What Casanova Told Me

by Susan Swan

  Praise for What Casanova Told Me

  “Utterly seductive…. In its inventive range, its playful engagement and tantalizing mystery, What Casanova Told Me is breathtaking, a tour de force.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “Swan invites the reader to become a surrogate traveller. She has a marvellous ability to take ordinary characters out of their ordinary places. There’s a dream-like quality to the prose. Her depiction of a troubled young woman on the cusp of self-hood is powerful.”

  —The Gazette (Montreal)

  “Swan is no miniaturist. She wants to write stories that are like sprawling castles in which every room is different. Her novels adamantly celebrate the epic, her canvas the wide world’s sweep. Her characters embark on odysseys, voyages of discovery that lead to dramatic adventures.”

  —Calgary Herald

  “The beauty and elegance of [Casanova’s] language, written and spoken—or rather of Swan’s rendering of his correspondence and their conversations—is striking…. Swan … [demonstrates] how matters of the heart may be considerably altered in the process of making journeys.”

  —Books In Canada

  “Part travelogue, part bodice-ripper, there is something both titillating and fantastical about this type of historical fiction, and Swan is adept at spinning facts into vividly imagined scenes and characters.”

  —Quill & Quire

  “Susan Swan gets all romantic on us in her new novel, What Casanova Told Me. But with its historical base and crafty parallel structure, it turns out to be a winner…. One of Swan’s best.”

  —Now (Toronto)

  For Louise Dennys, beloved editor and friend

  When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, had he professed to be writing a Novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man’s experience. The former—while as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart—has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer’s own choosing or creation…. The point of view in which this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us.

  NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

  Preface to The House of the Seven Gables

  HARVARD UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

  Pusey Library, Harvard Yard

  Cambridge, MA 02138

  April 29, 2000

  Luce Adams,

  291 Brunswick Avenue,

  Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2M2

  Dear Miss Adams:

  As instructed by your aunt, Beatrice Adams, I am returning the family documents found in the St. Lawrence cottage, along with my comments on their authenticity.

  The journal of Asked For Adams, with its lined pages and red-ribbed trim, displays features commonly found in late eighteenth-century diaries. Its most notable characteristic is the title embossed in gold leaf, which mentions your ancestor’s travels with Casanova. In the absence of a watermark it is difficult to confirm a date, but the journal looks to be a colonial product, perhaps manufactured in an East Coast American paper mill before the cheaper method of using acid to break down wood pulp was discovered.

  I’m afraid I wasn’t able to decode the Arabic manuscript with the interesting designs incised on its leather cover, nor do I have any idea why something so curious was found in the same box with your family documents. Perhaps some linking documents were misplaced or destroyed. However, I can say with some certainty that the paper used in the manuscript with Arabic writing has been treated with aher, a sizing material made from egg white and rice flour.

  I had better luck with the letters found with the eighteenth-century journal. The 1795 Fabriano watermark and the signature, Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt, appear to be authentic. In addition, the frequent slips in syntax suggest that the letter writer was someone who used

  French and Italian as promiscuously as Casanova is known to have done.

  Remarkably, most of his letters are in fairly good condition and eminently readable. Eighteenth-century letter writers wrote in a prose more akin to modern English than the fussy, over-descriptive language used by the Victorians. The Sansovinian Library in Venice will be delighted to have them on loan.

  In closing, please note that I have included a photocopy of the old documents so that your family can read them without fear of damaging the paper.

  I suspect your ancestor’s journal will be of general historical interest but it is the letters by Casanova that considerably increase the financial value of these documents.

  Sincerely,

  Charles Smith

  PART ONE

  The City of Longings

  Wrapped tightly in a pink plastic raincoat, the box of old documents lay snug in the bow of the motoscafo. Luce Adams sat huddled nearby, peering out the window of the cabin at the domes of San Marco rising up through the fine, slanting rain. In the next seat, an older woman in a dove-grey Borsalino was snoring, her head rolling with the swells. A young man sat in the stern, fiddling with an enormous telephoto lens.

  As the motoscafo pulled up alongside the Molo, the boatman spoke rapidly in Italian, pointing at the square where hundreds of empty benches stood waiting, as if in preparation for a celebration.

  “Scusa, signora.”

  The young man entered the cabin and bent to touch the shoulder of the middle-aged woman. She recoiled, pushing back the brim of her hat to see who had disturbed her sleep.

  “The boatman wants to be paid.”

  He rubbed together his thumb and forefinger, his eyes turning to Luce as she stooped to retrieve the box near her feet. Glancing at the rain outside, Luce opened her travel pack and carefully placed the box inside and fastened the clasp. The older woman left the cabin and gave the boatman his lire, and, smiling and gesturing, he began to heave their suitcases onto the dock.

  Just as the two women stepped onto the Piazzetta, where a cat was chasing pigeons across the stones, the sun rose in the east, lighting the sky of rainclouds beyond San Giorgio Maggiore a muddy pink. They stood staring at the sea streaming like grey-green banners beneath the medieval churches and palazzos. The misty rain still fell and from the faraway Lido came the faint, doleful boom of waves. Across the Piazzetta, Luce noticed the young photographer pointing his camera at the Basin of San Marco. She turned and saw half a dozen small boats slipping like water bugs out of the fog: in the light skiffs, rowers in sleeveless jerseys bent over their oars.

  “This way!” Lee Pronski called, and Luce followed her companion across the square that Napoleon had once called the largest living room in Europe. Luce walked with a slight forward stoop, pulling the cart stacked from stem to gudgeon with their luggage.

  After several minutes of walking down side streets, Lee stopped by a small Venetian bridge and stared into the window of an antiquarian bookstore. Its door stood open even though it was early for Venice, and the vaporetti chugging by on the canal looked largely empty. With a yelp of excitement, Lee disappeared inside. Dragging the luggage cart behind her, Luce walked over to see what had claimed her interest. The window of the shop was draped with a regatta poster proclaiming Vogalonga, Venezia 14 maggio. Below the poster, Catholic reliquaries were displayed alongside a pile of ancient books in Italian whose titles she couldn’t understand. Next to the books stood several diminutive figurines.

  She peered closer. The Venus of Willendorf. There was no mistaking the huge, swoll
en stomach bulging over a tiny pubis, or the featureless face hidden beneath a bumpy topknot. But she had never seen the ugly figure with two beaky faces standing next to the Venus. From inside the shop, she heard her name being called. She parked the cart by the door and stepped inside just as the woman shopkeeper was explaining to Lee that these figures were thousands of years old.

  “Well, no. These are only copies of prehistoric artifacts.” Lee picked up the double-headed icon and licked it, causing the shopkeeper and Luce to exchange startled glances. “Pure sandstone,” Lee nodded.

  “Another fertility goddess,” Luce sighed.

  “They’re much more than that!” Lee paid the clerk. “Here, Luce. I’d like you to have it. See the wavy bands across its chest? The chevrons indicate her metaphysical powers.”

  “Your mother is knowledgeable,” the clerk said, smiling at Luce.

  She’s not my mother, Luce wanted to reply. My mother is dead. She stuffed Lee’s gift into her enormous knapsack and they set off again through the narrow streets.

  At the Hotel Flora, the bellhop greeted the women with a sympathetic smile, his eyes resting on Luce in her rain-soaked jacket.

  “A bit of weather never hurt anyone.” Lee waved at the terrace where a waiter was setting the tables with bowls of croissants. “Luce, why don’t you change out of your wet things and meet me for breakfast?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Luce mumbled.

  “What did you say?”

  “I think I’ll go to bed.” Luce bowed her head and started up the stairs after the bellhop, now bent double under the weight of her travel pack.

  “I see. Well, sleep all day if you like,” Lee called out after her. “I’ll leave instructions at the desk on where to meet for dinner.”

  Luce offered her mother’s lover a barely perceptible nod.

  As she stepped through the door, the light in her hotel room seemed to dim. She heard the beating of wings.

  “Piccioni!” The bellhop mimed the gesture of eating and pointed at the dozens of puffy grey birds settling back along the eaves. “They saved Venice in the plagues.”

  As the door closed behind him, Luce peeled off her wet sweater. Then she opened her travel pack and removed her raincoat from around the box to see if any moisture had leaked through. The box was made of translucent plastic with the cloudy sheen of a shower curtain. She was impressed by the care Charles Smith had taken with the documents. The box was the latest thing in archival materials, only two and a half inches thick, or “slim size,” the best for hand-carrying documents. As an extra precaution, he had wrapped it in twine in case the tabs came unfastened.

  Luce snipped the twine with her nail scissors and nervously stripped away the layering of acid-free tissue, exposing a photocopy of the documents, an old red-ribbed journal, an ornate leatherbound Arabic manuscript and a sheaf of letters.

  It’s all dry, she thought. Thank goodness. Casanova’s letters lay next to the old journal, bound with a faded rose-coloured ribbon. She examined the letters first, untying the ribbon with her long skilful fingers. The staff at the Sansovinian would be pleased: not a drop of twenty-first-century moisture marred the paper bearing the Fabriano watermark.

  There had been a great deal of disbelief and amusement in Luce’s family after the letters were authenticated by Harvard’s eighteenth-century-manuscript expert, Charles Smith. Holding the letters under the light on the bedside table, she saw that the pages glittered slightly, and she realized sand had been sprinkled across the paper—perhaps to dry the gold ink. Casanova had used a darker ink in his later letters and some of their pages were frail and lacy, as if the ink had eaten through the paper. No doubt this was what Charles Smith had meant when he said Casanova’s letters were in “fairly good condition.” She longed to read the letters, but their fragile condition made her hesitate. What if she tore one by mistake and lessened its value? Better to read the photocopy that Charles Smith had provided, though it didn’t hold the same glamour.

  The family documents made up a fonds d’archives—the archival term for an assortment of papers generated by one person in a lifetime. Although most people would be satisfied with calling the documents a collection, Luce’s training as an archivist had taught her to use the proper term, and she still enjoyed rolling the words around in her mouth.

  The fonds appeared to belong to Asked For Adams, who bore a Puritan name of the sort usually bestowed on boys. She was Luce’s great-great-great-great-great aunt to be precise, and so not, strictly speaking, her “ancestor,” but that was how Luce always thought of her. After all, they were both Adamses. According to the Adams family Bible, Asked For Adams had vanished in Venice one spring evening during the eighteenth century and was presumed dead, possibly the victim of Napoleon’s soldiers.

  No one knew how Asked For’s papers had come to be in the attic of the old Adams cottage on the south shore of the St. Lawrence. After the death of Luce’s mother two years before, her aunt Beatrice had found the papers buried under other old documents, mostly letters from forgotten family members. The attic itself was a mess of detritus from generations of Adamses—Japanese temple bronzes, prints, embroidered oriental hangings, Turkey carpets (as they were then called) and military swords. It was assumed the documents had been brought to Canada over a hundred and fifty years before by Aaron Adams, a temperance reformer who lost touch with the Boston branch of his family after he walked north by foot from Albany, New York, looking for a wilderness where the poor weren’t ruined by drink.

  As the pigeons fluttered outside her window, she put Casanova’s letters back in the archival box and removed the thick, red-ribbed journal, smiling at its title: What Casanova Told Me: My Wanderings with Jacob Casanova through the Mediterranean’s Ancient Kingdoms. The name Asked For Adams appeared on the title page along with a list of places seen, things done—a precursor to the tendency of modern tourists to chalk up destinations like golf scores. The date read 1797.

  It wasn’t just the wonderful title that made her catch her breath. She noticed a small sketch of a woman in Turkish trousers inserted between the back pages of the journal, and on the frontispiece was a hand-drawn map with a tiny black dotted line marking a journey from Venice to Constantinople. Opposite the frontispiece was an inscription by Asked For Adams and a declaration of her ancestor’s travel principles. Flushed with excitement, Luce held the journal so its red-ribbed sides rested evenly on the hotel desk. The documents had arrived only the day before their flight, and she hadn’t had the chance to do more than scan a few pages. She began to read.

  In my lifetime, I have done many things for a woman born a Yankee in Quincy, Massachusetts. I have saved the life of a Sultan and travelled with Jacob Casanova who taught me there is only one lesson worth learning: Never try to realize the ideal, but find the ideal in the real.

  Find the ideal in the real? Now what on earth did her ancestor mean by that, Luce wondered. She turned back to the opening page.

  Our longings give rise to faiths (of which there are many) but the best faiths are five and they are also pleasures: (1) the Faith of our Forebears; (2) Love and Sexual Congress, which Jacob Casanova never separated; (3) Literature; (4) Beauty; and (5) Travel. No matter which faith we choose of the thousands that await us, we must practise it with as much reverence, compassion and exuberance as we poor beings possess, because the words of all doctrines will pall in time.

  In 1797, when I met Jacob, I did not know I was about to take up Travel, the Fifth Faith, whose principles Jacob so wittily invented and whose precepts I have translated freely from the French to suit my purposes. I was also ignorant enough then to think that Travel stood on its own, not understanding it depends on the other four faiths to be complete.

  JACOB CASANOVA’S TEN PRIMARY

  PRINCIPLES OF TRAVEL:

  1. Do not set out in a spirit of acquisition, but go forth in the utmost humility, experiencing the same fervour you feel when choosing a lover, knowing a world of possibilities awaits you.<
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  2. Write down what it is you desire and tear your wish into a dozen pieces. Then fling the scraps into a large body of water. (Any ocean will do.)

  3. Travelling is like breathing, so exhale the old, inhale the new and allow your heartbreak to fall away behind you.

  4. What you desire always awaits you if you are brave enough to recognize it.

  5. Go only where your fancies take you. The path of pleasure and freedom is the best path for the traveller.

  6. Arrange easy entrances and exits. Refresh yourself at comfortable lodgings. Then move on to other quarters, and forgive yourself the indulgence of necessary luxuries.

  7. If you find a place that suits you, by all means stay. But you will not know the soul of its people until you can speak to them in their own language.

  8. Accept others as you do yourself, but see them for who they are.

  9. Your journey is not over until you bestow a gift on the lands you have visited, knowing full well that you will never be able to repay half the riches they bestow on you.

  10. Go now and at once, taking Jacob Casanova’s words to heart: Un altro mondo è possibile!

  How whimsical of Casanova, she thought wryly. And his tenth principle, from what little she knew of Italian, suggested that Casanova believed he could change his reality like a suit of clothes. She didn’t like to travel herself and anyway, she couldn’t afford holidays, not on her salary at the Miller Archives and Rare Books. Given the choice, she would rather collapse into a book and let the world come to her. Because no matter what her ancestor said, travel was dangerous. Death lurks in the unknown—the unwanted surprise no traveller is capable of turning to their advantage. Better to burrow in at home and avoid a disaster like the one that had claimed her mother in Greece. If it hadn’t been for the nagging worry that she owed it to her mother and herself to see the island where Kitty had died, she would never have let Lee pay her way to the memorial service in Crete. And, of course, she had been intrigued when her aunt asked her to deliver the documents to the Sansovinian Library in Venice. It was the first time Aunt Beatrice had taken Luce’s archival work seriously, and she was flattered to be offered the role of custodian of the family papers.