by Mavis Cheek
‘Brando,’ I warned.
‘– thumb,’ he said, innocently.
From a distance the whole building seemed uninhabited and, like much of early Venice, elegantly decayed. The house attached to the loggia was long and low, only two storeys, with an ornate pediment and crumbling, pale plasterwork. Whatever grandeur it had once offered was no more – any architectural hubris had died in the decrepit facade years ago. Parts of it were shored up with timber buttresses and all around it were fences and notices of trespass and wire. If you blew too hard, it seemed, it might fall down. ‘Palladian revival, the newer bit,’ I said. ‘But the loggia’s much earlier.’ I thought it was beautiful. Brando pulled a face.
‘Always looking to the past, the later Venetians,’ he said. ‘The city was dying on its feet by the time this part was built. The loggia is charming – and that is where, so I am told, we will find the reliefs. But there was supposed to be someone here …’
As we came nearer we could see that, although it was decayed, it was not uninhabited. A face appeared for a moment at the corner of a glassless window – and then vanished. We stepped around a hole in the panelling of a wooden fence to where a flimsy and very half-hearted wire fence sagged at the front. If it was put up as a final barrier, it wasn’t. Lying on its side was a tattered, tipsy-looking poster with the outline of a guard dog. I called out asking if there was anyone at home as we pulled back a corner of the wire and walked over uneven pitted tiles to the loggia’s front. A cracked voice called back, not very nicely – ‘Ola! Ola!’ I thought it was the voice of an old man, but when the owner emerged from behind a rotten wooden door that probably saw light before the sumptuary laws, it was an old woman. And, like any Venetian, though she might be old, stooped, poor and possibly dispossessed, she still had style. Long hair, inadequately hennaed, untidily pinned and falling in thin, greasy curls with crazy woman big hooped earrings dangling were entirely incongruous above the plain black of her dusty dress.
‘What you might call a magnificent ruin,’ said Brando out of the side of his mouth, as he held his hat and bowed wonderfully obsequiously. Diplomacy rather than deceit saved me from saying ‘Just like you’. But there was something grand about her and I had to stop myself from curtsying. Instead I held out my hand and advanced. Brando was quicker. He held out his hand all right but it was holding a fifty-euro note. ‘Biglietto,’ he said. Clearly the Italian had given him detailed instructions. The old woman smiled more civilly but her eyes were watchful. ‘We wondered,’ he said, as he moved nearer like a man stalking a dangerous dog, ‘if we could see over the place –’ he gestured – ‘and ask you some questions? For a book I am writing. In English. I am told you have been here for many years as its custodian?’
La Vecchia obviously understood not one word but she did understand the money and took it immediately, putting it somewhere very safe within the folds of her dusty black skirts. Then she backed away towards the old door. Brando looked at me. I translated what he had just said, more or less, moving forward all the while. Suddenly the old woman held up her not entirely clean hand, palm outwards, and called, ‘Fermo!’ And stop we did. All three of us frozen like a tableau of refusal. Now what?
But Brando was perfectly calm. He gestured at the building again and said, over and over as if soothing a child, ‘Bella, bella – bella casa,’ and he smiled and smiled at the old woman until she could do nothing but agree that it was, indeed, bella and that she was gratified. Her smile was, for all its wrinkles and discoloured teeth, charming and it was easy to imagine that she might once have been bella, bella herself. Brando gestured to the low wall that ran along the front of the loggia, suggesting that we might sit in its shade – the heat was becoming fierce now – and the old woman nodded – still smiling.
We sat. I looked up at the carvings – they were old, some had been vandalised, some just worn away, but if you looked really hard it was plain to see what they were all about; copied, maybe, from old Roman tablets and plaques seen in the ruins of ancient towns dotted around the Italian countryside. The medieval mason knew exactly what was required. They were like some of the more hidden artefacts in Pompeii and Herculaneum, though those were finer wrought and better preserved. Titillation and promise of the pleasures within. A tradition as old as time and perfectly fitting for the oldest profession. I’ve always thought that Roman pornography was easy to look at because the women and the men are treated as equals. Participation is obvious on both sides. The Romans might treat their women as lower orders in society, but it seemed as if they were equals in the bedroom. I wonder what changed it? Constantine taking on Christianity, perhaps. I could see Brando eyeing the reliefs but he was much more concerned with ingratiating himself with La Vecchia. She reminded me of the Giorgione portrait of the old woman who says, ‘One day you, too, will look like this.’ I thought of my mother and the very idea of her using henna and wearing golden hoop earrings was so funny that I couldn’t stop a little trill of laughter. The old woman gave a little laugh in response – woman to woman – and the atmosphere became instantly more relaxed.
Now our hostess nodded to us again, but a little more benignly, and then went back through the old door returning a moment or two later with a very ancient kitchen chair – Brando immediately leapt to his feet and settled the chair for her and bowed that she should sit. He was – is – the most elegant of men despite his girth – when he wants to be – when he wants something – and I was reminded why it was that he had such success in his romantic pursuits. He was like a caring and considerate ballet dancer as he moved about her. Then, when we three were settled, I began to ask the old lady some questions. First I told her, as Brando instructed me, that there would be more money at the end of the interview. And said that we had been sent here by the Italian, something that she seemed to know already. Without any apparent hesitation the old lady began. I wondered to how many she had told the tale. Or maybe it is just the Italian way. The Decameron tales of life, death, love and survival were all in the story she told.
Her mother had brought her here in the last years of the war. They came from the mountains and were driven out by hunger and homelessness. Her father had been killed fighting in the Liberation Army at Monte Cassino and her mother was in despair. She was quick to say that mountain people had an understanding of survival no matter what was required of them. Her eyes were very sharp as they looked into mine, as if she dared me to defy what she was saying. I nodded. Well – there was her mother widowed and alone with her only surviving child – Claudia – the old woman who was then just seventeen. Her father was dead, her brother, a Fascist, had been killed by partisans – and it was safer to come down to Venice. The families of Fascists expected to see a bad time of it when the Allies arrived, even if they had changed sides. An acquaintance told her mother of this place. There was no other option except death. And the house was always looking for women. So they arrived.
At this point I asked her to stop for a moment while I told Brando what had been said so far. He nodded and pursed his lips and clucked sympathetically and then gestured that she should continue. There was not a lot more to say. Her mother offered herself and they laughed. Here the old woman shrugged and pursed her lips in that universal gesture of so what – she was intelligent, she said, and could put two and two together perfectly well. In the end she persuaded her mother that it was for the best. At least they would live. The house was well used by Germans at the time and they were decent enough with a certain discipline about them, a code. But as the British forces broke through in Salerno and moved on up towards the north, the Germans moved away and times became more difficult. They waited for the Americans and the British to arrive, expecting life to continue in much the same way if they kept her brother’s politics out of it and spoke only of her father’s honour. The old woman smiled and rubbed her hands. ‘A house like ours was always required. We were not likely to perish.’ No one, it seemed, expected life to change at all for the women of the house.
‘What kind of services did they offer?’ said Brando, looking up at the wall plaques. Depicted were positions I couldn’t imagine even a limbo dancer achieving, men in states of ecstasy with their heads thrown back and their legs agape – and animals. ‘Animals?’ said Brando wonderingly. ‘Animals?’ ‘I wouldn’t take those too literally,’ I said. ‘They are based on Roman ideas.’ I looked at the signora who looked straight back at me. ‘You’ll just have to guess. I’m not going to ask her for details. I wouldn’t know where to look, and anyway, my Italian isn’t that good. Or bad. Those images are less true representations than hooks to draw you in.’ I peered. ‘I very much doubt if they were really able to enjoy the intimate companionship of ducks. Even such large ones.’
He smiled and said, ‘L’anatra grande. It has a certain ring about it … I wonder.’ The old woman laughed and shook her head. ‘Anatra? Anatra?’ She made an eating movement with her hands. I signalled with my hands that the ducks were, indeed, very big. ‘No, no,’ she said, her Italian amused and emphatic. ‘We only ate the ducks. And in truth they were exaggerated in the pictures. Really they were very, very small.’ I did not need to translate this for him. She obviously found Brando’s disappointment delightful.
Venice, she told us, was not a bad place to be, if you were going to be somewhere like this, for the city had no scruples and was used to the ways of such a house. There was a decency about it and the Venetians saw it as just another aspect of trade. The services were not cheap.
‘Services?’ said Brando, understanding the word. ‘Servizio?’
‘Casanova.’ She laughed coarsely and made the gesture of opening and reading a book.
‘She says you can read Casanova on the subject. And I’ve got Pallavicino’s history of a puttana for you. And our home-grown Mary Wilson’s Voluptuarian Cabinet – you’ll have all those to look at. And if that doesn’t inspire you – well.’
Brando looked satisfied and for some reason those sad lines of Oscar Wilde’s came into my mind, images from the harlot’s house.
Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed
A phantom lover to her breast …
… Then, turning to my love, I said,
‘The dead are dancing with the dead …’
The signora continued. The northern Italians, she insisted, had class, had culture. It was the little dark men in the south of Italy, il contadini, who were bandits and vagabonds. But this house had always maintained a certain quality of customer. Over the years officers and the better class of men came here – first the Germans, then, eventually, the British and Americans who were mostly generous and good, and then the Italians – of a certain class – and finally the Venetians themselves as they picked up their old prosperous ways. Her mother had looked after the house and became quite wealthy, dying at a good age despite the grappa. After which Claudia took on her role and cared for the place, keeping it fit for the more refined gentlemen of Venice. The Germans came again of course, only this time they were not soldiers but travellers, with money in their pockets and fat bellies, very fat bellies – sometimes, said the old woman, their bellies were so fat it was hard to find the cazzo – at which she laughed and slapped her knee and held up her hand to indicate something very small. Then, with the good Germans, came Swedes off the cruise ships and tours and the money was good. The house and Claudia prospered anew. The city of Venice, though modern and part of Europe now, still understood such trade and did nothing to stop it. Indeed, in partnership with the man who now owned the place, the city fathers put up funds to restore the building. There were few original early Renaissance buildings left – Palladio and the baroque saw to that – and this loggia was very fine and worthy of repair. A new mason was employed to start returning the old decorations to their original designs and the rooms were to be refurbished. There was even a plan, nothing to do with the city fathers, of course, to increase the girls from six to nine with a new annexe. Good times, the old lady said, good times were coming again. But –
But before all the splendid plans could begin, the world turned upside down. She shrugged, raised her hands, as if it was the most foolish thing in the world. Money that was forthcoming, in a devious but nevertheless committed way, from the city was withdrawn. Until now everything had cheerfully been done on the nod and wink – but with the European Union becoming stronger – here she spat – things changed. Even in Venezia! She spat again. Without their interference, she assured me, the money would have been found somehow. No questions asked. But the owner could no longer raise the funds to restore the place, the city said it could not find the money and would not if it continued in its capacity as a bordello. ‘What do you expect from a place like Belgium?’ she said, with contempt. ‘All they do for pleasure is eat chocolate.’
I translated this for Brando who thought it was wonderful and laughed and laughed. The old woman laughed too, before declaring that she had – even so – refused to give up and lived on here. The man who owned the building paid her a small stipend but he could do nothing. Trade was banned, the rooms closed, the girls dispersed. The house began to fall apart. A municipal bigwig came to persuade her to let the city take on the building and make it beautiful again and she could move to a nice little apartment nearby and end her days with the comfort of modern amenities. Here the woman laughed again and mirthlessly. ‘The man, a city grandee, they sent to persuade me,’ she said, ‘was one of our best clients until all this happened. I would like to tell someone about that.’
‘In a Bocca del Leone?’ I said.
Her old eyes widened. Then she nodded. ‘Venice has always been good at such secret places,’ she said.
Brando was not, of course, interested in the decline of the place, he wanted to know what made a successful bawdy house – why, for instance, her business was so long-standing and so classy. What was it they offered that made them exceptional? The old woman smiled at him and asked why it would interest one such as him. So I explained all over again that it was for a book of shocking facts and stories about Venice. The old woman said that it would need to be a very big book. Then we all laughed. But she would not tell her secrets. There was no brutishness, she said. There was no damage done. It was all within reason, which is why the girls stayed. And it was, in the end, up to them how far they chose to perform. Some – she inclined her head – some were more adventurous than others. That is all. Brando leaned forward questioningly. The old woman smiled at him a little severely. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘very, very adventurous. Some of them.’ She turned briefly and nodded at the wall with its carvings. The house itself, she suggested, is the secret and you must use your imagination – just as those who paid to come here used theirs. ‘My profession,’ she said, ‘is an honest one. We offer a service and we fulfil it. You bring the fantasy and we fulfil it. How many other professions can say so?’
She nodded her head emphatically. ‘Si, si, si.’
I translated for Brando who only said, ‘Enough of the Holy Fool, what made it work?’
‘Two-way contract,’ I said.
‘I don’t want the philosophy,’ he said, like a grumbling child, ‘I want examples.’
I translated this for the old lady who looked at him and said, via me, ‘Use your imagination.’ She raised her hands once more at the wall in a gesture of explanation. ‘That is what we did, after all.’
Brando stared at the wall reliefs as if willing them to come alive. And then he indicated his camera. The old woman nodded and he got up and began to prowl around. We both watched him for a while and then I asked. ‘You have children?’
She shook her head. It was, she said, denied her by very reason of this life, this house. What she had wanted was a husband and children. That, she said, looking at me with the first hint of sadness in her eyes, regret in her voice, was all she had ever wanted. We were both in deep shade now. Beyond the loggia the sun beat down on the scrubby bit of land that had once been a garden of sorts – the lilies were in bud beneath a weight of vine and creeper and there were the trumpet heads of pink and orange poking their tired shapes among the weeds. It looked forlorn, in keeping, I thought, with an old meretrice past her best, with her head lost in memories of when she was young and desirable. The wire netting winked in the brightness looking hot and forbidding and a brave rat or two ran across the opening, wanting shade or dampness, or who knows what. The rats of Venice outnumber the inhabitants, it is reckoned, by twenty to one. And they are big. Much to feed on, presumably. No wonder Venice loves its cats.
After a little wait – a little creaking around in her chair from the woman – and a little more polite conversation about the state of the world in general and Venice in particular – Brando returned from his tour. When he was seated again she raised a bony finger, looking even more like the Giorgione portrait, and said firmly that she could tell us one thing, one certain thing, about success. I translated for Brando and he leaned forward to listen. She said that age had nothing to do with it, nothing at all – because it was all in the head. In testa. She tapped hers to make sure we understood. Yes, she said, even truth is in the head. And we only hear the truth we want to hear. Then she sat back and smiled almost saucily. While he has been with you, you have made a man feel that he is big as a satyr with a wine cup balanced on his prick – she laughed – now that is imagination, you see. But when you return him to the real world it is back to reality. He must, after all, go about his business comfortable in his own trousers. She laughed really heartily at this. Brando blinked. So did I.