Hill Towns (23 page)

I truly believe Joe hated it. I still am not quite sure why. I think I know: Venice robs you of yourself and hands you back changed. But I still am not sure. It could be that it was because I loved it. We began to change in earnest, Joe and I, on that first slow ride down the Canal HILL TOWNS / 187

Grande. Or perhaps it was simply that we began to become…us.

Just before we passed under the Rialto Bridge we met a procession of black gondolas, trimmed sparingly with gold and moving infinitely slowly. Dark-clad men and women with black scarves and shawls over their heads followed in their gondolas the lead one, where a coffin and an oblong of flowers reposed alone except for the gondolier. A funeral; of course it was. How strange, I thought, to go to your last rest on water, as you had come from that first one. It seemed fitting, somehow natural. Our boatman took off his livery cap, and Ada Forrest made a discreet sign of the cross. Sam shook his red head in something like disgust. Joe gazed at the procession raptly. I knew what he would say before he said it.

“Death in Venice,” he said. “Perfect. Thomas Mann couldn’t have done better; are you sure you didn’t set it up for us, Sam?”

“Glad you like it,” Sam said. “But it’s none of my doing.

I’d just chunk the poor bastard into the canal, like they do the dogs and cats. Thomas Mann obviously never had to pay for a funeral flotilla; these gondolas will set the family back whatever inheritance Uncle Aldo or whoever left. They
will
do it, though. I never heard of anybody going to San Michele permanently in a vaporetto.”

“Where’s San Michele?” Yolanda asked. She had her thick chestnut hair loose today on her shoulders, even though the gray stillness was already oppressive, and wore a low-cut yellow cotton dress and sandals. I thought she was looking prettier and younger each day I spent with her. Her eyes were clear; she had obviously stuck to the mineral water she still carried with her.

188 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

“The funeral island,” Sam said. “The cemetery island. It’s where them as can afford it have crypts, and them as can’t go into a common grave after twelve years. Proper field of bones, it is; like they grow death there. Doesn’t matter who you are, either; if you don’t pay you don’t stay. Twelve years and zip.”

“God,” Joe said. “That’s barbaric. Why? What about the English and Americans who’re buried here? Aren’t there quite a few? Didn’t Ezra Pound die here, and…somebody else, I forget who? Do they dump the foreigners too?”

“Nope. There’s a separate Protestant section that doesn’t get the heave-ho unless there’s
Acqua alta
—high water. Then, of course, everybody floats right on out. The reason for the twelve years is that there simply isn’t enough land on San Michele, or anywhere else in Venice, to hold the dead of all those centuries. There’s a separate Isle of Bones out past Torcello if San Michele isn’t Gothic enough for you.”

“Who else is there that we’d know?” Maria said, fascinated.

“Well, Wagner and Browning and Diaghilev, for starters.

There’s something nice about Diaghilev, in the Orthodox Church section. For as long as anybody remembers there’s been a ballet slipper left on his grave, with flowers in it.

When the old one finally rots, a new one appears. Nobody seems to know who brings them.”

“What a lovely thing,” I said, the enchantment growing.

“To go across the lagoon in a gondola to your grave, to have someone leave a ballet slipper on it. No wonder you hear so much about death and beauty in the same breath here.”

It seemed to me that every small canal we passed was arched over with high, curved bridges. Venice seemed to HILL TOWNS / 189

be strung with them, like spiderwebs of lacy stone. The sight of them made me uneasy. I felt gooseflesh on my bare arms and rubbed them with my hands, even as the sun broke free of the mist and hung in the sky like the white thumb print of a moon.

Joe saw my gesture.

“Bridges, bridges everywhere,” he said lightly. “Cat will go out of her skull.”

Anger bit me like a stinging insect. I did not answer, but Sam did.

“Well, there’s this little saint, Saint Zita, I think,” he said.

“She’s the patron saint of those who must cross bridges. I’ll get Cat one of her medals as soon as we land. She and Saint Zita will waltz right over every bridge in Venice.”

He looked levelly at Joe. He wore dark sunglasses this morning, and I could not see the piercing blue eyes. He reminded me of a hawk in its hunting hood, thin blade of nose and slash of mouth, coppery face. The earring shone dully.

The ponytail was shoved up under the straw hat; it gave him a different look altogether. Florence; I thought he looked far more a piece of Florence than this aqueous, ephemeral place.

Savonarola’s Florence.

Joe looked straight back at him. “You do that,” he said.

And then, “Christ, look at that! Jesus! Does every toilet in Venice flush right into the Grand Canal?”

I looked, then looked quickly away. At the mouth of a tiny canal the bloated body of a small black-and-white dog bobbed among a cluster of what could only be human excrement. The sleek, evil head of a water rat bobbed in the midst of it, nibbling. A powerful stench followed the sight by a breath.

“Well, you know, Joe, death and beauty,” Sam For 190 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

rest drawled. “You said it yourself. Oscar Wilde said riding in a gondola was like riding in a coffin through a sewer. I’d think you of all people would dig it. You know, Gothic decay? Faulkner?”

“Faulkner didn’t shit in his water,” Joe said tightly. I thought dismally that things were not going to go well for us in Venice.

“How do you know?” Sam said, smiling murderously, as only Southerners really seem to know how to do. I thought he was angry with Joe for his remark about me and the bridges; the thought pleased me obscurely but troubled me, too. I did not want these two men circling around me stiff-legged, like male dogs.

“Where in Venice did Thomas Mann die? I mean, his character?” I said quickly to Joe.

“On the Lido. A beach. Outside the lagoon, I think,” Joe said, diverted. “It’s one of the places I’m going to take you, Cat. I’ve always wanted to see it.”

“I can tell you right now you won’t like it,” Sam said equably. “It’s wall to wall with hotels and condos, and the beach is so full of fat bellies in bikinis and tiny tots peeing in the water it might as well be Coney Island. Looks a lot like it, too. You’d have a hard time finding any kind of liter-ary death there, except maybe sun-stroke. But don’t let me discourage you.”

“I won’t,” Joe said in his school voice. “It has not escaped my notice that we always end up going to the places you want to go, but you by no means discourage me. Cat and I are going this afternoon.”

“Joe, I’m sitting—” I began, and bit my tongue. “But I do want to see it. If you’ll wait until tomorrow morning—”

“I’m going today,” he said. “You come or not, as you wish.”

But in the end he did not go that afternoon. By the HILL TOWNS / 191

time we had decanted Colin and Maria onto the private landing platform of the Europa and Regina, followed by Sam and Ada and the luggage, the sky had darkened again, and by the time we had followed Yolanda through the maze of
calles
and alleyways back to the Campo San Fantin and the Campo La Fenice, just beyond it, and found the small, pretty, vine-grown Fenice et des Artistes Hotel, great warm spatters of rain had begun to fall. So Ada Forrest, carrying a huge Europa and Regina umbrella, called that afternoon for Joe and Yolanda and they went off to the Accademia, and I waited, stung and lonely, for Sam to come and fetch me to go and sit for him again, this time in the fabled light of Venice.

“I was going to give you lunch in our room at the hotel,”

Sam said, herding me through the bumping throngs in the Campo La Fenice under a huge hotel umbrella identical to the one Ada had brought; I wondered if the Europa kept a closetful of them. “But I think we’ll stop in at Florian’s and get a bite. When I left, the sounds coming from the newlyweds’ room were not exactly conducive to dining. I’ve heard a lot in my day, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything quite like that.”

“Is his leg bad, do you think?” I said, and then realized what he meant and said, “Shit.”

He laughed. “If it was, he wasn’t feeling it then. It’s probably broken in six places by now. I always heard, back home, about the catamounts screaming in the swamp, though nobody I knew ever heard one. But I think I did this morning.

Good thing I wasn’t trying to paint you. I’d have ended up jumping your bones. That little gal is going to get us all thrown out of there.”

192 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

I felt the red heat start up my neck from my chest. I thought of them, the two of them, naked in the rain light on a great canopied bed, thrashing, screaming out their joy. I thought of last night, on the train. I thought of Sam’s long, deft hands….

I trotted with him under the umbrella, up and down again, and only when we were past it realized that I had crossed a bridge surrounded on all sides by people and not felt the fear. I grinned, half in exasperation and half in triumph. It was dark and close under the umbrella, and I could see little of Venice but lovely peeling walls—and legs. Thousands of legs and feet, hurrying in the rain. It seemed as if we walked a long time, the warm, musky smell of him thick in my nos-trils, and finally I said, “Where is Florian’s?”

“Here,” he said, and led me between two pillars in a long dark portico of some sort, and lifted the umbrella from us, and we were in the Piazza San Marco. Saint Mark’s Square.

I did what I had become accustomed to doing when overwhelmed in Italy: I pressed my fist to my mouth and whispered, “Oh, God,” and started to cry. I felt the tears rise, flood my eyes, cling to my bottom lashes—and then, instead, I laughed. It was a kind of hiccup, a reflux of pure joy. The Piazza San Marco was, and is, the kind of space that elicits joy. Even in the rain. Even inundated with the worst of its tourist floods, in July at lunchtime. Even when the man you have loved always is angry at you, and has gone away with two pretty women who are the absolute antithesis of you.

Even then.

We walked along the covered gallery on the right, my eyes refusing to embrace the great baroque-domed Basilica and the Campanile and Doge’s Palace but sweeping them, averting, then coming back, as if in flirtation. I HILL TOWNS / 193

could not seem to stare squarely at them. Later, later, I would come here and simply sit and let them register, but not now; it was too much. The stones of the piazza glistened in the rain, but there were still knots of tourists grouped about it, flinging food to the flocks of pigeons whose wings made a continual dry, snapping noise in the thick air, and everywhere cameras aimed, clicked; minicams whirred. The hundreds of small chairs and tables that forged out into the glorious space like promontories were empty, though, and old waiters in black, white-aproned, were folding some of them and taking them inside. Sam turned me through a door and into a vast, dim space of dark paneling and apple-green walls and smoky old mirrors. We found a tiny table and sat down on gilded chairs. The room was not crowded but contrived to feel, to me, thronged with people, most of whom were staring at us.

Sam took off the disreputable, damp-splotched hat and raked his fingers through his rowdy, steel-wool hair. In the mirror opposite I saw a red giant, disheveled, barbaric, and a thin woman with eyes like black pools and damp, fair hair pasted in circlets on her cheeks. A waif of a woman, a men-dicant. Was that us? Surely they would put us out of this elegant place. Here came the waiter to do it now….

“
Buon giorno
, Signor Forrest,” the fine-featured old man said. He might have been one of the Doges, he had the black eyes and the proud prow of chin and nose. “You’ll be lunching? Signora.” And he nodded to me.

“
Buon giorno
,” Sam said pleasantly. “Yes, we will. Let’s start with a Bellini for the signora and a gin for me. Then we’ll decide.”

The old Doge nodded and went away, and I looked up at Sam.

194 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

“Not here too,” I said.

He laughed. It was like firing a cannon in a small chapel.

Heads turned; I heard one or two voices whispering, “Forrest.

The painter. You know.”

“Who’s she? Not his wife.”

“I don’t know.”

“I had my Venetian period several years ago,” he said. “We spent a lot of time here. Everybody comes to Florian’s several times a day, and since none of the waiters ever seem to quit or die or get fired, a few of them remember me. I tip well.

And I always came inside. Most people sit outside.”

The Bellini came and was ambrosial. We ordered two more drinks.

“I don’t remember seeing anything of yours from Venice,”

I said. “Where are they?”

“I didn’t show them,” Sam said. “I guess I worked here off and on for a year and a half; we had an apartment at the Europa. I thought the light was the most glorious stuff I had ever seen; I thought I was going to be the one to really show the world what Venetian light is about. Forget Titian and Tintoretto and Constable and Sargent and Whistler. Sam Forrest’s Venice was going to be hotter than catshit. But I couldn’t paint it. Never could get it. Whatever I painted by Venetian light turned into nineteenth-century German post-cards. I finally realized that what I’m about is solidity. Planes, angles, lines, splashes, masses—
globs
, as Ada says. I can’t catch the diffuse, oblique stuff. It makes an ass of me, and I of it. Most of the work from that time is in a warehouse in Rome.”

“Do you mind?”

“Naw. Tell you the truth, I’ve never cared that much for Venice. Something here makes me want to circle the HILL TOWNS / 195

wagons and hunker down. Besides, I think this time may be different. I’ve got a good feeling about this portrait of you.

I think you and I together may crack this damned fool’s-gold light.”

I said nothing, feeling shy and pleased.

We ate a delicate soup of creamed mussels with saffron and a plate of tiny fried spider crabs, and drank white wine.