Mistress of Night and Dawn

by Vina Jackson

  ‘Invisible ink that reacts to your body temperature?’ Siv hazarded a guess.

  ‘No such thing,’ Aurelia ruled.

  They each continued to think aloud, batting ideas back and forth until they had exhausted every possibility both plausible and implausible, eventually shifting effortlessly into a comfortable silence, the mark of a true and easy friendship. The fries on the table had long turned cold and Aurelia was now onto her second milkshake as Siv’s mouth had been occupied by doing most of the talking.

  Aurelia broke the silence. ‘Sorry,’ she said at last. ‘I didn’t ask you how it went at the circus school. Did you get your forms? Why did it take so long? Where have you been all day?’

  ‘Well,’ Siv announced proudly. ‘I’ve got a job.’

  ‘What? How? Doing what? Does your visa even allow you to work?’

  Siv took another loud slurp of her shake.

  ‘It’s cash in hand. I’ll be working as a nude model.’

  Aurelia coughed and snorted her mouthful of malt.

  Siv’s eyes narrowed. ‘That right there is karma, my friend. Teach you for laughing at me earlier. And my announcement is a lot less shocking than yours, I’m sure you’ll admit.’

  ‘Less shocking than mine?’ Aurelia hissed. ‘I didn’t choose the tattoo. It just arrived. What do you mean a nude model? Tell me you’re not doing porn.’

  Aurelia remembered the film clips that she had viewed earlier that day to aid her arousal and the way the women had been so completely on display with nothing at all left to the imagination. She winced. Surely her friend would not want to be a part of that?

  ‘No, no. Not that I haven’t considered it, I’ll admit, but I know it’s too risky to be onscreen. Future career prospects, parents and all that. I’ll show you the ad.’

  She reached into the pocket of her jeans shorts and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. It was from one of those fliers that appear on lamp posts with tentacle-like tear-off slips hanging from the bottom with the advertiser’s number. The advertisement had been handwritten in a deliberately artful font, almost calligraphic in style. It read:

  ‘And you called this guy?’ Aurelia asked.

  ‘Yes. And it happened that I was right near his studio. So I went there and modelled for him.’

  ‘You went to his house? Alone? Are you bonkers? You might have been killed, Siv.’

  ‘I haven’t said that it was a him, yet. And I had a good feeling about it. No harm done.’ she shrugged. ‘And now I’m getting the bill.’

  She proudly fished a thin wad of notes from her pocket.

  ‘You’re doing this for money? You know I have enough to pay for everything. And your parents would send more if they thought you need it. Especially if they knew you were going into nude modelling . . .’

  ‘I hate taking money from you. And you know that helping with the ballet classes is only covering board and hardly anything more. I want to be able to travel and party and buy things, not live like a pauper for months on end. Besides, it was fun.’

  ‘You took your clothes off for him?’

  ‘Yes. But do you want to hear the most amazing part of it all?’

  Siv had lowered her voice to a whisper and leaned closer to her friend’s ear as if she was about to share a secret.

  ‘He’s blind,’ Siv said.

  ‘So he touched you?’ Aurelia asked. ‘Siv, this sounds like a set-up.’

  ‘No, he didn’t lay a finger on me. It was like he was looking at me but not seeing me, but somehow he was able to sense my body . . . I’ve never felt so “seen” before. It was as if he could read my mind, my thoughts, see my soul. Or something like that.’

  Aurelia snorted. ‘And you’re worried that I’ve lost the plot?’

  ‘I have to go back, of course. We barely got started today. But he paid me up front, which is equally odd. I could just scarper with the money. But somehow I think that he knows that I won’t.’

  ‘Listen to us,’ Aurelia said. ‘I feel like we’re living in a fairy tale. Or someone else’s dream.’

  ‘Oh, I almost forgot. He’s having an exhibition, and invited me to pose for him there. You should come. Check it out for yourself, and stop acting like my mother . . .’

  She produced another flier from her other pocket. This one was printed on glossy white card that Siv had carefully folded up into a small square. The writing was in the same font, in thick black ink. The letters were crafted so perfectly that it was impossible to tell whether the lettering had been printed or painted. It simply read:

  Aurelia picked up the card and examined it carefully. She turned it over, but the back was blank. There was no sign of an address or any other instructions or explanation of the event.

  ‘This gets stranger by the minute,’ she said.

  Venice 1847

  He had been told that more rats than human beings lived in Venice.

  The gondola glided down the Grand Canal past the Scalzi Bridge as night fell. Ange’s cape was thin and the cold wind from the lagoon chilled his ageing bones. The water’s surface spread out in a million ripples in their wake, a subtle arrangement of waves, eddies, concentric rings and fluttering droplets through which their embarkation and dozens of nearby thin, elongated boats silently made their way.

  By his side, Formetta had wrapped himself inside a thick brown blanket and gazed ahead with a distant look in his eyes. Soon the canal widened as they passed St Mark’s Place and the open waters of the basin beyond the Punta della Dogana beckoned.

  The gondolier, shrouded in darkness, his features invisible, veered to the right, in the direction of the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore.

  Ange Desclos had travelled from Bohemia to the shores of the Adriatic in search of a manuscript. On her deathbed, his mother, who had once worked as a maid to Count von Waldstein at the Castle of Dux, had finally announced that the unknown father Ange spent his life speculating about had been none other than the notorious Casanova, who had been the count’s librarian until his own death in 1798.

  Not only this, but she had revealed the existence of several unpublished chapters of his controversial memoirs. It was well known that the rest of the book, published in Germany back in 1822, had been heavily censored, but there was also evidence of huge, unexplained gaps in the lengthy story. Ange had also become a librarian, possibly unwittingly following in his father’s footsteps. This quest for the missing part of Casanova’s narrative was not only a task of bibliophilia, but also a way of coming to terms with the man who he believed had been his father.

  His research spread across many years in dusty archives in Prague, Paris and Berlin and had eventually led Ange to Venice, Casanova’s birthplace and the setting for many of his adventures.

  Eventually he had come across it while poring through his notes in the dull light of the common room of the Pensione Tronca in the Cannaregio sestiere. An anomaly. A period of six months in 1788 where Casanova’s locations and doings were seemingly missing. And a few brief lines years later describing enigmatic events at a magnificent celebration in a castle near Avignon in the south of France.

  Why was there no further mention of this throughout the thousands of pages of the narrative? The few remaining survivors of Casanova’s days he had managed to track down and speak to could shed no light on the mystery but vague rumours whispered in public houses and the ghosts of memories that Ange had encouraged to the fore with small bribes, fine brandy or simple wheedling, had finally thrown up the name of Formetta. Today’s meeting was his final avenue of investigation. The ultimate name on his list, and now Ange could no longer recall when or why the elderly dancer’s name had even been passed on to him.

  How could he have known that Formetta would turn out to be deaf and dumb, and whatever secrets he harboured would prove nigh impossible to release? He had, exaggerating his gestures, indicated to the old man that he could write his questions down but the desiccated, white-haired retiree, had gestured him away as if the effort of doing so wa
s beneath him.

  ‘Casanova, the Chevalier de Seingalt? A Ball? A manuscript?’ Ange had shouted out, louder than he had wanted, as if raising his voice would have made a bigger impression on his interlocutor. But the elderly dignitary had just stood there with an enigmatic smile on his narrow lips, brushing a mote of dust away from his hand, as they had both faced each other in the sonorous antechamber of the small palazzo where he lived close by the Ponte dell’Accademia and to which Ange had been dispatched.

  Following a half hour of unsuccessful attempts to communicate, Ange had been ready to take his leave when Formetta had unexpectedly summoned a servant, who had brought him a blanket, and led the way to a pontoon at the back of the palazzo where the gondola had been stationed, indicating that Ange should follow him onto the boat.

  And now night had fallen over the lagoon, and approaching the island, Ange was surprised by the myriad lights illuminating the horizon of churches and domes, a hundred torches burning bright on walls, parapets and in windows. A strong waft of flowers, fragrances and random spices reached his nose as the embarkation was carefully manoeuvred against the wooden quay.

  A liveried servant extended a hand to assist his rise from the boat. Ange was helped onto terra firma. He looked back, expecting Formetta to follow him, but the gondola was already drifting away into the black waters of the lagoon. The elderly man was waving at him, a gesture of farewell.

  ‘Damn!’ Ange muttered under his breath.

  Ahead of him, a path of flickering torches cut through the night. He followed the attendant to a tall, semi-circular wooden door that led into a cavernous building squeezed between the island’s monastery and the San Giorgio church, but hitherto almost hidden from the eyes through some clever architectural artifice. Music rose from the building as he approached.

  He walked solemnly across the threshold and entered a vast cupola-shaped cavern where light literally dripped from the undulating ceiling like a curtain of fire, blinding him at first until he squinted to filter the assault and slowly made sense of the environment he had emerged into.

  Beyond the wall of white light an orgy of colours surged through, an otherworldly palette screaming of opulence and excess.

  The hall was busy with an assortment of people in the most extravagant attires and plumage, as if denizens of previous centuries had returned for the occasion festooned in every shade and variation thereof of the rainbow and more, every length of fabric more extravagant than the one before, wisps of cloth, cotton and silk draped with care and ingenuity along and across bodies, both male and female. A veritable carnival of the visual senses.

  For a brief moment, Ange felt terribly self-conscious at the modesty and drabness of his own suit, but the busy crowd seemed impervious to his presence and not a single glance questioning the suitability of his attire was cast his way. Shielded from the night air, his body was finally warming as his curiosity mounted.

  A murmur inside his head whispered that this was indeed the famous Ball that Casanova had supposedly once written about. The grail he had been tracking for what now felt like most of his life.

  Voices rose from the crowd like wild streamers in a variety of languages, most of which he could not comprehend, a blanket of sound that hummed and buzzed in a hypnotic manner, making him feel even more of a stranger in a strange country.

  Black-cloaked attendants, their powdered white faces peering anonymously through the opening in their tight hoods, moved between the guests dispensing tall blue glasses filled with sweet wine. After savouring his first glass, Ange quickly chased another of the circulating servants and helped himself to a second one, which he greedily downed in a single gulp. It was exquisite, caressing his throat as its warmth spread inside his body. His senses immediately heightened, focused on the exotic outfits of the many guests. He paused to catch his bearings.

  The crowd ebbed and flowed, moving through the large high-ceilinged room like the streams of a river sinuously seeking its source, colours blending, merging, melting into each other to create new shades and variations of impossible tints like paint flowing freely on a shimmering liquid surface.

  Ange felt blissfully light-headed.

  The throng parted in front of him and a group of tall women whose bejewelled gowns all freely exposed their bare shoulders and an avalanche of voluptuous curves, their skin whiter than white in echoes of porcelain, rushed through, the delicate texture of their crinoline brushing momentarily against the hand he held against his side. As if aspirated by their wake, Ange felt obliged to follow them as they wound their way through the milling crowds and passed through an immense vaulted door that led into another, even larger, chamber. The door clamorously closed behind him.

  He looked ahead and held his breath. At the centre of the room stood an immense water tank, its glass walls exquisitely streaked at regular intervals with streams of blue and scarlet, like liquid volcanic flows within the glass. The impressive construction, which towered heads above the spectators who now circled it, must have been designed on the nearby island of Murano by its world-famous glass-makers, he reckoned.

  The water inside the tank shimmered in the light of the ring of torches illuminating the room, burning bright and casting a diorama of fire and shadows across its empty contents. Busy taking in the bizarre reservoir that had been installed here, mentally attempting to calibrate his response to the incongruous situation he now found himself in, Ange heard the sound of water splashing and turned to witness a group of six women diving through the water behind the thick glass, the nakedness of their pale bodies somehow magnified by the transparent wall now separating them and the water from the onlookers and the rest of the room.

  It was the group of women he had followed into the chamber. He looked down and saw the dresses they had shed scattered haphazardly across the stone floor.

  ‘The night begins,’ a basso profundo voice behind him proclaimed. A man’s. But Ange’s attention could not bear to be diverted from the spectacle unfolding before him and he did not look back.

  ‘Could it be the zodiac this year? I hear it’s been over a hundred years since it was used as a theme for the Ball,’ a woman said in response, her voice high-pitched and he questioning.

  ‘Pisces, maybe?’ someone else said, blurrily pitched between man and woman at the limits of Ange’s hearing.

  The nude women disposed themselves around the circumference of the immense water tank, their shapely legs fluttering in position, stirring the water into small whirlpools that rose around them, circling their limbs. Ange couldn’t take his eyes away from them. Their bodies were all so perfect, as if sculpted from precious marble, skin like a taut canvas, every detail of their regal anatomies magnified by the glass. How could they breathe, he wondered? Small bubbles of water pearled through their lips and drifted to the surface of the glass tank at regular intervals. Were they mermaids? Or just fish turned human in appearance by unfathomable instruments of magic?

  Behind him, Ange could sense the room filling and a dull rumour of expectation rise through the crowd of spectators. Even if he had wanted to, there was no way now he could move away, surrounded as he was by a rush of bodies. He stood rooted to the spot.

  A reverent silence spread across the room, all voices stilling, a supernatural hush, the sound of a hundred breaths held back.

  And then, an almighty exhalation.

  A trap door had opened at the very centre of the floor of the glass tank and a winding line of naked swimmers, all male, he counted twelve in all, emerged from unknown, hidden depths, like arrows through the water, rising swiftly to the surface before diving again and separating into half a dozen pairs, each now making a beeline towards one of the women fluttering on the outer wall of the water tank like butterflies pinned against its glass walls.

  Each man was likewise perfect in body and shape, muscled, defined, sculpted, oozing power and intent as they approached their prey.

  ‘The rams,’ someone close to Ange whispered in his ear. ‘Aries.’<
br />
  Ange felt giddy. Something in the sweet wine? He brushed sweat from his forehead and watched, transfixed, as each pairing of men wrapped itself around one of the women in the water and proceeded to impale her from front and back in rapid, rehearsed motion. Until all eighteen bodies were dancing a shameless dance of lust in the water, thrashing wildly and wantonly in place. Yes, a ballet, but a beautiful and uncommon submarine one, bodies in communion, interlinked, joined, married to each other in metronomic motion, a slow, steady swirl of flesh in water, flesh against water. A celebration.

  His throat felt dry and painful.

  ‘Until dawn,’ a cry of liberation, resonating through the chamber, words flying above their heads, the water tank, the Ball.

  As reluctant as he was to take his eyes off the spectacle unfolding in the translucent water, Ange couldn’t help but notice men and women in the crowd surrounding him beginning to disrobe, bodies, white, tanned and olive-skinned in all shapes, sizes and ages, proudly revealed, clothing casually dropping to the floor, corsets unhurriedly being unlaced, shirts parting from skin, breeches dropping, shoes being cast aside.

  Behind him, someone tugged on his shirt, gently but firmly, as if to assist him.

  At the same moment, streams of coloured rope unfurled from somewhere in the heights of cavernous chamber and fell, dangling just inches away from the shimmering surface of the water tank, and out of nowhere, a group of naked aerialists began their descent, each wearing a thin crown of flowers and matching ankle chains in shades of gold, stopping their acrobatic arc just before their feet reached the water. As they did so the conjoined couples circling the periphery of the enormous bowl, each a sublime two-backed beast lost to the throes of pleasure, began a slow drift to the surface where, as if in slow motion, they reached the open arms of the nude acrobats and were taken into the safe harbour of their strong arms and each respective trio ascended to the roof where Ange and the other spectators lost sight of them.