by Mavis Cheek
‘You have lovely hands,’ he said. At which I quickly whipped them off the table and out of sight. He gave a very amused little laugh. ‘I forgot,’ he said, ‘An Englishwoman must never be seen to celebrate her good points. It is immodest.’
‘That’s all a bit old-fashioned,’ I said.
He inclined his head. ‘It’s refreshing.’
I found myself smiling. And then I laughed a little, too. Nice hands, indeed.
‘London?’ I said.
‘I lived near the British Museum for a while – nearly a year – when I was doing my doctorate.’
‘Oh really? What was it on?’
‘Late Roman and Byzantine trade routes. Alexandria, Haifa—’
‘And the British Museum was the best place to be? I should have thought …’ I gestured all around. ‘Well, why not here?’
‘You plundered your way through the world even better than we Venetians,’ he said. And the way he said plundered gave me a very jellified feeling somewhere it shouldn’t.
Then our eyes did meet.
‘My ex-wife is still in London,’ he said.
Clever. I tried to ignore the information. He was probably lying. He probably wasn’t. He was certainly a very cool customer. Perhaps he was a crook? Perhaps he wasn’t chatting me up. Perhaps he was just being friendly.
‘My husband is in Florida,’ I replied. Not meaning to at all. And for the first time I managed to get a reaction that was less than immaculate or planned.
‘Florida?’ he said, with some emotion. Then he returned to his cooler self. ‘Is he a dealer in orange juice?’
Hard to say if it was a joke or not. ‘No. Computers.’ It sounded very boring and bland. Usually I’d have gone on to explain that Robert was at the top of his tree, really clever, a high-class consultant of the first order. But I didn’t. I just left it as it was.
‘Among the greatest mysteries of life,’ he said. ‘Computers.’
Unfortunately I warmed to him when he said that.
‘Why Florida?’
I liked the way he could not keep his cool at the thought of the place.
So of course – of course – I told him all about it. I did not ignore the new drink. I used it for punctuation while I described the idea of truth and the trip I didn’t take. The glass emptied. All around us were people having interesting conversations and I felt caught up in it all. The drawing room of Europe was abuzz and the evening sun softened the severe stone facades. This, I thought, was life. You see, Robert, you see – this is what happens if you behave unkindly towards me. This.
Our toes were practically touching beneath the table as we leaned in on each other and he told me that he had never been to America, never wished to go. And I told him more about the truth thing and he said, ‘You know your poet William Blake? Your great visionary? You know what he said about truth?’
I shook my head. I did not mind at all not knowing. ‘What did he say, then?’
‘He said, “A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.”’ He laughed.
I was amazed. I was ecstatic. ‘That’s absolutely very bloody marvellous,’ I said. And with a little careful negotiation managed to manoeuvre my chin onto my hand. ‘Marvellous,’ I said. ‘Say it again.’ And if I had then been asked if I felt it would be a good idea to make my escape before anything untoward happened, I would have answered, truthfully, ‘No.’
Instead of repeating the line, he was looking over my head into the distance. ‘Your friend,’ he said, ‘does he wear very bright clothing?’ I nodded, wondering how he could possibly know. But I turned and followed his gaze. There was Brando – in ochre and pink – striding across the piazza, waving cheerfully while not taking his eyes off my new best friend while my new best friend, with elegance and apparent good cheer, stood to greet him as he summoned a waiter for another round of drinks.
Brando did not have a Campari. In the manner of a sulky child he ordered a beer. Such an inelegant drink for the piazza I found myself saying to him. ‘So-o inelegant.’
‘Really?’ he said acidly. And sipped. ‘And how did you get on with the research this afternoon?’
‘Excellently,’ I said. He wasn’t really listening.
The Italian said, most charmingly, that he had taken me away from the work I was so diligently doing when he arrived. Then he admired Brando’s ochre jacket. ‘It is a rare Englishman who will be so bold.’
‘It is a rare Italian signor who is not.’
Brando stared at the Venetian for a moment and the Venetian stared back at him – and then – as if an unspoken decision had been made – Brando beamed a smile at him. ‘Indeed,’ he said, and raised his glass. ‘The jacket is, of course, Italian.’ The Italian raised his glass also. ‘I admire it very much. And you are right in your choice of drink,’ he said carefully. ‘How could you drink a red drink with that colour?’ He said it very seriously. Brando gave him a look of questioning amusement – and then they both burst out laughing.
‘Your friend is very naughty,’ said Brando.
Signora Nina has been telling me why she is here,’ said the Italian.
‘Yes, she’s very good at it really. And I am lazy. So I pay her to do it on my behalf. It works.’
He looked puzzled. ‘You pay her – ?’
And then I went off into surprisingly wild – for me anyway – laughter – because he was obviously thinking about Truth with a capital T, and Brando was thinking about researching all things murky in Venice. So they both looked at me. And I, though slightly blurry, explained.
Good humour all round.
‘Where do you stay?’ asked the Italian.
‘At the Gritti,’ said Brando. ‘Of course.’
The Italian bowed his head in agreement.
‘But I’m staying at La Calcina,’ I said, ‘because that’s all he’ll afford for me.’ I suddenly felt sad at being thought so little of.
‘It is not that at all,’ said Brando, signing for the waiter. ‘It is that if Nina stays in the same hotel as me, people might get the wrong idea.’
The Italian raised his eyebrows.
‘Yes,’ said Brando, indicating another round of drinks to the waiter, ‘quite the wrong idea. They might think I was a heterosexual.’
At which both men laughed loudly all over again. Brando was obviously relaxed and happy again because he ordered his favourite Negroni. The beer was removed. And I was now to be viewed as perfectly available.
I still found the timbre of the Italian’s voice, even his laughter, very appealing. Brando had already asked him if he knew of any particular aspects of Venice that were not on the usual tourist route and were – well – not nice. He nodded. ‘Venice, as you know,’ he said, ‘is full of such things. Even the body of St Mark, our revered patron saint, has a past.’
‘A pickled past,’ I laughed. My word, I could be witty. ‘And he probably isn’t in the basilica because the basilica burnt down sometime in the tenth century and his body was more than likely destroyed. But nobody actually admits he isn’t there. Ha ha.’ I tapped the side of my nose. Brando leaned back and looked unimpressed. ‘That’s hardly heinous stuff,’ he said.
The Italian looked amused. ‘Oh no, I agree – that is – well – very Venetian – the art of equivocation. No – I was thinking more of how they smuggled the stolen corpse from Alexandria.’
I murmured ‘pickled’ again, which Brando ignored, nodding to the Italian to continue.
‘The corpse was properly mummified – as indeed it should be being the body of a Christian saint – and to get it past the suspicious eyes of the Muslims they covered it in pickled pork. Lots and lots of the stuff.’
Brando clapped his hands. ‘Now that is vile,’ he said. ‘Deliciously vile. Just the sort of thing. I wonder if they ate it afterwards?’
The Venetian laughed loudly and I felt a twinge of jealousy.
‘But wouldn’t the pickling stuff destroy the mummification?’ I asked.
Both men looked at me sadly and I knew that I had committed the same faux pas as giving the punchline to a joke before your husband begins to tell it … ‘Sorry.’ I, too, laughed. Also loudly. Rather more loudly than intended. ‘Spoiling a good story.’
Brando said, half seriously, half playfully, ‘Don’t bring your quest for truth to the ball, dear Nina. That’s not what my readers will want.’
‘Our readers,’ I said. And smiled at him sweetly.
He started to talk to the Italian about his first book and his luck. ‘That’s why I like Venice,’ he said, ‘because she understands wealth and approves of it.’
‘Always,’ said the Italian. ‘Despite the little matter of the sumptuary laws and we managed to evade those largely. Venetians like a challenge.’
He looked directly at me. Being English, I immediately looked away and gazed about me as if the inference of his words were the last thing on my mind.
The piazza had never looked more delightful, bathed in the last golden glimmerings of evening sunlight and shadow, the water to my left flickering in the reflection, the basilica to my right glowing with mosaics and marble. Even the darkness of Giotto’s tower looked elegant. The alcohol had given everything a halo, a gentle fuzziness, that was soothing to the eye. Mind you, I thought, as I let my eyes rove about while the two men talked of books and curiosities and the horrors of life under the doges, mind you, even this scene with St Mark’s at its centre is unreal. No saint buried beneath the high altar. Nothing but ash. And the building itself – no monument of Christian values but everything about it – its marbles, its mosaics, its gold and jewels – as well as its saint – all ripped from somewhere else, all once worshipped by an alien world, all stolen and brought as trophies to Venice. I was almost in a doze and feeling very happy when the Italian tapped the back of my hand very lightly. ‘Your kind friend has invited me to dine with you, and I have promised to share the secret of a little-known and very good place that Venetians keep to themselves.’
‘Excellent,’ I said. And I was very hungry. When I stood up my head felt light as goose fluff and just as unfocused. Brando put his hand under my elbow, as he sometimes did when we walked together, but with just a little more alacrity than usual. The Italian walked slightly behind the two of us as we exited the square, which I found disconcerting. I was much happier when he went in front to lead the way. In fact, I was very much happier watching his back moving so easily and confidently along the twists and turns of the route than I was being watched by him. I did not feel I was entirely elegant in my footsteps. Cobbles are the most difficult things sometimes and, in my bid to be elegant, I was wearing a pair of heeled sandals that were less sandal and more foot, if you know what I mean.
We walked unspeaking for a while, moving away from the busy little streets and alleys leading off from San Marco. I concentrated on staying upright and the others concentrated on moving out of the way of the oncoming human traffic. I so wanted to stop and look in some of the windows – how the Venetians know about dressing a perfectly ordinary frock shop window is alchemy at the very least. The light was fading now and the streets were full of shadows. Eventually we arrived at a quiet square where most of the windows were shuttered except in the far corner where a light shone dimly through the panes and a small wall lantern burned low above the lintel. We could have been in any century here. The eating place was small, with an unremarkable facade saved only from dreariness by the pots of bright red geraniums lined up along its frontage. In the last of the evening sun these had that dusty scent that is entirely southern and to do with heat. From what I could make out of the old lettering across the lintel the place was called Sandolo. Which the Italian told us was the name of a type of boat. This seemed particularly appropriate as, until I’d got a few breadsticks inside me, I felt myself to be a bit boat-like – rocking gently, untethered, anchorless and pleasantly all at sea.
Eleven
Superchery: deceit; cheating.
Reverend John Boag’s Imperial Lexicon, c.1850
WE ATE FISH. It was a fish restaurant. The owner and his staff were efficient and cool and the Italian was greeted without too much effusiveness. Yes – there was a table we could have, tucked away over in one of the corners. ‘In high season,’ he told us as we sat down, ‘such a vacancy would be impossible.’
I made a serious inroad into the breadsticks and felt the bliss of a little sobering before the first course – zuppa di pesce. I might have had mussels in their shells but I had a feeling they would shoot all over the place. I wasn’t doing brilliantly with the paper covering on the bread sticks. The soup arrived and it was delicious even allowing for my acute hunger. I felt so happy and realised that I had not felt happy for what seemed like days and days and days … which also made me rather sad. Brando approved and insisted that we had a very good bottle of wine. The Italian smiled with his white teeth which seemed to glow in the dimness and I very nearly asked if I could call him Volpone. I managed to restrain myself – thank God for the soup and the breadsticks. He suggested that in the Veneto and for such a meal, Soave was the best choice. I decided to be sensible and drink water but the smell of the wine was too much and I decided not to be so sensible. Why should I? No one else seemed to be at all restrained. While we waited for our next course – I had chosen baccalà mantecato – the famous and most wonderful creamed salt cod of Venice – Brando prodded our Italian for ideas. No shame, Brando, in pursuit of the cruelties of the world.
The Italian thought there were one or two things he could suggest. For example, ‘After dinner I can show you a little-known mouth of truth – I think it is not one often noticed. That is, if you do not mind walking a little way?’
At which a voice, which was, extraordinarily, mine (this was before the baccalà), said, ‘Oh, can’t we take a gondola?’ I had always wanted to take a gondola but never actually asked to do it, or done it – so naff – so touristy – so silly – thought radical Robert and I. Now I let out the pink and fluffy in me. Brando stared as if I had suggested hang-gliding over the lagoon. I smiled back at him, shocked and pleased. I might once have concurred in the dismissal of such a showy waste. But now the red rose, ‘O Sole Mio’, and trailing an elegant finger seemed utterly desirable. I would experience a gondola at last. Brando was still staring. ‘Oh, can’t we? Please?’ Then he blinked his eyes and, of course, said No. The Italian, though much more kindly, said that where we were going it would not be useful to travel by canal. So we didn’t. And I felt very disappointed. I looked Brando meaningfully in the eye and said how glad I was that I had spoken the truth about wanting a gondola ride. He offered me more bread. After that I had little to say and just enjoyed the food and the slight fuzziness of the occasion. I felt myself to be a free spirit and ready for anything. Though I wished I had worn slightly more sensible shoes. With the bill paid by Brando – though the Italian attempted to pay – we set off towards the Ghetto near where, apparently, we needed to be.
The night was quite warm but not quite warm enough. Graciously, the Italian offered to lend me his jacket to drape around my shoulders but Brando just put his arm around me, very firmly, his hot hand warming the top of my arm nicely and the jacket remained safely on the shoulders of its owner. I was rather disappointed. But Brando was, I could tell, irritated that the Italian was so attentive. Usually Brando was oblivious to any small discomfort, mine or anyone else’s, and it was amusing to see that, even in the most dyed-in-the-wool gay man, there was still that element of masculine jealousy. I rather liked it. Oddly, I felt very safe with the two of them. And happy. And – in the light of truth and drink – I said so.
‘How safe I feel,’ I said, ‘and happy.’
‘Is that unusual?’ asked the Italian, all Volpone and teeth again.
I thought about it. ‘Well, I haven’t felt very safe or been very happy since I started telling the truth. To be truthful.’ At which, of course, we all laughed.
‘Then why don’t you abandon it and be
normal again?’
‘Because she’s a stubborn twit,’ said Brando warmly. ‘Always was.’ He removed his arm as if in punishment.
‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s more than that. I’ve come this far and I can’t give up.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’ asked the Italian.
‘Both. If I can do it, then so can everyone else. Including smiling politicians. Do you know, my daughter refuses to vote? She was able to vote in the last election and just said No. Because she said you couldn’t trust any of them. And Johnno did vote, but for the Monster Raving Loony Party. A protest, he said. But it was just lack of belief. Trust.’
‘But politics has always been full of treachery,’ said the Italian. ‘It is about power. Power is the corrupter. When you are powerful truth becomes secondary.’
‘You should know –’ Brando replaced his hand and squeezed the top of my arm with obvious pleasure at the thought – ‘you spawned Machiavelli.’
‘Machiavelli,’ said the Italian dismissively, ‘was a Florentine.’
I laughed and thought, how convenient, to disown a fellow Italian when it suited. He probably applauded the man’s political views in the safety of his own apartment.
‘And his proposals for government,’ said Brando, ‘were something like, “When you invade a land and gain territory, be sure to crush the people so they cannot have revenge.” Yes? That may have been Florentine once but it’s pretty universal now.’
The Italian turned and smiled. ‘Or you could say “Stabilise power and then build an enduring infrastructure” – it sounds better like that and it comes to the same. Words can lie so beautifully in matters of politics. Force and Prudence were his watchwords; they sound so good, yes? If he were a Venetian he might have added “and payment”.’
Brando puffed an amused smile at the suggestion but seemed to be beyond speech.