What Casanova Told Me

by Susan Swan

  “It’s a relief to be back above ground, isn’t it,” Lee said.

  “Thanks for helping me. I panicked. I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry. It was too hard. I should have realized that before. Here, let’s rest. I have something to say to you.”

  Luce let Lee lead her to the little Orthodox church and they sat down on the bench by its door.

  “Did your ancestor write the words you spoke?” Lee asked as they sat down.

  “No, it was Casanova.”

  “Really? Well, it was a good choice. Now, Luce, I need to know something.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you still want to go to Zaros?”

  Luce nodded.

  “Then you should go. I’m going to talk to Christine. She and Yannis will find a way to get you there.”

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  “No. Gaby and I had a falling out. I will tell you about it another time.”

  “Thank you, I’d like to see where my mother died.”

  “We agree then. Good.” Lee rose, sober-faced and magisterial, and Luce followed, her young face bright with relief. On the other side of the road, a long line of women were filing into the bus.

  It was early evening as Luce watched the backlit shadows of the speeding motorcycle on the roadside cliff. Christine had talked to Yannis and he had arranged for his friend Achilles Tridafilakis to drive her to Zaros. And now she was doing what she swore she’d never do, riding for hours on a motorbike without a helmet. Under her legs, Achilles’s bike jumped forward in steady bursts of power as vignettes of nineteenth-century village life rushed by: isolated farms without electricity, and pretty lighted villages where men lounged in cafés and women and girls sat on front stoops shelling peas.

  By the time Achilles’s bike drove up the hill into Zaros, the sun was setting behind the Psiloritis mountains. It wasn’t hard to find news of Gaby. Everyone knew who she was. Her home was a few miles from the old monastery, up one of the mountain passes.

  Still, it felt like hours to Luce before Achilles found the house with the nineteenth-century Turkish numbers still above the door. It stood back from the road, a homely whitewashed building with a cornflower-blue door, an icon of peasant life replicated in the tourist postcards of the Aegean. In the yard, a tethered goat cropped the grass near a small grove of almond trees. When it heard the bike, it lifted its shaggy head expectantly. Luce said goodbye to Achilles and stood for a moment on the road, getting up her nerve. As the roar of the bike faded, she became aware of sheep bells. In moments, she was trapped in a stream of dusty, woolly animals whose bells chimed prettily in different octaves. She stared down timidly at the giant cloud of fleece. A shepherd called to his dog circling behind them and the sheep scattered and flowed together again, the tinkling of their bells only intensifying her sense of aloneness. For a moment, she faltered.

  Then the sheep moved on, freeing her, and she walked into the yard with her graceful, loping stride and knocked on the blue door. She heard the noise of a bolt being drawn, and a panel fell open. Behind an iron grille, a burly arm appeared, and a stocky, round-faced woman stood before her adjusting her hairnet, her mouth full of bobby pins.

  “Neh?” the woman said.

  “Gaby,” Luce said softly. “It’s me, Luce. Kitty’s daughter.”

  “Kitty? You Luce?”

  Luce nodded shyly. The door opened and the round-faced woman pulled Luce into her arms, pinching her cheek and shouting Greek words of welcome.

  “You come! Good. I expect you, Luce.”

  Luce let Gaby lead her into a small sitting room furnished with a stiff Victorian sofa and chairs. She knew she was in the right house. A large framed photograph of Kitty and a young man hung on the wall by a small stove. Luce stared in amazement at her mother smiling up at the proud-looking young man with fierce black eyes. She realized the young man was Constantine Skedi, and she was struck by the protective expression on his face as he smiled down at her mother. It reminded her of her own feelings about Kitty. Had her height made her think of herself as her little mother’s protector, she wondered. Or was it some childlike quality in her mother that drew this protectiveness out of those close to her?

  “You like my boy? Poli oraio, eh?”

  Luce nodded gravely. In the last few days, she had picked up enough Greek words to understand.

  “Yes, he’s very handsome, Gaby.”

  Luce sat up and reached for the pitcher of water that Gaby had left for her on the bedside table next to a vase of wildflowers and a large bleh mati, one of the good luck charms in the shape of a glass eye that she had seen for sale in the tourist shops of Athens. Gaby had given her the bleh mati on the first night, explaining in her broken English—gringlish, as Gaby jokingly called it—that Cretan mothers sometimes pinned the blue eye on their children’s clothes to protect them.

  Luce filled a glass of water and drank it down. She’d experienced a beautiful dream just moments before waking. In the dream, she was standing at a vaporetto stop in Venice, watching her mother and Lee chug away from her in an airport motoscafo. The doll-sized figures of the two women at the stern of the launch were as plump and round as the Willendorf Venus. And their smiling faces were partially hidden under gigantic eighteenth-century hats decked with roses and toy sailing ships with brightly coloured flags flying from their mastheads. The two women were waving and calling to Luce, their faces alight with happiness, and Luce had felt her anger at her mother drain away.

  Kitty had been happy before she died, Luce thought as she rolled out of bed and began to dress for the morning. And her mother’s life with Lee had been good, even brave and inspiring.

  Since the afternoon in the Skoteino cave two days before, she had been thinking about her refusal to acknowledge her mother’s courage. Had she been so unsure of herself that she resented her mother’s power and success? Or was it something less obvious? That her mother no longer needed her? Yes, perhaps. For all the years of her childhood, she had believed that it was her strength that sustained her mother after Luce’s father abandoned them. Certainly, she had helped her mother, she knew that. But it was a child’s dream to think that someone as purposeful and talented as Kitty couldn’t survive on her own.

  She paused by the window to admire the view of the mountains. It was a lovely morning in Crete. She turned towards the dresser where she had stacked her guidebooks next to the copy of the journal and the manuscript with Turkish writing. She picked up the travel diary and opened it to the final entries.

  July 30, 1797

  Dear Girl,

  I am writing to you because it is sometimes better to set down the words on paper so the reader can digest their meaning. I did not want to leave you last night and go with the other men to the party for our host, Fotis Stamatapoulos. As you know, it was a private masquerade for gentlemen, and I could not bring you. Dom claims Fotis is a powerful man in Greece and I would do well not to offend him. (Dom and his politics—he works hard to please the influential citizens here.) So I toasted Fotis’s health in gloomy spirits. I was concerned with you and how you would be feeling left on your own.

  Asked For, I do not understand the uncivilized habits of these wealthy Greek merchants who dress up and converse with other men. It is not the Venetian way. So you can imagine my delight when I returned to my room and found your note saying you had a surprise for me. Piece by piece, I removed my costume and stood before the long mirror that a sea captain had given our host in lieu, I am told, of payment for a debt. How you fool yourself, Giacomo, I told myself as I beheld the wreckage in the glass—the teeth no longer white, the stooped shoulders, the sway-backed loins where the scurze about my manhood grows tipped with frost.

  As I stood surveying the old creature in the mirror, you stole into my room. And my surprise was complete. How beautiful you looked, darling girl, dressed like Aimée in the portrait on my watch chain. I could not have been more astonished. And I could not have been more moved by the generosity of
your play-acting. And then how seriously you listened when I told you I was too old for you.

  “‘Giacomo, my love will make you young,’” you said, cleverly quoting Aimée’s own phrase from her letter. “‘What is love except the force that defies death?’” you murmured. “‘Our happiness will stop the ticking of the clocks.’”

  “Aimée,” I groaned, playing at your little game, “will you tell Asked For it is her that I love?”

  You must understand my distress, dear girl, when you stopped your play-acting and began to sob. You said our love is wrong and that you must deliver me to Aimée who is the mother of my child.

  “My soul,” I said, taking you in my arms and sliding my tongue into the hollow spot between your collarbones—for what else could I do but try to comfort you? “That was long ago, dear girl. Do not let your sense of duty spoil our chance for happiness.”

  Asked For, it is you I love. Your beauty has given me back to myself, and once again I feel the giddy sense of release all men like to dwell in—to know that what has lain dormant and hidden is becoming free.

  As I write, you sleep peacefully in the bed beside me. The wind blows the white curtains of this simple room in and out and the golden light of Homer blazes upon the crash of waves below. And now I put down my quill and weep at the thought of us parting. To have given up hope of finding happiness, Asked For, and then to have jouissance bestowed so generously—once again. I love, I love. I appeal to you and the Fates of Greece—stay by my side always.

  Jacob

  August 1, 1797

  I write this on a hillside near Sounion. The men have gone off to sketch the spot where the father of Theseus threw himself from the cliff when his thoughtless son forgot to raise the victory sails. Some time ago, I watched Jacob and Domenico disappear down the narrow, sandy road to the top of the cliff. Manolis ran back and forth between them, holding up the sun umbrella. And now I sit, my journal on my knee, and stare at the Aegean. I am sad that we are going on to Constantinople. But there is no other plan for us. Jacob wrote to Aimée, promising to rescue her from a life she does not want, and she is the mother of his son. For that reason alone he must go. When I tell Jacob that he must do the honourable thing, he shakes his head and groans. Then he grows thoughtful and asks if going to Constantinople is what I desire.

  I say yes, because I have no right to hold him back and yet I want to shout to all of Greece that I want Jacob for myself.

  Neither he nor I know what to do about our circumstances, and this morning Manolis took us to the witch of Sounion to ask about our future.

  I will describe our meeting to see if I can understand her words:

  Manolis led us through the tall grass of a meadow overlooking the Aegean. It was a difficult walk. Several times Domenico bumped against my shoulder, or came up beside me to offer sweets. I ignored him. Eventually we stopped at a marble column that lay on its side in the grass. A handful of peas lay sprinkled across a coloured rag placed on the marble.

  “Stand back, Asked For! It’s the Devil’s goods!” Manolis cried. It was all I could do not to laugh. What foolishness! Manolis is as superstitious as a child. We walked to a nearby shepherd’s hut, where a girl holding a baby stood cooking before a fire.

  The girl was no more a witch than I am.

  When she greeted me, I smiled and touched her baby’s cheek, and she shocked me by spitting in the child’s face.

  “Miss Adams, the Greeks believe showing a child favour brings the evil eye,” Domenico said. “Although it is hard to believe that a woman of such beauty could have the evil eye.” And he gave me a horrible, leering smile. Jacob did not see the incident. He was too busy questioning the witch about our fortunes. The girl spoke to Manolis and disappeared into her hut. A moment later, she reappeared with a handful of the same dried peas I had seen on the marble column. She threw them on the ground and began to speak rapidly to Jacob in Greek.

  Someone is calling my name. Domenico, I think. Here he comes up the hill, puffing as usual, and grinning as if he has a treat in store for me.

  Luce had come to the end of the journal. There was nothing left to read except what might be in the manuscript of old Turkish writing, and for now it was impenetrable. She felt as if she had lost Asked For to the sea winds of Crete, which had blown away everything that once anchored her to the earth. What if she never learned what happened to Asked For Adams that eighteenth-century afternoon? She had to find a way to decipher the old Turkish manuscript. She gently lifted it up and opened its tea-brown leather cover. Inside, on its margin-less pages, she saw the dense flawless symbols that made her think of flocks of seabirds flying towards her. A fonds d’archives depended on the archivist’s ability to find a thread of connection, but she wouldn’t be able to find a connecting thread if she couldn’t read the old document.

  How disappointing that Asked For’s journal ended abruptly. But why should her ancestor have something up her sleeve? Asked For had written her entries over two hundred years before, not knowing if anyone would ever read her journal.

  She had to face the possibility that she would never know what had happened to Asked For. And yet perhaps help would come her way. Yesterday evening, Theodore had phoned her at Gaby’s to say his friend, Ender Mecid, was hoping she would stop in Istanbul on her way home because he wanted to see the old Turkish manuscript. Theodore had added that Aphrodite was happily chasing mice at his mother’s taverna. Should she go to Istanbul? After the phone call, Luce had consulted the pendulum and it had swung in wide, clockwise circles, signifying yes.

  She packed the document carefully away in her knapsack. She could hear Gaby in the kitchen below, chopping vegetables. They had spent two days enjoying each other’s company. The first night Gaby had received her warmly, plying her with mountain tea and a large portion of nostimi vounisia pestrofa, a sweet-tasting mountain trout; they had moved on to a jug of homemade retsina and small glasses of raki when the meal was done. Together they had sat on Gaby’s stiff-backed horsehair sofa and looked at photo albums of her mother and Lee with Gaby. Gaby sat close to Luce, patting her arm and shoulder and smiling when Luce had tried out her pidgin Greek.

  Downstairs, Luce found Gaby rolling out sheets of pastry dough on the kitchen table. She smelled the scent of mint, and on the stove, onions and what looked like dandelions were simmering in golden oil. Gaby turned when she heard Luce and gestured at the stove.

  “We have chortopitakia for lunch, eh, Luce? Then you and I, we work in garden.”

  Gaby took Luce’s arm before she could protest and drew her over to a table. She gestured to the vegetables spread out before them: wild carrots, stafilinkaki; corn poppies, koutsoundades; milkworts, galatsides; saw thistles, tsochi; wild fennel, maratha; and baby leeks, prasakia. She handed Luce a small knife and with a series of hand gestures made it clear that she wanted her to chop the bunches of wild carrots and fennel.

  Luce was the first to see the van drive up to the gate as she and Gaby sat on the front stoop, snipping off the tips of beans and dropping them into a pot. She rose while Gaby struggled to her feet, puffing noisily, in anger or pain, Luce wasn’t sure. Out on the road, Lee was climbing out of the front seat of the van. She spoke to Yannis, who drove off, and walked into the yard. By the stoop, she took off her Borsalino and began to fan herself with it, looking up glumly at Gaby and Luce. Around the little house, cicadas sang their jubilant heat song.

  “Why you no come before?” Gaby said.

  “I left you a message,” Lee said, frowning. “I was tied up with Kitty’s tribute.”

  “Bah! You bad girl. You forget Gaby.” Gaby picked up the pot of beans and struck it emphatically against the wooden table on the stoop.

  Luce thought Lee was going to yell at Gaby. Instead Lee hung her head like a scolded child.

  “Yes, that’s right. I’m an old fool, Gaby.”

  In an instant Gaby was off the porch. She walked over to Lee and put her hands on either side of the woman’s face and pull
ed her head down to kiss her brow.

  “You not fool. I know that. Come. We make party, drink raki.” Gaby linked her arm with Lee’s, and the two smiling women walked over to join Luce.

  At the window of the room she and Kitty had shared whenever they had visited Gaby, Lee stood watching Luce picking tomatoes in Gaby’s garden. The girl moved with a touching purposefulness, combining the androgynous quality bestowed by her height with her feminine gracefulness. Lee felt surprised by the tenderness of her feelings. Lordy, how could parents bear to watch their children grow up? She had never given herself the chance to experience such painful confusion. Helping Luce find a safe passage into adulthood had been Kitty’s concern—not hers. Once she had watched a mother starling throw a fledgling out of its nest. The mother had brought worms all day to the baby, waiting for it to learn how to fly. Overnight the baby starling died. Lee had found its remains pressed into the earth, killed by the cold, or a neighbourhood cat. The death of the fledgling had upset her. I suppose I have discounted maternal love, she thought, without realizing it can be a metaphor for the affection we feel for anyone close to us.

  Below her window, she heard Gaby call out to Luce and, as she peered forward, she saw the woman’s foreshortened figure under the grape arbour, waving at the girl. And Luce came hurrying over, walking without her little forward stoop. Well, the girl was learning her strength, she decided. She watched Luce nod gravely as she bent down to hear what Gaby was telling her.

  Get on with it. You owe it to the girl. She’s never done anything to harm you.

  Lee turned away from the window and picked up the letter she’d started that morning:

  Dear Luce,

  I think I owe you my account of your mother’s death. Constantine Skedi entered our lives the year Christine had extended the tour to Zaros. Its mountain resort is a good midway point for a rest. The tour always stayed at the small hotel near the water mill, the one with the terrace where you feel close to the stars and wake up breathing the cool mountain air because the Psiloritis are the highest range in Crete. Your mother met Constantine in the village one afternoon. Christine had asked her to keep an eye open while we were there for a second bus driver. Constantine offered his services and drove her back to our hotel where he was coldly received by Andreas, who announced that he didn’t socialize with a palioalvanos. (That’s an insulting Greek word for a damn Albanian, Luce.) Constantine just turned on his heel and left.