What Casanova Told Me Page 4

  “I will. Thank you,” I said softly.

  “Without proof, your father may not believe you. But at least you will have done your republican duty.”

  “I must go now,” I said. “Father will be looking for me.”

  Carrying Finette in my arms, I made to leave the platform, but he continued to sit on the bench and I understood he was exhausted.

  “Are you all right, monsieur? Can I have someone in the square fetch you water?”

  “I am grateful to you. But the climb was hard on bones no longer young. Forgive me for not getting to my feet.”

  “I wish you a pleasant evening, monsieur.” He must have noticed my hesitation over using his name because he called after me as I began my descent:

  “My inscription is still in the prison at the Ducal Palace. No one but myself knows where it is. The seventh cell, under the third plank to the left of the door. A tiny inscription. ‘I love. Jacob Casanova, 1756.’ If I were only a few years younger, I would prove it to you surely.”

  This last comment made my heart flutter. What a foolish, frivolous expression—a fluttering heart, as if the organ were not the sturdy blood pumper that fuels us all. Yet that is how I felt in the presence of the courtly Venetian gentleman. As I left, I saw him pull out the miniature portrait and his lips moved as if he was murmuring an endearment to the woman under the little glass casing. I suddenly felt very sorry for him.

  I quickened my step, going round and down as fast as I could into the darkness, the noise and the lights of the Good Friday evening in Venice.

  A shadow fell across the page.

  Luce noticed the pair of brogues squarely placed by her chair. She had a weakness for men’s shoes, especially brogues, the only shoes she could remember her father wearing. These were worn and rubber-soled, and the sight of their scuffed toes sent a shudder of longing through Luce.

  “May I join you?” His voice emptied into the air over her head. “I am not dangerous.” And now a card appeared on the page of the old journal—“Dino Fabbiani,” it read, “Photo-journalist, The European.”

  “I’m here on assignment,” he said, speaking English with a slight, musical accent. “It’s always nice to see Americans coming out for the regatta.”

  “I’m Canadian.” Luce was startled to notice how breathless she sounded.

  He slid his lean body into the empty chair. “North American then. You know—you have a very unusual voice …” He cocked his head, as if listening to far-off music. “What is the expression in English? My lady’s dulcet tones …?”

  Luce felt her cheeks pinking up. It was a nuisance that she blushed easily; people often suspected her of lying. As a child, she’d learned there was no remedy for pale-skinned people; the harder you struggled, the deeper and more incriminating the blush. He pointed to the old journal.

  “Is that yours?”

  “It belonged to my ancestor … she travelled with Casanova.” Why had she blurted out the truth? Some girlish compulsion to please? She carefully placed the journal out of sight on her lap.

  He closed his eyes, nodding portentously. “This is remarkable. You don’t understand how remarkable.” He opened his eyes again, his expression good-natured and alert. “I admire Casanova greatly. Did you know he broke out of a prison in the Ducal Palace? There are guides at the palace who say he was allowed to escape, you realize, because he was a spy for the Venetian Republic.”

  “That can’t be true. The bill for the damages he did to the roof of the Ducal Palace was found in the Venetian archives.”

  “So you know Casanova’s story. Would you like to see his prison cell? I have a friend who could show it to us this evening—after hours.”

  Across the canal, a heavy-set woman in a Borsalino fedora was trudging slowly towards the small footbridge. Luce gave Lee a faint-hearted wave. “I have to meet someone,” she said.

  “Tomorrow then. You will come to the Piazza San Marco. At one p.m. By the café with the loudest orchestra,” he added. He stood up and bowed, his slimness apparent in his black jacket and jeans, and she half expected him to click his heels like a dancing master. He went back to his table outside. Then he paused and gave her a tentative smile as if he expected her to disappoint him.

  “I’ll see,” Luce nodded.

  Dinner did not go well. As they finished their first course, Lee Pronski seemed distracted and glum, and Luce didn’t know how to talk to her mother’s scholarly lover who wore her jaunty Borsalino throughout supper, its wide brim shadowing her fine Roman nose and wide, down-turned mouth.

  “Is that a friend of yours? He seems to think so.” Lee nodded towards Dino Fabbiani who was now standing at the door of the restaurant. He waved then in their direction before turning and walking off. Aware she was using a faux, singsongy tone, Luce explained that he was the photographer they had met on the motoscafo.

  “If you ask me, he looks like the kind of local who preys on tourist women.”

  “Maybe they prey on him?” Luce suggested in her whispery voice.

  “Speak up, Luce. I can’t hear you.”

  “I was just wondering if some of the tourists are looking for love?”

  “Oh, love.” Lee stared gloomily around her. “After your mother’s death, I don’t have the stamina. I’ll leave that to you, although—as I recall—Kitty used to worry that you were lacking in the romance department. She tried to encourage you to be more outgoing, didn’t she? Of course, gregarious women like Kitty don’t understand introverts.”

  Her cheeks reddening, Luce thought she’d heard wrong, but Lee ventured on, making small talk about Venice and their hotel, Lee’s eyes brightening over the arrival of their desserts, an apple dumpling with toasted almonds for Luce and a large tiramisù for Lee.

  “Now, Luce, shall we get down to business?” Lee asked, spooning up the last of her dessert. As Luce watched meekly, she delved into her capacious handbag and brought out a bundle of papers that included a map of Greece and a large booklet. Lee handed the booklet over to her.

  “Have you seen this?”

  Luce shook her head. The booklet was a newsletter for the Association of Canadian Archaeologists. On its first page, there was an article about her mother’s memorial service in Crete:

  A Group of Scholars And Friends To Pay Tribute

  To Dr. K.A. Adams, The Well-Known Canadian

  Archaeologist, In Northern Crete

  An unusual memorial tribute will take place this June in Crete when friends and colleagues gather to celebrate Dr. K.A. Adams, who was killed in a car accident there eighteen months ago.

  The tribute is being held in an island cave believed to have been a shrine of the ancient Minoans. Most of the participants met Dr. Adams in Crete where she took part in tours of Minoan sites run by the tour guide Christine Harmon.

  The most recent of Dr. Adams’ ten books was The Minoan Way, a collection of essays about life in early Crete. Her bestseller, An Archaeologist Looks at Prehistory, has been translated into 26 languages.

  Dr. Adams began her career studying the pottery of the Iroquoian-speakers of Southern Ontario. In 1982, she was made full professor at the University of Toronto. Her monograph What they Wrought, about female potters in North America’s Neolithic communities, was strongly influenced by the late Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, who believed early Europeans worshipped an earth mother known as the Great Goddess of Regeneration.

  Rejecting the statistical approach usual in her profession, Dr. Adams became a controversial figure when she wrote about women playing an important role in Neolithic religion.

  Her books and articles expressed the belief that prehistory provides cultural models that show humans can create peaceful, industrious societies without wars or class distinctions.

  “It’s a nice write-up, isn’t it?” Lee asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When I think of how some of your mother’s colleagues ostracized her … I suppose we should be grateful they can acknowledge her n
ow.” With a sigh, Lee unfolded the map of Greece.

  “We’ll meet the group in Athens,” she said, pointing to the city. “And I’ll give my talk at the consulate. It’s on the controversy about the Minoan sacrifice—one of your mother’s subjects. I’m sure you know about it.”

  “Not really.”

  “I can’t hear you, Luce.”

  “I’m looking forward to your talk.”

  “Thank you. Then we’ll spend six days with Christine in Herakleion.” Lee ran her finger along some unreadable place name in northern Crete.

  “Is that where she died?”

  “No, it was Zaros.”

  “I was hoping to see Zaros.”

  “Well, we will have to see what Christine has planned for us. Don’t you fancy it?” she asked, pointing at Luce’s untouched dessert. Luce had done her best with the risotto Lee had ordered for her, but the tiramisù was too rich, even for someone who could eat whatever she liked and stay slim. She handed over her dessert and politely hid her surprise as Lee made short work of it. There was no more talk about what Kitty thought of Luce, or the memorial service in Crete, and Luce herself was loath to continue the conversation. It upset her to think of her mother discussing her deficiencies with Lee.

  Lee paid the bill and then she and Luce set off for the Hotel Flora, going slowly to accommodate the older woman who walked with a magisterial bounce. The moon was full over Venice, and in the narrow streets gaggles of sightseers moved between the pockets of silver and mauve shadows, enjoying its giddy influence. As they entered the Piazza San Marco, Lee pointed at the large watchtower.

  “Did you know Venetians hoisted criminals in a cage up the Campanile? The inquisitors had spies everywhere. You could get your neighbour arrested just by sending them a letter.”

  “Wasn’t Venice the first modern police state?”

  “Speak up, Luce. I can’t hear when you whisper.”

  “I think Venice is lovely.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Lee nodded as they passed the Quadri where a string quartet was playing “Yesterday.”

  “Oh, Lordy! The Beatles. I find nostalgia a bore.” Luce saw Lee frown, as if daring her to disagree, and she found herself nodding obligingly. As they passed by an arcade, Luce noticed a man watching her from under one of its arches. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t see his face without her sunglasses, and it was too dark for them now. Could it be Dino Fabbiani? Or was she just alarmed by the density of Venice, where everyone appeared to be watching everyone else? She turned to stare at him and the man stepped back into the shadows.

  As they walked on, Luce felt sure the man was following them. Yet when she turned around to look, no one was there. She must be imagining things, influenced perversely by the play of moonlit shadows on the old buildings. A moment later, she turned again.

  “I think someone is following us,” she said.

  “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. Venice has the lowest crime rate in Europe.”

  “I don’t like being stared at.”

  “Hang on for a minute, will you?” Lee stopped to catch her breath in a lane outside the square. “You know, Luce, you tilt your head just like Kitty.”

  Not certain she had understood Lee properly, Luce bent her head down to hear the shorter woman.

  “You remind me of your mother, Luce. The way you listen.”

  “I’m nothing like her.” Luce shook her head in a fierce, embarrassed little gesture.

  Lee’s smile wavered but she composed herself and pointed down a side street. “The Flora is that way.”

  A few minutes later Lee admitted she had overlooked the little lane, hardly wider than a pair of shoulders, that led to the Hotel Flora. They had to retrace their steps three times before they saw the hotel’s discreet sign, with the symbol of a tree in white on a black background.

  Alone in her room, Lee Pronski exchanged her leisure suit for a black kimono sprinkled with tiny yellow tigers, and reflected on the evening. Despite Luce’s ridiculous clothes—what was that fringe of lace peeking above the girl’s jeans, anyway? Her underpants? Probably. The jeans were cut so low you could see her belly button. Still, despite the girl’s clothing and her boyishly cropped chestnut hair, there was an old-fashioned air of naivety about her lover’s grave, soft-spoken daughter. She saw it in the girl’s large, trusting grey eyes, the beautiful, myopic eyes of someone prone to introspection. A pity Luce tried to hide her short-sightedness behind those round sunglasses. And then the incongruous combination of her height with that whispery voice, a frustrating susurration of apology mixed with resentment. What, she wondered, did Luce feel resentful about? She had led a life of ease in the bosom of Kitty’s well-to-do family.

  Lee wanted to feel protective towards her lover’s child, but it had made her sad to see the solemn way Luce tilted her head when she concentrated. The mannerism induced a slight double chin, out of place on someone her age though it had seemed so endearing in Kitty. Otherwise, Luce was right: she was cut from a different cloth than her petite, energetic mother whose skin and hair were so fair she seemed to have been hewn from pine.

  At dinner, she had put her foot in her mouth, she knew that, telling Luce how Kitty felt about her daughter’s shyness. But she had been trying to convey that she, too, had sometimes felt like an introvert with Kitty, whose chatty, outgoing manner disarmed everyone she met. Time was, Lee thought, when I would have handled the situation with more finesse. She wasn’t unkind by nature, although her blunt manner had often been misconstrued by her students. She had grown up in Brooklyn and she struggled with the reserve of Canadians like Luce who didn’t come out and say what they meant. You had to guess with Torontonians, and if you failed to get it right, you were judged silently. Nevertheless, she had enjoyed passing on her knowledge about women’s role in Neolithic cultures, even though many students were bored by the subject now. Young women dismissed her generation of feminists. It wasn’t as if women, like men, had a solid tradition to fall back on. Who read Susan Griffin now or studied Daly or Christ? Only Kitty had seen through her carapace and knew the pride she took in her teaching.

  Smiling wistfully, she removed the small photograph she had tucked inside the pages of her guidebook and stroked it sadly. “Kitty, I’ll do better with your girl next time,” she whispered.

  She put away the photograph. It was time to run through the little chores she had planned for herself that evening. First, from the innards of her overstuffed purse, she extracted a manuscript titled “The Minoan World: A Peace-Loving Matrilineal Society or a Culture Based on Blood Rituals and Human Sacrifice?” Lee’s face softened at the sight of the large, generous o’s and a’s. Kitty had written her essays out in longhand first; it was a superstition of hers, that thoughts come more easily using a pen than a keyboard. Lee had misplaced the published version, but she had wanted to consult Kitty’s text for her talk on the bogus Minoan sacrifice: she’d need all the ammunition she could muster for her audience in Athens. She set the manuscript aside and took out a postcard of the Piazza San Marco that showed pigeons sprinkled in the air like flashing coins flung by a beneficent Doge. The brightly lit scene did nothing to convey the vortex of perpetual motion in the square, where tourists walked through flying birds. In slow, deliberate strokes, she wrote to her old colleague Martin Wells:

  Dear Marty,

  Arrived this morning with Luce on the early plane. I am fine if a little low. To be expected in the aftermath of the last eighteen months. I trust Luce will be able to look after herself. Today we found a mother-daughter pair in an old bookshop. A Bronze Age copy, Caynkenar type, provenance unknown. Luce pleased by my token. Consoling myself with gourmand fare.

  Lee

  P.S. The chair of our division sent me your course description with a note, urging me to come out of retirement. Thanks for thinking of me, old friend. I haven’t forgotten the good times we had teaching together.

  She stuffed the card into her purse and withdrew a well-worn black-ringed n
otebook. A syllabus had been Scotch-taped to its inside page:

  Humanities 6491. 02: Special Topics: The Journey of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, from a multi-faceted Neolithic deity to one limited primarily to sexual functions. The course will emphasize the cultures of prehistoric Europe and Minoan Crete whose people worshipped an all-powerful goddess of regeneration.

  It wasn’t good to think of work when she felt disoriented by memories of Kitty. Yawning, Lee put away her notebook and went to her window overlooking the moonlit domes of San Marco. She had meant what she said to Luce about Venice. Aside from the occasional pickpocket, there was nothing to fear. The residue of an atavistic loss lingered beneath its legendary suspension of time—perhaps a futile longing for the mainland the Venetians had abandoned over a thousand years before. To escape Attila and his army of Huns, they’d cut their ties with what remained of the Roman Empire and built homes on the swampy islands a few miles from shore. Like me, Lee thought. I, too, have chosen isolation, but the price of isolation is the pain of feeling abandoned and forgotten. Was that why she had asked Luce to come with her to Crete and offered to pay the girl’s fare?

  Her gesture had surprised her friends—and herself. She had prided herself on avoiding faux intimacies with her students and yet, she thought ruefully, here she was trying to shepherd her dead lover’s daughter through the Mediterranean. Now that Kitty was gone, she felt like just another middle-aged woman with a past receding like an ancient shoreline.

  With a groan, Lee threw herself down on her bed. I will not feel sorry for myself like those sad English women I read about in Anita Brookner novels, she thought. I must choose and know that I chose my circumstances.

  Luce awoke, trembling, from a dream. Already she could barely remember it, but it brought back a memory of waiting for her mother who was working on a dig near the Wye River in Ontario.

  On that long-ago day, Luce had been waiting bravely by herself in the marsh by the old Jesuit ruins. All morning, she’d played in the bulrushes whose roots intertwined into a spongy carpet under the surface of the water, imagining she was one of the Jesuits from medieval France who left behind old axes and gun casings and did not renounce their faith even when the Iroquois scooped out their sizzling flesh with clam shells.