Stone Virgin

IN THE SPRING of 1793, when Ziani began writing his boastful, scandalous Mémoires, the Madonna was three hundred and sixty-one. He was seventy-four and dying. The previous year a stroke had disabled him down one side and stretched a corner of his thin mouth. He could not walk far now, and had a permanent look of distaste. But his memory was clear as ever – clearer, as though distilled by the body’s decay. The airs of the past came to him, warm with malice, spiced with lechery, scented with self-congratulation.

Day after day he sat huddled at the card table he used for a desk in one corner of the vast apartment on the third floor of his mortgaged house, writing by the light of the window, though reflections from the canal below troubled his eyes and sometimes disturbed the vengeful and erotic flow of his thoughts. Apart from his own meagre person in its soiled blue satin robe, and his table and chair, and the couch he slept on, everything in the apartment was draped in dust sheets. Neither house nor furniture belonged properly to him; he lived on there by agreement with his creditors.

His eyes were failing, he could not see with any distinctness to the far end of the apartment, his gaze lost itself among the sheeted forms. All his energy went into the writing. When he came to the section of his Mémoires that dealt with the statue, the seduction of Donna Francesca and the cuckolding of skinflint Boccadoro, he wrote with more care than ever, wanting to lacerate his personae and stimulate his readers in equal measure:

In that April of 1743, having recently returned to Venice from Rome, where I had fallen out of favour, and penniless as a result of those speculations described in a previous chapter, I was obliged to seek temporary employment, and found after a short while, through the influence of my family, a post as secretary in the house of the merchant Tommaso Boccadoro who employed me because of my name and also because I had attended the University of Padua (though obliged, because of the unfortunate involvements related elsewhere in these Mémoires, to leave without obtaining a degree). Boccadoro also agreed to house and feed my faithful Battistella, who has been with me through so many vicissitudes and is with me still, in return for duties about the house, though he refused point-blank to pay him wages, thereby revealing early in our relationship his inability to rise to an occasion or make a generous gesture.

Though described as secretary, my main task was to restore to order the very considerable collection of books. Boccadoro had taken the house in part payment of debts, just as it stood, including the contents of the library, from a branch of the Longhi family. As the other part of the payment he had taken in marriage Francesca Longhi, a girl of eighteen. The Longhi had been spending more than they possessed for many years by that time, and they were desperate for money, otherwise they would never have agreed to marry her to him. The family live now, what is left of them, in San Barnabà.

So as I have said, my main duties concerned the library. Boccadoro, while scarce knowing one end of a book from the other, had aspirations to learning; but the books had been kept without particular system; those who had accumulated them no doubt knew where to find what they wanted, but my unlettered employer blundered about among them lost. I was to catalogue the books and make an index with brief summaries of their contents.

The work was not disagreeable, but the position of paid employee was galling to my pride, extremely so, and I found solace from the first, when dealing with Boccadoro, in a certain deliberate falseness of speech and manner. This took the form of praising virtue, but should not be thought of as hypocrisy as I had nothing to gain at that point, other than, by saying what I did not believe and seeing him agree, to mark the difference between us and feed my contempt.

So I smiled on Boccadoro and spoke in praise of virtue. He listened to me in spite of my comparative youth. For one thing, he was innocent; and then my lineage exercised charm on a man whose father, it was said, had humped crates of fish on the Zattere. What also weighed with him was the rumour that had got about somehow or other, and which I did nothing to confirm or deny, that I had been pursuing theological studies in Rome with a view to taking Holy Orders.

He listened to me, as I say; he even sought me out. His trouble was that frequent one which afflicts hot old men with cool young wives; though I did not understand this at first, and certainly not the extent of Francesca’s coolness.

Ziani stopped to wipe his eyes, peer across the apartment. He thought he had heard some sound there. These days he was haunted by small sounds and movements, most of them illusory. As always, his gaze grew perplexed among the whitish mounds. He caught a flicker as some loose fold of drapery stirred in a draught – the apartment was prey to a system of currents oceanic in complexity.

As his eyes strained, so did his mind, across the long interval of years, to the morning Boccadoro had confided in him. Sunlight caught and held in the enclosed space of the garden. May – the acacias were in flower. He had been there some weeks by that time. There was dew on the narrow leaves and the pebble walks were glistening. Early in the day then. Some shouting or singing from the direction of San Silvestre. Singing or shouting? A quarrelsome note in it. They were setting up the fruit barges along the fondamenta. The statue there in her arbour, modest and provocative, with that arm guarding herself. And the old man shambling towards him, long-shanked, powerful still, violent and ridiculous. No wig. He was not yet dressed for going out. He was in robe and skullcap. Ziani began to write again, every detail clear in his mind:

It was in the garden that he first spoke to me about his situation, the banality of which naturally he did not see, as our misfortunes seem always to be uniquely ordained. At the moment he approached I was standing at the entrance to the arbour, looking at the statue; and it can therefore be truly said that this comedy begins and ends with her. I was wondering what she was intended to represent.

The garden was large for Venice, running a good way behind the house, ending in a high wall with a gate set in it; beyond this there were the precincts of an abandoned church. On one side of the garden, back towards the wall, were the ruins of a stone arcade, three arches still standing; and it was within the last of these, the one farthest from the house, that the stone lady dwelt. At some time the former owners had planted roses here, white on one side, red on the other, and they grew up the shafts of the columns to the height of the arch, where they met and mingled colours very prettily; and a grape vine which looked old enough to be a cutting from Eden, lacing with the ruins of the masonry, formed rafters with its thick stems and a roof with its leaves, to make a bower for her. There was a wooden bench inside, where one could shelter from suns that were too burning. She was made of white stone but in the light of the vine leaves she had a faint hue of green and as always she was smiling, a slight smile difficult to interpret. At that time we had no idea what she was.

Then Boccadoro came shambling towards me. He spent some time in preliminaries, glancing at me with his fierce little eyes. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘you are young, but you have a good head on your shoulders. I have often noted it. I am speaking to you because you are more nearly of an age with my wife, though of course there is some difference of years, the more so because of this fact, which, as I say, I have noted. Do you not think so?’

‘What fact is that?’ I said – he had lost me. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘to be sure, this very fact of this excellent head that you have on your shoulders. And then, you have attended one of our very best Universities … I have a deal of acquaintance, a great deal, but there are not many who are close to me, not many that I can call friend.’

I did not see cause for astonishment in this, after his lifetime of usury. Now I tried to combine in one regard modest acknowledgement of this praise and respectful interest in what was to follow, with what success I do not know – but in any case nothing did follow, nothing more came from him; he began to stare about the garden; caution – or pride – had intervened.

It was now that I took the first of many gambles in this affair. It was that species of gamble called a bluff by the practitioners of spigolo, the attempt to make your opponent think you are stronger than you are, the penalty for failing being full exposure of your weakness. ‘My dear sir,’ I said, ‘I understand what you are referring to. Believe me, you have my sympathy.’

His face lost all expression for some moments through undiluted wonder at my words. I have often noted that when men are in distressful situations or situations of perplexity, however common these may be, however patent to view, yet will the smallest insights into them on the part of others seem wondrously perceptive to the one afflicted. So much is this the case that often, as now, the mere pretence of such an insight will suffice to unlock a man’s tongue. ‘What,’ he said, ‘you have sensed it then?’ ‘How could I not?’ I said. ‘How could I not?’ ‘She wants an increased allowance,’ he said. ‘She wants to rent an apartment of her own, a casino. She tells me she feels foolish among her friends through not having one.’

‘This fashion for casini is the curse of the age,’ I said. ‘It has been the ruin of many families, as I know for a fact.’ This was it then: having bought the merchandise he was now complaining at the price. But there was more. Encouraged by my nods, he came out with it. It seemed that the ordering of his house was not enough for Donna Francesca. She neglected to supervise the servants. She did not appear when he had guests.

I thought of the lady as I had seen her first, on the day of my arrival in the house. I had stood waiting in the interior courtyard, where there was a circular well-head, decorated with lions’ heads round the rim. Their manes had been carved to resemble foliage and I was admiring the inventiveness of the carver when I heard the rustle of her clothes and looked up and saw her above me, descending the staircase in a pale-blue gown high at the collar and low-cut in front, in the fashion of those days, with the shining coils of her hair dressed high on her head, the gaze of a well-bred Venetian girl, equable, intrepid, without undue boldness however; and a figure whose shape and suppleness the stiff brocade could not conceal. I had not expected her to be so well-favoured – perhaps because beauty of any kind in conjunction with Boccadoro was not a thought easily entertained. I had seen her before, in the street with her brothers once, when I still lived in Venice; but she had been no more than a schoolgirl then. She was more now, certainly.

These thoughts were in my mind as I looked at Boccadoro. It was all I could do to control my face. He was proposing to make this high-mettled creature, luxurious and wilful as all our Venetian ladies are, into an adjunct of the parlour, a devotee of the spinet, to soothe his unlovely brow when he returned from the counting-house, and serve grenadines to his grotesque cronies as they sprawled grossly, wigless and unbuttoned, after dinner! Truly those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad … Then it occurred to me: why did he not go to them, to these same farting cronies, for advice? The way to deal with an unruly wife, that would be within their scope and range. Why did he come to me?

‘It is the chief affliction of the age,’ I said, ‘and one to which our women are unfortunately all too prone, to think of pleasure as something to be sought outside the home rather than in it. This constitutes a reversal of all traditional values.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘Exactly so. You are a very Cato. Or perhaps Cicero is the one I mean.’

I replied that I would not scorn comparison with either of these signori. A kind of excited suspicion was beginning to stir in me.

‘Maria, her maid, grows insolent,’ he said, ‘and Donna Francesca refuses to check her.’

‘Refuses?’ I allowed myself a tone of gentle wonder. ‘Refuses?’

That I stressed this word was no more than a fortunate accident. I had meant only to keep my ascendancy over him. He bridled and reddened and I thought I had gone too far; but then I saw how his eyes avoided mine: here was not anger, here was shame. Stronger, more definite came the scent of his misfortune, rising to my jubilant nostrils like a savoury steam. Where women are concerned there is only one refusal that matters. What if Francesca’s went further than the drawing room – higher, I should say – a flight of stairs higher?

As I hope will have been apparent to the reader before this, I am a sensitive man, and an observant man and a man of acute perceptions; and now, as I talked to him, suspicion became conviction almost at once. This was why he had come to me. From colleagues he would fear derision – an old man with a young wife; but he was paying me for my services; and to Boccadoro’s primitive sense, that restored the balance.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the pleasure this notion afforded me. I am willing to recognize that it was not, to speak strictly, Boccadoro’s fault that I had been reduced to taking wages. We were products both of changing times. Half the great houses of Venice were owned by men like him, who had come from nothing. Nevertheless, by employing me he had demeaned me, imposed a slight on me, fixed me in an odious relationship. All this demanded redress. Hitherto, until this morning, I had found this in my deliberate insincerities. In all our conversations I was fencing with him, scoring off him all the time. However, it was less than satisfactory. He did not know it, for one thing; and then, a duel cannot be carried on by feints alone. Now, if I was right, not only had he exposed his vitals but also given me the means of delivering the thrust.

‘Why should you have this to contend with?’ I said. ‘A man does his work. He expects to find peace at home. They do not understand this.’

‘Everything is difficult,’ he said. ‘Everything requires argument. It is tiring and moreover it interferes with business.’

‘It is this endless quest for pleasure I have referred to, which undermines all our institutions. It is the ruin of the state. What is happening to all our fine and great traditions?’

‘What indeed?’ he said. ‘They are going to perdition.’

‘And it is the women who lead the way,’ I said. ‘We take our tone from them. They are the keepers of our morals, that is a well-known fact.’

‘By God, yes,’ he said with feeling. (If my nose told me rightly, his were being kept pretty well.)

‘That is the paradox of it,’ I said. ‘They are the keepers of our morals, but they must still be guided by us. Guided not coerced, as we are not barbarians.’

‘By God, no,’ he said.

‘True pleasure, for women,’ I said, ‘lies in the performance of their wifely duties, omitting no smallest thing that can add to their husbands’ comfort and pleasure. That is the secret of it.’

Boccadoro was so delighted by this that he rubbed his skullcap back and forth over his head causing some of his scant grey hair to stick out from under it. He was a man of violent and impulsive gesture. ‘My dear fellow,’ he said. ‘I only wish she could hear you now.’ He paused and I saw an idea born on his face – his eyes were reddish-brown, deep-set and normally quick-glancing, but they became fierce and staring when any calculation was involved. ‘But she could,’ he said. ‘She could hear you.’

His considerations were clear to me though I did not at first believe he would closet us together. I was near Francesca’s age, as he had begun by saying; and he was wondering if I might sway her, bring her somehow to a sense of duty – including the duty of the bedchamber. I, Sigismondo Ziani, the moral voice of my generation, advocate of the conjugal couch! There was something so innocently hopeful in his staring shrewdness that almost my heart warmed to him – almost.

‘There is one obstacle only,’ he said.

‘And what is that?’

‘My poor friend,’ he said, ‘she hates you.’

Ziani laid down his pen and reached with mottled paw across the table for the brass handbell which, as essential to his survival, was one of his few possessions left unpawned. He held it at arm’s length and rang it in sustained and querulous fashion, knowing however, from experience so ancient even the rancour had gone from it, that Battistella would certainly not come at the first summons and quite possibly not at the second.

While he waited he grew pensive. Reflected light from the slopping canal moved in leisurely ripples, over the walls of the apartment, the tented shapes, the faded baize of his table, his curled fingers, the stained satin of his robe – he spilt his food often these days, through tremulousness and the haste of his appetite. Reflections of light, sounds from the canal and riva below, these were the accompaniments to his days; with his view over the water, they were all that linked him to the world outside. He had not been out of the apartment for more than three years now. Poverty, misanthropy, growing infirmity, kept him immured. There is one obstacle only, his mind repeated, with self-delighting lucidity. And what is that? With sardonic interior laughter that moved no fraction of his face he dwelt on the complacency of Boccadoro’s reply. My poor friend, she hates you.

He was commencing, with habitual imprecations, to ring for a third time when Battistella appeared and moved slowly towards him with his shuffling gait.

‘Old fool,’ Ziani said, though his servant was a year younger than himself, ‘you are getting very deaf. When my Mémoires are published I shall buy a bigger bell. What ridiculous thing are you wearing?’

Battistella made no reply to this but stood surveying his master, mouth slightly open, breathing audibly. He was a spindly old man with inflamed eyes, very steady and direct. The short wig, which he hastily donned from old habit whenever he heard the bell, was rakishly askew on his brow. He was wearing a pink coat with silver embroidery in the fashion of thirty years before, very much too large for him, with sleeves rolled back and enormous ragged pockets so low as to be almost out of reach – he would have had to adopt a crouching posture to get into them. Below the flaps of the skirt his thin legs in their wrinkled hose seemed too frail, the patched shoes too narrow, to bear the pink and silver bulk above.

Ziani peered closely. ‘I know that coat,’ he said. He felt a movement of rage. ‘You have been at my wardrobe again,’ he said. He at once regretted saying this, as it gave Battistella the chance, which he immediately took, to list his grievances, a thing he enjoyed doing: the dampness of the house, the lack of any proper heating, his bad chest, his wages two years in arrears … Battistella’s face, throughout this wheezing catalogue, remained quite impassive. ‘Provide me with livery,’ he ended by saying – an old gibe, this – ‘and I will wear it, not only with pleasure, but with pride.’

Ziani felt the eyes of his servant upon him. There was no denying that Battistella had scored a point. He assumed an air of languid superiority. ‘I am in the midst of composition,’ he said. ‘I have no time for trivial matters. I am relating the Boccadoro business. You remember that, I suppose?’

Battistella’s breathing had quietened a little and he had become absolutely still. ‘I remember it very clear,’ he said.

‘You always claim to remember everything. Do not imagine for one moment that you deceive me. This at least you should remember, as you were involved in it closely. I have reached one of the key points, that moment when with a sudden lightning flash of intuition I realized that Donna Francesca was not opening her arms to him.’ Ziani chuckled on a rising note, hee, hee, hee, and reached for his snuffbox. ‘So to speak,’ he said. Triumph caused him to sniff up the rappee too vigorously. He sneezed violently and his eyes welled up with tears.

‘As I remember,’ Battistella said, ‘begging your pardon, you mentioned that possibility to me soon after meeting the lady and subsequent to that you speculated several times as to whether Signor Boccadoro was getting his conjugals. “Is he getting his oats, Battistella?” you said to me. “That is what I would like to know.” So how can it have been a sudden bit of lightning?’

Ziani stared. His mouth fell open. This burst of garrulity, and the contradiction it contained, had been totally unexpected. His eyes were smarting still. He could think of nothing to say. The nightmare panic of being worsted descended on him. He took out his handkerchief and fell busily to wiping his eyes and blowing his nose. When the rather grubby cambric was removed his face had recovered its lopsided composure. ‘My poor Battistella,’ he said. ‘You do not understand what it is to be an artist. Are we to include everything that occurs from hour to hour? Of course not. We must strive to render things dramatic. That is the art of it.’

‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ Battistella said, ‘but things either happened or they didn’t.’

Ziani raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘What a blockhead!’ he said. ‘Do you want me to say what waistcoat I was wearing? I compress all my suspicions into one moment. I am trying to present this business as a campaign, Battistella. Lightning assessments, bold courses, a master plan. My Mémoires will be faithful to the spirit of the age. And what is it, this spirit of the age?’

Battistella made no reply.

‘You have no idea, have you? This is the age of the heroic strategist.’

Still his servant said nothing. Using silence to indicate dissent or disapproval was one of Battistella’s customary ploys; Ziani knew it of old; as always it vexed him and as always he was constrained to conceal his vexation. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘If anyone else had said that you’d have thought it brilliant. Well, you needn’t speak. You have no vision, Battistella. That is the difference between us. When these Mémoires of mine are published, you will change your tune. Did you take the sheets to the printer again yesterday?’

‘Yes.’

‘And they still agree to make no charge for the printing?’

‘They say they will take their costs out of sales.’

‘You see?’ Ziani looked up in triumph. ‘The rogues can smell money,’ he said. ‘These are people used to assessing manuscripts. They see the genius in my pages. What is for dinner today?’

‘For dinner today we have a good torta.’

‘Torta, torta,’ Ziani said fussily. ‘Torta can mean many things. You do not tell a man what is for dinner simply by saying there is pie.’ He looked expectantly at Battistella.

‘This torta contains chicken pieces fried in good oil, and ham ravioli.’

‘And?’

‘And almonds and dates. Also there is sweet wine from Malaga.’

Ziani’s eyes glistened. ‘I will admit,’ he said, ‘that you have managed excellently with food lately, my good Battistella. There was a time when it was polenta every day. Now the money seems to be going further. I congratulate you. As a literary critic you may lack refinement, but you are a good man in the kitchen. You will be rewarded, never fear. I am thinking of raising your wages. As you see, the printers have faith in me. Those people are not fools, they can see what will make a profit.’

He paused for a moment, but his servant remained silent. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you may leave me now. I am ready to resume.’

‘Yes,’ Battistella said, but for some time longer made no move, remaining silent and immobile, almost as if he had forgotten where he was, holding his master in the same fixity of regard.

This gaze, the way Battistella had looked at him, remained in Ziani’s mind after he had gone. There had been a troubling quality in it. Of course he was losing his wits, povero vecchio: sometimes he did not seem to know quite where he was. This thought gave Ziani a brief sense of superiority. All the same … Battistella was his only link with the world, and dependence made him sensitive to any hint of change. Sometimes, these days, he had a sense that his servant was up to something. Age had slowed Battistella down. He had become contradictory and moralistic. But he had been a considerable trickster in his day. Of course Battistella was just as dependent on him, in a different way … Fifty years now. Scrapes they had been in together … this brought him back to thoughts of Boccadoro, and he took up his pen once more, remembering that comical indecision:

I saw contrary impulses pass over Boccadoro’s face, march, counter-march, skirmish briefly, withdraw to regroup. As I have said, though shrewd in business matters he was ingenuous in all else – I never knew a man easier to read. If Donna Francesca in very truth hated me, as he asserted, my effectiveness as counsellor would be greatly the less, she would not be brought to compliance by hated Ziani; on the other hand, and for obvious reasons, it increased his sense of security.

For my own part I felt sure he was exaggerating the matter. After all, I was unoffending and the acquaintance was slight, even though I had been a month in the house. My days were spent in the library, for the most part. Finding the atmosphere oppressive, I dined out in the town whenever I could afford to do so, which was whenever I had money from my mother – she had married again, after my father’s death, as I have explained already. Because of the unfortunate circumstances narrated earlier in these Mémoires I was not welcome in my step-father’s house, but my mother gave me money sometimes. Even when I took the evening meal, however, conversation was not lively, there was no increase in intimacy, as there was always present, in addition to Boccadoro himself, his ancient deaf aunt, who lived in the house, and often enough Francesca’s singing master, Signor Malpigli, or her dancing master, whose name I have forgotten – Buffo, I think. Sometimes even her dressmaker stayed to dinner. Boccadoro had the ungenteel habit of asking anyone in the house to his table.

It was probable enough she disliked me, I thought; his praises would not have disposed her well towards me; but hatred is another matter. In the course of a career not unmarked by experience of the fair sex – as should be evident from the most casual perusal of these Mémoires – I have noticed that ladies render themselves vulnerable through declarations, much more than do we, for whom matters of the heart occupy a less central place. Therefore their safeguard is in discretion and they know this well.

‘However it may be,’ I said, ‘give me the chance to be of service to you. If what you say is true she cannot dislike me more. Let me try what I can do.’

For a moment I wondered if eagerness had throbbed too palpably in my voice; but no, his face broke into a smile. ‘If it produces results,’ he said, ‘by God you will not find me ungrateful.’ He meant money, of course. The promise shone from the yellowish teeth of his smile, offensive alike to dignity and all sense of elegance. Nevertheless, I smiled back upon him. ‘You have engaged more than a scribe,’ I said. ‘As I hope to show you.’

The meaning in these words he did not see. He smiled still and nodded. At this moment the lady herself, accompanied by Maria, came out from the house on to the terrace which overlooked the garden. She had perhaps been intending to descend the steps but on sight of us she checked and turned aside. The two of them then began to walk the length of the terrace, a distance of thirty paces or so. During the rest of my conversation with Boccadoro they walked back and forth on the terrace; Francesca in a long-sleeved gown of some white material and her hair set with threads of pearls, which shone as they caught the light; Maria too in white, and carrying a white shawl, in case her mistress should feel cold, for it was early still, though with promise of heat later.

Ziani looked up from the page. Evening was advancing, the light was losing strength. His eyes were giving him trouble. Before long Battistella would bring his dinner, this famous torta that he was promised, also the great candelabrum which would hold thirty candles but now held only three – all they could afford, or so Battistella said. Battistella controlled all expenditure now. He kept the candelabrum in his own quarters and would not bring it forth, no matter how much play Ziani made with the bell, until he judged the time appropriate.

Sockets for thirty candles, Ziani thought, and he allows me three. In the evenings, when the shadows deepened, the shapes of things looked threatening, and he longed for a good clear light that would leave no dark corners. He keeps the candelabrum in his room, he thought. When I demand it, he makes excuses and creates delays … He felt twinges of rage, too much resembling pain to be encouraged. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. She, the maid, Maria, was carrying a shawl, a white shawl, yes, in case her mistress … promise of heat in the day, but it was early still. Scent from the cones of acacia flower, a scent normally rank, but the cool air chastened it. The stone lady was in her arbour, flecked by the sunlight that broke through the young vine leaves, patterning her face and headdress and robe and the arm which lay across her breast, defending and caressing – that ambiguity which intrigued me from the first … There were darker markings on her. Dew of the night? Yes, there was something of the night about her still – what was it? Why am I obliged to think so deeply about her, only a thing of stone?

Ziani opened his eyes. She had looked alert, that was it. As if her ravisher – or deliverer – might be near, the promise of the dark not yet over. She could have been a garden deity, a spirit of the seasons. Boccadoro and I stood near to her talking, the two girls pacing above. Girls they were still – for the servant was scarcely older than the mistress – and of a similar height. And dressed in white, and walking side by side … was it then that the first rudiments of the notion came to me? About the germination of ideas it is impossible to be precise. Of course when they turned towards us it could be seen that Maria was darker-skinned and slightly fuller-bodied, she lacked the ethereal quality of Donna Francesca, but the general resemblance was strong.

Men in colloquy below, women parading above. It was as if some secret of life were contained there. He and I could have been attendant lords, or attendant saints, of that order who assist at divine occasions, miraculous events, hover at the margins of visitations. We had perhaps arranged this occasion too, for so might the Queen of Heaven have walked, with a companion, in the cool of the morning, visible to mortals but indifferent. A wrong choice was made, he thought suddenly, on that morning or a morning like it, by me or someone else. It was not inevitable that I should end like this, captive, disabled, with no one to rely on or compete with but Battistella. Did I compound the wrong or merely inherit it, as I stood there with Boccadoro, watching them pass and repass?

This softening, almost like contrition, was unusual with Ziani and he shifted sharply in his chair as if in an effort to be released from it. It was almost dusk now. He hoisted himself and leaned sideways, with the usual pain of such labour, to look down over the broad glinting surface of the water. From here, helped by the curving line of the canal, he could make out the blurred masses of light on the Rialto, the blanched reflections on the water. Strange to think that the house where these distant episodes had occurred was quite close by, that after all vicissitudes he had come back to die within a mile of it. Boccadoro was dust, gone with his horns to the grave, but the house was still there, with the narrow canal below the garden wall. The arbour empty now, unless some new tutelary spirit had been installed. She was still alive, married into the Bembo family. Living in some style, so Battistella said.

He could hear the loud bells of San Stefano ringing the Angelus, signal to pleasure, not devotion. Venice was stirred with the rhythms of pleasure still: in that respect she had not changed. This was the time of promise, of encounters. He could remember, as if the feelings had belonged to another, the excitement of dressing to go out, in this same house, when there had still been money, and in other houses in Venice, the sense of a whole city, a whole population, preparing for pleasure, the bells, the flush on the water turning leaden – one set out as the rose turned to lead: augury of disillusion not recognized then.

The great houses on the opposite bank were lit up now. No shortage of candles there. Gondolas bobbed in the broken bronze reflections at the landing stages below the steps. While he watched, a party in white bird masks and scarlet tabarri came down from the Casa Loredan opposite and were helped into two boats. It was Carnival time still – Carnival was almost continuous in Venice. In these beaked masks, tall hats, full cloaks, only voices and laughter distinguished men from women.

Some at least could afford to entertain, Ziani thought, with bitterness. Some could afford considerably more. Battistella, his lifeline in this too, brought him the gossip of the coffee house as this was retold in the market. Had not Ludovico Marin employed the architect Selva, notorious for his high fees, to redesign the interior of his mansion and extend it as far as Campo San Salvatore? The Contarini had ten gondolas at their doors and fifty servants in livery. For the sake of a single reception, it was said, the Mocenigo family had gutted three adjoining palaces, giving them a suite of forty salons. All this while others, of descent no less illustrious, lived on bread and gruel in their new ghetto of San Barnabà – so many broken patricians in that district now that they called them Barnabotti – or crouched, as he did, in some corner of their pillaged ancestral homes. Ziani felt a rush of energizing malevolence. Revenge was as necessary now as it had been that distant morning in the garden, though the enemy was different. Scions of these noble families featured or would feature in his Mémoires, all in a scandalously discreditable light. Then we shall see who laughs, he thought, reaching for his handbell. Then we shall see.

It was Ziani’s custom, every morning before resuming, to reread attentively what he had written the day before, in order to make stylistic improvements. This morning, while reading the previous day’s stint, he fell prey to very considerable disquietude concerning Francesca’s ‘hatred’ for him. All these years he had thought of this as a complacent exaggeration on Boccadoro’s part, understandable and natural at a time when the old man himself was being deprived of sexual favours. But suppose the lady had really said it? He had never asked her, as far as he could remember. If she had indeed said this, disturbing reinterpretations of the whole affair became necessary, since it could only have been meant as a signal. As an expression of true feeling, it was too excessive, on such slight grounds. Then she had wanted him to understand something by it. And how could it be understood but as an expression of interest, a kind of encouragement, something that invited a response? But that would mean … Ziani fell to stroking his jaws rapidly and repeatedly, in consternation. That would mean she had made the first move, fired the first shot. He, Ziani, master strategist, expert at plotting that route which led, deviously at first, afterwards straight and clear between the lady’s legs, had been all the time her dupe, instrumental to her purposes: she had led him by the prick … It was an appalling thought, a true monster of the mind, needing to be smothered at once, before its infant lungs became too raucous. He thought of summoning Battistella, but his servant’s responses were unreliable these days: not only did he argue on matters of literary theory, but he could not always be trusted to corroborate the past. No, he would have to wrestle with this demon alone. Adopting his usual discipline, Ziani closed his eyes and took a series of deep breaths. The thought did not quite go away but he began to feel calmer. After some minutes of this he was able to take up his pen and begin again:

The first test, and the most crucial, was whether Francesca would agree to grant me audience. If she was as unbiddable as he said, she was capable of disobeying his express wishes; but I did not think this was likely. In fact I expected a summons through Maria; and whenever in our goings about the house our paths crossed, Maria’s and mine, I waited for some sign. However, there was none. She looked boldly at me, made a sketch of a curtsey, and that was all. This Maria was a beauty in her way and I will confess that had I not been set on the mistress I would have been strongly tempted to assay the maid. Moreover she was ripe for it; I detected invitation in her regard; all men of the world will know what I mean when I say she had breasts that seemed impatient of her bodice. Some few trinkets would have clinched it, something for her trousseau.

When the moment came it was the lady herself who spoke, and in a way that seemed unstudied – though naturally she would not have wished it to be thought rehearsed. I was crossing the courtyard on my way to the library, which was on the first floor of the house, when Francesca came in from the garden. We met in the middle, at the well-head carved with lions’ heads, where I had stood that first morning and watched her descend the stairs. She greeted me and seemed to hesitate; my instinct told me to stop; she stopped too; talk between us thus became inevitable.

‘I see that you are busy,’ she said: I had papers in my hand.

‘Not at all,’ I said – how promptly may be imagined. ‘Not if you wish to speak to me, noble lady. What could count beside that?’

She paused a moment, still regarding me, though without much kindness. Then she spoke again, but now as though addressing the mild lions on the well-head. ‘It is not so much that I wish to speak to him,’ she told the lions, who seemed quite to understand. ‘I would not aspire so far,’ she said. ‘Only to look at him, to observe at close quarters this faithful steward, this persona esemplare.’

‘Persona esemplare?’ I frowned, as if puzzled. This was a critical moment.

‘Such a … paragon,’ she said, still to the lions, but there was a slight breathlessness now which betrayed her. As is universally acknowledged, women are frail and tender vessels, their containing walls are more porous, feeling finds its way to the surface less resistibly than with us, whose casing is tougher. So it was now with Francesca, in that catch of the breath, a slight, the slightest, quiver of the lip. (This tendency of theirs to self-betrayal is of great advantage to us, second only to their innate credulity.) However, I was not sure yet of the precise nature of her emotion.

‘That sounds like a character in a play,’ I said. ‘A new type for the commedia dell’arte perhaps? A character who does nothing but moralize, and of course always at the wrong time. No, my name is Sigismondo.’

It was effective. It made her look at me, and abandon this absurd pretence of conversing with lions. It was important to dispel any sense on her part that she was mistress speaking to servant. We had both been bought by Boccadoro; I would not have her thinking she was higher placed; victory is not victory if achieved by self-demeaning. Besides, my whole strategy was based on her being brought to see the natural alliance between us, against jumped-up Boccadoro. After all, we were both scudati, fallen ones. I planned to prevail on her virtue by exacerbating her desire for revenge. This had further advantages: when the citadel fell, I would have no mere compliant lump on my hands, gates flung open and nothing more to do, but a creature energetic, eager, inventive, shameless, seeing in my felicity her more exquisite vindication. Such at least was the plan. The reader will judge for himself how far I succeeded.

‘You must be confusing me with someone else,’ I said.

I saw the slightest of frowns trouble her brow – a deliberate frown: she was like a child, wanting to show the adults she was puzzled. Then her face was smooth again and she wore the mask of youth, which is of all masks the strangest. ‘My husband continually sings your praises,’ she said.

‘Then perhaps,’ I said ‘it is he, your esteemed husband, who is confusing matters.’

Now indeed I was on the brink. In what other game are the greatest risks taken at the beginning? I was about to reveal myself as a persona far from esemplare. If I had miscalculated in some way, misjudged her relations with Boccadoro, she would be prompt to make me suffer for it. With what haste she would repair to him, point out his faulty judgement, as all good wives so love to do! We were still standing in the same place, looking sometimes at each other, sometimes at the well-head, sometimes at the walls. It was she who moved first, turning towards the door of the small salon that led off the courtyard, but turning leisurely so that I was sure to be included. She passed into the room immediately and advanced towards the casement at the far end. Obviously I was intended to follow and I did so. We stood together in the embrasure, looking out towards the garden. We were in the full light and our faces were clear to each other as we talked. It was the first time we had been alone in a room together, and I wondered if she felt constraint. Nothing showed on that mask of her eighteen-year-old face.

‘It is not only as a cataloguer of books that he praises you,’ she said, ‘but in all other respects too. He talks about you constantly. It is very tedious to listen to. Sometimes he compares you to Cato, sometimes to Cicero. Sometimes, in his enthusiasm, he compares you to a person called Catero.’

‘A noted sage,’ I said, and she smiled. Her smile was very beautiful. Once having seen it, a man would cast about for things to say to bring it back. Next moment, however, a look of annoyance came to her face and she gestured towards the garden. I glanced through the window and there, not many yards away, was the hulking form of Bobbino, Boccadoro’s manservant, lounging insolently in full view, kicking at the gravel path. ‘My husband instructs him to wait within call,’ she said. ‘For my convenience, of course. I say that I have Maria, but that makes no difference. That is why I came to stand here at the window so at least we would be spared the sight of his pig’s face peering in.’

My heart exulted: she was confiding in me. ‘Shall I send the oaf away?’ I said. ‘Let me kick him round the garden.’

‘No, no,’ she said, ‘thank you,’ and she smiled again, though not by my intention this time – perhaps because Bobbino was so big. ‘Never mind him,’ she said. ‘My husband seems to think you could be a kind of tutor to me.’

A kind of tutor I could be indeed, I thought. My eyes perhaps betrayed me, because her own expression changed and her chin lifted slightly, in a sort of defiance.

It was this, the sense that she had seen my desire, that brought me out from cover completely, made me throw myself on her good will. ‘I don’t know where he can have got that idea,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it was at the theatre.’

This was said at random. The truth is that I was flustered. She had seen unregenerate Adam peeping out through my eyes; and I had been excited by the defiant quality of her response. Otherwise I would not have been so disrespectful of him. But at the back of my mind there still lingered thoughts of the Commedia, and how Boccadoro resembled Pantalone – it must be remembered that the old comedy with its stock characters and improvised dialogue still ruled supreme in the Venice of those days. This was fifty years ago, before the rise of Goldoni – he was just beginning.

However, that one word, uttered as I say too hastily, did more for my cause, I think, than a hundred prepared phrases might have done. (Perhaps, as I think now, it was inspiration, the kind of ‘accident’ that happens only to talented persons.)

‘Theatre?’ she said. For some moments her face remained set in its impervious cast of youth. Then she broke into a different kind of smile, one of contempt, for Boccadoro, for me. ‘Theatre? He never goes to the theatre. What would he do in a theatre? And he does not want me to go, because it is a bad influence, so he says. For that matter he never goes to the Ridotto, either, not he, he would not risk a florin at the tables. So naturally I do not go. He does not rent an apartment, or even share the rent of one, which is often done nowadays, for meetings and conversations among friends.’

Here was a catalogue of troubles indeed. ‘I am extremely sorry to hear this,’ I said. ‘It is medieval. It has a flavour of barbarity about it.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘four months married and I go out less now than when I lived at home with my brothers. I thought at least I would have had more freedom, but it has happened the other way. No wonder –’

She stopped short on this and I did not press her. ‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘you should choose a cicisbeo to escort you, if he will not go. That is common enough. There are many who would undertake it gladly, asking for nothing in return but the pleasure of your company.’

‘My husband does not believe this she said, and she lowered her eyes. ‘Then there is this creature Bobbino’ she added after a moment, following some train of thought of her own.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘a kind of tutor I could be to you, if you consent.’

‘Oh indeed?’ she said, very coldly. And what kind is that?’

‘The kind who talks about the theatre, I said, and without giving her any time to reply, I began in fact to talk about the theatre, which I had known well in the years before I left for Rome, the quarrels and the cliques, the great Arlecchino, Sacchi, who was later to become so successful as a manager, the love-affairs of Carlo Gozzi and the comedienne Teodora Ricci, Goldoni’s Momolo Cortesan, which had run for three weeks at the San Samuele theatre, and which had a written part for the protagonist. Goldoni himself was naive, strangely so for one who created so many rogues on stage: I made Francesca laugh when I told her the story of how a trickster, dressed up as a monk, had succeeded in selling him a lace from the Blessed Virgin’s corset.

I spoke mainly of things as they had been five years before, but that made no difference to Francesca. She attended eagerly to my every word. Looking at her absorbed face, seeing the laughter rising to it, I knew that my campaign was well and truly launched.

Ziani stopped to reach for his snuffbox. He was pleased with his delineation of this last scene. It had pace and profundity and penetration. How she had hung upon his words! And how adroit he had been, how quick to see the matter that would interest her! As often happened in moments of self-congratulation, he sniffed too vigorously and the coarse rappee made his eyes water and smart.

His window was open slightly, as the morning was warm, and he could hear the men working on the restoration of San Samuele – they were driving in new piles to replace those of the original foundation. Battistella, who crept around Venice like a feeble ant, in his borrowed robes, gleaning gossip along with the groceries, Battistella had seen the old piles, the ones they had taken out; they were of larch and they were seven hundred years old. Fast in the clay for seven hundred years! Black as carbon but still strong. The men were singing the ‘Bandiera Bianca’, a song almost as old. The words came to him, barely distinguishable, punctuated by the rhythms of the work:

contro il gran turcho – bandiera bianca

che l’enemico – segno di pace

It was not the Turk who was the enemy now, he reflected. The enemy was nearer home – vultures more local, getting the whiff of the Republic’s decay. Revolutionary France, the Austria of the Habsburgs, an unholy league of liberty and tyranny would destroy Venice, who had kept these twin monsters in balance for so long – longer than those stakes had been bedded in the silt of the Lagoon …

He reached for the handbell and gave a prolonged summons. While he waited his thoughts returned with fretful obsessiveness to that room in Boccadoro’s house, the two of them there by the window. Already his triumph had been eaten away by a return of nightmare doubts. She it was who had made the first move, she who had contrived the meeting, she who had directed and controlled the course of the conversation. All his theatre talk had only been floundering, improvising – he was the one who belonged in the commedia.

With mechanical curses he rang the bell again. Why was it only then that he had begun to be conscious of desire for her? A month in the house and he had not thought of her particularly in that way. Desire had followed his will: that was why his memories of her had this painful tension. Until he had possessed her there could be no room for tenderness, he had been too afraid of failing.

‘You will not hear the trumpets,’ he said, when Battistella finally appeared. ‘You will come crawling late on the Day of Judgement.’

Battistella stood surveying him, breathing noisily. He was still in his pink coat, despite the warmth of the day, and his wig was as usual askew.

‘What is for luncheon?’ Ziani asked.

‘There is a good rice pudding.’

‘Rice pudding, rice pudding,’ Ziani said, with customary pleasurable sharpness. ‘And how is it made, this rice pudding?’

‘It is made with honey.’ Knowing how it pleased his master to protract these conversations, Battistella never revealed all the details at once.

‘And?’

‘It is cooked in milk of almonds.’

‘I am thinking seriously of raising your wages,’ Ziani said. ‘You may as well know that. And you may keep that coat, you may have it. This morning I have been describing my first tête-à-tête with Donna Francesca. I have managed it well, that colloquy, extremely well. Consummately. I have brought it home to the reader. The way I engaged her sympathies was brilliant. I have been wondering whence the initial agitation came, and it occurs to me now that she was aware of my loaded cannon right from the very commencement, she felt the danger. I was mesmeric to women in those days.’

Ziani reached for his snuffbox. ‘It was a burden in some ways,’ he said. ‘One had to –’

‘No, sir,’ Battistella said suddenly. ‘It did not lie there.’

Ziani’s hand jumped and he spilt his snuff. ‘What do you mean?’ he said, staring.

‘Begging your pardon, sir, she had no one to turn to but her maid. They sold her to him, her brothers did. Theirs were the debts and she had to pay. It is not only pagans and saracens and blackamoors. They would have shut her away or killed her, that family is well known.’

Evidently under the impression that he had made himself clear, Battistella began his snail-like withdrawal.

‘Where is all this tending?’ Ziani said. ‘Who told you that, anyway?’

‘Maria and I sometimes talked.’

‘Did you so?’ Ziani said uneasily. ‘You are a sly dog, Battistella. You did more than talk or I’m a Chinaman. But what is behind all this rambling, what point are you seeking to make?’

‘She was looking to find a friend,’ Battistella said loudly and wheezingly from the door. ‘Nothing to do with mesmeric, nothing to do with cannon.’

On this he immediately disappeared. Ziani sat for a considerable time, staring before him. He was deeply offended by this brusque rejection of his theory. I must stop discussing these Mémoires with him, he thought. He has no sensitivity whatever, and always gets hold of the wrong idea. But who else was there? He had only Battistella. She had no one to turn to but her maid … Could it be true that she had come to him in need, and her first hostility was to cover that? That she might have been unhappy in that way had somehow never occurred to him. But the mask of youth could cover that as well as other things. So while I was laying my groundworks, my mind set on victory, master strategist Ziani, she was merely suffering, and trying to keep that fact concealed? Of course she complained, but only conventional complaints …

He tried to shake off these disagreeable thoughts and recover his feeling of triumph, but this would not return. He had a sense of something incomplete in his memory. They had stood together in the window glancing from time to time out across the garden. The lout Bobbino kicking at the gravel. Sunlight on the boxwood hedges, the narrow leaves of the acacia, the apricot trees espaliered against the wall. She turned her back on spying Bobbino and I moved round a little so as still to look her in the face … that was it: this change of position gave a view of the statue, half-hidden as she was by foliage, with the first roses of the year climbing round her. The outbuildings of the abandoned church rose behind her, looking from that angle like a distant background in a painting. Even though she was half masked by shadow and leaves her pose was striking, the face raised with that provocative alertness, the guarding hand held out. That faint smile of hers not visible from there. Seen thus among the leaves she was like our first mother. He had known nothing at all then about the man who made her.

This conversation with Battistella unsettled Ziani for the rest of the day, as if he were the dupe of time and memory. Besides, he was beginning to feel dissatisfied with the pace of his narrative. It seemed to be dragging somewhat. Perhaps he was spending too much time on the description of preliminaries. He was impatient to get Francesca’s clothes off, reveal her beauties, describe the tunes they had played together. His cold heart was stirred by the memory of these exploits; he crept to reach them, stalking them as it were through the thickets of his prose.

However, something held him back. In part he was handicapped by egotism. To sell the Mémoires, and retrieve his fortunes, he was depending in equal measure on the scandalous and the erotic. At the same time he wanted to be noted as stylist, as man of the world. He imagined the reader exclaiming aloud at the justice of his observations. Elements such as these are not easily combined. So far he felt he had managed things well: in Venice and elsewhere public figures and the scions of noble houses had been exposed and discredited, one revealed as a card-sharp, another as pimp to his numerous female relatives, a third voyeur of his own wife and two footmen with her knowledge but not theirs; to mention only a few. This chapter, these episodes of Francesca and old Boccadoro and the Madonna, he had envisaged as one of the highlights. But some quality of reluctance had crept in, he knew not how. Dues of recognition had to be paid, slowing him down.

When he resumed it was with the determination to get to his conquest with the least possible delay:

In the days that followed we met quite frequently in different places about the house; and whenever we met we stopped to talk. These meetings had always an air of accident about them, but it has been my experience that at certain junctures of human affairs accident is aided by design. Certainly it is true that we met more often in those few days than during my whole stay before.

We talked of indifferent things and took care not to laugh together much. We were never really alone. For one thing, Maria was always in attendance. She kept at a distance and busied herself usually with some task of stitching; all the same, those eyes and ears of hers missed nothing. But it was Bobbino that was the real constraint upon us. Wherever we looked we seemed to see him, lounging idly, doing nothing in particular. If we walked in the garden he would be there, not far away. If we sent him about his business he would be back before long, on some pretext or other. When we were behind closed doors he knew it and for how long. Thus we were obliged to speak gravely, for that was what Boccadoro would expect; and Francesca had to keep Maria by her for that same reason.

But there is a language which lies within and around what is spoken; and this developed rapidly between us precisely because of these constraints I have mentioned. In pauses, and in inflexions of the voice, we talked to each other, with eyes on eyes, with hands that did not touch. Thus the supervision aided me, fretting Francesca, making us accomplices. I owed much to the lout Bobbino.

Boccadoro himself, for ten days following, spoke no more to me about the matter, either by hint or direct question. I think now, and must have supposed then, that Francesca was deliberately keeping him waiting for her ‘verdict’. This allowed meetings in the meantime while she was supposedly making up her mind, confirmed him too in his laughable belief that there would be dislike to overcome on her part before the Ziani message of duty and morality could be brought home to her. These were the tactics of her cunning, not prompted by me. Nevertheless, I was the instigating force …

So it was that during this period the Casa Boccadoro resembled the physical universe, in which, as the Englishman Newton has shown, all bodies are bound together by a principle of mutual attraction or repulsion, either inclining to cohere in regular figures, or inclining to recede. All of us were held in balance: myself, Francesca, Boccadoro, Bobbino – even my Battistella, to whom I had complained of that animal’s intrusiveness and who sought to distract and deflect him. (Battistella was an astute fellow in those days, now addled, poor soul.)

This celestial state was shattered when Boccadoro announced his intention of leaving for Verona, where he had business to attend to. He would be away for one night, he said. Bobbino was left behind of course, to spy. All the same, I don’t think Boccadoro had any suspicions; he was not a man to review judgements once formed; and this explains his fury later, when he discovered us.

He left early in the morning, but it was not until mid-afternoon that Francesca and I met. She kept to her own quarters till then, perhaps to mark the vulgarity of haste. For one so young she had a great sense of occasion.

Ziani paused, sighing. He had not known then what monstrously memorable forms her sense of occasion could take. That same night he was to discover it …

He had made up his mind to take her to the theatre, this being the first thing in which they had found a mutual interest. However he had spent his wages and had no money besides, or very little. He had borrowed two liras from Battistella, who could always, by means Ziani did not inquire into, feeling they verged on the miraculous, produce a little money, but it had still not been enough. He had hung around Florian’s for an hour or so before lunch in the hope of making a touch – there was only Florian’s then, Quadri had not yet opened on the other side of the Piazza. But it was awkward, after he had been away so long – awkward, on being recognized, to start asking for a loan. Bad policy, too. He had given it up almost and was walking on the Broglio, feeling dispirited, when by great good fortune he had met Pietro Gradenigo who had been a fellow student and who at once agreed to lend the eight liras he needed. Enough, with what he had already, for a box at the San Samuele, also wine and biscuits. However, after all this, with the well-known perversity of women, she had asked to be taken to a gaming-house … Should I mention my poverty, he wondered, my ploys to obtain money? No, it is incompatible with conquest. He took some snuff, wiped his eyes, resumed writing:

She wanted to go to the Ridotto, where she had never been in her life before. She wanted to do something she had never done before, she said, and she could not keep the pleasure from shining in her eyes. This was an occasion to do something for the very first time.

But what about Bobbino? We looked at each other for a moment. Then I asked if she could trust Maria. Yes, she said, she had complete faith in Maria’s discretion. And I in Battistella’s, I said, he is the most faithful creature alive. So let us take them into our confidence, let us appeal to them for help, let us throw ourselves upon their mercy.

And this is what we did, and at once, summoning them to us, holding a council of war. Neither was well disposed towards Bobbino: Maria because – and this I understood only from nods and compressions of the lips and salvoes of glances – he did not keep his dirty hands to himself; and Battistella – but this I knew already – because Bobbino was a bully and jealous of his position in the household. Jointly they begged us to have no further inquietude: they would take care of booby Bobbino.

We were set on the adventure anyway; less assurance would have been sufficient; but I felt relieved to have Battistella’s support. In many difficult situations, before that time and since, I have benefited from his resourcefulness and sagacity. (He is less reliable now, through age, poor soul. His mind inclines to stray.)

We left by the street door, quite soon after dinner, while Bobbino was in the pantry still. We were masked, of course. Therefore once on the street anonymous, completely free from recognition and detection. Venice, alone perhaps of cities, confers this freedom on her children, because of the universal custom of masking, which in the middle years of the century was more widespread even than now, masks being commonly worn in public places whether it was Carnival or not and by people of all degrees. With this custom comes that other one of sexual debauchery, the casual trafficking for which our city has long been famous, even more than Rome, that città delle donne. The anonymity conferred by masks has been a potent force in our history, adding to the excitement of intrigue as it grants immunity from the consequences, emboldening the prick while it renders the cunt more yielding. I was sensible of boldness myself in that region, not to say effrontery. For her state I couldn’t answer, but I hoped. She was elated and inclined to laughter.

The masks we wore were full face, of that close-fitting kind, oddly like death masks as it always seemed to me, white in colour; and with them we wore the bauta, which had become very fashionable, more ample in those days than now, covering the head and shoulders. In these, and our loose-fitting clothes, we were well disguised.

Francesca’s mood of excitement increased as we walked down the short street on to the salizzada. She made loud remarks about other passers-by and raised her concealed face often to laugh. She was determined, on this great occasion, to enjoy everything, right from the beginning – and of course she had to show it. I began to understand how high-strung she was. How violent she could be I had yet to learn.

From the Rio di Fontego we took a gondola towards San Marco, one of the best routes in the city in my opinion, the water broad enough and the way winding, with very varied views. The evening was warm, with a light scirocco blowing. The bridges and rive were all lit up, crowded with idlers and strollers and pleasure-seekers of every sort, and those who live by them, whores, mountebanks, pedlars, pimps, all doing a brisk trade, Venice being full of strangers just then, come to see the celebrations for the visit of the King of Portugal. That day there had been a big regatta on the Grand Canal and fireworks were promised for later. Hoping for more money our gondolier began singing for us, ‘Venezia, gemm’ adriatica, sposa del mar’. He had a tenor voice, not very strong, but sweet. We kept the curtains of the cabin open so that we could sit looking out at the people and the lights. Francesca laughed and exclaimed less and by this I knew she was beginning to enjoy herself. The moon, not quite full, was straight before us, low in the sky, over the Bacinto. We descended at the Ponte de la Canonica. I paid the man extra to avoid a wrangle and we made our way from behind the Basilica into the Piazza.

We began at once to cross the square in the direction of San Moise, where the Ridotto was. But I was worried still about money. I had about eleven liras in all, barely a ducat. It was possible Francesca had nothing with her – I did not want to use her money in any case. Now at the Ridotto, even in those days, in order to play faro or spigolo one needed more than this, they did not play small games; and to play the numbers, without enough to cover initial losses, was to invite an abrupt end to our entertainment. I was hoping for a good deal from this evening and I wanted no failures.

As we passed under the Nuove Procuratie I happened to notice the sign of the Guardian Angel, and I suddenly remembered the Moro coffee-house alongside, which I had used to frequent once, with the two small inside rooms, where they had card tables and a biribisso wheel – the place has been closed down since. On the spur of the moment I suggested to Francesca that we should try our luck in there. The stakes would be lower. Besides, I thought, she should see something of the underworld of Venice there, which she would not have seen before. Had she not said that she wanted to do things for the very first time?

It was crowded and hot inside, the usual rabble of rogues and harlots, mingled with some of the best blood in Venice. There were faces I recognized: masks were obligatory here, but they were often too flimsy to conceal the features, mere tokens – the doorkeeper kept a stock for people arriving without one; an eye-mask or a false nose was considered enough. The din was great; sexual commerce was incessant at the fringes of the tables, conducted by prostitutes and by women who had lost at cards and wanted to play again – for a few liras they would copulate standing up in the passageways off the gaming rooms, enveloped in the folds of their cloaks. The place throbbed with noise, reeked of sweat and wine fumes and sexual discharge. And Francesca loved it. She laughed as we jostled through to the tables and her eyes were gleaming in that white mask.

Fortune favoured us, as I shall relate. A man in a black mask that left nothing but mouth and chin exposed, was making good use of that mouth at the biribisso table, boasting he had understood the system. His manner was truculent. His purse, which he made no attempt to conceal, bulged with sequins.

It was this casual display of gold that made me suspicious. I have a nose for dupes and this was not one. It seemed to me that he was acting a part. He had begun by asserting loudly that the wheel went in certain runs and sequences, four on red, two on black, the third red always in the zone of the twenties– or some such thing – it is a long time ago now. The croupier – the only one without a mask – told him to play or move off. In a rage – real or simulated – he put down a handful of gold sequins on the middle band of the red. And he won. And he won again.

Since then I have seen the trick played often enough. Always there is someone who claims to be an infallible winner. Others are sceptical but when they see him win they begin to believe it and they put their money with his. When there is enough on the table, everybody loses. The money of the boaster returns to the bank.

Simple enough, but effective. Then I had only instinct to go on. I gave my money to Francesca for luck and told her to put it with his. With eyes if possible more brilliant than ever she did so. We doubled our money twice. Then I took it up. At the next turn the bank took everything.

From that point onward everything went well for us. We played faro and won. We played bassetto and won. Francesca brought me luck. She sat beside me and sometimes played a hand, sometimes whispered advice. I asked her if she wanted to go on to the Ridotto but she preferred to stay where she was, here where we were winning, amidst the uproar and the reek. She loved every minute of it – I never knew anyone to enjoy things as she did …

When we finally rose from the table it was after midnight and between us we had won some thirty sequins, over six hundred liras in the exchange of the time. It was more ready cash than I had had for years. We went out to the front room of the Moro and sat in a corner and took the masks off our heated faces and drank a bottle of champagne together, glass for glass.

What time it was when we left I do not know. The Moro used to stay open till three or four in the morning. We walked arm in arm to the San Marco boat stage. There were still a good many people about on the Molo – Venice being then as now a city of inveterate noctambulists – and the gondolas were plying. It was quiet on the water, full tide – the level at the Molo was not more than a few inches below the bank. There was a thin mist, making the moonlight seem luminous. Where the oar broke the surface the ripples gleamed. We were both slightly drunk: with champagne, with the elation of winning, with the sudden quiet and beauty of the night. Our boatman this time was silent but in the distance, towards the Lagoon, we could hear singing, voices answering voices. Francesca herself sang, a snatch from an old song, gentil mia donna. She trailed a hand in the water. She allowed me to kiss her, on the cheek several times, once on the mouth.

We returned by the side canal that ran below the house. Thus it was that we came through the garden. We lingered there; and there the lady did something else for the very first time.

Ziani sniggered mechanically to himself and reached for his snuffbox. He was becoming increasingly uneasy. He sought to recall that nighttime garden of long ago. Not dark there but twilight – dawn was not far away. Scents of the garden, the roses, the acacia blossom – musk smell of early summer. Deep steady smell of the roses. There was the brackish smell of the canal. The statue glimmering in her alcove – her form and the roses, the white ones, the only defined things in the garden, as if they were first to anticipate the day. And the oval of the girl’s face. They had sat together in the dimness of the arbour, on the wooden bench against the wall, behind the statue – she was at the entrance, their guardian angel. No, I knew already that this had been a cloister, we were on church ground. I knew she was the Madonna Annunciata, I had found Longhi’s book by that time, in my delvings in the library, among those neglected volumes, though I spoke of it to no one. I knew who she was when I crowned her with the roses …

His uneasiness grew. If I had not done that, he thought, perhaps Francesca would not have done what she did. Before going into the arbour they had made a chain of roses for her head. Alternate red and white roses. She split the stems with her nails. Then he had laid this circlet of roses round the stone brows. He had addressed a mock plea for lovers to her, and genuflected, to make Francesca laugh, calling her lady Venus, Our Lady of Lovers. There was an emanation of light about her, a light different from that elsewhere, or so it seemed – an illusion, trick of the mingling of day and night in the garden. The roses had smelt of their wounds as well as their perfume. The Madonna had seemed to listen …

I must get back to myself, he thought. Man of the world, stylist. What is needed now is some general observation on the nature of the fair sex, followed by a deft description of the romantic ambience, then graphic details of how I had her.

I have often remarked that when the ladies grant us their ultimate favours and surrender the keep, it is not because we have roused their appetites or dominated their wills, still less because we have convinced their minds, but because, generous creatures, they wish to make us gifts. It is in the arranging of suitable circumstances that the man of the world shows his mettle.

Our hearts were full to overflowing with the beauty of the night, our minds with the sensations we had experienced, the excitement of the tables, the return over the moonlit water, the tranquil garden with its sweetly mingled odours, where the last of the night contended with the first of the day. There was everything here that was needed to appeal to the fancy, touch the sentiments, incline the mind to thoughts of love.

We were sitting together in the arbour. I had kissed her earlier, but briefly and playfully, and she had evaded some kisses, allowed others. Now, however, when I returned to the assault, I found a warmer welcome. Far from evading, her lips sought mine. We began to kiss long and eagerly, myself in a seventh heaven of delight, still not quite daring to believe that the highest felicity would be vouchsafed, though now her mouth was opening to the kisses and her lips had assumed that softness of consistency that a man of the world will recognize as denoting readiness in women. Ziani my boy, I said to myself, the moment has come to sound the charge. I got my hand under the skirt of her gown, lost my way among her petticoats, found it again at the junction of hot flesh and stocking-top. She pressed her legs together at first, made some attempt to ward me off, push my hand lower, but the gesture was half-hearted and feeble; and when I moved the hand up between her legs and touched her cunt her own hand fell away, her thighs loosened, all resistance was at an end, she sighed, she was mine. By now I was vastly swollen in the nether part and impatient to make the breach, but held off a little longer, rubbing gently at the threshold and especially that little nipple they so love to have fondled, while we kissed and she panted and the milk of her pleasure wet my fingers. Then, when further delay threatened my own equilibrium, I knelt before her, a position more suitable for prayer, but it was the only way the thing could be done on that narrow bench against the wall. I was unbuttoned and my weapon was out, rearing up, huge. (I had a huge one in those days and always rearing up at moments opportune and otherwise but now most opportune.) Because of my position and the indistinct light I don’t think she was aware of this great spike that awaited her, she leaned murmuring to kiss me and I drew her downwards, holding her in my embrace, pulling her gently forward until she slipped from the edge of the bench and so transfixed herself on my braced and eager uccello. As she slid down I slid up, impaling her with one great resistless thrust.

All this I had intended for our mutual pleasure; but I heard her exclaim in a startled way as she came down on to me and when our faces were level I saw hers twist with pain. My own spasms were not long delayed, but I realized in that moment that Donna Francesca, four months married, had just ceased to be a virgin, and that my versatile dagger, piercing her, had in the selfsame stroke wounded old Boccadoro more grievously even than I had intended.

Ziani stopped, laid down his pen. He had grown excited, writing this; the ancient gristle between his legs had stirred; but that small heat soon died away, lost in the terrible doubts he had had since starting this section of his Mémoires. Had he simply been her instrument all along, a convenient length of piping? Such thoughts, the suspicion that he had been somehow a dupe – which of all things he most dreaded being – all this was difficult to endure. But there was more, much more: there was the thing she had done afterwards, the thing that had put him in thrall, subjugated his memory ever since, destroyed his whole vision of that evening, the moonlight, the roses, his masterful importunity, her sighing sacrifice of maidenhood. She had dispersed these sentimental wraiths for ever. She had shocked and frightened him.

While he still knelt there, spent now, his pride limp and flaccid, she had sat back from him and in his full view lifted skirt and petticoats, with deliberate gesture and smiling face – a pagan smile – touched her own torn parts, raised her hand so he could see on it, in the dawn light, the glisten of blood and seed, and holding this hand extended before her had walked to the front of the statue – the Madonna! – and anointed her on the forehead, just below the crown of flowers.