Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice (11 page)

“But I had nothing to do with
that
,” I say. “In fact, I strenuously disapproved. I lobbied for sanity and restraint—but, alas, too late. He had already rallied the press around him.”

Carlos springs to my defense. “It's true,” he says, “
verissimo
. Jessica was not consulted in this
folie
, this I know. It was a solitary folly, not a
folie à deux
.”

“And how do
you
know?” asks his girlfriend suspiciously.

“Because,
tesoro
, I am a poet. Poets know everything.”

She seems unconvinced, as does Leonardo.

“There is an old Italian proverb,” says Leonardo, “two who sleep together conspire even in their dreams.”

Gaetano scoffs: “I never heard of such a proverb. You invent it,
amico mio
.”

Leonardo shrugs, twitches, then puts his arm around my shoulders. “Well, Jessica, what do you say? Benefit of doubt? I will give you that.”

“Thanks,” I say, my blood boiling. I want to shout: But the bastard is
not
my lover! You insult my taste! However, I seem to have forfeited that right. Discretion is the better part of valor, I think, biting my tongue; and Leonardo, now forgiving, leads me toward another party in another palazzo.

This palazzo (whose name I am not told) has been gutted inside and redone in the starkest modern style. A pure white staircase—banisterless, and reminiscent of the inside of a nautilus shell—leads upstairs from the flowering courtyard to the
piano nobile
, which is pure white, hung with glassy black Venetian lamps in odd mushrooming shapes, has black leather furniture, white marble floors, and walls covered with white linen. The window shades are huge white linen sails, like the sails of Venetian galleys, and the paintings hung about the room represent a fortune spent at Sothebys: Picassos, Braques, Miros, Rousseaus, even a few Monets and Manets, Renoirs and Matisses. This palazzo is, in short, the modern equivalent of Contessa Venier's.

“It is done by Scarpa,” says Leonardo, knowingly.

“Beautiful,” I say, absorbing the fact that the owners, whoever they are, are very rich and very chic. They are also partial to the same Picassos that move me most—the saltimbanques and strolling players—those acrobats about whom Rilke wrote:

But tell me, who
are
then, these wanderers, even more

transient than we ourselves, who from their earliest days

are savagely wrung out

by a never-satisfied will (for
whose
sake)? Yet it wrings them,

bends them, twists them, swings them and flings them

and catches them again; and falling as if through oiled

slippery air, they land

on the threadbare carpet, worn constantly thinner

by their perpetual leaping, this carpet that is lost

in infinite space…

Of course, they move me because they are myself. I, too, am a strolling player, wandering through time, a vagabond, a saltimbanque of sorts. But the people at the party are also strolling players, the same strolling players as those at the
other
party. Wandering out to the balcony where the races can still be seen along the Canalozzo, I turn and see, mingling in the crowded salon, Jackie, Paloma, Arianna, Gore, Tina, and company. Can Grisha be far behind? The party has merely moved from one palazzo to another. And again the Beautiful People are somehow cut off from the common folk of Venice whose
festa
this is. They might as well be painted figures on the wall, or masqueraders dressed for a costume ball. They inhabit one Venice, the street people another.

“Jessichka! Jessichka!” comes the call of Grisha Krylov, and at once I start to flee down the shell-shaped stair. But Leonardo sees him too, and before a word is spoken flings a slim, octagonal flute of
prosecco
in his face.

“Pig!
Cochon! Tiy sveenya!
” Grisha screams, punching poor Leonardo in the nose. Down he goes for the count, and I take off, making good my escape.

More headlines for tomorrow, I think—or maybe not. At any rate, I'm safer in the streets than with the glitterati among the Picassos. Funny, I think, how all these starving painters' paintings are now the ultimate status symbols, conferring greater proof of wealth than gold, emeralds, private islands, or ocean-going yachts. It is the artists who make the true value of the world, though at times they may have to starve to do it. They are like earthworms, turning up the soil so things can grow, eating dirt so that the rest of us may eat green shoots.

Off I go again through the streets of Venice, suddenly finding myself lost in a
sestiere
I do not know, with only shadows, angles, and byways before me. For the moment, there seem to be no people. Laughter comes through an open window. A mother cat nurses her kittens in a packing box in a filthy alley. The sounds of cat-scratching and cat-mewing reverberate in the
calle
. The water sounds of a back canal (the slap of water against mossy stone, the muffled tapping of boat hulls against half-rotted wooden poles) can be heard, though the canal cannot be seen. Smells rise around me as if in Satanic prayer. This is the incense of the devil: offal of the streets, banana peel, dog shit, filthy candy and gum wrappers, dead maggoty birds kicked into the corners. There is a grated door to a thirteenth-century house before me, and within, a narrow staircase leading God knows where.

Suddenly I look up, and in a window on the second floor an auburn-haired man with an earring glinting in one ear is kissing the same blond courtier I saw before. It is a kiss of such lingering passion and longing that I can almost feel it here on the street where I stand.

The blond looks down, sees me, laughs derisively, and slams the window shutters hard. Laughter reverberates in the alleyway, and I am left not knowing what I saw or did not see, whether it was the same American girl as before, or the Elizabethan courtier, or whether, in fact, they are one and the same person.

If I were to climb that stair right now, I think, and enter that shadowy, thirteenth-century house—over whose door there is a mocking stone face, a death's head with a gaping toothless mouth, stained by centuries of rainwater—would I encounter Will Shakespeare and his beautiful boy lover or merely an Italian punk Romeo and his American bimbo? In my heart I know it is the poet, locked in that window frame, longing for his lover, possibly forever.

Eternity was in our lips and eyes,

Bliss in our brows' bent.

So he wrote, years later, in
Antony and Cleopatra
. That he knew love, longing, passion, unrequited love, and love festering into resentment, fury, murder, self-murder, is unmistakable from the plays, from the sonnets, from the lines of poetry themselves. Whoever he was, whoever he is, he knew those mortal things; and the goddess he worshipped at all times—whether in England or in Italy, whether in time or out of it—was the muse, the Mother of all living, the White Goddess whose kiss is at once spider bite on the sleeping cheek and lingering tongue kiss on the tip of the waking genitals, where she leaves her mark: crystal tears,
lachrymae dei
, the white stain of eternity, its milk.

H
OW I GOT BACK
to the Lido, I do not know; who won the regatta, I do not know; who won the fistfight between Grisha and Leonardo, I do not know; where Björn and Lilli fled, I do not know. I only know that by sunset I am back in my suite at the Excelsior, stripping off the silver jump suit, my face burning with fever, thinking, thinking only that I must dress and go, dress and go to my premiere of
Women in Hell
.

But I am will-less. My head aches, my cheeks burn, my heart pounds. I tell myself I shall lie down on the bed for a little while, only a little while, and I do. I stretch out on the cool linen sheets, half dressed and half undressed, sweating, frightened, immobilized by lethargy and weakness.

I must have drifted off.

It is plague time in Venice. My groin, my armpits, my neck, are swollen with buboes. I lie alone in a sweat in the same narrow house with the rain-stained death's head above the door, and I wait, I wait for someone to come and find me, whether to tend me or to cart away my body, I am not sure.

And suddenly I am out of my body. I have left it behind and I am rising now, hovering above it near the ceiling and looking down at Jessica, who lies there on the carved walnut bed, caged by writhing columns. What a beautiful young woman, I think, to die so soon. Her hair is chestnut brown with titian red-gold streaks; her eyes are brown, flickering to gold. She wears the garb of a wealthy young Jewess in the ghetto and she is all alone.

But not quite alone; for as I watch, two men appear, one carrying on a silver salver poultices and beverages in golden goblets, a jar of leeches, a bleeding bowl, a straight razor; the other is empty-handed. They are the two Elizabethans again—one auburn-haired with large spaniel eyes, one blond and blue-eyed and aristocratic with a pouting girl's mouth.

The first one speaks. “We are poor physicians, Harry, to minister thus to the wench. For shame—”

“Hush, Will,” says the other, “don't be a frightened puppy. This is Venice. All fevers and contagions breed here.”

He lifts the woman's heavy head, brings a golden goblet to her lips, and bids her drink. She does. A few gulps go down, but the remainder stains the front of her bodice.

“
Un goccino
,
per piacere
,” says the blond courtier, his Italian as precise and perfect as his English. She drinks again, whereupon he hands the goblet to his friend. Then he lifts her skirts, pulls down her undergarments, and bends his sweet girl-lips to her nether ones, saying, “O here are the charged chambers, the velvet leaves, the cunnus, the quim, the tropic country for which we are homesick always…Come, let me suck the fever out of thee.”

As he brings his lips to her feverish, purple nether lips, I myself feel the soft sweetness of his tongue, the riotous excitement of the friend looking on, the heightened confusion of my fever. I begin to come, tumultuously, as one sometimes does in dreams or in illness, and as I do, Will falls upon Harry and pulls him off Jessica's body, raining blows upon his blond head. The phone shrills. I stab my arm out at it, knock it to the floor, crawl across the sweat-soaked sheets, drop my feverish head over the edge of the bed (where it hangs like a throbbing, overripe melon), and grab the receiver.

“
Pronto?
” I mumble, the dream courtiers fleeing and I longing to make them stay, for now I lust for them both. My reverie is pierced by the voice of one of the young secretaries of the film festival, a certain Oriana Ruzzini, whose words are hushed with her reverence for me, for I am her idol—obviously she does not know my dreams!

“Signorina Pruitt,” she says, “your film is about to begin. They are about to present the actors in the Sala Grande.”

“My God,” I say. “I'm so sorry. I felt ill. I shall be there at once.”

“Do you need help?” says Oriana. “A doctor? Anything?”

“No. Just make them wait.”

“Certainly,” says Oriana.

In a fog I get out of bed, throw cold water on my face, make up, and dress. I must really have a fever, I think, for my cheeks burn and my armpits ache, and my throat throbs as if with swollen glands. Whatever my temperature is, I don't want to know it—for it is a point of pride with me never to miss a gig no matter how ill I am. I have played whole performances much sicker than this, I tell myself, much sicker. I'll make it. I know I will.

Dressed in a black satin “smoking”—last year's St. Laurent—low, black satin pumps by Andrea Pfister, and a silk top hat from the Astaire era that I picked up in a vintage clothing store in Tribeca, I am ready to go. I may have chosen the low-heeled pumps because I could not walk in higher ones, but I dare not tell myself this. I'm fine, I say to myself, applying the finishing touch: a black veil, dotted with tiny rhinestones, which I drape over the top hat, pinning it so that it just covers my eyes and nose. I race out of my room to the lobby.

My plan is to run all the way to the Palazzo del Cinema, but I have not counted on how sick I am. In the lobby, I collide with the
portiere
, who says, “Miss Pruitt, may I help you?”

“A taxi, please,” I mumble.

It is late, the screening should have begun (it must be nine already), so there are a few vacant taxis at the door. I get in one of them and tell the astonished driver that I want to go the two or three blocks to the Palazzo del Cinema. He's not at all happy about this until I press
50,000
lire into his hand.

I just about make it out of the cab and up the slippery marble steps of the Palazzo del Cinema before another wave of weakness hits me and I have to lean against a wall to gather my strength. I take a deep breath, concentrate all my powers (as Vivian Lovecraft taught me to do), and open the double doors to the mezzanine. They seem like lead, the very gates of hell, and the burst of maniacal applause that greets me as I enter the mezzanine does not diminish that illusion. I am picked out by a single spotlight as I descend the stairs to my seat among the actors. Blinded by the spot, terrified that I am going to stumble and fall, I overhear these words: “Some grand entrance,” says an unknown woman near the aisle. “What a prima donna.” That seems somehow to be the last straw.

I take my seat among my fellow actors from
Women in Hell—
Hanna Schygulla, Catherine Deneuve, Liv Ullmann (who have all just flown in for the screening). I squeeze Liv's hand. Hanna blows me a kiss. Catherine waves. My director, Gian-Pietro Robusti, nods hello. Then it is time for the presentation. I barely make it to my feet to take my bow before I sink back in my chair, exhausted.

“Are you okay?” Liv asks, her beautiful round blue eyes moist with empathy as ever.