A Venetian Affair (4 page)

News of Mrs. Anna’s dramatic stand traveled quickly around town. Andrea referred to the scene as his cacciata funesta
²²
—his fateful banishment, and the starting point of all their misery.

Mrs. Anna was a fierce watchdog, always on the alert and obsessively suspicious. She kept a close eye on her eldest daughter and did not let her go out without a chaperon—usually herself. Her spies were planted wherever the lovers might seek to escape her gaze, both within the English set and among Venetian families, and she kept her ears constantly pricked for gossip about the lovers. Venice was a small world. Everyone knew who was losing his fortune at the Ridotto on a particular night and who was having an affair with whom. Andrea and Giustiniana were aware of the risk they were taking in defying Mrs. Anna’s ban; they had to be extremely careful about whom they spoke to and what they said. At a deeper level, they knew the future offered little promise of an end to their difficulties. But it was too soon, and they were too young, to worry about the future. For all the trouble their love had already caused, only one thing mattered to them in the winter and spring of that year: exploiting every opportunity to be together.

Just as Mrs. Anna resorted to the Venetian arts of intelligence, Andrea set up a small network of informers to obtain daily information about Giustiniana’s movements. His chief spy was Alvisetto, a young servant in the Wynne household, who was not always dependable because his fear of Mrs. Anna was sometimes stronger than his loyalty to his secret paymaster. He had the unfortunate habit of disappearing during his missions, leaving Andrea flustered and clueless on a street corner or at the side of a bridge. “Alvisetto did not make it to our appointment and I went looking for him all morning in vain,” he complained. “Poor us, Giustiniana. Sometimes I lose all hope when I think in whose hands we have put ourselves.”

Alvisetto was also the chief messenger, and he shuttled back and forth between Andrea and Giustiniana with letters and love notes. Occasionally, the gondoliers of Ca’ Memmo would moor at a dock near the Wynnes’ to drop off or pick up an envelope. If Mrs. Anna was at home, the two lovers would fall back on “the usual
bottega
for deliveries,” a general store around the corner from Giustiniana’s home, run by a friendly shopkeeper. When Andrea’s message could not wait—or if the urge to see her was irrepressible—he would appear at the window of Ca’ Tiepolo, the imposing
palazzo
across a narrow waterway from the Wynnes’ more modest house.

Ca’ Tiepolo belonged to one of the oldest and grandest Venetian families. Its wide neoclassical façade stood majestically on the Grand Canal. From the side window of the mezzanine it was possible to look directly across to the Wynnes’ balcony. The ties between the Tiepolos and the Memmos went back many centuries. Andrea was a good friend of the young Tiepolos and especially close to Domenico, better known by his nickname Meneghetto, who was among the few to know from the start that Andrea’s love affair with Giustiniana was continuing in secret. Meneghetto was happy to help, and Andrea often dropped by after sending Giustiniana precise instructions. “After lunch,” he advised her in one note, “find an excuse to come out on the balcony. But for heaven’s sake be careful about your mother. And don’t force me to edge out as far as the windowsill because she will certainly see me.”

Andrea’s portable telescope was very useful. He would point it in the direction of Giustiniana’s balcony from a
campiello,
a little square, across the Grand Canal, to check whether she was at home or to find out whether she might be getting ready to go out or, best of all, to watch her as she leaned lazily over the balcony, her hair wrapped in a bonnet, watching the boats go by. When he observed her from such a distance—about a hundred yards—Giustiniana was not always aware Andrea was spying on her. “Today I admired you with my
canocchiale
[telescope],” he announced to her mischievously. “I don’t really care if your mother saw me. . . . After all, the rules merely state that I cannot come into your house and that I cannot write to you.”

From a purely technical point of view he was also within bounds when, thanks again to the benevolence—and the sweat— of his gondoliers, he came down the Grand Canal and signaled to Giustiniana from the water. On days when she was confined to the house and they had no other way of seeing each other, Andrea’s sudden appearance at her neighbor’s window or the familiar plashing of the Memmo gondola down below was a welcome consolation. “Come by the canal as my mother doesn’t want me to go out,” she would plead. “And make an appearance at Ca’ Tiepolo as well, if you can.”

They developed their own sign language so they could communicate from a distance during the evening walk at the Listone or at the theater or, later in the night, at the gambling house. “Touch your hair if you’re going to the Ridotto,” he instructed her. “Nod or shake your head to tell me whether you plan to go to the piazza.” These little signals sometimes caused confusion if they were not worked out in advance. They also had to be given very discreetly, lest they set off Mrs. Anna’s alarm bells. “When you left the theater,” Andrea wrote anxiously, “you signaled something to me just as your mother turned around, and I think she might have noticed that. If this were the case it could damage us, since she might also have noticed all the other gestures we had made to each other from our boxes.” Despite his occasional burst of bravado, Andrea remained deeply worried not just by what Mrs. Anna might have seen but also by what she
thought
she might have seen. He went to such extremes to avoid creating false impressions that he sometimes sounded like an obstinate stage manager. “You must realize that if your mother catches you laughing with someone she can’t see, she will assume that you are laughing with me,” he once said to her in a huff. “So try to be careful next time.”

Andrea fretted constantly about how dangerous it was to write to each other. If their correspondence ever fell into the wrong hands, there would be an explosion “that would reduce everything to a pile of rubble.” Still he deluged Giustiniana with letters and notes, often filling them with practical advice and detailed descriptions of his frantic chases around town. “We are completely mad. . . . If only you knew how afraid I am that your mother might find out we are seeing each other again.”

It was a glorious adventure. There were times when they managed to get close enough to steal a quick embrace in an alcove at the Ridotto or in the dark streets near the theaters at San Moisè, and the thrill was always powerful. “Last night, I swear,” Andrea wrote to his beloved the morning after one of these rare encounters, “you were so heated up, oh so heated up, such a beautiful girl, and I was on fire.” But in the beginning they tended to hold back. They made their moves with deliberation. They kept each other at a safe distance: lovemaking was mostly limited to what their eyes could see and what their eyes could say.

It is easy to imagine how, in a city where both men and women wore masks during a good portion of the year, the language of the eyes would become all-important. And what was true in general was especially true for Andrea and Giustiniana on account of the rigid restrictions that had been imposed on them. Andrea was being very literal when he asked anxiously, “Today my lips will not be able to tell you how much I love you. . . . But there will be other ways. . . . Will you understand what my eyes will be saying to you?” What their eyes said was not always sweet and not always clear. With such strong emotions at play, it could take days to clear up a misunderstanding precipitated by a wrong look or an averted gaze. One night, Andrea returned to Ca’ Memmo after a particularly frustrating attempt to make contact with Giustiniana. It had taken him all evening and a great deal of effort and ingenuity to find her at one of the theaters. Yet in the end she had displayed none of the usual complicity that made even the briefest encounter a moment of joy. In fact, she had been so annoying as to make him wish he had not seen her at all:

Yesterday I tried desperately to see you. Before lunch the gondoliers could not serve me. After lunch I went looking for you
in Campo Santo Stefano. Nothing. So I walked toward Piazza
San Marco, and when I arrived at the bridge of San Moisè I ran
into Lucrezia Pisani!
⁴
I gave her my hand on the bridge, and
then I saw you. I left her immediately and went looking for you
everywhere. Finally I found you in the piazza. I sent Alvisetto
ahead to find out whether you were on your way to the opera or to
the new play at the Teatro Sant’Angelo, so that I could rush over
to get a box in time. Then I forged ahead and waited for you,
filled with desire. Finally you arrived and I went up to my box so
that I could contemplate you—not only for the sheer pleasure I
take in admiring you but also in the hope of receiving a sign of
acknowledgment as a form of consolation. But you did nothing of
the sort. Instead you laughed continuously, made loud noises
until the end of the show, for which I was both sorry and angry—
as you can well imagine.

A few days later Andrea tracked her down after yet another chase along crowded streets and across canals. This time the reward was well worth the pursuit:

I caught sight of your mother and hoped you would be with her.
I looked for you left and right. Nothing. Your mother left, I followed. She went to San Moisè, I went to San Moisè. In fact, I got
so close to her that we would have bumped into each other at the
entrance of a
bottega
if I had not been so quick. . . . [Later] I
waited in vain for Alvisetto, whom I had instructed to follow your
mother. . . . Then I got your letter telling me that you would be
going to San Benetto, so I rushed over only to realize with regret
that you had already arrived and that the opera had begun. . . .
Oh Lord, what will Giustiniana say. . . . Let’s see how she will
treat me. . . . Goodness, there she is, that naughty girl [who
wouldn’t look at me] the other evening. . . . Will she look at me
this time or won’t she. . . . Come, look this way my girl! . . . And
little by little I began to feel better. And then much better when I
moved into that other box because I could see you and you could
see me so well and with no great danger that your mother might
notice every little gesture between us.

As an overall strategy, Andrea felt it was important to convince Mrs. Anna that the love between him and Giustiniana had indeed subsided and that she could finally let her guard down. It would be easier for them to find ways to see each other. So whenever Mrs. Anna took her daughter to a place where there was a good chance they might see him, Giustiniana was to feign complete disinterest:

Sometimes, in taking risks, one must be willing to be
la dupe de soi-même.
So arrange things in such a way that she will feel
she is forcing you to go to all the places where she knows you
might run into me, such as San Benetto or the Ridotto. . . . And
when the weather is nice, show little interest, even some resistance, to taking a walk to the square. . . . Believe me, our good
fortune depends on the success of our deception. . . . To avoid
coming to San Benetto, all you have to do is tell her you don’t feel
well. As for the Ridotto, you can say, “In truth, Mother, it bores
me too much. Besides, we have no one to speak to and I don’t feel
like playing [cards]. And we don’t make a good impression anyway, walking around with no other company. So let me go to
bed.” And if she refuses and takes you out with her, you will see
me and she will say, “Giustiniana doesn’t fret about Memmo
anymore.”

In public Andrea and Giustiniana behaved like two strangers. Yet if their relationship was ever to develop, if they were to make arrangements in order to meet somewhere safely and actually spend time together, they were going to need more reliable allies than Alvisetto—friends willing to take the risk of giving them cover and providing them with rooms where they could see each other in private. Andrea worked hard to identify those who might be most useful to them. He gave precise instructions to Giustiniana as to how she should behave to bring this or that friend over to their side. But his instructions were not always clear. When Giustiniana innocently told a potential ally that she no longer loved Andrea when in fact Andrea had asked her to say the opposite, he gave her a sharp rebuke: “As soon as I do a good piece of work, you ruin it for me. The truth is . . . and I am very sorry to have to say this, you have not been up to my expectations.”

Andrea could be equally hard when he thought Giustiniana was not keeping enough distance from possible enemies. He was wary of the young Venetian nobles who hung around the Ridotto and who delighted in gossip and intrigue. It was important not to give them a reason to unleash their malicious tongues. As a rule, he explained to Giustiniana, “it is good for us to have the greatest number of friends and the least number of enemies.” But there was no need to be closer to that crowd than was strictly necessary. And he criticized her when he saw her displaying too much friendliness to acquaintances he did not consider trustworthy.

He was especially suspicious of the Morosinis, who had always sided with Mrs. Anna in her battle against the two lovers—merely to spite him, Andrea thought. The Wynnes were often lunch guests at Ca’ Morosini on Campo Santo Stefano, and Giustiniana’s persistent socializing with the enemy infuriated Andrea. She had to choose, he finally said to her, between him and “those Morosini asses”: