by Diana Cachey
“I am not afraid of ghosts. They’ve never bothered me.”
“They are now, aren’t they?” Not much got by Louisa’s keen eye, especially not a hot Venetian like the tall, smiling Gianni she’d seen conversing with Barbara.
Barbara waived to the waiter for another caffe. She knew Matteo had taught Louisa how to people watch, Venetian-style, which was more like furtive observing while collecting information than watching them. Clever Venetians spied people’s images in window panes, bevelled mirrors, shiny counter tops, canal waters and reflective sunglasses. Louisa also used her compact mirror to apply lipstick or mascara while she looked behind her to see who was there and what they were doing without them suspecting a thing. Matteo used cigarette lighters to do the same thing. He said Venetians secretly kept watch over others in a number of ways without even giving it a thought.
Spying in assorted manners of which mere mortals knew nothing was evidently a sport in Venice.
“I can’t help it if Venice keep delivering these men,” said Barbara.
“Hmmm, well it sure looked like Venice delivered more than just another man.”
Using stealth espionage techniques she’d learned from Matteo’s training, Louisa had witnessed the entire exchange between Barbara and the lawyer, Gianni, on the ferry. Louisa had also observed a tiny woman in fur coat approach Barbara then whisper something to her before giving her those cigarettes she was now smoking like a crusty truck driver. Louisa had seen it all without so much as a turn of the head.
“Minding my business, were you?”
“Of course, but I want to know what I missed,” said Louisa. She stared at Barbara over her sunglasses. Louisa pretended not to have seen it all because she wanted to test her sister’s veracity.
It occurred to Louisa that Venetians were masterful minders of other people’s business, while pretending to see nothing. It also occurred to her that the recent flow of messages and vague references to books, poems, legends, ghost stories and clues on plaques, hidden objects and places, might be a way for Venetians to give her facts, dangerous information, which could not be traced back to them. This mysterious method of sending clues would create a maze that confused any would-be attackers and diverted wrong doers from secret puzzle pieces and private areas, not unlike the design of Venice itself.
“Apparently you didn’t miss anything. Another day, another Gianni.”
Barbara’s confident yet demure manner lured men in droves. For a man to chase her sister wasn’t out of the ordinary and this alone wouldn’t have intrigued Louisa. But she’d recognized both intense fear and curiosity in Barbara’s eyes during her exchanges with this man.
Unlike Louisa, fear did not make Barbara curious. Instead, it made her run the other way. What had sparked Barbara’s interest in Gianni despite her fear? Why had she chased him off the boat instead of shying away from him? Also why had the old woman spoken to Barbara? What did she say to her sister?
“You better tell me what happened back on the boat, Barbie,” said Louisa.
“Mmm, good stuff, huh?” Barbara raised the empty espresso cup to her lips, sipped the air in it and widened her eyes.
“That man, Gianni, on the vaporetto,” Louisa whispered, “cute, huh?” She waited for Barbara’s reaction. Nothing. “What did he say to you?”
“About what?”
“About any ambiguous allusions to anything,” Louisa said.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know but I’ve been getting messages, sort of like puzzles to solve, from strangers. Yet they are always like tangled fishlines. Bait that doesn’t lead to catching fish.”
Bait? Why did she used that word? They were living here on water, Venetians fish. Bait? Was it important? Louisa shook her head.
Don’t start reading into everything, she told herself.
But Barbara had also noticed that her sister had used the word “bait.” The word reminded her again of the eery poem she’d heard on her walks in Seattle. About things caught in nets. She’d heard the poems before she left for Venice and now they seemed significant.
Bait. They both stared at each other. Church bells rang.
Should I keep reading clues into everything or stop? Which is it? Louisa wondered. Bait, she repeated to herself.
Bait? Fishes? Barbara pondered while she also noted the bells.
Bells continued to ring in Murano. From either the old church or the new church. The new church was not a new church at all, but rather the newer of two old churches. Both Murano churches were old buildings but one was ancient. The newer one contained huge hand-blown glass chandeliers and was filled with medieval art. The older church was magnificent too, for the simple fact that it was ancient.
Church bells chime different tones for diverse occasions. Weddings, masses and funerals all have distinct bell sounds to signal parishioners to the event. The long, sad, pensive bell that just rang indicated an impending funeral mass.
“A funeral!” Louisa said. She jumped up from her tranquil sun-bathing. “We need to check funeral notices.”
“Why?” Barbara said then continued to puff away at what was now her third or fourth or fifth cigarette. They’d both lost count.
“A notice for the funerals of the dead glassmakers must be posted all over town,” said Louisa. “On electric polls, buildings, restaurants.”
“What’s that going to tell you?” Barbara asked but she seemed more absorbed by her trembling hands. She stared intently at her index finger and thumb, which were barely able to hold the cigarette. Her eyes burned through the two fingers with unblinking precision.
“Those notices, my dear Watson,” said Louisa while squinting at her sisters’ hand, “might tell me the names of grieving, interested parties.”
“Sit down for a second.” Barbara said. She stopped meditating on her shaking hands long enough to puff from the cigarette then she exhaled the smoke like a blast from hell. “Let’s relax.”
“Relax?” Louisa picked up her hat and scarf. “You call that relaxing?”
“I’m trying to enjoy the sun.” Barbara tried to steady her hands further.
“With stiff hands, shaking fingers and your smoke stack smoking?”
“I’m having some espresso and admiring this wonderful view.”
“Watson, you can keep on failing to chill out,” said Louisa, “or we can go to a funeral.”
“I’m in Venice. It’s sunny.” Barbara inhaled another drag off a cigarette as if she chain-smoked cigarettes her entire life.
“I’m movin on. Gonna walk around to inspect some electric poles.”
“Can’t your little imagination, your investigation or whatever this witch hunt is, can’t it wait for a minute?”
“Why wait? You know that ain’t my style?”
Barbara realized Louisa was off again on her search for clues but she knew not where the hunt would lead. Nor did Louisa.
“But going to a funeral. Really? Funerals creep me out.”
“Especially today?”
Barbara peered into the half-empty pack of cigarettes, stomped out the one in her hand. She tossed back her head and raised her eyes to the sky. Everything looked grey to her.
“Yes, especially today. It feels voyeuristic.”
“Maybe I’ll stop in a bar. Ask around.” Louisa stood, put on the hat and scarf, and waited.
“If you go to a cicchetti bar,” Barbara said, “please come get me first. I’m getting hungry.” The cafe where they sat had a food menu and a marvelous view, but the Muranese cicchetti bars that Louisa frequented served unrivaled finger food.
“Okay. Until then sit here and sun, I mean sulk, smoke and smoke some more. I’ve got a funeral to attend.”
Barbara could see that Louisa relished the idea of chasing puzzling clues regarding the recent deaths. The additional mysteries of ghosts, Nazis and haunted houses had also enveloped her with intrigue. Her new role as assistant to ghost detectives thrilled her, lessoned her
boredom and increased her distraction. Playing amateur Sherlock Holmes allowed Louisa to pretend she had a purpose here, a purpose beyond the grand sounding Interpol global law enforcement job, which had turned out to be little more than a routine translation clerkship. A desk job.
Barbara sensed that Louisa was hiding something from her. What had lured Louisa to the lagoon town, really? Fear of commitment to a law firm job in America? Louisa didn’t need the Venice job and its pseudo Interpol prestige. With her top credentials, many offers poured in to her mailbox, yet she turned them all down for this one. Surely something more was at stake for her here in Venice. Did she need closure with Matteo? Likely. Louisa could barely wait until school was over to return to finish, or resume, this thing with Matteo. Barbara watched Louisa skip merrily away, nodding at tourists and locals alike.
She loves Venice, that’s it. Could it be that simple?
Nothing was that simple. Not in their complicated world, in the land of America, in the land of the free. But did people in the land of the free feel free? Free to leave their homes or jobs and seek out something new? Or did they feel stunted, stopped, stuck with the status quo?
Perhaps Louisa needed a break from it all. Perhaps.
Perhaps she simply needed . . . an adventure.
Skilled at seeking out clues, Louisa usually found the route she needed to take. Louisa knew little about the country of her familial origin before her first trip to Italy. To her, Italy was a boot-shaped plot of land where great-grandpa was born -- but she found an Italy aficionado when she needed one and she met one where she usually found her experts -- in a Seattle watering hole.
The stranger, turned new best bar friend, had recently traveled to Italy. She instructed Louisa to “take a triangle train tour from Milan.” Over many beers, Louisa and this stranger discussed different “triangle tours” available to Louisa on her first trip to Italy many years ago. The first option was to go to Tuscany and drive along the Mediterranean coast. Ah yes, the Florentine coastal route, a wine-lovers dream. It included Tuscan towns like Sienna, Luca, Moltepulciano and those of Cinque Terre, a beautiful cliffside colony lined with five (cinque) beach resorts. This option required renting a car, which Louisa’s new barfly buddy/Italy expert assured her would be easy driving, painless and pleasurable.
Tuscan wine tasting? Not an option, thought Louisa at the time. I’ll be drinking and driving, alone. Bad combo. Further research also revealed that buses to the Cinque Terre as well as throughout Tuscany were either infrequent or inconvenient.
The second option held more promise: the Milan-Florence-Venice triangle. Arriving in Venice by train placed you squarely on the Grand Canal.
“You walk out of the station and spread before you like fine china is the playground of Europe,” said the expert.
It was a no brainer for Louisa who decided right then that upon arrival in Milan, she would take the train to Venice.
“You can see Venice in three days,” her new bar buddy told her.
She was wrong. Three days weren’t enough for Louisa to see all of Venice but it was long enough for her to fall hopelessly in love with the town, which turned out to be as wonderful as she’d imagined it, both picturesque and surreal. Venice’s palatial buildings bubbled up from lagoon shores and framed a chaotic dance of maneuvering watercraft that nearly collided but never touched during their perfect waltz on the water. The excitement Louisa felt during her first trip never diminished. Arriving by planes, trains, busses and boats, she always came back to Venice. No matter how many times she left thinking it would be her last visit, she was mistaken.
She was also mistaken in thinking that the first glass of Prosecco she took at her favorite Murano bar would be her last drink of the day. Louisa knew several bars where locals played cards in the afternoon and ate little sandwiches and some pastries. They drank inexpensive but excellent house wine. They also offered fresh, delicious cicchetti.
The tasty Venetian appetizers known as cicchetti, which means “little toothpicks,” come in many varieties. The ones offered at the Murano spot she frequented included olives, cheeses, salami, peppers, meatballs, boiled eggs topped with hot sauce and artichoke hearts sprinkled with balsamic vinegar. This bar also prepared open faced snacks such as sliced baguettes topped with fabulous salads of cod fish, tuna, ricotta and broccoli, to name a few. The locals poured copious amounts of red wine for Louisa then followed it up with tiramisu and handcrafted limoncello, a sweet liquor made of lemons and vodka.
She’d walked into her favorite Murano bar to ask a few questions, eat a few sandwiches and play some cards. Instead, she ended up drunk.
The next morning, she woke with a hangover.
Barbara had left her in Murano and run off to San Bortolo in anticipation of a date with one of her men, Louisa wasn’t sure which one. And although she got drunk, Louisa hadn’t dared call Matteo. Her protests of “it’s only lust” aside, she knew it was a lie. For some ridiculous, unexplainable and infuriating reason, Louisa couldn’t stop thinking about him. But she didn’t call him and went home to sleep off the vino.
What’s wrong with me? Louisa always thought this when she drank too much the night before then felt sick and fretted about Matteo the next morning.
Nothing, nothing is wrong with me. Whenever she questioned herself, she answered with this defiant response. It jumped out too quick as if to conceal a stinging truth.
Wasn’t it easier to run away? Escape to where the question “what’s wrong with me” no longer mattered? Where she could hide her feelings of inadequacy, worry, doubt?
Behind of her carefully woven veil of self-assuredness, like the one she wore last night with wine, cicchetti and aperitif, she really set out to escape. Her drinking was perfectly normal here, wasn’t it? Her masks were too.
The problem was that people didn’t believe her false self, they saw through her masks. Some days it seemed that everyone sensed her insecurity. It surfaced inside her at all the wrong times. Like now.
I can stay under these covers, in this layer of relief, and never surface.
She longed to stay hidden, wrapped in blankets until the anxiety passed. That was the beauty of a hangover. Better to stay in bed all day.
Saying,“I’m fine, nothing’s wrong” convinces me that nothing is wrong then I’m safe and secure. Correct?
Incorrect. The problems, insecurities and fears remained. It didn’t work. Even lying there in bed all day didn’t help. Something, some fear, some uneasiness broke through her provocative, protective layer. Louisa tried to lie to herself. Plunge whatever was wrong deep down inside her. Deeper. Yet it rose up. Something still disturbed her body, mind and soul.
The disturbance, this unknown feeling of “something is wrong with me,” occurred at unpredictable intervals. It paralyzed her. Confused and sorrowful, she stayed stationary in bed while the world outside her bedroom window moved forward.
Being such a common ailment for Louisa, or at least her commonly imagined one, such fearful anxiety seemed hardly enough to require an entire life change of sorts, like joining the convent or deciding to take steps to become a single parent, although she’d considered both and understood how that might work for some.
She remained in bed. Temporary paralysis could produce permanent damage if movements were made too quickly or without caution.
Remembering instructions from her first aid courses about possible paralyzing physical injuries, hers today being mental paralysis, she made an emergency plan to nurse herself back to health, or at least back to reality. Need to move an imaginary stretcher over here, and slowly get out of bed, with the spine protected and straight.
A little movement wouldn’t kill her. She decided she could at least get up. She could take a bath. A long bath, in freshly harvested detoxifying sea vegetables. Sea veggie baths served specific purposes. Relaxation, detoxification, mineralization. She found the dehydrated sea veggies she bought from the farmacia and tossed them along with herself into the tub.
She turned the water even hotter. She watched red, brown, beige, green, amber colors of the seaweed expand. Some reminded her of the small ends of wilted tree branches. Others resembled bean sprouts, rice noodles or hairbrush bristles. She ran her fingers threw them, agitated the bath and watched them swirl. She pulled a larger, mottled leaf out of the water then draped it over her hand. The pimpled, wet wrap revealed her rings, knuckles and nails through its cover. Another branch appeared to be a lock of lush auburn hair underwater, but went limp in her hands.
The fresh, earthy seaweed smell soothed her. The strands clung to her limbs. The soft, some might say slimy, branches surrounded her like a cushion of fine silk. She melted into the experience. She sunk down further and fell into the halfway between sleep and waking state, where dreams trickled by like the dripping faucet water.
Wind blew shut the small bathroom window above her head. Had she dozed off in the bath?
Strange sounds, which she assumed were coming from the canal below her bedroom window, echoed beyond the bathroom door. She tried to ignore these sounds, even as they clicked away at her, clapping like the bills of seagulls wrestling for leftover seafood at the fish market. She wouldn’t allow their squawking to interrupt the wonderful experience of her sea foam bath. Warmed by her makeshift womb, she sunk down further, content.
A bird clucked again and she cursed the ghosts.
Ever since she started chasing ghost traces, her senses became heightened and odd sounds seemed to be everywhere especially on days like today when she felt sluggish. Click cluck click she heard again. Those stupid gulls.
She pulled the drain out of the tub and placed the sea veggies in a pail next to the tub. She rubbed some pieces a few more times across her thighs, stomach and lymph nodes and exited the bath.
She moved towards the bedroom window where she knew gondolas passed underneath with their daily serenades. Could it be them or their boats? She loved to hear gondoliers sing,“O Solo Mio,” which they sang every day.