Us

by Nicholls, David

  ‘Do I?’ she said, smiling.

  ‘You speak better English than my son!’ I said, the kind of pointless jibe that had brought me here in the first place.

  ‘Thank you. I wish I could pretend it was because I read a lot of Jane Austen, but mainly it comes from bad television. Cop shows, detectives. By the age of nine, every schoolchild in Denmark knows the English for ‘we’ve found another body, superintendent’. And pop songs, too – you’re bombarded from an early age, the same all over Scandinavia.’ She shrugged. ‘Absurd, really, that I speak better English than Swedish. But knowing me, knowing you, there is nothing we can do!’

  ‘I wish I could reply in Danish.’

  ‘Don’t feel too bad. We’ve long given up hoping that the world will take lessons.’

  ‘My wife enjoys very much your television programmes.’ It’ll be herring and Lego next, I thought, and wondered if it was a particularly British, no, English trait, to grab at clichés like this.

  ‘Our gift to the world.’ She smiled and pushed her chair back. ‘Douglas, against my better judgement I am going to get more of this disgusting fruit juice. Can I get you something? They have cake …’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  I watched her go. My wife enjoys very much your television programmes. The mangled syntax was back, and why was I straining to mention Connie? Certainly I had no desire to deny her existence, but neither was there any reason to hang a ‘married’ sign around my neck – except, I suppose, from an awareness that Freja was a very attractive woman. Fifty or so, I guessed, with flattish features and a pleasant, healthy glow suggestive of black bread and swims in icy lakes. Clear skin, the veins close to the surface on her cheeks. Laughter lines around very blue eyes, dark hair that might well have been dyed – it was a slightly unreal dark brown, like Cherry Blossom shoe polish. She smiled over her shoulder and I found myself sitting straighter and running my tongue over my teeth.

  ‘So,’ she said on her return, ‘are you travelling alone?’

  ‘I am. For the moment. I’m hoping to meet up with my son in a day or two,’ I replied, which was true, if not quite the whole story. ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, I’m alone. I’ve just got divorced.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘It was best for both of us.’ She shrugged and laughed. ‘That’s what people say, isn’t it? Where is your wife? She’s not travelling with you?’

  ‘She’s back in England. She had to go home early. A family thing.’

  ‘And you didn’t want to go with her?’

  Here my imagination failed me. ‘No. No.’

  ‘Do you like travelling alone?’

  ‘This is only my third day.’

  ‘For me it’s my second week.’

  ‘And how is it?’

  She considered for a moment. ‘I thought Italy would cheer me up. I thought I would walk all day through little mediaeval streets and sit every night with a book in a little restaurant and eat a modest meal with one glass of wine before retiring to bed. It seemed so nice in my imagination. But usually I’m given the table by the bathrooms, the waiters keep asking if I’m expecting someone and I find myself fixing this very relaxed smile to let everyone know I’m all right.’ She demonstrated a tight grin that I recognised at once.

  ‘In Berlin I once went to the zoo by myself,’ I said. ‘That was a mistake.’

  Freja laughed and put her hand to her mouth. ‘But why?’

  ‘I was on a conference, and I heard it was a great zoo, so …’

  ‘I’ve been to the theatre alone,’ said Freja. ‘The cinema I think is okay, but the theatre feels … awkward.’ We smiled at this and continued a light-hearted riff about places one should never go alone. Paintballing! A rollercoaster! Trampolining! The circus, we decided, was the worst. One ticket for the circus, please! No, just the one. One adult, yes. By the end we were quite hysterical. ‘I feel better,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘Now the table for one doesn’t seem so bad.’

  ‘Last night I was so exhausted I ate a sandwich in my room with my head out of the window, so there wouldn’t be crumbs.’

  ‘Congratulations!’ She handed me the sugar bowl with mock formality. ‘You win today’s international loneliness award.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you!’ I said, accepting the trophy and acknowledging the applause then, feeling a little foolish, placing the sugar bowl down. ‘And now I must go.’ I attempted to stand, groaning and steadying myself on the edge of the table. ‘Christ, I’m like some ancient old …’

  ‘Goodness, what have you done to yourself?’

  ‘I overdid it yesterday. I walked completely around Venice, three times.’

  ‘Why on earth would you do such a thing? Surely there’s no pleasure in that.’

  ‘Not after the first time, no.’

  ‘So why?’

  ‘I’m looking for … it’s a long story, I’d rather—’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m prying.’

  ‘No, no, not at all. But I must get going.’

  ‘Well, if you need a break …’

  I stopped and turned. ‘I don’t know how you feel about visiting art galleries on your own,’ she said, ‘but I prefer not to.’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘I’m going to the Accademia first thing this morning. It opens at eight thirty. It’s really not far. We can walk around very slowly, sit on benches. If you’d like.’

  Might I find Albie there? Would he really be queuing at opening time for a museum of Venetian art? Unlikely, but would it really be so bad to devote an hour or so to the Grand Tour?

  ‘I’ll meet you back here in fifteen minutes.’

  And so Freja and I walked out along the Riva degli Schiavoni, which was still cool and quiet in the morning sun, and I found myself hoping, perversely, that I would not bump into my son.

  110. seeing art with other people

  Freja and I liked the Accademia very much. There was a sense of the art belonging to a city that, on the evidence of many of the canvases, had barely changed in seven hundred years. Crisp and vivid Bellinis; exquisite, bright Carpaccios; and, in one room, an immense Veronese the size of an advertising hoarding, three great arches swarming with figures, twenty, thirty of them all distinctly individualised and dressed in anachronistic Venetian garb, with a biblically robed Christ at the centre, preparing to eat, somewhat unconventionally, what looked like a terrific leg of lamb.

  ‘The Feast in the House of Levi,’ said Freja, consulting the caption on the wall and stepping unwittingly into my trap.

  ‘That’s what Veronese ultimately called it, but in fact it was originally The Last Supper. The Inquisition didn’t like the picture, they thought it was irreverent – all these people, bustling around, Germans, children, dogs, black people. You see that cat, under the table by Christ’s feet? They thought it was blasphemous. So instead of painting out the animals and the dwarves, Veronese simply changed the title. Not a Last Supper, but The Feast in the House of Levi.’

  Freja looked me up and down. I realise this is a cliché, but her eyes really did scan up then down. ‘You know a great deal about art,’ she said.

  I shrugged modestly. ‘My wife’s the expert. I’ve just picked up a thing or two along the way.’ … from the internet, I should have said. My expertise lies entirely in looking things up, but I kept my counsel and strolled on, hands locked professorially behind my back.

  ‘So what do you do?’

  ‘I’m a scientist, a biochemist by training. Nothing to do with art, I’m afraid. You?’

  ‘A dentist, so to me biochemistry sounds fascinating. Dentistry is also not very artistic.’

  ‘But necessary!’

  ‘I suppose so, but there’s not much room for free expression.’

  ‘You have terrific teeth,’ I said, somewhat idiotically.

  ‘Well, I’ve learnt that as soon as you say you’re a dentist, people start peering into your mouth. I suppose they want to see if you practise what you
preach.’

  ‘“Practise what you preach” – you see? Your English is incredible.’

  ‘You mean I know a lot of clichés?’

  ‘Not clichés. Idioms. You’re very idiomatic.’

  ‘So much praise!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind. Why would I mind?’

  In the final gallery we found a terrific mural by Carpaccio, occupying a whole room and telling the legend of the life of St Ursula in comic-book form. If I knew anything about Renaissance art, it was that stories of saints rarely end well. In this case, the virtuous Ursula says goodbye to her betrothed and leaves Britain to go on a pilgrimage with 10,000 virgin followers, but they’re all beheaded by the Huns in Cologne. In one canvas, an arrow is fired point blank into Ursula’s chest, and I wondered what message could be drawn from that?

  ‘The moral is, don’t go to Cologne,’ said Freja.

  ‘I went to a conference in Cologne. I thought it was a charming city.’

  ‘But were any of you virgins?’

  ‘Well, we were all biochemists so, yes – almost certainly.’

  She stepped closer to the canvas, tilting her head. ‘Poor St Ursula. Poor ten thousand virgins. Still, it’s a comfort, I suppose, to know that someone is having a worse holiday than you.’

  For all the gore of the final frames, it was a wonderful painting, full of colour and life and strange, imaginary cities under cobalt blue skies, with that precise perspective that is so conspicuous in early-Renaissance art, as if they had all been issued with really terrific geometry sets. ‘I don’t want to sound conceited, but I’m pretty sure that, if I’d been around in the early Renaissance, I could have come up with the theory of perspective.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Freja, grabbing my forearm. ‘I’ve always wondered, why did no one pick up on that before? “Listen, everyone! I’ve just realised, when things are far away they appear smaller.”’

  I laughed, then remembered my new guise as an art historian. ‘Of course it’s a little more complicated than that.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘I love Carpaccio’s version of England.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Freja, ‘it just so happens to look exactly like Venice.’

  ‘I suppose, if you’d spent your life in Venice, you might very well expect everywhere to look like Venice.’

  ‘Why would you wish for anything else?’

  And then we were out in the clean blue light of the morning, our surroundings seeming somehow refreshed and made vivid now that we had seen them on old canvases. Those strange top-heavy chimneys were still there, the same accentuated geometry of the buildings and fruit-bowl hues of pink and orange and peachy yellow, the forced perspective of the eastward view from the top of the Accademia Bridge. We took it in.

  ‘What a place,’ said Freja. ‘It shouldn’t be here, and yet here it is.’

  ‘There’s a nice café on Santa Margherita,’ I said. ‘If you’re not in a hurry.’

  111. ponte dei pugni

  We headed west. Freja had been separated for two years, divorced for six months. ‘The usual story. It hardly bears repetition. He had an affair, and then I had a silly affair to punish him for his affair, and then he had another affair, like some ridiculous poker game. Except that he fell in love with his lover and I did not. To begin with it was awful, a catastrophe. Chaotic and shocking and sad. We had built this business together – we were in the same surgery every day – and all through the day there would be arguments and rows and accusations. Believe me, no one wants to see their dentist cry, not while they’re working. Can you imagine? Tears plopping into your mouth while this hysterical woman is wielding a drill. And of course the children were so furious with us both.’

  ‘How many children?’

  ‘Two, both girls. But they had already left home for university, so perhaps things could have been worse.’

  ‘And do you think that was a factor in the break-up?’ I said, adopting a casual tone.

  ‘That they’d left home?’

  ‘And that your work was somehow … complete?’

  Freja shrugged. ‘For him, perhaps. Not for me. I loved our family, I was proud of us; it never occurred to me to think of it as work. My husband used to send me crazy, of course, but that was beside the point. The point was we were married and we would be together until we died.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘So it was awful to begin with, screaming and shouting and tears, and the girls went a little off the rails. But then you’re lying in the wreckage – to continue the metaphor – you’re lying in the wreckage and you reach down and feel for your legs, they’re still there, and both your arms and your skull is in one piece. You can see and hear and realise you can still stand up. And that’s what you do. You stand up and you catch your breath and you stagger away. I’m talking a lot. It is because I have said nothing but “grazie” and “a table for one” for the last three weeks.’

  ‘I don’t mind. Really.’

  We were out of the dark alleys now, into Campo San Barnaba, the church front bright and elegant and unadorned.

  ‘I haven’t seen this square. I like it a lot,’ said Freja, and as her tour guide I felt rather proud.

  ‘You must see this,’ I said, the expert once again. On the bridge at the far side of the square, four white marble footprints were inlaid deep into the stonework. ‘It’s a fighting bridge. If you had a dispute with someone, you settled it here. A sort of public boxing ring. The footprints were where the fight started.’

  ‘You’re a real local historian, Douglas.’

  ‘I read the guidebooks. It sends my wife crazy. She’s always telling me to put the book away and look up. Look up!’

  We placed our feet in the marble indentations. ‘Perhaps I should have brought my husband here,’ she said.

  ‘Do you get on now?’

  ‘As well as you can with someone you’ve hated. It is “amicable” – is that the word? Amicable,’ she said and raised her fists.

  112. winter music

  At the Caffè Rosso our coffees were extruded from an immense brass contraption that hissed and steamed like the boiler of a locomotive. We took them outside to the sunny terrace of that wonderful square, with its lopped-off campanile at the western end, snipped through cleanly as if by giant scissors.

  ‘What happened to the church tower?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Douglas, I thought you would have an interesting story. I thought you knew everything.’

  ‘I didn’t have time to look it up. Sorry.’

  There was an expectant silence. Freja had confided in me, and it was my turn now to offer up some explanation as to why a dishevelled man in middle age was circling Venice in a teenager’s trainers. Instead I found my attention drawn to the young violinist who had begun to play across the square, mournful music in a minor key. Bach, I guessed. If I ever find a piece of music depressing beyond belief, I assume that it is Bach.

  ‘So, Douglas. You and your wife, are you together or separated?’

  I lowered my coffee cup, opened and then closed my mouth.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking,’ said Freja. ‘I have been boring you all this time about my life, I thought you might like an opportunity to bore me in return.’

  ‘That’s only fair. And I’d tell you if I knew. We’re in a … transitional state. By which I mean we’re physically apart, but still together. The process has not … we’re in flux. I’m not explaining this very well, am I?’

  ‘You mean you haven’t yet decided if you want to stay together.’

  ‘Oh, no. I’ve decided. She hasn’t.’

  ‘I see. At least I think I see. Do you mean that—?’

  ‘Freja, I hope you won’t mind, I realise you’ve been very open, and I’m not being coy. But my reason for being here, here in Venice, it’s more complicated than … it’s not entirely … what I mean is, I’d prefer to keep it to myself. Does that make sense?’

 
; ‘Of course. I apologise.’

  ‘No need. Please don’t.’

  We listened to the violinist for a while as he performed elaborate trills and variations on the same repeating sequence of minor chords. He was a young man in scuffed shoes and an untucked shirt, with that rather unworldly air that musicians sometimes share with scientists and mathematicians. I wondered, perhaps Albie might have taken to the violin instead of the guitar. Perhaps we should have pushed him in that direction.

  ‘He’s very good,’ said Freja, ‘but I find this music far too sad,’ and I too felt saddened, and chastised. ‘It’s winter music,’ she added.

  I’d like to apologise for my son. I had lost sight of my purpose and forgotten why I was here. I had become distracted by an absurd and irrelevant flirtation. All these sideways glances, these confidences, this pathetic affectation of culture and sophistication – I was making myself ridiculous. I should leave.

  ‘Of all the ones I’ve seen, I like this square the most,’ said Freja. ‘I’ve been trying to understand what makes it different and I think it’s the trees. In Venice I don’t miss the cars at all, but I do miss the colour green.’

  ‘I must go,’ I said, standing abruptly.

  ‘Oh. Oh, really?’

  ‘Yes, yes I have to, I’m behind schedule, I must … start walking.’

  ‘Perhaps I could walk with you.’

  ‘No, I really need to cover some ground. It’s hard to explain.’ My heart was racing suddenly; too much coffee perhaps, or fear. ‘The fact is, Freja, my son has gone missing. That makes it sound as if he’s been abducted; he hasn’t, he’s run away and I have a theory that he’s here in Venice and I have to find him. So …’

  ‘I see. That’s awful, I’m sorry, that must be a worry for you.’

  ‘It is. I apologise.’

  ‘Why do British people apologise for being in distress? It isn’t your fault.’

  ‘But it is! It is! That’s the whole bloody point!’ I was leafing through my wallet now, panic rising. ‘I’m sorry, I only have twenty euros.’

  ‘I’ll pay.’

  ‘No, I’d like to pay. Here, take it.’