Carnevale

by Michelle Lovric

  Never mind.

  One day a real acqua alta will dislodge the letter. Not a petty little acqua alta but a ferocious one. It will clean out the cluttered arteries and veins of Venice. It will make Casanova’s letter float to the surface, and I will be ready to take it to her.

  But back then, in 1782, I knew that I could not bring Casanova back to her. He was in disgrace. He would stay there. She knew that I would never catch the king pantegana who lived in the well in our courtyard, and she could never catch him for me. But I could sit on her lap, and she could stroke my ears, and we could dream a little together.

  So much pain flowing in blood-red routes across Europe, while Cecilia stayed at home dropping useless tears into the Grand Canal, reading his letters, waiting for him to ask her, experimenting with cretins and sophisticates until they made her sick.

  I watched her weep when she was lonely for him. Sometimes I howled a little, in sympathy.

  When the day grows dim, I always make myself available for Cecilia. The Grand Canal, to those who can really hear, becomes noisy with tears at that time. As everyone knows, cats can hear what humans cannot. Our ears twitch even when we seem to be most profoundly asleep. We are sensitive to misery. There is a lot of it about.

  Other cats join us, me and Cecilia. We sing.

  The chorus thickens with song, and tears. We are voracious of the sadness; we devour it. Cats are absorbent of human misery. We take it away in our fur.

  The hour of the cats draws near. The sun dies in the arms of the evening. We cats take to our roofs. We walk over the terracotta tiles with a delicacy you cannot imagine, lifting our paws high like Spanish horses.

  Under the water, in Venice, the bones of dead cats and dead humans are joined in the sediment. In love, in joy and in loss, we cats are with the humans who deserve us.

  It may seem just now that Cecilia does not deserve me. Be patient, though.

  She will earn me.

  Chapter 21

  La lagrema più grossa xe quela che va in carozza.

  The biggest teardrop is the one that goes in a wagon.

  VENETIAN PROVERB

  Paris, October 10th, 1783

  Darling Cecilia,

  How are you? It’s days and days since your last letter. I worry for you, as you know. Don’t leave me without news. Since we started this delicious correspondence I find I cannot live without it.

  As you know, I am in Paris now, with my brother Francesco. I shall stay here some months. One has need of family in times like this. (God knows, though, my mother never felt that need!) Francesco has been envious of me all his life, of course, but, finally, he has managed to reconcile envy with affection. Francesco should have been a rich man. Paris loved him once. Did you know that the Empress Catherine bought one of his paintings for the Hermitage! Ah, Cecilia! I see your triangular face all pointed with envy at this! Francesco should have been able to look after us all, but his life of luxury and two bad marriages have left him in ruins. He’s now twitter-boned and impotent in every way, as he has always been in the bedchamber. I guess that God gave his Word to me in such excess that my brother was bound to be deprived. Who knows? I must only be grateful for my share.

  In any case, Francesco requests that you convey his regards to Antonio, if you see him – I don’t know if he has yet forgiven you for taking his noble clients. But one day, I predict, Antonio will be proud to be the portrait painter who gave the famous Cecilia Cornaro a start in her glorious career.

  Paris is cold and strange to me. There is no one here who remembers me in my great days here. No one ever remembers the women I loved. Every night I dream of Venice. Always that white light of the morning of my escape from the Leads. I see something dead floating under the surface of the water at San Barnaba. An eddy from a silent gondola divides the blank sheet of liquid behind me. Faces are withdrawn from windows as I pass. And nowhere do I see a beckoning smile or an outstretched hand for Giacomo Girolamo Casanova.

  Of course, I meet celebrities as usual, the wise Mr Benjamin Franklin and a young man who was the son of the delectable Marie-Louison O’Morphy from a liaison after her time in the king’s harem. Portraits, portraits! Remember it was I who brought La Morphy to the king. For I had her portrait painted; in it I had her pose naked, with the glories of her rump and thighs begging for the urgent attentions of a lover. The painter was so proud of his work that he made copies. When the king saw the portrait, he demanded to see the original, and having seen her, he took her. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I have travelled only in order to bring happiness to pretty girls in need of a little help. It was always tempting to sweeten the charity with a little love.

  I finish this letter now, for I am summoned to the drawing room. I must smile, and bow, and declaim – the French that I learnt in Rome all those years ago still serves me here. My little teacher, Barbaruccia, what joy it gives me to remember her dressed in men’s clothes for her elopement! And that makes me remember the nun M. M. in her male attire. I think of how I followed her trim buttocks in pantaloons through Zannipoli by moonlight. Ah! They have all become so ghostly.

  Only you seem real to me now.

  Goodbye, my little Cecilia. Paint well. Remember that I love you. Remember to take the greatest care of yourself.

  Your Casanova.

  Paris, November 21st, 1783

  Cecilia, my Cecilia,

  Today is the festival of Salute in Venice. In my mind’s deep eye I see you with your candle entering the fairy-tale church, a fairy-woman yourself, but smelling richly of oil. And tomorrow, by coincidence, is your Saint’s day. I hope that you will mark it. Don’t be so lost in your work that you forget Saint Cecilia and her bath! Think on the bath you took on the night you met me …

  It’s so strange to realise which are the things that make you homesick. This morning I sat in a café in Montmartre. Suddenly the clink of a spoon against a coffee cup brought back to me a vision of Florian and our Piazza, and a thousand Venetians stirring sugar into their coffee, sweetening their already too-sweet lives. It was unbearably painful to know that you might be among them, and that I am not.

  In three days I leave with my brother Francesco for Vienna. Francesco is to be taken under the protection of Prince Kaunitz, but I, my love, must look to myself. I must find work.

  I kiss you. I need to know how you are.

  Your Casanova.

  PS Is it true that there are plans to send up a gas balloon in Venice during Carnevale this year? How I wish that I could see it.

  Vienna, mid February, 1874

  Dear Cecilia,

  After sixty-two days of travel and it seems as many years of genuflection, I have found work. I have ended up here in Vienna again. I have become the secretary of the Ambassador Sebastiano Foscarini. I am to write his dispatches. He’s a gentleman. I am indebted to him for the sum of 500 francs. I do not see how I shall pay it, but I am not dead yet.

  I have met here a young girl who reminds me of you, my love. Caton M. has none of your talents, but I like her lopsided smile. I saw her nether garments fluttering on her windowsill yesterday, and became aroused, though without much vigour.

  Without you beside me, my desires are running dry. Yours, I hope, are in their full flood. I know you hate to hear it, Cecilia, but I must say it to you: I wish you more love in your life, both given and taken. Our time together has been so short. You must have more than I could give you. Nature demands it.

  Speaking of underclothes, Clement of Alexandra, who was a man of great learning, observed that the modesty that seems so firmly rooted in the minds of women is in fact lodged only in their underclothes, because as soon as they are persuaded to remove those, not a shadow of it remains.

  I cannot remember your nether garments, Cecilia. But I believe this is because you never wore them.

  But I do not know for certain. There are so many things about you I do not know. We never lived together; we never passed a winter in each other’s arms, nor woke to kiss each other w
ith cold noses. All we had were those drowsy before-dawn rousings, the grittiness under the eyelids, those hasty farewells. I never watched you sleep, never saw the hollowing and plumping of your breast as you lay dreaming.

  The next morning

  Last night I dreamt that I was wearing your clothes, impregnated with your smells. Then you appeared, and you treated me masterfully, reaching into my neckline and pinching my nipple. You bared your own breast and with it you entered my mouth and stayed there as long as you wanted, while I gasped.

  I am yours as you are ever mine.

  But go carefully, my darling.

  Your Casanova.

  PS Tell me more about the balloon, darling. Was it painted like a Tiepolo ceiling? Did it rise like a bubble from a garlanded stage … ? That is how it happens in Paris.

  April, 1784

  You are saved, my dearest one,

  The Dutch war against Venice is over! Almost as soon as it is begun! I can tell you before you hear it from anyone else.

  My patron, Foscarini, has met with the Dutch ambassador here, and a settlement has been achieved. The Emperor Joseph has intervened to help us. I myself travelled to meet the great man and was instrumental in the rescue. Casanova has come to the rescue again of La Serenissima and her beautiful women.

  If only I could save you every time you are under threat, Cecilia. You know that you stand alone and perfect in my imagination, and you have the strength in yourself not to feel threatened by other women who have taught me only to love you properly. We are the same in this, darling, for although you are discreet I rejoice in the flushed cheeks I sometimes read between the lines of your letters these days.

  A few months ago, at a dinner given by the Ambassador, I met a most interesting man, a freemason, Count Charles de Waldstein of Dux. He is not yet thirty, but mature in his ways, with a weakness for racing and gambling. We talked of many esoteric matters, of the Clavicle of Solomon and all things to do with magic and the occult. I felt so at home I exclaimed, ‘Oh! che bella cosa! All the things that are familiar to me!’

  ‘So,’ replied Waldstein, ‘come to Bohemia with me. I am leaving tomorrow.’

  I think he means it. He tells me that he has a library of 40,000 volumes in his castle in Bohemia. I am cordially invited there, not just as a guest, but to live, should I want. He offers me a position as his librarian.

  Cecilia, can you imagine it, your Casanova as a librarian, that perambulating scarcely breathing symbol of pedantry and impotence – that laughing-stock among living souls? That false-monk? In some Bohemian backwater, with not even its own theatre and no casino?

  Never.

  Count Waldstein boasts of the splendour of his table (you see, he has divined my little weakness), the plenitude of Bohemian virgins, and the eminence of his own noble guests, but I am not seduced.

  Except by you, as always.

  Tell me you are safe and well, darling. I need to know.

  Your Casanova.

  Vienna, 1784

  Ah Cecilia,

  I have at last received a letter from you, and how I have revelled in it!

  Your letter was brimful of your fragrance, your oils, your juices – all the pleasure that you paint on this world by breathing in it, my darling. I want so very much to look at you again. And on Venice. I need to hold you in my arms and reassure myself that my worries about you are groundless, that you are safe and whole and that no one has come to hurt you.

  But I am so happy that your work has found success. You are invited to go to London? Just like your idol, Angelica! You are right to stay in Venice yet, darling. Travel can come later, when you are ready. And I hope that you never taste an English cheese. They are so much pap and cardboard with a sour smell. The cheeses of the North are also a sorry lot. Barely any flavour. My senses are as alive as ever. I remember the special stink of every Italian cheese like the poems I still know by heart. I think I may turn these memories to use one day ... a Dictionary of Cheeses, written from recollection.

  I am still in Vienna, as you see.

  Do you know, Cecilia, I begin to realise that wherever I am, I feel as though I were in a strange country. All those years I longed to be in Venice, and when I returned, she was not my home and she treated me as cruelly and as coldly as my mother did. My real home is where you are. All else is foreign to me. You are my whole family, my court, my palazzo. Without you, everything grieves. Even the windows are flooding with tears! I see the everlasting Teutonic moisture trickling down them in droplets of despair. Look! I have caught one tear on the corner of this letter: see how it makes the ink weep on the page!

  Now write to me again, Cecilia, tell me what’s nearest your heart so that I can carry it near mine.

  Your Casanova.

  PS How goes it with my devilish cat? Is he still the monstrous nightmare of the pantegane? Do their salty whiskers twitch in fear as they dream of him, as even now he approaches the quiet breathing of their lair with murder in his heart? PPS Cecilia, you are well, are you not? Tell me the truth. I want to know if there is something wrong.

  Vienna, December, 1784

  My dearest Cecilia,

  Have you heard about poor Beckford? He has married, finally, but he is also disgraced. Some keyhole-sniffing puritan lord has caught him in flagrante with the little Courtenay and now, I am told, the frightful English scandal-sheets are in love with the story. I hear nothing from Beckford himself now. I believe he has become some kind of hermit.

  I wonder if his Vathek will ever see the light of day? Do you still have that portrait? The one he would not take away? How I would love to see your bedroom painted with his palaces! How beautiful it must be. Your letter, with its sketches, stands propped up on my desk, so I can imagine what you see by candlelight each night.

  However, I own myself nonplussed that you chose the scenery of Vathek for the room where you dream. There is a dark side of you that causes me to fear for you sometimes. Your bright black wit sometimes hovers on the edge of danger. Vathek disquiets me because it laughs so flirtatiously with the extremities of evil. It is an indiscretion of laughter. It partakes of what is sublime and what is horrific alike while sniggering behind the hand, condoning both without really experiencing them. To me, this is more ‘obscene’ than Aretino, for at least Aretino is sincere. Those thirty-five positions come straight from the heart and never hurt anyone. In the wrong hands, Vathek could do damage.

  How I hate to write to you on this cheap paper. I wish I could send you parchment and watermarked card from Belgium. For I know how you will finger my letter, my Cecilia. And your letters, always on such gorgeous paper, smelling of Venice and you – can you guess how I devour them, and fold them, and unfold them, and bat them about my desk and squeeze them to death in my hand under my pillow at night?

  So that old devil of a cat is a father once more? It’s a shame that his morosa chose to kitten on that wet portrait, but I am sure you can repair the damage. Keep one of the gattini, Cecilia. The old tom will not last forever. He wants too much and fights too hard. One of the pantegane will catch him in a weak moment and he will be gone.

  As I am gone.

  Your Casanova.

  Vienna, April 21st, 1785

  My darling Cecilia,

  My master the Ambassador is sick, and I think he will perish. I shall be on the road again very soon.

  I had a daydream, Cecilia. You must tell me what it means. In my daydream I am being auctioned to a crowd of noble women. I wear my satin frock-coat, which you know so well, but it’s worn and shabby. The women, however, are richly jewelled, expensively plump, and during the auction each is seated at a table of rich food. Every table is set for two, with one empty place. In the strange atmosphere of the room, each woman seems to become the contents of the plate in front of her.

  First Lemon Sole bids for me, then Foie Gras en sa Gelée, and then finally Crab Bisque, with her melting eyes and her croutons bobbing gently in the shade of a linen napkin. But now Foie Gras is winni
ng – a finger of sunlight quivers in her Gelée. I start to wonder about its flavour — Sauternes, perhaps? Those wizened but distended ampoules of gold beside the pale tranche of Foie must be the Sauternes grapes, I think. But ecco quà – she is not the winner. Another bids more fiercely. And she is just a lump of hard, coarse bread on a naked, dirty table top. The bread is too hard to break in half, I can see. I will have to earn the whole thing. Madame Bread looks exacting intelligent, cool. She has a book open on the table next to the bread …

  I am looking at the tattered shreds of your letters to me. It destroys me to see them so shabby, just like the man to whom they are addressed. Sometime, alone in inns or waiting on roadsides, I re-read them. I find these days that I have to prise them open, for they cling damply to each other. Your crisp beautiful paper has become limp. With every reading, your lovely writing has become fainter. Sometimes only the flourishes remain. I can no longer bear all these sadnesses. Only fresh letters with your breath still hovering over them will do for me now.

  So I am sending them home to you. Please keep them for me, darling, with your letters from me, if you still have them. I would like our love story to live in your studio. A part of Casanova will in this way stay in Venice. They could not exile my love for you, for Venice, only my body which is now becoming worthless in any case. You live for me now, enacting my desires.

  Perhaps these letters, full of proper love, will protect you from evil. I hope so, my darling.

  Your Casanova.

  Vienna, April 23rd, 1785

  This day died my master, Ambassador Foscarini. I am again without a protector.

  O my Cecilia, I am tired, tired to the bone, of this life where I am never secure. Where I must always teach some new cook how to make duck with marmalade sauce! Where the pistachio nuts are ever cold, tightly closed, and I discover them already rotting inside the shell when I force them open! Where the maid brings me a watery tepid chocolate to drink in the mornings!