Domina

by L. S. Hilton

  In turn, Alvin explained that he was thinking of getting into curating, maybe spending some time in Berlin or perhaps LA, where the contemporary scene was, like, much fresher? He showed me photos of a friend’s show in Silver Lake, which involved crudely derivative Giacometti-like figures in acid-treated steel with large varnished Japanese radishes laid reverently on top of them. I made some noises about that, while taking note of the passcode on his phone. Then we fell back on the Biennale, which pavilions had been ‘amazing’ (most of them, in his view), and whether Baku or Tbilisi was the next exciting market (neither, in mine). The restaurant was crowded as usual, people had spilled out onto the quay, a jazz trio was playing and the air was full of excited American voices comparing European adventures. It wasn’t until Alvin was on his third white wine that I thought to ask him why he’d friended me.

  ‘Well, there’s this girl – Angelica?’

  I breathed and listened.

  ‘Her brother’s engaged to my sister. He works in New York. They met at Brown. I was looking for some experience in Italy and she recognised your gallery. I’d mailed a couple of others before Ibiza. Angelica helped me. She’s, like, really into art. She works at –’

  I knew exactly where Angelica worked.

  ‘Anyway, she thought she recognised you, in a shot from a Biennale party, but it can’t have been you. Doppelgänger!’ He produced the word with some pride.

  ‘And that’s why you thought we’d met?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry about that.’

  I pouted. ‘You didn’t email me for a job?’

  ‘Nah, I’m more into LA now. Cool party though, huh? Shame you had to run off. Tage really knows how to get that stuff right. So this girl, the one you look like, she used to work with Angelica, but she got fired. Had an affair with the boss apparently.’

  ‘Really? That seems a bit unfair. That she should get the sack, I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, I dunno. Apparently she was into some really twisted shit.’

  Nice. I wondered where that particular rumour had got started. Angelica admits she made a mistake. She confused you with someone else, that’s all. I didn’t have time to think further than that right now.

  ‘I should be getting back. I’ll get the bill.’

  ‘Can I come along? I’ve, er, got some time to kill.’

  ‘Are you meeting friends in Rovinj?’

  ‘Maybe. You know how it is. I might go to Dubrovnik. Or there’s a contact of my dad’s in Zagreb – I could go up there.’

  ‘It’s such a struggle, getting on in the art business, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sure is!’ he replied. Without irony. His grin showed me those eager teeth and I felt a shudder of my original distaste.

  He walked next to me as we crossed over by the Ghetto and turned in towards the Casino, where I planned to pick up the vaporetto to get home. I pointed out the gates behind which the Jews were locked every night by their kind hosts, and the tiny, hidden synagogue built above the ceilings of the once-crowded tenements.

  ‘Awesome.’

  We chugged in silence along the Grand Canal until we came to my stop.

  ‘Sure you don’t want another?’

  Perhaps this is OK. Maybe he can just fuck off to Dubrovnik. But then he pulled out his phone. All evening he had barely been able to keep his hands off it, caressing it anxiously like a mother soothing a fractious baby.

  ‘Maybe a coffee.’

  He nodded, distracted with his phone, and followed me down the alley that runs next to the Ca’ Rezzonico museum to the nearest café, the canvas backpack of his belongings hoicked over his shoulder as he scrolled through his messages.

  ‘I was just trying to find a picture, of that girl who looks like you. Angelica said it was a dead spit.’

  There were a few snaps of Judith Rashleigh in her jolly old university days hanging around online, but after I moved to London there had been nothing. Easy, since I’d not made any friends. Aside from my old security pass from the House, the only recent extant photo of Judith that I knew of had been taken by my old schoolmate Leanne. But Leanne was dead and I had incinerated that picture in the rubbish chute of a Parisian apartment building. How long would they keep those passes on file at the House? Could Angelica access them if she wanted to?

  Then, just as the waiter came to take our order, Alvin twisted his head towards me and snapped a selfie.

  ‘I’ll mail it to her, for a laugh.’

  ‘Let me see it first!’ I giggled. ‘God, I look awful. We should do a better one. Go on, delete it. You can’t do that to me, Alvin!’ I let my hand rest, mock pleadingly, on his arm and put quite a different expression into my eyes while his thumb found the little dustbin. Good boy.

  He leaned towards me, confidentially. ‘You can tell me. Is it you? Angelica was pretty sure.’

  ‘How could it be?’

  ‘Well, you’re pretty sexy. So was she, obviously.’ If only he could just let it go, poor dumb fuck.

  ‘Come on, it is you, isn’t it? I can tell you’re hiding something. I’m, like, really a people person that way. I won’t tell Angelica.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

  There was the same arrogant certainty in his eyes now that I had seen on the island.

  ‘So what really happened then? Back in London? Come on, you can tell me.’

  He’ll do it. If you let him go, he’ll say he’s found you.

  I put a few coins on the table and echoed his gesture, dipping my eyeline below his scurfy chin and cupping my face in my hands.

  ‘Would you really like me to tell you a secret, Alvin?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ll tell you at my flat. We can take another picture there too, if you like. Maybe – lots of pictures. Come on.’

  As we stood, I realised that, the thing was, I didn’t want to do this. I just didn’t want to do this any more.

  8

  I began the next day, like, super-early. Smudging concealer over the cut on my face, my eyes in the mirror were hollow, haunted. I wouldn’t think about the lesions on the inside. Patch up the frontage and get on with it. That had always worked before.

  The foot-passenger ferry to Croatia left at 6.05 a.m. for a four-hour trip to Rovinj with a stopover at Poreč. I was on the dock at the San Basilio terminal at 5.30 a.m. with a small bag and Alvin’s ticket clutched in my hand. Photo ID is required to collect ferry tickets but not to process them – the steward barely glanced at the paper as he took it from me among the press of passengers. Italians just don’t get queuing. I counted ten travellers past me and then made a little pantomime of forgetting something in English, leaving Alvin’s phone on the boat, rushed back down the gangplank without catching the busy steward’s eye and in ten minutes was back at the flat. Good. Alvin had caught his ferry. No trail. Tucking my fags and a twenty euro note in my sports bra, I jogged through Dorsoduro, over the Accademia bridge and along past the Doge’s prisons. I paused on the wheelchair ramp next to the Bridge of Sighs and gently released Alvin’s backpack, weighted down with a rather nice pair of Oggetti candlesticks. One must make sacrifices. I ran on to the Giardini at the end of the island, where I went through the undignified motions of my workout, then back to San Marco as the campanile sounded, negotiating the first groups of tourists, already slick with sweat and sunscreen in the morning haze. The orchestra had not yet arrived for their shift; the only sounds were the pigeons and the footsteps endlessly crossing Europe’s drawing room.

  I knew most of the waiters now, from my morning ritual. Taking a table in the shade I nodded to Danilo, who brought my fresh orange juice, brioche and cappuccio. The stencil in that day’s creamy foam was a broken heart. After a read of the FT and a delicious cigarette, I walked back over towards Accademia, plunging into the narrow funnel of streets around San Moisè, idly gazing into the windows of the cluster of smart shops. A pair of Prada sandals caught my eye; black satin on a thin silver sole, with a delightful spray of feathers on the heel, like Mercury
’s wings. Frivolous shoes, tricky shoes, shoes to splurge your wages on because what was the point of saving for a rainy day if you owned those? Nobody would allow a rainy day to happen to a girl in those sandals. I peered at the price. I could have them, if I wanted, I could have them in every colour. But I didn’t want them.

  *

  The light on the lagoon still danced in turquoise brushstrokes, the air still smelled of seaweed and ice cream, but inside I was all drains and damp leaves. I took a brisk, Victorian shower, turning the temperature from tepid to freezing, dressed for a serious day and packed my briefcase with the Caravaggio book and a notepad. I had an appointment at the Marciana Library. The building faces the Doge’s Palace, just by the statue of San Teodoro and his anatomically peculiar crocodile. Once there was a gallows between his column and the lion of his neighbour, San Marco, and Venetians still think it bad luck to walk between them. I walked between them. I presented my passport, gallery details and a hastily drafted outline of my ‘research project’ to the listless receptionist, who waved me through to the main reading room, with its triple loggia and islands of pale wood tables set in red carpet. High above, the fierce air conditioning froze the sunlight on the glass roof and I was grateful for my sensible scholar’s sweater. I gave my order to the reference clerk and took a seat while I waited for the material, opening the Caravaggio compendium once again to the Medusa. She wasn’t howling me any special message, and I began to leaf through the book, examining every illustration. I paused at Amor Vincit Omnia, Caravaggio’s glorious portrait of his boy lover Cecco as the god of love. I traced the smooth curve of the adolescent cheek with my fingertip. Even in the flat, shiny reproduction, the laughing anarchy of the composition bubbled out, pulsating with pagan energy. A note beneath the plate quoted a contemporary viewer who had seen the picture in the collection of Caravaggio’s patron, where it was always shown last, concealed beneath a curtain of dark green silk. I hadn’t exactly needed that to confirm the identity of my poltergeist lodger, but at least Yermolov had a sense of humour.

  *

  The name for it is zersetzung, a method of ‘home intrusion’ practised by both the old KGB and the Stasi. A clever and effective means of soft torture. Objects are moved around by invisible visitors, subtly or not-so-subtly. It’s disturbingly uncanny – it has been known to drive people quite mad – and entirely deniable. Who’s going to believe you have been burgled when the only thing that’s been moved is the soap? A popular move, apparently, was leaving pornographic material in the bedroom. I didn’t know whether to be touched or insulted that they hadn’t tried that one.

  What was Yermolov trying to tell me? I knew I should be scared, but what I actually felt was curiosity. This was almost flattering. If he wanted me to reconsider my refusal that badly, why intimidate me? And why Caravaggio?

  ‘Ecco, signorina.’

  The reference clerk had reappeared, holding out a pair of white cotton gloves and a thick, heavy volume bound between two cardboard covers. I had ordered the manuscript copy of one of the first books on Caravaggio, a biography by Mariani, but I didn’t want to swot up on the painter’s life so much as examine the notes scrawled in the manuscript’s margins. The writing was impenetrably tiny, and the seventeenth-century Italian abbreviations were difficult to understand, but I was enjoying myself. It felt like a long while since I had done any serious research. I muttered the words aloud under my breath, the sound helping with the sense, until I came across what I had been looking for:

  ‘They committed a murder,’ Mariani had scribbled furtively ‘Prostitute, tough guy, gentleman. Tough guy hurts gentleman, prostitute slashes insult into the skin with a knife. Officers called. They wanted to know what the accomplices – In prison he didn’t confess, he came to Rome and said no more about it.’ I sat back and stared at the clumped black letters. I had known about the incomplete ‘murder note’; it was the source of wide biographical speculation, if you liked that sort of thing, but the slash was news. The sfregio, the mark of shame sliced into the victim’s face with a blade, often a punishment for women who had been unfaithful to their keepers. I felt a curious little shiver of excitement.

  In two of his most famous pictures, Caravaggio invented a new genre. The Fortune Teller and The Cardsharps each show a scene of illusion, of deceit in action. Two realities play out simultaneously in each. Painting is cheating, the artist shows us; it twists our perceptions as surely as the overconfident marks are duped by their conmen. Beware of what you think you see.

  If Yermolov was bothering to threaten me, he must believe I had some sort of power. I didn’t hate that. How did we come out, in this? Who was the gentleman, who the whore, who the tough guy? If it was a threat, it was an elegant one.

  The rest of the day was spent at the gallery; at about seven I returned to the flat, which was just as I had left it. I was running a bath when my phone rang. Not my work phone, my personal one. Three people had that number – Steve, Dave and my mother – and none of them showed on the screen. I took the call and said, ‘Fuck you,’ in as firm a voice as I could muster. As I had expected, I spoke into silence.

  *

  I had to get out. I was really over sitting around waiting for Yermolov to mess with my head. I needed to feel clean, strong, alive. Time to pay a call on the Ukrainians. I left the heavy wardrobe well alone and ran my hand over the hanging rail in the dressing room. I chose a short flame-orange Missoni dress – at least, a suggestion of a dress – and hung it over the mirror while I bathed. I poured half a bottle of Chanel Gardénia into my bathwater, then dressed in charcoal lace Rosamosario briefs and the silk whisper, adding soft suede flats in the same cream as Mademoiselle’s famous flower. Heels are a liability in Venice, but in those it took me just eight minutes to wind across tiny squares and cross five humpbacked bridges to San Polo.

  If anyone who went to the Ukrainians’ place had ever been sober enough, the apartment might have become a thing, the sort of party hideout breathless journalists get their knickers in a twist about, but even if you were straight enough to find it, you would leave in a state that guaranteed you wouldn’t tell. Only Venetians really knew about it, because they know all their city’s long secrets. I’d heard from Masha, who did not approve. I bought a bottle of nasty grappa from the Chinese shop next door, which was the form, and brandished it as soon as the low street door was opened. Even for Venice, the Ukrainians’ alley was narrow, which perhaps explained the physical type of their visitors. Only the lithe of hip need apply, which suited me just fine, tonight. The Ukrainians (if they had names, no one knew them) were a couple; a raddled blonde and her husband, who claimed to be artists, though mercifully none of their own work was ever in evidence. Their flat was a huge ground-floor apartment hung with rather spectacular nineteenth-century portraits, a water gate opened directly onto the canal, which meant that someone always went swimming, and the mezzanine was a kind of souk, a camp of divans and tattered antique silks, more or less diversely occupied. There was always food, and there were always people, though the guest list could be eclectic to the point of alarming.

  The Ukrainian husband greeted me familiarly, spark-ling eyes, pidgin Italian, and ushered me and my angry dress along the candlelit hallway. He was wearing an entire 1980s television set on his head, his face poking out where the screen had once been, wires and plugs trailing behind, but I didn’t feel the need to mention it. Ukrainian wife was posed by the watergate, her legs engulfed in the foetid canal, smoking a gargantuan joint and explaining something important to a startled-looking German backpacker. She waved at me languidly as I poked among the debris of their dinner party for the least-unhygienic-looking glass. A brunette girl dressed in red lipstick, with wonderfully lustrous skin, scampered down from the mezzanine. ‘Has anyone seen Bruno?’ she panted in English. She tried again, in French and Russian, but no one had seen Bruno, so she gave it up, plucked a slightly singed shawl from one of the lamps to twist into a loincloth and fell asleep on an armchair. Ukrainia
n husband poked her shoulder vigorously, but she only stirred a little to shrug him off. He took a moment to twiddle the volume knob under his chin.

  ‘Ket,’ he pronounced, with some satisfaction. Once we’d got that settled, he offered me a plate of zucchini frittata. ‘How are you, dear?’

  We chatted a little in the bits and bobs of languages we shared. I picked gingerly at the frittata, then lit a fag to fumigate it. Once he’d turned his volume down again, I went for a prowl upstairs. I set my glass on the sill of the oeil-de-boeuf window above the watergate and settled in for a moment of Venetian contemplation. A faint splash below suggested someone had braved the canal. I hoped it wouldn’t cause a short circuit.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with an old line,’ I said, without turning round.

  A hand drew round my waist, and I let my head fall back against a shoulder scented with a familiar sharp citrus cologne. We had met here before, once or twice. I felt the harness of a wedding ring as the hand moved up against my left breast.

  ‘Beautiful as ever.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The right hand was stroking up my hip, fingertips caressing my skin under the abbreviated dress. I waited for my wet rush of want. Nothing. I turned to kiss her, hard, seeking the pulsing slip of her tongue. Nothing. Confused, I opened my eyes, caught the glow of hers in the misty gleam off the canal.

  ‘Where’s hubby?’

  ‘Rimini, with the kids.’

  ‘Lucky me then.’

  My mouth was in the hollow of her neck, tracing her collarbone with my tongue, I gripped her waist and moved my palms to the beautiful scoop of her soft ass, she inhaled sharply and brought her hand up to rake through my hair, sucking at my throat. Slowly I knelt down in front of her, tugged her cotton skirt to the floor and let my nails wander on the rim of her lace knickers, pale against her summer tan. Her belly was lovely, puffed out like new bread, I pressed my forehead into its plumpness, then began to tug at her knickers. They were sopping wet. I hooked them to one side as she ground against me, turning my face to stroke my cheek against her neat lozenge of pubic hair, bisected by the hard protuberance of her Caesarean scar, then flicking my tongue to her clitoris, lapping her gently, reaching for the soft slit between her labia.