Urban Venus

by Sara Downing

  Another dream. This time I remember it a little more clearly. I couldn’t begin to say where I was, or even who I was, even though I know quite clearly ‘I’ wasn’t me, but I do have a strong image of the man in the dream. He was my lover, whoever he was. His face was unfamiliar, and although the ‘me’ in the dream knew him, in real life I have no idea who he is. But I did recognise the look in his eye as one of sheer adoration; that look is quite easily translated from subconscious to conscious state. A bit like the look I used to see on Ed’s face in the early days. Go away, Ed, stop invading my thoughts, you bad, nasty nobody. The kind of love I felt in this dream was far beyond anything you and I ever experienced.

  I remember it being night time, and wearing something long, silky and floaty, a nightie perhaps? Why was I meeting this man in my nightie? I wrack my brains to try to bring some more detail from the dream back to life but at the moment it won’t come. But bits of dreams tend to have a habit of creeping up on you when you’re least expecting them; something you do or say during waking hours can spark off a memory from the subconscious, in the same way I suppose that the tiniest daytime thought or insignificant action can trigger a certain dream the following night. It’s all somehow linked in these crazy, clever and complicated human brains of ours.

  Dreams always seem to lose a lot in translation – there’s nothing harder than having to try and explain a really exciting or funny dream you had to someone without it sounding like a whole load of tosh, and I know that if I voice this one, even just to myself, then its meaning will fade. Dreams are a bit like books written in your own, personal language, or code, I suppose, only to be understood by you and no one else. They make perfect sense whilst in your head, but are so hard to verbalise. Although at the moment I don’t understand this one; I just don’t remember enough about it and I desperately hope some of it will come back to me soon.

  My phone beeps in my pocket, bringing me out of my dream-obsessed state. It’s a text from Leonora. ‘Hope day 1 going well. Aperos @ 6 in café Strozzi, v. del Trebbio. See you there! xx.’ I text a quick reply back to say I’ll be there and load up my ‘Map’ app for the umpteenth time today. I’m sure I’ll get my bearings here eventually; I have to, I practically swallowed the guide book whole before I came out. GPS position located, I realise it’s not that far and decide to walk along the Arno, then cut back up into the town. I haven’t been along the riverside much yet so it gives me a chance to see a few more sights.

  As I turn away from the river and into the Via de’ Tornabuoni I gasp, instantly wishing I had been born to landed gentry, instead of being the daughter of a couple of retired office workers from Sussex. Even new money would do, any kind of wealth, I’m not fussy just as long as there is lots of it. This street is quite literally bulging with designer stores, their vast and opulent window displays positively oozing with gorgeousness. Salvatore Ferragamo sets the standard for what is to follow with its huge, illustrious store overlooking the Arno, delicious bags and shoes screaming ‘Buy me, buy me’ but simultaneously flashing their expensive price tags with a ‘Ha, you can’t afford me, you’re only a student,’ taunt. Ahhhh if only. One day I am going to be rich and come back to that shop, completely confident of my status and unabashed at my spending power like the wealthy young couples I can see inside now, and BUY SOMETHING REALLY EXPENSIVE. Or even several things.

  My big sister, Evie, would love this part of town, I know that for a fact. Now there is a girl who is born to shop and has the means to do so. I must drop her a text over the next couple of days; it would be great to get her out here and show her the sights…. And maybe she’d take me shopping…….?

  I traipse past the others; Prada, Gucci, Bulgari, Cartier – all the best names have a presence here – and swoon at the window displays. Beautifully attired shoppers, well-heeled and high-heeled, zip from one store to the next, oversized bags crammed with goodies dangling from their arms and proclaiming ‘Recession, what recession?’ There I was thinking we were in the middle of a global financial crisis, but quite clearly the cutbacks have not cut back their budgets.

  I turn from temptation and the certainty of a lifetime of debt into the little side street and track down the café. Leonora and Sophia are comfortably ensconced in the far corner, looking a bit like they’ve been there all day. I wonder where exactly in their timetables the study fits in, but clearly it doesn’t impact too heavily on their social lives. Dante, Lanzo and Stefano are there too, plus a couple of other girls I haven’t met yet, so my social circle is set to expand yet again. Leonora is sporting a fine-looking shopping bag of her own from one of the stores I have just passed. I would wonder how she managed that on a student’s allowance had I not picked up from conversations yesterday that her father is a banker in Rome, pretty high up in one of the top financial institutions. Obviously papa wants his little girl to be able to buy the odd treat now and again. Lucky thing, can’t begrudge her that I suppose.

  Drinks ordered and a chair found for me, everyone is keen to know how l’inglese fared on her first day all alone in the big città, and I regale them with tales of the flirty Vincenzo and the fight, the stupendously great Signore Di Girolamo and my charming new friends from my course. I surprise myself at just how much of this I manage to recount in Italian; at this rate I should be coping pretty well with the native tongue within a couple of weeks. I am walking proof that total immersion is the only way to learn a language.

  ‘I’ve heard things about Signore Tizzaro,’ Sophia warns. ‘Apparently he’s a huge flirt. Just be a bit careful.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I reassure her. ‘I couldn’t be less interested in him – not my type at all. I wonder who that girl was, though. It did look like she was a bit more to him than just a student. He was painting her too.’

  ‘Yeah, he does that, apparently. He has a real eye for a pretty girl who’d make a good model. He’s a fantastic artist, though. In fact he’s got an exhibition coming up at the Strozzi in a couple of weeks. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it and get you to come along,’ she explains, then adds: ‘You might see a few of your fellow female students on canvas!’

  Once the rest of the group are deep in conversation about something else I venture covertly to Sophia: ‘I had this weird dream in the museum.’ Much as I want to tell someone about it I don’t want her to think I’m a little bit crazy when she’s only just met me – and has to share an apartment with me.

  ‘You fell asleep – in the Uffizi!’ she howls, finding it amusing that the girl who had so avidly toured the museum with her only the day before could find the time to take a little nap with all that enthusiasm bouncing around in her head. ‘How did you manage that?’

  I explain to Sophia that it wasn’t the first time it had happened. ‘I had these strange dreams; I wasn’t me, I was someone else and there was this man I was in love with. I think it was the same man in both dreams. It’s all a bit vague, but I think I really loved him, whoever he was. He kept looking at me with these big, puppy-dog eyes. He had this goatee beard on his chin, I seem to remember, a pointy little thing, and his clothes were odd, it definitely wasn’t twenty-first century gear he was wearing. And there was a carriage and horses, I remember that now, too. He was taking me somewhere. Where to and where from I have no idea.’

  ‘Well you seem to have remembered quite a bit of it,’ Sophia replies. ‘Do you do this a lot – fall asleep in strange places that aren’t your bed? That could get you into all sorts of trouble, you know!’

  ‘Can’t say I do. Think it’s the first time it’s happened actually,’ I explain. ‘I do dream a lot, and I remember quite a bit of my dreams usually, too. But I don’t normally fall asleep in places like that. It’s all a bit odd. Maybe it’s just my body’s way of catching up on the tiredness of the weekend. And looking at all those paintings.’ I try to shrug it off with a smile and make light of it, but I desperately want some more details of the dreams to come back to me, so that I can attempt to make sense of them a b
it more.

  One of the other girls in the group that I haven’t met before is Francesca, a petite little doll-like thing with huge eyes and a mane of dark, wavy hair down to her waist. I’d noticed her go a bit quiet and awkward and look away from the group when I was talking about Vincenzo earlier. I really want to find out what it is that she knows, so I seize my moment when there’s a lull in the conversation between her and the other girl I’ve not met before, Alessandra, to the other side of her. I feel a bit odd prying into someone’s private life when I hardly know them, and I surprise myself too at my sudden interest in Vincenzo; after all he hadn’t exactly made the greatest of first impressions on me earlier.

  ‘What are you studying Francesca?’ I ask. ‘Are you an Art student too? Only you seemed to know Signore Tizzaro when I was talking about him earlier.’

  ‘Er… yeah…. no, well, no, I’m not doing Art, I’m studying Classics actually. But….um…. a friend of mine used to know Vincenzo, really well. She had a bit of a thing with him for a while, but he dumped her as soon as the next pretty girl came along. He’s a bit like that. Really do be careful, won’t you?’

  ‘How does he get away with it?’ I ask. ‘Back home, lecturers who get into relationships with students can get into all sorts of trouble. It goes on, of course it does, but it’s not quite as out in the open as it seems to be here.’ I’ve barely known this guy five minutes and already I’ve managed to form an opinion of him as the biggest womaniser going.

  Francesca gazes off into space and doesn’t go into any more detail, and I don’t push it, but I can’t help thinking that this ‘friend’ of hers is actually her, which is why she doesn’t want to expand on it further. He clearly hurt her, judging by her expression when she heard his name just now, so who can blame her. All she sees is history repeating itself and yet another girl going through what she went through.

  But why should I care? I’m not going to be making the mistakes these girls have made. My head isn’t as easily turned by a bit of flattery and the offer to make me his next model and muse. I just want a tutor I can learn something from; any unwanted advances coming my way will be instantly rejected. For some reason he fascinates me though; must be that sheer blatant way he has of going about, taking what he wants and discarding it when he’s finished. Everyone loves a rogue, don’t they? Well, I don’t, that’s for sure. Not any more; I’m all done with rogues.

  We leave the café at around eight, and stroll back through the well-lit streets towards the apartment. Florence is so atmospheric by night; I think I almost prefer it once darkness has fallen. It obscures the graffiti and the other imperfections that adorn the city in places where they really shouldn’t be, on walls and archways, even on the huge monuments and churches, and the more subtle light seems to enhance the historic feel of the place, take us back to when it was in its prime. We pass by the majestically up-lit Duomo and the smaller but by no means insignificant Baptistry, whose gilded doors glint with an almost artificial brilliance under the spotlights.

  I pause to glance in the window of a tourist-type shop selling postcards and prints of the city’s great artwork. Amongst Botticellis and Giottos of all sizes I spot a small Venus of Urbino towards the back of the display, almost obscured by the other pictures. But to me it is as though she has her own personal spotlight, seizing my attention and rooting me to the spot.

  The sudden jolt of seeing her hits me with a lightning bolt of memories from one of the dreams I had in the museum. Someone is painting me; I am nearly naked, reclining on a huge sofa or lounger of some sort. The man in the dream is pacing the room, angry about something, and I am doing my best to calm him down. Eventually he gives in and comes to me, and I have an immense feeling of love, sensuous touch and of being held in a way which makes me feel more cherished than anything on earth. Who is this man, and for that matter who is the woman – the one that I ‘become’ in these dreams? Maybe I have just been looking at too many renaissance paintings, too many reclining nudes, and my subconscious brain keeps trying to transport me back to those times?

  Sophia calls to me from the corner of the street, shaking me out of my daydreams. ‘Where did you go to?’ she asks. ‘I’ve been calling you for ages, you seemed to go into some sort of trance, it was a bit weird.’

  ‘Oh, it was nothing, I think I was just remembering something from one of those dreams,’ I reply, trying to pass it off as unimportant. She really is going to think I’m a weirdo if I keep doing this, so I decide to keep to myself the memories of what came back to me, quickly changing the subject as I run to catch up with her and the others, who have just disappeared around the next corner. Looks like everyone is piling back to ours, and I am glad of that as the last thing I fancy is a night in on my own. These dreams and the memories of them are starting to give me the creeps a bit and I need a good distraction.

  I can’t recall having had recurrent dreams before, although these two weren’t exactly what you could call recurrent; they were more like separate instalments of some bigger story, I think, like there’s some crazy soap opera playing itself out in my head. All I know is that the man and the woman – me – are basically the same in both, but I don’t know why and I don’t know who they are. I don’t know what the ‘me’ in the dreams looks like, although I am quite convinced that she isn’t Lydia Irvine, twenty-first century gal.

  That’s enough for now; I don’t really want to have to expend any more thought power on it, it’s wearing me out. What I need is a lively night in with lots of friends.

  And that was exactly what I got. Stefano, Lanzo, Dante, and my newly acquired friends Alessandra and Francesca didn’t actually leave until some time well after two o’clock. They were all great company, but they left so late, and as they have all been so nice to me, I would have felt rude sneaking off to my bed halfway through the evening. Spot the would-be English party-pooper.

  Oh God, my head. I know I’m a student and therefore should be used to the whole stay-up-late, get-up-late scenario, but my body clock just doesn’t work like that, and never has done. I was always one of the real girly swots who actually made it to nine o’clock lectures instead of languishing in bed for another two hours, and not because I’d set an alarm clock the size of Big Ben for some unearthly hour to wake me up, but just because I seem to be made that way. And come the evening, when the bell for last orders rang that was pretty much me done too. Nights later than that tend to send me into a downward spiral of tiredness and absent-mindedness.

  Still, I haven’t got to go in until my tutorial with Vincenzo at twelve today, so maybe I could try going back to bed and see if I can catch up on a couple of hours…. Worth a try, but somehow I doubt I will be able to. I like to sleep at sensible, grown-up hours, when it’s dark outside mainly, although given my recent propensity for dropping off in the museum, maybe all that is about to change, and it could be argued that I take my rest anywhere and everywhere. Perhaps I should avoid the gallery for a while; those dreams and my attempts at interpreting them are starting to give me the creeps.

  Time to resort to headache pills, I think, as I pull myself out of bed and head to the kitchen in search of water.

  ‘Ah, la bella Signorina Earveenay, come stai?’ Vincenzo greets me as I enter his office for the first of my formal tutorials, shaking my hand fervently with both of his. Which I suppose is better than him coming at me with that double-cheek-kissing thing like everyone seems to do here. I say ‘formal tutorial’ as he’d texted me earlier to see if I’d rather meet him in a café or bar, instead of at the faculty building, to which I’d promptly replied that I’d rather come to him this time, as I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the books on his shelf. So we find ourselves in the confines of his pretty palatial office, and my excuse for meeting him on neutral territory seems to have been accepted without too much fuss. I don’t for one minute think he was hoping to ply me with alcohol and seduce me into being his next model, but given all I’ve heard about him in such a short space of time, I think
I would rather be here.

  Our tutorials are supposed to be formal, anyway, so I don’t feel too bad about shunning his plans for something a little more relaxed. I am under strict instruction from Newcastle to document all my tutorials and lectures as part of my coursework, which will then count as a very miniscule part of my pass mark for this year. I think it’s just their way of feeling that the cost of me being out here for a year is justified, and also it gives them some proof that I am actually turning up to things and learning from it all. Fair enough, I suppose.

  There’s definitely something about being in the right environment to learn, and even if Vincenzo and I had the most in-depth conversation in a bar, somehow it just wouldn’t feel quite as academic as spending our allotted hour here, amidst all his great tomes and academic material. Less temptation to make small-talk, and more focus on the work. I wonder how long it will be before he thrusts one of his own volumes in my face, for me to take away and digest?

  But instead of foisting his books on me, towards the end of the tutorial, Vincenzo hands me a stiff, white envelope from a pile on the corner of his desk and says excitedly, ‘Open it now.’ By the look on his face I suspect it is an invitation to his exhibition, which the girls were talking about yesterday. He sits in silent anticipation, hands folded in his lap like a small child who has presented a lovingly home-made Christmas present to its mother and is waiting for her face to light up with delight. He is clearly feeling very pleased with himself at the prospect of a showing at one of the finer art institutions in the city, and rightly so, really.

  ‘You’re having an exhibition!’ I exclaim, feigning surprise. Can’t have him thinking I already knew about it, as that might imply that I’d been discussing him with someone else and I don’t want to oil his ego too much.