What Casanova Told Me (7 page)

April 25, 1797

We are soon to be at war. General Bonaparte is in Austria while his army remains in northern Italy. But the situation has become critical. I saw this with my own eyes. I was standing with Father on the shore of the Giudecca near the Convent of the Capuchins. On Easter Monday there was an uprising against the French army in Verona and yesterday we witnessed a foolish gun battle—Venetian soldiers firing on French sailors from a fortress by the harbour. Father says the Venetians have brought war upon us sooner than he would like. Who knows now what will happen to Father’s trade mission? He had hoped the army would bypass Venice in its hurry to crush the Austrians.

Poor Father. He was feeling poorly, and he became seasick on the gondola taking us to the Convent. Afterwards, I held his head on my lap and massaged his scalp while the gondolier studied us with cunning eyes. Francis had gone to Murano to talk to the glass merchants, and I think the gondolier assumed Father was my aged husband. I stared coldly back and continued massaging my poor father’s scalp.

I do not hold this marriage plan against Father. I understand that he is doing what is best for me before he dies, and that he does not want me to make my way in the world without a husband, whereas I would be content to live alone in a city like Paris, far from the world of the Gooch farm with its views of the great Atlantic and the humpbacked islands near Boston. Aunt Abigail brought me up to know Greek and Latin, and I could make a modest living teaching the Classics to French schoolchildren. Father dismisses these plans and jokes that it is better for me to wed a dullard who will be too slow witted to mind my bookworm habits than choose a learned man who will assume a wife should obey her husband. There is little point trying to tell Father I am not reassured by this advice.

So I was thinking, as I massaged his head, that I forgive Father for wanting me to do and be things I do not wish to do and be. And perhaps it was the tenderness in my face that the gondolier misinterpreted. As for my betrothed, I feel only boredom. Each night, he comes to dinner and grumbles on about the lace industry in Burano, or the glass furnaces in Murano—both are sadly in decline, he claims. And despite his own lack of cleanliness, Francis has taken up Father’s practice of searching for bodily wastes in the streets as proof of Venetian sloth and depravity. Father had thought we might be married in Venice if his trade mission prospered. But yesterday Francis announced he will not be married in a Papist soap bubble—he means the Basilica of San Marco—because he found human excrement in the vestry.

My parent and I made our way up from the landing to the little Convent of the Capuchins near San
Redentore. The Abbess was waiting for us at the door, dressed in a white robe that left the tops of her round shoulders as naked as those of the French actresses we saw one night in Paris. Perhaps Father, too, was thinking of those daring thespians because I caught him gazing admiringly at the curve of her neck as she let us into an elegant hall.

Aside from a tall grilled wall rising up like the bars of a cage at the end of the room we could have been in a count’s banqueting hall in Paris. On one side of the barrier, dozens of young novices in pretty white dresses smiled and dipped like goldfish in a water bowl. On the other, young male visitors stood gossiping with them through the holes in the grille, designed for that purpose.

The Abbess, who spoke a pretty French, explained that young girls enter her convent to receive an education because Venetian schools are very poor, and Venetian girls among the most untutored in Europe. Most of the novices, she told us, will marry the young men visiting them there that afternoon.

Although I envied the novices their small bodies and flirtatious ways that so easily elicited the suitors’ attention, they appeared trapped in their pretty cage, and their suitors were a weedy, pale-faced lot, less imposing even than Francis who, like Father, at least looks ruddy from farm work. Our arrival disrupted the flirting, and a few of the suitors turned to listen as Father described the simple wedding ceremony he has planned for Francis and myself. He told the Abbess he wanted a minister of our own denomination and that the ceremony should be done before war is declared.

“You think there will be a war in Venice?” the Abbess said, smiling at the notion.

Father brought out a little box of powders he’d bought at a local apothecary shop. He took some up his nostrils.

“I pray I am wrong, Mother,” he said. “But I believe Napoleon will avenge the Verona uprising against his army. He is encouraged by the weakness of Venice. Already, your Senate has given in to his request to punish Venetians who resist the French.” The Abbess sat very still, as if she didn’t believe a word Father said, and then she broke into a tinkly, sly laugh.

“You Americans are a deadly serious race,” she said. “A month from now when your daughter is married, you and I will laugh at your foreboding.”

Our discussion over, the Abbess took us down a long hall and into another grilled room and then another until we found ourselves in a library. She produced a journal and quill-pen and proceeded to make notes about the cost of posting the banns while Father waited fretfully, twirling the curls on his bob wig between his fingers. I guessed that he was brooding about the fate of his mission.

I resolved not to worry about politics that afternoon and wandered over to enjoy the view from the library window. It overlooked a pretty hedged courtyard, and I was startled to see Monsieur Casanova sunning himself there in his body corset; nearby, a young nun stood washing clothes in a water trough. On a hedge behind him a long white garment was heaped like a snowdrift. Other pieces of clothing hung off little bushes and shrubs. Although I cannot help feeling the old Countess and Monsieur Casanova are two beings, I saw below me only one: a handsome old gentleman sitting amid the beanpoles in his white undergarments while the laundress cleaned his clothes.

Then, suddenly, in the distance, I saw a great flash of light and heard several loud cracking booms, one after another. At first, I imagined it was the sound of a storm breaking over the Lido beaches. A nun rushed into the courtyard shrieking, and now an army of them came pounding down the hall outside the library, calling to one another in Italian, their voices frightened and awestruck.

Father and I hurried with the Abbess down to the main door where a large crowd stood staring at two warships by the harbour entrance. Fortunately, it was some distance away.

“Our soldiers are attacking a French gunboat.” The Abbess no longer sounded girlish and merry, and the three of us stood in mute apprehension. I could not help thinking that if war comes to the Republic of Venice, there will be no time for weddings in Venetian churches.

May 3, 1797

There will be a war and a marriage.

The incident at the Lido that I witnessed the other day with Father and the Abbess has determined the fate of Venice, just as Father prophesied. Napoleon has been waiting for such an opportunity. Shots from Venetian soldiers at the fortress of St. Andrea near the harbour entrance killed four French sailors and their captain, Jean-Baptiste Laugier. The French captain was killed even though he shouted again and again through his trumpet, “I surrender!” Privately, Father told Francis and me that Venetians do not understand the vengeful determination of General Bonaparte.

There is little anyone can do. The Senate has apologized for the incident but my parent says this will not appease Napoleon, who needs the money chests of Venice to pay for his Austrian invasion. I am certain Father is right; when we were in Paris, the new martial pride of the French was a wonder.

Father told me yesterday that my wedding will take place on June 4, Whitsunday, at the Convent of the Capuchins. My distress over his announcement is severe, and my only joy is the comfort I find in Finette, Monsieur Casanova’s fox terrier, who always jumps up to meet me with affection.

Towards sunset I took her for a walk in the Piazza San Marco. Without realizing what I was doing, I began to climb the Campanile, the dog leading the way. I believe she was hoping, as I was, that Monsieur Casanova would be waiting in the shadows of its bell tower, but not a soul showed his face except for two French soldiers in Phrygian caps lurking by the entrance. As I passed by them with the dog, they made mocking comments about my size, not knowing I understood. I began to feed a flock of pigeons, shouting
“Cochon! Cochon!”
to the greedy birds scrabbling for my crumbs. The word “pig” was not meant for the birds but the soldiers. And behind me, to my satisfaction, I heard their laughter cease.

Inquiry of the Day: Why do I admire those who can escape their circumstances?

Fruitful Thought for the Day: It is because I come from a people who dared the Atlantic for a new life.