by Glenn Dixon
“Later,” said Tanya, “this quarto was in the collection of King George the Third.” She turned back a few pages. In the margins, here and there, were asterisks and penned-in notes. Someone had made a careful study of the text. “We can’t know for certain,” she said, “but some of these markings may be the king’s.”
“King George?”
“The Third,” she finished. “He was the mad king.”
“Right.”
“When he died,” she said, “this quarto was at Buckingham House, and the next king, George the Fourth, wanted the house expanded into a full palace.”
“Buckingham Palace.”
“Correct,” she said. “So he had all the collections cleared out—like in an estate sale—and that’s when this quarto arrived at the British Library. That was in 1812.”
“Wow.”
Her fingers hovered over the pages.
“Aren’t you supposed to be wearing white gloves?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “We don’t do that anymore. With gloves, we’ve found that the pages are sometimes torn by accident or the manuscript can be dropped. We can’t chance that. Skin is much more sensitive and much more responsive to the frailty of the paper.”
She turned back a few more pages to Juliet’s soliloquy in the vault. A dark smudge, like a water stain, covered half the page. “In World War II, the library was hit by a German bomb,” she said. “There was some damage, mostly from the firefighters trying to put out the fires. I don’t think this stain is from that, though. This one is probably older.”
“King George reading it in the bath?”
“Perhaps.” She smiled. “He did enjoy his baths.”
“Can I see the prologue?”
“Of course.” She flipped back to the elegant title page—The most excellent and lamentable tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and on the next page was the famous prologue. There was no list of characters. In fact, this ancient quarto had no markings at all to show acts or scenes. Each scene ran into the next. Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene. The font was beautiful. Some of the s’s looked like f’s, and here and there the spelling was different, but the text was complete.
“Can I see their first meeting?”
“Yes, just a moment.” Tanya turned a few pages forward. There was the Queen Mab speech.
“Just past that,” I said. “When they’re on their way to the party at the Capulets’.”
She skipped ahead a few more pages but went too far.
But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
“Oh my God,” I said. “That’s the balcony scene.”
Tanya looked down at the text. “So it is.”
“Wait, can I read some of that?”
“Of course,” she said.
“What’s that?” In the margin was a tiny, finely drawn hand, bunched into a fist, with the index finger pointing toward the printed text, almost like a graphic from the Monty Python show.
“That’s called a manicle—from the Latin maniculum, ‘little hand.’ You find them sometimes, added to old manuscripts.”
“Do you think King George could have drawn that?”
“It’s entirely likely, yes.”
I looked at the pointing finger, drawn by a king, maybe. It alighted on the lines Two of the Fairest stars in all the heaven, having some business, do entreat her eyes to twinkle in their spheres till they return.
“Stars,” I murmured.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh,” I said, waving my hand. “It’s nothing.”
* * *
If you go to Juliet’s house in the middle of the night—and I’m not saying I did—you can’t sneak in. It’s locked up tight. An iron gate blocks the archway, but you can stand there, your fists on the bars, and gape in at the old house. It’s quite magical. The courtyard is empty of tourists, shrouded in purple shadows, with a single spotlight shining up across the famous balcony. Now, I’m not saying that I had too much wine to drink. I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that I went for a bit of a wander, at night, under the stars, through the narrow medieval lanes of the Old City.
Ancient streetlamps cast dappling lights over the rushing black water of the river. Pigeons cooed in the roof beams, and wineglasses clinked in the outdoor cafés. I shuffled aimlessly, tramping down cobblestone lanes, until I suddenly emerged onto one of the brighter pedestrian streets, one I recognized—the street that led down to the piazza surrounding the Roman coliseum.
The opera was just getting out. People were streaming through the old Roman arches and into the piazza. It was after midnight, but children ran about, whooping and laughing. A few touts, knowing this, had toys for sale. The best one was a helicopter you could fling high into the air from a rubber-band launcher. These minichoppers floated down on whirling propellers, with little LED lights—purple and green—blinking as they descended. All the adults smoked. The burning ends of cigarettes bobbed in the dark like stars on the ocean. I wandered through the crowd, mostly couples, arm in arm in their pressed suits and evening dresses. And it made me feel alone. It made me remember why I had come. It made me think about Claire again.
* * *
Very shortly after I finished university, I decided to go traveling. I wanted to see the world and I’d set my heart on Bali, exotic, far-off Bali. To my great surprise, when I mentioned my plan to Claire, she asked if she could come along.
“Of course,” I said, trying to hide my excitement. “That would be great.”
At the airport, though, as she trundled up to the check-in counter with her suitcases, I could tell something was wrong. What I didn’t know was that Claire was using this trip as closure. She’d broken up with her boyfriend—the one who didn’t like large words—and in a bid to make it stick, she had arranged to flee the country, with me, only she didn’t tell me about that little detail.
When we landed at the Denpasar airport, a mind-numbing seventeen hours later, we squeezed into a tiny bus that took us up to a place called Ubud. It was supposed to be a tropical paradise. Emerald-green rice paddies terraced up the hillsides. An ancient temple stood at the end of our road, a thousand years old, with demons and Hindu gods carved into the crumbling stone walls. Spider monkeys swung from the trees, and in the evening, we could hear gamelan music, chiming and drumming, drifting up from the temple complex. It would have been magical except that Claire did almost nothing but cry for the first few days—cataclysmic sobs—and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to help her.
She’d sunk into an emotional squalor. She had loved that boyfriend, even though she knew he wasn’t right for her. I think now that he was the one who’d set her own personal love maps. In a way, I think she never really got over him. I tried to be unbiased about it, and I wish I could say that I became her knight in shining armor, riding in to save the day. But it wasn’t that way at all. The world, for me, is not a romantic comedy. Claire just needed a friend, and I was, apparently, the one she had chosen.
Then it got worse. She got sick. Really sick. We phoned for a doctor and he huddled into our little hut without a stitch of English. He wanted to jab her with a needle though we weren’t sure what was in it. We weren’t even certain that the needle was sterile. We chased him out and she just lay on a cot, crumpled, for the next week, counting the hours until our return flight. I sat outside in a little garden, not far from the room, bringing her water when she called out for it, the magic of Bali forgotten and out of reach all around us.
We limped home after that. She’d lost a lot of weight and was inexplicably angry with me. Maybe she needed to be angry at someone. I too wanted to howl at the universe: Wait a minute. Wait. This is not how it is supposed to go.
But fate was not listening.
* * *
I spent a few late afternoons in Verona, just wandering and thinking. On a side street, not far from the river, I stumbled a
cross the Korean Broadcasting System again. They were shooting more film footage by the old fortifications they call “Romeo’s house.” Of course, just like Juliet’s balcony, this wasn’t actually Romeo’s house. A powerful family by the name of Montecchi did live somewhere in the vicinity of Verona seven hundred years ago. All the influential families holed up in fortresses in the fourteenth century—it was a dangerous time in Verona—but there’s no evidence at all that this particular house belonged to the Montecchis or that they’d had a son named Romeo. Still, the imposing dwelling with its unbreachable walls is representative of the times. It was the kind of place an important family would have owned.
The Koreans were on the street outside the house. Hyun-ki, the handler/cameraman, was down on his knees on the cobblestones, crouching over his camera’s viewfinder. Our host, whose name I couldn’t remember, stood—bestriding the camera—and on cue, he sauntered away from it so that in the shot his hiking boots would appear first and then, as he walked away, he would recede, shrinking like Alice in Wonderland with the fortress walls rising above him. I stood in the shadows and watched them film this take a couple of times, each time changing something slightly—the camera angle, the speed of the host’s walk.
On the third take, the host spotted me. He waved merrily, and Hyun-ki turned too with a wide grin on his face.
“Hello, Canada,” said Hyun-ki.
The host strode forward, beaming as if we were old friends reunited after decades. “You have come to see Romeo’s house?”
“Yes. I have. I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your name.”
“I am Ahn Sung-jin. In Korean ‘Ahn’ is the last name.”
“Okay, Sung-jin.”
“You call me Jin. Like your English ‘Jim.’ ” He pointed at the door. “We cannot enter. We have tried to knock. Do you have a way in?”
I’m not sure what superpowers they thought I possessed. Just because they’d seen me at the Club di Giulietta did not mean I had a key to the city. Frankly, they probably had more access to the tourist sites than I did. “No,” I said. “I’ve got no way in either.”
The house had crenelated walls and a small square tower; in effect, it was a little castle. Quite unlike the other tourist attractions of Verona, this house was owned now by a private family who refused to have anything to do with all the hoopla and speculation over Romeo and Juliet. The family spent a lot of money on restorations and I assumed they lived quite comfortably in their fortress, the heavy oak door closed securely against writers and lovers and cameramen from Korea.
Near the door, they’d at least allowed a historical plaque:
TUT I HAVE LOST MYSELF; I AM NOT HERE,
THIS IS NOT ROMEO, HE’S SOME OTHER WHERE.
“Interesting,” I said.
“What is this meaning?” Jin asked, his face lined with bewilderment.
“It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, I think.”
“Tongue-in-cheek?”
“An inside joke—saying that this is not actually Romeo’s house so that people won’t bother them, so people will go away.”
“But what is ‘Tut’?” he asked, tilting his head.
“An exclamation, like ‘oh,’ though maybe a bit impatient or disapproving.”
“But I am so sorry, I am not understanding this.”
“It’s Romeo who says that line,” I said. “He’s means he’s not feeling like himself these days.”
“Because he is in love?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Ah,” the host nodded. He explained to Hyun-ki in Korean, and there was more nodding of heads, humming, and pondering.
“You in love?” Hyun-ki asked turning to face me.
“What?” The personal question came out of nowhere.
“You come here because you are love story?” Hyun-ki pressed. Jin grinned behind him.
“Well, I, you know . . . I . . .”
“You always travel alone?”
“Um, yes, sometimes.”
“You not married?”
“No, I’m . . . well, there is someone, back home.” I paused. “But no, I’m not married.” I could see from his facial expression that this was the wrong answer. “Are you married?” I managed.
Jin stepped in. “I have been married for ten years already. Hyun-ki for fifteen.”
They both had children. They both had houses and jobs and families and, though they didn’t mean it that way, I began to feel I should slink off with my tail between my legs. Before I could, Hyun-ki muttered something in Korean and they excused themselves with much bowing. “We must go now. We are seeing the opera tonight.”
“The opera?”
“You have seen the opera, at the arena?”
“Oh, right,” I said. “In the old Roman coliseum. I haven’t been yet.”
“Tut,” said Jin, shaking his head.
“So, what’s playing tonight?”
“Tonight it is Aida, but tomorrow night is Romeo and Juliet.”
That stopped me. “Romeo and Juliet is an opera?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing.” There was that lush Tchaikovsky overture. And of course, West Side Story was loosely based on Romeo and Juliet. At least I knew that much.
“Tonight, it is full up.”
“Sold-out?”
“Yes, yes, but tomorrow night, tickets are most available. We are going. You will go too?”
“Well, I hadn’t really—”
“Tut,” he said again.
“Okay, yes. You’re right. I’ll get a ticket.”
* * *
The following night, I did go to Romeo and Juliet, the opera. The setting is spectacular. The Arena di Verona is not just any concert hall; it’s a massive Roman coliseum built in the year 30 CE. It sits in the middle of a wide piazza, and it’s large enough to seat fifteen thousand people. Now though, instead of gladiatorial fights, it hosts operas—lavish spectacles that draw tourists from across the continent of Europe.
Before the show, I had some pretty decent spaghetti carbonara at a café on the edge of the piazza. I took my time, waiting for the long summer twilight to dwindle. The shows start only after it’s dark, but when I saw the crowds starting to form, I finished my meal and dug out my ticket. I went in through a pink limestone arch and up a set of marble steps worn by two thousand years of foot traffic. My seat, my three square feet of rock bench, was near the top and, fortunately, the man at the front desk of my hotel had given me a thin foam cushion to put down over the cold marble, which was good, because it was to be a very long performance.
Everyone in the audience was given a small candle upon entry, and when the candles were lit, the arena became a constellation of stars. A full orchestra fronted the mighty stage, and the opera began with two hundred or more singers marching out to sing the opening chorus. I assume it was the prologue; it was all in Italian and it was magnificent.
Then, not more than ten minutes into the story, a vehicle drove onto the stage. It had a propeller at the front and huge hydraulic wings that opened into a satanic umbrella. It looked like the car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Wait a minute, I thought. I don’t remember this anywhere in Shakespeare, and certainly not in Romeo and Juliet.
A woman clambered out of the car, dressed head to toe in red leather, brandishing a whip. She cracked her way through the male singers—Romeo and Benvolio and Mercutio—who all bowed down before her. What the hell? Who was this character supposed to be? Rosaline? The Devil? Love Incarnate?
She leaped back into her Batmobile and a terrific pyrotechnic column of flame whomped from the vehicle’s back end. The crowd cheered as she drove off. I checked my program. Was I at the right play? After that, the Prince was wheeled onstage in a contraption that looked like a glazed flowerpot—only it was two stories high. Juliet, like a magician, in what I think was the balcony scene, released two doves from her draping sleeves. The poor birds fluttered and flopped onto the stage, where they pecked at the floor
boards for the rest of the act as the singers swirled around them. Several rows below me, I caught sight of the Korean Broadcasting team. They turned at one point and waved up at me, gleeful smiles on their faces. They were having the time of their lives.
The night wore on with tumbles of musical scales and incomprehensible stage settings. I followed as best I could, trying to fit the Shakespeare tragedy I knew so well with what was unfolding on the stage below me. I assumed one singer was Tybalt, but then the woman in red leather appeared again, prancing about him, whipping him and others at random. Another guy appeared on a two-story-high salt-shaker. That had to be Friar Lawrence. Was this the wedding scene? I had no idea.
In the end, I was completely lost. Juliet had stabbed herself with the dagger; then she rose up—a couple of times—to sing a few more arias. Romeo, who had long since poisoned himself, kept lifting his head to throw in the harmony. Finally, the Prince showed up again on his flowerpot to call an end to the shenanigans.
It was well after midnight when we were let out into the piazza. The Koreans were waving me over to them.
“You like?” Hyun-ki asked. He was vibrating with excitement.
“I don’t know what to think.”
“I like very much.” He touched his heart.
Jin bowed to me. “We are leaving tomorrow,” he said. “You are staying?”
“Yes. I’m still answering letters.”
“And you are learning something about love?” He hummed solemnly.
“Yes, I’m trying.”
“I wish you good luck and safe travels.”
“Thanks, Jin. Same to you.” He bowed again. And then I bowed to Hyun-ki and he bowed back and then they bowed to each other, and this could’ve gone on for a while had I not interrupted. “Really,” I said, “It’s late. I should probably get going.”
They bowed a few more times and then they were gone.
I wandered across the piazza, past a statue commemorating some long-forgotten battle. The night was calm, the old cobblestones still warm from the day’s heat, and I kept on walking, past the turn for my hotel. What was I doing here? What was I hoping to accomplish?