Tomorrow

by Damian Dibben

  Of all the places in the world I’ve known, the Piazza San Marco is the most unaltered by the years. I suspect it will be so until the very end of time. Now it is just another reminder of my loss, but then I was surely thrilled by it, the bravura of its colonnades, the startling red immensity of the Campanile, the fairy-tale church and the sugar-pink palace. We weaved through the crowds, beneath the winged lion that looks out to sea, to the edge of the quay. ‘Look!’ My master gasped, pointing across the water. ‘There! Where once was just a bog of land. Look, my champion.’

  And so I saw it for the first time: the cathedral, my cathedral. A domed mountain of white marble so luminous that it seemed to charge the city with light. It was brand new, still scaffolded in places, with artisans at work, clipping and sanding.

  ‘The new world, you see?’ My master’s hand was hot on the back of my neck and tears shone in his eyes. ‘How marvellous to live in such a time of revelation. And what joy to discover it together, you and I, side by side.’ He knelt and stroked me beneath the chin. ‘How patient you’ve been. What troubles I’ve put you through. But here we are, safe and quiet for a spell and the world offers up its treasures.’ There was a scent of cloves from a nearby skiff, the sky was clear lapis, the air still and warm—and I remember how content I was.

  * * *

  ‘My companion can be a fussy eater,’ my master confided in the proprietor of the trattoria, a portly, giant smile of a man. We’d come to an exuberant locale close to the fish market, and my master had insisted I sit up at the table next to him, for a better view. ‘He’ll not eat meat, nor fish, but has a passion for beans, fagioli, in whatever style suits your kitchen.’

  The proprietor grinned and pinched my cheek between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Capisco. An animal of distinction for sure. And for you?’ he asked my master.

  ‘Oysters. And many of them!’

  After dinner, we went to the square close to our quarters where a festivity was already in full swing.

  ‘Will it shame you greatly if I partake?’ Before he’d even finished the sentence, my master was whisked into the maelstrom by a lady reveller. That night, I was not embarrassed by it. The opposite: it cheered me to my core to watch him sail by on his clumsy feet, forever going off in the wrong direction, apologizing and laughing all the while.

  Then, a shadow seemed to fall on the square, not literally—it was night by then—but a feeling of it, an invisible pall of unease, or danger. I stood up, tense, lifting my snout and cocking my ears. Whatever it was, only I had sensed it, for everyone else carried on the same. For me, and only me, the music went quiet and I had the sense of a cold hand touching my heart. Through the spiral of dancers I saw a figure hurry away, a broad-shouldered man. He moved differently from everyone else, like a thief hurrying off. I went after him, but by the time I’d got through the crowd, his cloak was disappearing round a building. Cautiously, I padded to the corner and peered round, but found just an empty canal-way and a pair of vacant bridges. The cold hand inside released itself slowly—but the fear remained. There had barely been a time in my life when Vilder had not seemed to stalk us. The stranger that had once dazzled me, gliding over the frozen river in London. ‘My parents owned mines, long ago. I inherited,’ he’d purred, twisting the sapphire on his finger. Although I only met him once more after Whitehall, in Amsterdam, twenty years later, he ruled our lives. Every street we turned down, we would check he did not follow. Every room we went into, we’d make sure he was not there. Every passer-by we’d scrutinize, every soldier on the battlefield, every man we ever met.

  There was panic in the voice that came from behind me—‘Where are you? Where are you, my champion?’—and my master tore up the street, the lights from the dance making his shadow as high as the buildings. He found me and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘You frightened me.’ He grinned, hugging me, and I wondered if I should warn him in some way. But I thought I was just being superstitious. ‘Enough dancing for one evening,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home. We have much to do tomorrow.’

  That night, guarded by the mahogany bears, he made a special place for me on the bed with his pillows, so I’d sleep by his head. In truth, I always preferred my own corner—but I stayed close as he wanted.

  In the early-morning light, last night’s worries seemed absurd, and, as my master had promised, we went to the cathedral. As soon as we crossed to the promontory of land on which it sits, we stopped dead on the arch of the bridge. Close up, it was even more magnificent. We circled it, gazing at the domes and towers, the congregation of statues staring down at us, haughty immortals dismissive of us living things. It smelt of fresh plaster, lime and furnaced iron, vital scents that have long since been overthrown and turned bland by age.

  We ascended the white staircase and my master chattered, excited as a boy. ‘Octagonal, you see its eight sides, ingenious, Byzantine almost. It has borrowed that from its rival church. But only that, for this building has its own rules. And the stone is Istrian, no? You see how the marble dust catches the light? They say they sank a million poles into the ground to bear this marvel. I know my boy, I am quite mad, a fool for beauty.’ The doors at the top were towering, new bronze, not a touch of the muddled, zincy green they are now. They were open and we were about to step inside when he stopped and scanned the fondamenta, regarding each person in turn, before shaking his head and smiling. ‘Just superstition. In Venice, of all places, I—we—’ He didn’t finish his sentence, just straightened his tunic. He was about to go in, but halted again. ‘If we lose one another inside—’ He motioned towards the multitude ascending behind us. ‘If we lose one another, my champion, wait for me on the steps. Just here, by the door. Yes?’ I understood precisely.

  Inside, there was a sweet smoke—a sickly incense of camphor, sandalwood, myrrh and gum Arabic—that shrouded the murmuring clusters of churchgoers and tourists, turning them to dreamy shadows. At the altar, a priest swung a silver thurible and smoke arced in its wake, like a comet’s tail, back and forth, accompanied by the tinkle of chains. Here and there bowls of the same incense smouldered, adding to the fog. Even then, before my master’s disappearance, I hated the smell; it crept, teasingly, into my lungs and left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. My master stopped and stared, a shaft of light from one of the high windows catching on his face. I did as he did, surprised to find a new sky, high above us, a giant cupola, a false world hiding the real one.

  ‘Like a great crown upon our heads, is it not?’ he said. ‘We all become kings.’ He turned on the spot. ‘Eight chapels, three altars. We shall all be forgiven.’ A chuckle. ‘And look, the fresco in there. Is it Titian?’ The sunlight through the window must have been hot on his face, as I remember him slipping his scarf from his neck and winding it round his wrist. It was a cherished piece, bought in a market in Florence, woven silk in a puzzle of geometric patterns.

  He stepped over to the side chapel, his eye upon the ceiling. ‘Titian indeed,’ he thrilled. ‘You see? A rare find. David and Goliath. Such ecstasy and turmoil. I met him once, here in Venice, in his studio by the Arsenale. He had a canvas, half painted, of Theseus on which I complimented him. But he did not care for me.’ Another chuckle. ‘Let us look closer.’ He ruffled the fur on my head, before entering the annex to examine the fresco. If I’d known it would be the last time he would touch me, I would have welded myself to his side like molten metal, but I did not go with him. The chapel was busy enough, so I stood guard at the gate instead, glancing up at the picture. A muscular warrior lay upside down on a rock, slain, dead, colour drained from his body, head twisted at an angle, arm outstretched in startling perspective and a vivid splash of carmine red spilt from it on to the stone. Behind a slight boy jutted his arms up to the heavens. The sky, otherwise a mass of brooding clouds, was ripped open in the centre and a stabbing yellow light pierced through.

  Wondering why my master was so entranced by such a grim tableau, I turned the other
way, facing the main chamber. More and more silhouettes were pouring through the entrance in exaggerated wigs and giant cuffs. They clutched at their companions’ sleeves and muttered proclamations. As I had been at the dance, I was beset with worries once more: my master stopping at the top of the stairs had given new weight to them. Chatter whispered around the walls, bouncing off the marble floor and dancing high in the dome. Then—and again I will never know if it is a real memory, or if time has made me imagine it—the invisible hand of yesterday, colder than the tiles beneath my paws, gently gripped my heart. My haunches went up. One man moved more quickly than the others, a shadow in the gloom. He slipped behind the columns and disappeared. The icy fingers seemed to tighten their hold and I was overpowered by dread. In an instant, fragments of memories rushed into my mind—of the night in Amsterdam when Vilder turned so violently against me, of my head striking hot brick and the smell of my fur catching light.

  Light-headed, I turned back to the side chapel but my master wasn’t there. I swung round, scanned the central chamber, nose and eyes. I saw him, I thought, under an arch, lighting a votive candle. Relief. I bounded over, pressed my nose to his boot, only to find it was someone else. I ran back to the chapel with the fresco, but there were three new pairs of feet, sightseers babbling reverentially, as they admired the gruesome painting. But I could still smell him, my master, clearly. I had an absurd thought that he had become invisible before I found his scarf on the floor. A little heap of silk where once he’d been.

  My dread thickened. I circled the interior, nose to the ground. For the third time I returned to the side chapel, but it was empty now. Just the scarf coiled there. It taunted me. I went back to the votive candle. I let out a bark, calling his name. He had never left me before. My hollers were loud and coarse. ‘I’m here. I’m here. Where are you?’

  A warden with the build of a bargeman approached, his hard soles pounding the tiles. ‘Silence in church,’ he whispered angrily. ‘Uscire, cane, uscire!’

  I kept on barking. ‘Are you lost? I’m here.’ The warden tried to seize me, but I got away, made another lap of the church in ever more desperate zigzags. Shoe to shoe. Nothing but strangers’ feet. Widening horror. Then I remembered his instruction before we entered. ‘If we lose one another, my champion, wait for me on the steps. Just here, by the door.’ My fear melted. I pushed through the crowd and out of the main door. He was not there. I circled on the spot, whining. I snapped back and forth down the stairs, up again, down once more, across the quay, left, right, clockwise, anti-clockwise. ‘Where are you? Are you lost? I’m here.’ I scouted about the quays of the customs house and the passages at the back of the church. ‘I’m here. I’m here. Where are you? Are you lost?’ I barked until I had no voice left.

  I resolved to try to find my way back to our lodgings. I tried to retrace the path we’d taken. Now I’m familiar with every alley and passage of the city and could walk them blind, but then I was baffled, exasperated and finally infuriated by the maze of seemingly identical streets. Countless times I made wrong turns, halted by a cul-de-sac or a canal. Eventually I reached the bridge of white arches, put my head down, and shouldered over it through the heaving crowds: buckled shoes, brocade heels, petticoats, overskirts, coloured ribbons and bows. I remember thinking how ridiculous humans could be, making such shows of themselves with clothes, with frills, trinkets and trimmings.

  I came out, head spinning, into the great square. The Campanile stood guard, the city’s sentry, colossal and plain, careless of my plight, its bells silent. I double backed once more into the snaggle of streets until at last I found our palazzo. I had to bark and bark until the landlady let me in. I raced past her up to our rooms. There was no sign he’d returned, no new smells of him, no candles lit. His things were left exactly as he’d laid them out that morning. Neat piles. The room, with its bare walls and peeling plasterwork, its miscellany of mismatched furniture, its bed guarded by mahogany bears, was sinister now.

  I was half aware of the landlady hovering in the doorway. ‘Sei solo? Are you alone?’ she said in her high, prim voice. ‘Where is the gentleman?’

  In the early hours, when the streets were empty, I returned to the cathedral, mounted the pale flight of steps, but found the bronze doors closed. As soon as they opened in the morning, I slipped in without the wardens seeing me and tiptoed to the side chapel where I had last seen my master. On the ceiling, the warrior lay slain on the rock, upside down, with blood drizzled from his skull. Below it, the room was empty.

  Even my master’s scarf was gone.

  3

  THE VIGIL

  Venice, 1688–1815,

  the hundred and twenty-seven years I have spent waiting

  It’s extraordinary how whole decades can pass as if in a dream, how one hour can turn like a hundred years and a hundred years like one hour. To begin with, I never strayed from the steps. Not having my alcove then, I camped wherever I could find shelter, butted against the walls of the customs house, beneath the window ledges of the church or ensconced on nearby skiffs and gondolas—anywhere as long as I had a view of the front of the church. ‘If we lose one another, my champion, wait for me on the steps. Just here, by the door.’ I turned my nose to every shoe and boot that passed, thousands upon thousands of them, the dull and banal odours of other humans, not my master’s vital scent: midnight in a tall forest, stiff parchment paper, a whisper of pine sap.

  In those first years, I dreaded, above all else, the onslaught of winter, weeks of grey drizzle smudging the city, the first chimneys lit, before the chill set in, making the canals smoke and cobblestones sweat with frost. And then, in the bitterest weeks, in the darkest vale of the season, humans would put on masks, grotesque versions of their real faces and flap through the city like giant insects, congregating behind quickly closing doors, as orchestras struck up in unseen halls. In those weeks, however tightly I curled up to sleep, the flagstones stayed cold beneath me, the chill would insinuate my bones and the same twitchy nightmare would haunt my slumber: a babble of sightseers, silhouettes and periwigs, sweet smoke and swinging thurible. And always, when I woke, teeth chattering and eyes sore, a fresh charge would fire through me, and I’d stand, fur prickling hot and cold.

  No, he never came. I never saw him, smelt him. I never felt him.

  Eventually, I had the idea to leave the island and search elsewhere. I’d learnt from my master how to travel, how to navigate by the sun, who instinctively to trust and who to be wary of. I did not have gold to pay my way, but I could charm a wagoner. Humans possess a fascination for our species, and an innate kindness that they do not always have for each other. I thought of all the places my master and I had been long ago, but being perpetual wanderers, there was nowhere I could call home, no particular place to begin my search. My master never spoke, as all other people did at some point, of the place he grew up, or his ‘family.’ Only once, in all our time together, when we went into hiding in the Carpathian Mountains after fleeing Holland, did I hear him mention the words ‘mother’ and ‘father.’ There was never mention of ‘sisters’ or ‘brothers.’ He had that self-contained quality that only children have. But neither were there ‘aunts,’ ‘uncles’ or ‘cousins,’ no ‘relations,’ or ‘ancestral seat,’ or ‘birthplace.’

  And he hadn’t married either. Despite the fact he’d fallen in love, I was sure, more than once. Despite the fact he was always more comfortable with women than with men, that he appreciated them on a profound level, talked more to them, shared confidences and fears that he’d never admit to his own sex. But of course it didn’t give him, or I, any comfort at all that he would need to end any liaison before it had fully come to life—and I knew why: his sense of right and wrong demanded it. So, there was no specific place to go, which he and I had made our home. And besides—

  ‘If we lose one another, my champion, wait for me on the steps. Just here, by the door.’

  I delaye
d time and time again but one morning when the agony of inaction, of not knowing, became too fierce, I crept on to a ship unnoticed. My heart banged as the last of the cargo was loaded and the boat readied to set sail. ‘Tomorrow we begin again,’ I reassured myself. For a moment I was emboldened, then straight away terrified. I jumped ashore as the gangplank was being raised, hurried back to the church, thrilled with relief for not having left. For once, the sweet smoke inside gave me a punch of hope, a connection with him, but on visiting the side chapel, with its painting of the slayed giant, now with its colours slightly faded, and finding the room bare, the taste grew acrid again. For hours, even into the night, I snouted the front steps, up and down, up and down, checking and double checking until I thought I would lose my mind. There was not so much as an atom of him. But I never let it enter my mind that he wouldn’t come back, that he might be dead, that he might not exist any more.

  One day, some years after I lost my master, a young man passed that I recognized, the musketeer son of a duke with whom my master had been friends in the decade before we came to Venice. I’d almost forgotten the idyllic summer we’d spent, between our campaigns, in their palazzo at Lake Garda for the young man’s marriage. The whole family had so doted on me, they’d joked of kidnapping. And there he was in Venice, with his father still, both unchanged. I followed them barking, until the old duke stopped, peered round and I realized my mistake. He was the son, the once musketeer, his visage sunken and shrivelled with age, its vigour gone and a muddle of irritation in its place. His moustache, once acrobatic with expression, the badge of an intrepid adventurer, was painted on now, and not well, one side shorter than the other. He stared at me, baffled, before the young man, who I’d never met, put his hand to his father’s shoulder to ease him on his way.