubbed itself against her pant leg.

“It likes your voice,
bella.”
Dino smiled as he took a
photograph of Luce crouching down to stroke the cat’s battered-looking head.

“I wish I could take her,” Luce said. “But we leave tomorrow.” “Ah, well, think it over.” Alberto nodded at Dino. “If you change your mind, Dino will bring it to your hotel. I hope you will remember seeing the greatest wonder of Venice. If it is true as they say, that time is money—then I am the richest man in the world.”

“Oh, time is much more complex than that,” Dino said, winking at Luce, and she smiled shyly. It was true: she could feel the arrow of time bending mysteriously. It seemed to her that time was thundering backwards, like a river returning to its source.

A few minutes later, she was walking with Dino through the great Piazza San Marco, where tourists moved among the pigeons like currents of sea air from the Adriatic, their cameras bobbing on their chests, the side veils of their Tilley hats fluttering. One of the larger groups, judging from their boisterous, drawling voices, came from the American South. They called out to one another as they pushed their way into a crowded pizzeria on the edge of the square.

“Are the pigeons a metaphor for the tourists?” Dino asked sarcastically. “Or are the tourists a metaphor for the birds?”

Luce smiled obligingly. Near the middle of the square, she noticed the guide who had been talking to Dino in the Ducal Palace. As she watched, the woman lifted up a huge scarlet umbrella and the tourists scurried in her direction.

“The tourists can’t be a metaphor for the birds,” Dino said. “They are too badly dressed.”

Luce laughed, her usually solemn round face as unguarded as a schoolgirl’s, and Dino bowed like a performer accepting
applause. Then he pivoted on the heel of his brogue and waved at a figure in a frock coat who was calling out to him in Italian. The man’s head sprouted a mountainous plumage of yellow curls, and his high-heeled pumps shone bright pink against the cobblestones.

Luce felt a surprised little thrill. Could it be Donald Sutherland under the curls? She recalled that the actor had played Casanova in an old movie by Fellini. Or was it a Sutherland look-alike? The man had caught Sutherland’s lugubrious style—the long, horsey face with the bulging eyes.

“You know him?” she asked.

“Leopardo’s been hired to dress up for the regatta,” Dino said. “It’s over two hundred years since the death of the great Venetian, you know.”

The lanky actor strolled across the square and kissed Dino on both cheeks. He beamed toothily as Dino focused his Mayima on him.

“My friend is interested in Casanova,” Dino said, from behind his camera.

“Were you in Fellini’s movie?” Luce asked.

“Leopardo is too young to claim that honour.” Dino laughed.

Someone was shouting Casanova’s name. The trio turned towards the wharf, where an enormous golden gondola was being landed by five men, all of them dressed in the same style of frock coat as Leopardo and wearing the same golden wigs. Once ashore, they began to tumble and somersault on the dock while the tourists clapped. They bowed, acknowledging the applause, and sprang into a human pyramid; Leopardo strode whistling over to join them. Despite his size, the others hoisted him up to the shoulders of the two men on the top of the pyramid, as the crowd around them clapped
and yelled. Out of the corner of her eye, Luce noticed the guide with the red scarf looking their way. When Luce met her gaze, the young guide turned her back and began talking to one of the American tourists, paddling the air with her hands as if she was irritated.

On the Molo, the six Casanovas had begun declaiming in English to the audience. The smallest of the six knelt before the crowd and began to describe the childhood of Casanova. The actor switched to Italian, and what he said made the crowd laugh.

“He’s telling us how Casanova amused his mother’s dinner guests!” Dino said, sliding his arm around Luce’s waist. “He was only eleven,
bella
, and he did it by answering an adult riddle. Why is the Latin noun for the female genitals masculine, and feminine for the male?”

Dino paused, and Luce said softly, “Because the servant takes his name from the master.”

“Ah,
bella
, you are clever.”

“Do you think Casanova’s mother loved him, Dino?” she asked, thinking of Lee’s comment about Casanova seeing a mother’s omnipotence in desire.

“An excellent question! She delighted in his wit, naturally. But she left him with his grandmother to go on the stage.”

“Poor Casanova,” Luce murmured. Over by the
vaporetto
station, a woman in a large Borsalino stood watching the performers. “Let’s get out of here,” Luce whispered.

They hurried away across the Molo. She kept her head down, and when they were out of sight, she let Dino take her hand and leaned into him, grateful for his warmth in the cool spring afternoon.

Lee waved to Luce, but she couldn’t seem to catch the girl’s eye. Or Luce didn’t want to be seen with that wolfish-looking
young man. Who would have guessed that someone as timid as Luce could be sly? She had been slow returning to the hospital, and when she returned, Luce had left for her appointment at the Sansovinian.

She had hoped to take Luce to the island of Torcello for dinner at the trattoria that specialized in
carciofi
, the lovely, plump artichokes that were first boiled and steamed, then coated in the thickest olive oil and served cold, their long stems trailing wistfully across the crockery. In the midst of her concern at the hospital, it hadn’t occurred to her to let Luce in on her plan. She had wanted to tell her, in a quiet moment, that the island of Torcello, with its clogged canals and deserted piazza, had been Kitty’s favourite spot in Venice. She was sure Luce would want to hear how she and Kitty had photographed its sad stone Madonna and eaten picnics of tasty artichokes by a muddy stream behind the old cathedral.

Now what was she supposed to do, go back to the hotel and wait? Lordy, it was a nuisance dealing with the needs of a young person. Perhaps Luce didn’t want to be with her. She had overheard Kitty once reprimanding Luce for calling her the Polish Pumpkin. She had been called worse things by her students. Still, it had stung her at the time.

Well, she would forget about Luce and work on her lecture notes at the Cantonine Istorica, another small restaurant she and Kitty had enjoyed. She’d eat their artichokes and toast Kitty with a glass
of prosecco.
Her mind made up, she strode off. But when she arrived, she found the restaurant closed. She peered through the window, looking for signs of waiters in their formal white jackets and saw the menu posted in the glass. Yes, there were the
carciofi
and the other dishes they had enjoyed together:
frittura mista
, a mixed fish fry;
capesante alla veneziana
, Venetian scallops cooked with garlic, parsley and
lemon juice; and
ragno di mare
, the spider crabs that Kitty had loved so much.

She started her walk back, alone, to the Flora.

Dino took Luce to Harry’s Bar, once the watering hole of Ernest Hemingway. They huddled together at the bar, looking at his shots from the previous day. He shook his head apologetically over some of the photographs and she realized that the rowing skiffs were slightly out of focus. She made sympathetic little noises when he said he’d had a day of bad luck. She found his droll, old-world manner touching.

“Do you want to go back to the square and take some more?” she asked.

Shaking his head, he offered her the last of the long-stemmed bitters in the silver bowl on the bar. “Come,
bella.
I have something to show you.”

He led her down a maze of streets lined with high stone walls that concealed private gardens. A fresh sea breeze was rustling the tops of the half-hidden trees, and overhead, a newly risen moon cast its watery light, changing them into silvery creatures. In one instant, Dino became Punchinello, with a long, comic nose, and next the plague doctor of Venice in a beaky mask and flowing white gown. They crossed into a well-lit alleyway, and Dino became a man again. She sighed in relief, and he tugged her close to him, staring into her eyes with an unsettling intensity. She realized he was standing on his toes so his face could be level with hers.

“You must like tall women.” She smiled at him.

“You are very beautiful,
bella,”
he whispered. “Your great big eyes—
bellissima!”
She could feel his longing for her in his touch, and the sensation made her giddy. She pulled back,
giggling nervously, and they started off again, their arms around each other’s waists. And now, unexpectedly, they stood on the Zattere wharf. Under the pink glow of street lamps, she noticed Dino’s friend, the tour guide, with her group of Americans sitting at one of the cafés. She pointed them out to Dino and he nodded dismissively. It was extraordinary, she thought, how small Venice was. Lee had told her the city was in an area no bigger than Central Park.

He took her arm and tugged her in the direction of a water-stained building.

“Luce, come. My flat is here. Look.” He pointed at a plaque on the wall.

“‘Beauty is religion if human virtue conjures it up and the reverence of the people holds it to its heart,’” she read. Half turning, she stared in the direction of the tour group and noticed that Dino’s friend was on her feet now, gazing at them.

“Did you know John Ruskin refused to make love to his bride?” Dino asked.

“Yes.” Luce decided to ignore the guide. “He expected her to have no pubic hair, like a statue.”

“So you know Ruskin too?” Dino sighed as if she had disappointed him and inserted his key in the door of the
pensione.
His flat turned out to be just two rooms—perhaps the very rooms, Luce thought, in which Ruskin had composed
The Stones of Venice.
She felt shy again, glancing nervously about the shabby space. To calm her nerves, she began to examine some black-and-white photographs scattered on the bed. Now that she’d come this far he would expect her to have sex with him. She knew she either had to sleep with him or explain why she had led him on. Thank goodness she had a moment to think. He had disappeared into a room off the entrance hallway. Rifling through his photographs, she
stopped at one with a letter clipped to it and read it without thinking. It appeared to be a cover letter from Dino, offering the sale of his photographs to an English paper:

So he really was a photojournalist. She felt slightly ashamed of herself for doubting him. Then she noticed the scribbled memo attached beneath:
Dear Dino, I am afraid your photographs are not up to the professional standards of
The European.

She hid the memo quickly beneath a pile of photographs as Dino emerged from the other room, holding up a blow-up of an eighteenth-century painting of a man in a wig and frock coat. The head was in profile, showing a youthful male face whose single, bulging eye seemed to express astonishment at something just outside the frame of the picture. Luce knew
from her research that it was a painting of Casanova at twenty-six, by his brother, Francesco Casanova.