A Venetian Affair

by Catherine George

  She wasn’t sure what to believe. Unlikely as it sounded, it might just be true.

  Her cold grew worse over the next few days. Piero’s care never failed her. From some store room he managed to produce a bed. It was old, shabby and needed propping up in one corner, but it was more comfortable than her sofa, and she fell onto it blissfully.

  But he refused to let her thank him.

  ‘It comes easily to me,’ he assured her. ‘I used to be a top physician at Milan’s largest hospital.’

  ‘As well as being a great chef?’ she teased him.

  He gave her a reproachful look. ‘That was the other night.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I should have thought.’

  She knew that Vincenzo sometimes came to visit, but she always lay still, feigning sleep. She did not want to talk to him. He threatened secrets that she must keep.

  But he too had painful secrets. He’d hinted as much.

  Every second afternoon Piero would go out, returning three hours later. He never told her where he went, and she guessed that these occasions were connected with the events that had brought him to this limbo.

  One afternoon he entered wearing his usual cheerful look, which became even brighter when he saw her.

  ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ she ventured.

  ‘Not today. She wasn’t there, but she will be one day.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Elena, my daughter. Ah, coffee! Splendid!’

  She respected his desire to change the subject, but later, when the darkness had fallen, she asked gently,

  ‘Where is Elena now?’

  He was silent for so long she was afraid he was offended, but then he said, ‘It’s hard to explain. We sort of—mislaid each other. But she’s worked abroad a great deal, and I’ve always been there to meet her when she returned. Always the same place, at San Zaccaria—that’s the landing stage where the boats come in near St Mark’s. If I’m not there she’ll want to know why, so I mustn’t let her down. I just have to be patient, you see.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said sadly. ‘I see.’

  She wrapped the blanket around her and settled down, hoping that soon her mind would start working properly again, and she would know what to do next.

  Then she wondered if that would ever happen, for when she closed her eyes the old pictures began to play back, and there was only grief, misery, despair, followed by rage and bitterness, so that soon she was hammering on the door again, screaming for a release that would never come.

  Sometimes she would surface from her fever to find Vincenzo there, then go back to sleep, curiously contented. This was becoming her new reality, and when she awoke once to find Vincenzo gone she knew an odd sense of disturbance. But then she saw Piero, and relaxed again.

  He came over and felt her forehead, pursing his lips to show that he wasn’t pleased with what he found.

  ‘I got you something,’ he said, dissolving a powder in hot water. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘Thanks, Piero,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Or do I mean Harlequin?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Harlequin, Columbine, Pierrot, Pierrette,’ she said vaguely. ‘They’re all characters from the Commedia dell’ Arte. Pierrot’s a clown, isn’t he?’

  His eyes were very bright. ‘It’s as good a name as any. Like Julia.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed.

  The cold remedy drink made her feel better and she got to her feet, rubbing her eyes. Her throat and her forehead were still hot, but she was determined to get up, if only for a while.

  It was mid-afternoon and since the light was good she went out of the little room into the great reception hall and began to look about her.

  The pictures might be gone but the frescoes painted directly onto the walls were still here. She studied them, until she came to one that stopped her in her tracks as though it had spoken to her.

  It was at the top of the stairs, and showed a woman with long fair hair flying wildly around her face like a mad halo. Her eyes were large and distraught as though with some ghastly vision. She had been to hell, and now she would never really escape.

  ‘That’s Annina,’ said Piero, who had followed her.

  ‘It’s Annina if we want to be fanciful,’ said Vincenzo’s voice.

  He had come in silently and watched them for a moment before speaking.

  ‘What do you mean, ‘‘fanciful’’?’ she asked.

  He came up the stairs, closer to her. She watched him with hostile eyes, angry with herself for being glad to see him.

  ‘We don’t know if that’s what she really looked like,’ he explained. ‘This was done a couple of centuries later, by an artist who played up the drama for all it was worth.

  ‘See, there are prison bars in one corner, and there’s a child over here. And this man, with the demonic face, is Annina’s husband. Count Francesco, his direct descendant, didn’t like having the family scandal revived. He even wanted the artist to paint over it.’

  Scandalised, Julia spoke without thinking. ‘Paint over a Correggio?’

  She could have cut her tongue out the next moment. Vincenzo’s raised eyebrows showed that he fully appreciated what she’d revealed.

  ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘It is Correggio. And of course he refused to cover it. Then people began to admire it, and Francesco, who was as big a philistine as Correggio said he was, realised that it must be good after all. So it’s stayed here, and people take their view of the story from this very melodramatic picture. Naturally, the ghost looks just like her. Ask Piero.’

  His smile showed that he knew exactly the trick the old man was playing to scare off intruders.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know what she looks like,’ Piero said loftily. ‘I’ve never seen her.’

  ‘But she’s been heard often,’ Vincenzo observed. He clapped Piero on the shoulder. ‘I’ve left a few things for you. I may see you later.’ He pointed a commanding finger at Julia. ‘You—into the warm, right now.’

  She returned to the little room with relief. Her brief expedition had lowered her strength, and when she had eaten something she curled up again and was soon asleep.

  It was after midnight when Vincenzo reappeared. When he was settled he became sunk in thought. ‘How many people,’ he asked at last, ‘could identify a Correggio at once?’

  ‘Not many,’ Piero conceded.

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ He glanced at the sleeping Julia. ‘Has she told you anything about herself?’

  ‘No, but why should she? Our kind respect each other’s privacy. You know that.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s something about her that worries me. It could be risky to leave her too much alone.’

  ‘But suppose she wants to be left alone?’

  ‘I think she does,’ Vincenzo mused, remembering the desperation with which she had cried, ‘I don’t need anyone’s help.’

  Nobody said it like that unless their need for help was terrible.

  All his life he’d had an instinctive affinity with needy creatures. When his father had bought him a puppy he’d chosen the runt of the litter, the one who had held back timidly. His father had been displeased, but the boy, stubborn beneath his quiet manner, had said, ‘This one,’ and refused to budge.

  After that there had been his sister, his twin, discounted by their parents as a mere girl, and therefore loved by him the more. They had been close all their lives until she had cruelly repaid his devotion by dying, and leaving him bereft.

  He had loved a woman, refusing to see her grasping nature, until she’d callously abandoned him.

  Now he would have said that his days of opening his heart to people were over. No man could afford to be like that, and he’d developed armour in self-defence.

  He made an exception for Piero, whom he’d known in better days. There was something about the old man’s gentle madness, his humour in the face of misfortune, that called to him despite his resolutions.

  As for th
e awkward, half-hostile woman he’d found sleeping here, he couldn’t imagine why he’d allowed her to stay. Perhaps because she wanted nothing from him, and seemed consumed by a bitterness that matched his own.

  Suddenly a long sigh came from the bed. As they watched she threw back the blanket and eased her legs over the side.

  Vincenzo tensed, about to speak to her, but then something in her demeanour alerted him and he stopped. She stood for a moment, staring into the distance with eyes that were vague. Slowly Vincenzo got to his feet and went to stand before her.

  ‘Julia,’ he said softly.

  She made no response and he realised that she was still asleep. When he spoke her name she did not see or hear him. After a moment she turned away and began to walk slowly to the door.

  She seemed to know her way as well in the darkness and in the light. Without stumbling she opened the door, and went out into the main hall.

  At the foot of the stairs she stopped, remaining still for a long time. Moonlight, streaming through the windows, showed her shrouded in a soft blue glow, like a phantom. She raised her head so that her long hair fell back and they could both see that her eyes were fixed on the picture of Annina, at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Can she see it?’ Piero muttered.

  ‘It’s the only thing she can see,’ Vincenzo told him. ‘Nothing else exists for her.’

  She began to move again, slowly setting one foot in front of the other, climbing the broad stairs.

  ‘Stop her,’ Piero said urgently.

  Vincenzo shook his head. ‘This is her decision. We can’t interfere.’

  Moving quietly, he began to follow her up the stairs until she came to a halt in front of the fresco showing the distraught Annina. It too lay in the path of the moonlight that entered through windows high up in the hall.

  ‘Julia,’ Vincenzo said again, speaking very quietly.

  Silence. She was not aware of him.

  ‘Dammit, that’s not her real name,’ Vincenzo said frantically. ‘How can I reach her with it?’

  ‘There’s another name you might try,’ Piero murmured.

  Vincenzo shot him an uneasy glance. ‘Don’t talk like that, Piero. Enough of superstition.’

  ‘Is it superstition?’

  ‘You know as well as I do that the dead don’t come back.’

  ‘Then who is she?’

  Vincenzo didn’t reply. He couldn’t.

  A soft moan broke from her. She was reaching up to touch the picture, beginning to talk in soft, anguished tones.

  ‘I loved him, and he shut me away—for years—until I died—I died—’

  ‘Julia,’ Vincenzo said, knowing it would be useless.

  Instead of answering she began to thump the wall.

  ‘I died—’ she screamed. ‘Just as he meant me to. My baby—my baby—’

  Abruptly all the strength went out of her and she leaned against the wall. Vincenzo grasped her gently and drew her away.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m here. Don’t give in. Stay strong whatever you do.’

  She looked up at him out of despairing eyes, and he knew that she couldn’t see him. For her, he didn’t exist.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  She shook her head and tried to pull away. ‘I must find him,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Of course, but not tonight. Get some rest, and later I’ll help you find him.’

  ‘You can’t help me. Nobody can.’

  ‘But I will,’ he insisted. ‘There has to be a way if there’s a friend to help you. And you have a friend now.’

  Whether she understood the words or whether it was his tone that reached her, she stopped struggling and stood passive.

  It was the first time he’d seen her face turned towards him without suspicion or defensiveness. But he could still feel her trembling, and it made him do something on impulse.

  Putting his hands on either side of her face, he kissed her softly again and again, her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said again. ‘I’m here.’

  She did not reply, but her eyes closed. He wrapped his arms right around her, leading her carefully down the stairs. She held onto him, eyes still closed, but moving with confidence while he was there.

  Step by step they made their way to the bottom of the stairs, then back into the little room, where Vincenzo guided her to the bed so that she could lie down again.

  She murmured something that he could not catch, then seemed to relax all at once. Vincenzo pulled the blanket up and tucked it tenderly around her.

  ‘Not a word of this, my friend,’ he said, joining Piero. ‘Not to anyone else and especially not to her.’

  Piero nodded. ‘We wait until she mentions it.’

  ‘If she ever does.’

  ‘You think she won’t remember what happened tonight?’

  ‘I don’t think she even knows what happened tonight. She wasn’t here.’

  ‘Then where was she?’

  ‘In some far place where nobody else is invited. It’s dark and fearful, and it’s from there that she draws her strength.’

  ‘Her head must be very muddled if she thinks she’s Annina.’ Piero sighed. ‘It was like meeting a ghost in the flesh.’

  Vincenzo raised an eyebrow. ‘Rid yourself of that idea, my friend. She is no ghost.’

  ‘But you heard what she said. She was buried—she died—the child—she was speaking as Annina.’

  ‘No,’ Vincenzo said sombrely. ‘What’s really horrifying is that she was speaking as herself.’

  At last Julia awoke to find everything clear. Her body was cool again and the inside of her head was orderly.

  ‘Have you come back to us?’

  Looking around, she saw Vincenzo sitting nearby, and wondered how long he’d been there.

  ‘Yes, I think I have,’ she said. ‘More or less. I may even be in one piece.’

  She swung her legs gingerly to the floor and began to ease herself up. He crossed the floor quickly and held out a hand.

  ‘Steady,’ he said as she clung to him. ‘You haven’t been eating enough to keep a mouse alive. No wonder you’re weak.’

  ‘I’m not weak. You can let me go.’

  He did so and she promptly sat down again.

  ‘OK, I’m weak.’

  ‘Give yourself time. Don’t rush it.’

  He spoke in his normal way, but she had an odd sensation that something was different. He was looking at her curiously, with a question in his eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You’re giving me a strange look.’

  For once she seemed to have caught him off guard. ‘I was just—wondering if you’re really better. You certainly seem—’ He seemed to be searching for the right words. ‘You seem more like your normal self.’

  ‘That’s how I feel,’ she said, wondering what he was implying.

  ‘Good,’ he said, sounding deflated. ‘Stay there while I make you some soup.’

  The hot soup was straight from heaven. When she’d eaten she went down to the pump for a wash.

  She returned to find Vincenzo still there. He was sitting by the window, sunk in his own thoughts, and didn’t at first hear her. When she hailed him he seemed to come out of a dream.

  ‘OK?’

  ‘Yes. Who’d have thought washing in freezing water could feel so good? How long was I out of it?’

  ‘Just over a week.’

  ‘I slept for a week?’

  ‘Not all the time. You kept recovering slightly, then you’d insist on getting up and walking around before you were ready. So you got worse again.’

  ‘But to sleep for a week!’

  ‘Or a hundred years,’ he said ironically.

  ‘Yes, now I know how the sleeping princess felt. I’ve even lost track of the date. Mind you, I often—’

  She checked, as if about to revea
l something, but then thinking better of it. Vincenzo’s curiosity was heightened.

  ‘You often forget the date?’ he asked. ‘How come?’

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t mean that.’

  She met his gaze, defying him to disbelieve her openly, although she knew he wasn’t convinced. He backed down first.

  ‘Well, anyway, it’s December second,’ he said.

  ‘That’s weird, to fall asleep in one month and awake in another. And no newspapers or television. It’s strange how nice life can be without them.’

  ‘To shut the world out!’ he mused. ‘Yes, that would be nice. What is it?’

  He asked because she had suddenly stopped in the middle of the floor, and her eyes became vague, as though she were listening to distant voices.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s just that—I had such dreams—such dreams—’

  ‘Can you recall any of them?’ Nobody could have told from Vincenzo’s voice that the answer mattered to him.

  ‘I think so—there was—there was—’

  She closed her eyes, fighting desperately to summon back a memory that lay just beyond reach. It was disturbing, and yet in its heart lay a feeling of peace, the very one she was seeking.

  ‘Try,’ Vincenzo said, unable to keep a hint of urgency out of his voice.

  But it was a fatal thing to say. The minute she reached out for the dream it vanished.

  ‘It’s gone,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I hope it comes back. I think it was lovely.’

  He shrugged. ‘If you can’t remember it, how do you know it was lovely?’

  ‘You know how it is with dreams. They leave you with a kind of feeling, even when you forget the details.’

  ‘And what feeling did this one leave behind?’

  ‘It was peaceful and—happy—’ She said the last word in a tone of astonishment. ‘Oh, heck, it was probably nothing at all.’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Vincenzo agreed.

  She looked around. ‘Where’s Piero?’

  ‘He’s gone to the landing stage.’

  ‘Looking for Elena? Perhaps she’ll come today.’

  Vincenzo shook his head. ‘She’ll never come. She died several years ago.’

  Julia sighed. ‘I wondered about that. I can’t make him out. How does he come to be living like this?’