by Susan Swan
With affectionate respects,
Francis
I shuddered at his phrase “lay a hand on you.” Francis was trying to make amends, but how long will his fear of God keep him from forcing himself on me, as he has forced himself on his sisters? He is my sole companion in this foreign place, and if I did not know that Monsieur Casanova was close by, I would be greatly frightened. How curious I now see that older gentleman as my friend.
It is only a few days until Napoleon’s Liberty celebrations, when there will be bonfires, military parades, fireworks and Trees of Liberty installed in the square. Before the bonfire is lit, Francis and I and other engaged couples will dance the forlana, a peasant dance from Friuli. Yesterday we went to our first practice and our instructor grew cross with Francis for stepping on the toes of his female partners, while I was whipped back and forth in a great show of tapping feet and criss-crossing of calves. It is the first vigorous exercise I have had since we arrived in Venice.
Two days after Father was buried, Isaac Bey arrived at my hotel with a printed placard. He asked one of the hotel staff to affix it to the front wall of the building. The placard stated simply: “Thomas Adams, b. 1747 Quincy, Massachusetts, d. 1797. Received sacraments like a good Christian. All those who read this are asked to pray for him.”
“It is the custom of your people to do this in Venice,” Isaac said gently. His gesture touched me, although my parent would have been shocked to see the placard that claimed he had received the sacraments in the Catholic fashion. In death, Father has become an emblem of all faiths—died an Atheist, buried as a Jew, memorialized as a Papist, and in the deepest part of his heart still a stern Congregationalist.
“Where is Monsieur Casanova?” I whispered. “Is he safe?”
“Yes—and he wants you to have this.” Isaac handed me a note. It was addressed to the Chevalier de Seingalt.
Beloved,
My heart overflows with joy over the news that you are on your way to Constantinople. Now that my husband, the Sultan, is dead, nothing can keep us apart. The new Sultan, Selim, and his mother, my grey-haired friend, have promised they will help us begin the life we were denied so many years ago.
Hurry to me, beloved. We will make up for everything the Fates have stolen from us. You are the man the most important of all the men.
your loving Aimée
Puzzled, I reread the last sentence. It made no sense. Was Aimée suggesting that Monsieur Casanova was the most important of all her lovers? It was an odd thing for a woman in a harem to say, but perhaps it had a significance that only two lovers would understand.
“This is from Aimée Dubucq de Rivery?”
“He received word from her yesterday,” Isaac said. “And he wishes you to join him on his voyage. He leaves Venice on the day of the Liberty celebrations.”
“Will he go by frigate?”
Isaac Bey smiled kindly, I thought. “He leaves in the same gondola that took your father to the Lido. It will be at San Marco by noon. Should he expect you?”
I thought of Francis. “Yes,” I whispered.
Isaac told me to wear my mourning clothes. There was no time to ask for an explanation. I gave him two florins for Father’s funeral and insisted that he distribute my parent’s clothes to impoverished Hebrew families. To protect myself from the Liberty mobs, I will bring the flintlock pistol Father bought for my mother when he left on farm business; it is a pretty pocket model with a tiny bayonet and a brass frame engraved with the Stars and Stripes.
Today I was able to claim Father’s funds from the account he had opened in a small Venetian bank. Despite their social freedoms, Venetian women are not permitted inside banks, and at first the sight of me perplexed the clerk, but in the end my status as an American citizen prevailed and I withdrew the money Father had deposited.
Thanks to Monsieur Pozzo and his sketches, the account has diminished considerably. Still, it is enough to pay my expenses here in Venice for several years. At home, this sum would support Francis and me three times over—if I were to return with him to Massachusetts.
First Inquiry of the Day: What is the truest freedom? Freedom from or freedom to?
Lesson Learned: If it is true I am alone in the world, it is also true that I am free in the world.
Second Inquiry of the Day: Do I have the courage to leave Venice with Jacob Casanova and seek a more adventurous life?
Second Lesson Learned: Jacob Casanova knows I am a woman of my word and I will not disappoint him.
On the next photocopied page was a small advertisement that must have been inserted between the pages of the original journal. From the look of the streak marks on the page, the original had been refolded many times.
BIGGE REWARD FOR BOSTON GIRL!
ANYONE KNOWING THE WHEREABOUTS OF MISS ADAMS OF BOSTON PLEASE CONTACT FRANCIS GOOCH AT THE HOTEL FENICE. SHE DISAPPEARED FROM THIS GRAVE OF VIRTUE, JUNE 4. HER FINANCE DOES NOT KNOW WHERE TO FIND HER. SHE WAS A KIND GIRL WHO LIKED TO HELP HER SICKLEE FATHER. MR. GOOCH LEAVES FOR AMERICA IN 3 DAYS.
Luce wondered if Isaac Bey had noticed the announcement and sent it to Asked For Adams as a souvenir. Did her ancestor smile over the spelling mistakes, no doubt the work of a Venetian printer with a faulty command of English? Francis Gooch had offered a reward for news of his beloved, but would not stay more than three days to wait for a response. Maybe he was in no hurry to get married himself.
Ah. At last, she had come to one of the photocopied letters from Casanova. His penmanship was unmistakable, although the user copy did not convey the dramatic glamour of his handwriting. Gone were the gold ink and the faint sparkles of sprinkled sand. And gone too was the lacy look of a few of the later letters, whose paper had been corroded by an acidic ink. At least, she had a good reading knowledge of French, although she spoke the language badly and with a nasal Toronto twang.
She felt thrilled to hold the letter in her hand and to hear his voice speaking after Asked For Adams, as if she were listening in on a secret conversation. Casanova’s letter was addressed to Isaac Bey.
June 15, 1797
Dear Isaac,
A thousand thanks for our safe departure, old friend! Our stowaway came to the Molo, looking her part in a black silk vesta. Naturally, I felt sad to leave the city of my birth to Napoleon and his pack of French wolves. But I could not risk another run-in with the Corsican. He has borne me ill will since one of his men told him falsely that I had made love to his youngest sister. How fortunate for me that you keep up with your spy work and that my old enemies on the Council will now be under his guard. The fall of Venice has that at least to be said for it.
Peering through a knothole in my hiding place, I heard Nino whisper that he would take Miss Adams to meet me at the crab fisherman’s hut. She seated herself in the felz not far from where I lay, and I was moved by the expression of hopeful equanimity on her face. I believe Miss Adams is braver than other women. Alas, the wind rose after we set out, and I realized a June storm would soon overtake us. You know such storms, Isaac. They turn the sea cold and unfriendly and make the horizon appear a thousand miles off.
In no time, the gondola began to bob and quake, while Miss Adams continued to regard the lagoon with a hopeful look. She seemed pleased to see my little Finette again, who sat by her feet, staring directly at the place where I lay hidden. My pet wore the forgiving expression that says she wants to understand but, failing an explanation, she will wait loyally for a signal from me.
The journey through the gloomy marshes took many hours and I confess I fell into a heavy sleep. The bricoli that mark this deserted part of the lagoon are few in number, and it was twilight by the time we came to the islet of Cason dei Sette Morti. As soon as Nino saw the old stone house, he tapped the coffin lid with his oar, and I showed myself to Miss Adams. She uttered a cry, as she believed the corpse in the coffin was coming to life. When I spoke to her, she put her handkerchief to her mouth and couldn’t answer. The poor child had lost her voice, so overcom
e was she by the strangeness of her circumstances.
I cursed myself for falling asleep and promised I would never again allow her to think she was alone and in danger. Then Nino, thinking to divert her with his macabre wit, told her the story of the seven dead fishermen who once lived in the stone house. I do not think you know this story, Isaac, as few go any more to the lagoon’s southwestern marshes: Six fishermen and their cook, who was no more than a boy, lived in the old house. One day the fishermen found a corpse floating in the water. They took it back to the boy, telling him the corpse was deaf and dumb, and asked the boy to feed it. As they sat down to a meal of red-cheeked triglia, the dead man came to life, and greeted the fishermen. Then the hearts of all seven men stopped. In the end, the boy swam away to Venice to tell his tale.
As you can imagine, this story did her no good. Nino and I were obliged to lift her out of the boat and into the shallows by the shore. In the confusion she lost her copy of Seneca’s De beneficiis, but the dear child said not a word of protest. Tears streaming down her face, she followed me as I ploughed on through the waves, holding my satchel and shoes above my head. Nino came after us with our belongings.
In the kitchen of the old stone house, I found a large pile of dry kindling and built a fire. After we drank tea, she squeezed my arm gratefully. “Monsieur, I am sorry for the trouble I caused you. Today, I was too frightened to move or speak.”
“Dear child,” I said, “there was no need for speech in the bobbing gondola. It is my fault for not showing myself to you sooner.”
“Thank you, Monsieur Casanova. It is true I am downcast because Father is dead but I am glad you are with me.”
Could there be a more charming statement, Isaac? In the morning, we made a breakfast from crayfish we found on the shore, and she went about with the hopeful resolve I associate with her people. The Americans set out on an unknown ocean believing the Lord would take care of them, and in this she is true to her race. The Venetian people, may God bless us, exhibit no such willingness, and our empire lasted a thousand years because we expect the worst of everyone. And now it, too, has ended.
And so, dear friend, thank you for the ducats that secured our passage. The crab fisherman comes shortly to row us to the frigate anchored outside the Lidi. The vessel is taking a shipment of Murano glass to Corfutown. Then we will go on to Athens, where Miss Adams will be safe from her fiancé. We’ve spent the past ten days or so hiding in this old house and I’ve learned much about Miss Adams’ circumstances.
Your friend always,
Jacob Casanova
PART TWO
In the Land of the Gods
Across the table from Luce in the ferry lounge, Lee sat reading a book about Crete, occasionally stopping to make notes in a black scribbler. Luce noticed the name Yannis Sakellarakis under the title: Digging for the Past. Wasn’t he the archaeologist whose findings her mother had challenged? She remembered her mother mentioning his name in connection with the discovery of the remains of a human sacrifice in Crete.
Human sacrifice. Luce was inclined to believe Sakellarakis: Minoan Crete hadn’t exactly been the peaceful artistic culture her mother claimed it was. Pretending she was absorbed in her reading, she covertly studied Lee’s face. It had been shocking at first to think of her mother as a lesbian. You’re the one who decided to love a woman, not me, she had shouted. Why should I have to deal with your sexual choice? Now she was used to the idea at least. But how could her mother have left their comfortable life together for the person sitting across the table? An overweight complainer who believed in a fairy tale about a golden age for women?
Lee looked up.
“How’s your journal?”
“I was just thinking about something.”
“Well, so was I.”
Lee bent again to her notes. Through the porthole above her head, a panorama of turquoise waves seeped into the sugary blue swell of the Adriatic. Soon the Aegean was unrolling ahead, mile upon mile in all directions, like a fathomless green sky.
June 21, 1797
Somewhere on the Adriatic. A new world and a new life.
I am writing this on the deck of our frigate, using Monsieur Casanova’s portable writing box. He is pacing the deck near me, an arresting figure in his frock coat and Kevenhuller. Just now, when he saw me looking his way, he took off his hat and bowed joyously.
We have been almost a week at sea and I am subject to fits of homesickness, wondering if I will see Quincy again. He has apologized for the difficult start to our journey and the long wait in the lagoon marshes. It was done to fool Count Waldstein into believing my companion fell into the canal and drowned after a night of gambling. How relieved we were to see the crab fisherman who poled us to our frigate. Our ship was preparing to set sail, having given up any hope of seeing us.
Monsieur Casanova has been encouraging my journal writing, to distract me from my homesick longings. So perhaps it is only fair—if there is to be a reader of these journals—that I explain my upbringing. I was born in 1772, shortly before the Revolution, when courtesy was still revered. “Never be seated until required, ask for nothing, speak not, salt only with a clean knife, spit nowhere in the room but in the corner,” was Father’s dictum. As a baby, I wore a necklace of wolf fangs to keep away the pox, and my schooling began in 1778, in Quincy, Massachusetts, six years after my mother’s death and my birth. My lessons were supervised by the woman I call my aunt Abigail Adams, wife to the president, known for her kindness to her female cousins. Despite the limitations of colonial life, she was able to pass on to me a devotion to the principles of honesty and self-reliance that have formed the basis of my character. I read Shakespeare and Seneca at home. Aunt Abby taught me to admire Seneca for denouncing the notion of women as frail vessels for men’s seed. “Should women wish it,” Seneca wrote, “they have an equal amount of vigour, an equal capacity for the performance of good deeds; they endure grief and suffering equally with men if they have been trained for it.”
Aunt Abby believed women were men’s equals and she was fond of saying that if she’d been born a man, she would have been a rover. But Uncle John, for all his interest in my aunt’s philosophy, is more concerned with feminine skills. So like most young girls in Massachusetts, I was taught to make dresses, sing from the New England Psalm Singer in our Congregationalist church, and stand each morning against a board that braced my back so that I would grow straight and tall. In my case, it seems to have worked.
During those years, when Father ran his orchards, I learned to spear eels with my male cousins and pick cotton in the fields near Quincy, and when my aunt could not make ends meet, I helped her sell her Canton china to passing salesmen. It was sad to see her struggle because the American government paid Uncle John poorly, but Aunt Abby showed me how to live frugally. As I grew, she taught me to leave behind my country ways and hide my muscles under my sleeves like a Boston lady.
She was glad for me when Uncle John sent Father abroad on the trade mission. For three months, I enjoyed my life as Father’s hostess in Benjamin Franklins old house in Passy outside Paris. Father was not happy there because he never trusted the French—no matter what pronouncements he made publicly about their revolution. In his heart, like some of his friends, Father remained loyal to the British crown. But he would have died sooner than admit such a heresy.
I credit Aunt Abby for my ability to accept French ways. It was she who encouraged me to see that it is possible to like the French without forgoing our republican simplicity—as she herself had learned earlier during her years in Paris with Uncle John.
As for my religious instruction, I received it in Quincy’s Congregational church. We listened to the Sunday sermon from the front pew. Behind us sat the shopkeepers and the millworkers and, last of all, the two sections labelled BM and BW (Black Men and Black Women).
I admit I do not have strong religious beliefs. Perhaps this is because I am the daughter of an Atheist. After Mother died, Father said God had withd
rawn from him so he would withdraw from God. My parent stopped attending church and was no longer capable of receiving visions. Father told me he had once seen God’s face in Halley’s Comet, warning of Doomsday. On another occasion, our founding fathers turned into the seven sins before Father’s eyes. Jefferson was vanity, Franklin sloth, while Uncle John became the image of pride—an Adams failing.
A Sombre Notation: A few hours ago, I broke off writing and wept. Father is dead, and my aunt will be gravely disappointed in me for breaking the Fifth Commandment: Honour thy father and thy mother. For all her talk of being a rover, Aunt Abby is stern with family members who put aside domestic duty.
At least I am helping a friend while doing a little roving. I could not save Father or lighten his dour mind, but I can do my best to help Monsieur Casanova find Aimée Dubucq de Rivery. If Seneca speaks the truth, and I believe he does—the practice of virtue means we are obliged to perform good deeds without expecting a reward in return.
First Inquiry of the Day: Will I ever return home to America and see my Aunt Abby and my cousins John and Nabby?
Lesson Learned: Freedom is so close to exile it may well be the same word.
June 23, 1797
Moored in Corfu. Bad weather has confined us to ship in the pretty little port of Corfutown. To pass the hours, Monsieur Casanova recounts his escape from the Leads to other passengers who, like me, are spoiling for entertainment. Sparing no detail, my companion describes how he broke through the roof of the Ducal Palace only to realize that the moonlight might reveal Father Balbi and himself to the crowd below. He decided to go on after the clock in the square struck midnight. Our eyes widen as he relives the moment when he coaxed Father Balbi across the roof on his hands and knees, carefully lowering him through a window with a sheet, and finally, how he nearly fell over the parapet trying to push a ladder into the room below, knowing the priest was ready to abandon him.