Venetian Fan

Cat Bauer

I’m crying and it’s Titian’s fault.

I sit at the top of the Doge’s private staircase inside the Palazzo Ducale, alone except for one cuff-linked man who stands near the foot of the steps, his back to me, black hair tumbling to his collar. He cannot see my tears.

Today is my birthday. I am sixteen. I am alone, on the day I was born, in front of an ancient fresco in Italy and I have never been kissed.

The steps are smooth stones, chilly beneath me on a hot July afternoon. My sketch pad is beside me, my fingers too unsure to draw. Outside the open door, tourists shuffle by, blank and unaware. I listen to the babble of voices that bounce off the bare walls:

“What’s a Doge, anyway?”

“I dunno. I think he was sort of like the president of Venice.”

“Devo fare pee pee, Mama! Adesso!”

“Basta!”

On the wall above the door in front of me towers Titian’s fresco of St. Christopher, child perched on his shoulder, a colossus striding across the Venetian lagoon. His biceps are toned, his thighs, strong and muscular. His head tilts up at the child, who rides him like a victor, little legs wrapped around St. Christopher’s neck. The child is serene. St. Christopher is determined, lusty jaw, noble nose. I think: I want to float up over the doorway and press my mouth against St. Christopher’s stony lips.

The Palazzo Ducale, the Doge’s Palace, was once the center of the government, rising like a rose-colored fairy tale in the waters of the Venetian lagoon. Now it is just another Italian museum, trampled by foreign footsteps looking for a glimpse into the past of a crumpled Republic.

The guidebook says that the Doge was the head of the government. He walked down the staircase (where I sit) from the Senate (where he worked) to his private chambers below (where he lived).

Titian painted the St. Christopher fresco for the Doge’s eyes to light upon as he descended the stairs—a billboard to remind him of his majesty. I think: I could use a few frescoes splattered across the walls of our house in Florida to remind me who I am.

I have been here an hour, swallowing the image, but I’m still hungry for more. I had two fathers back in America; together they do not equal one St. Christopher. Maybe that’s why the fresco moves me.

“They say Tiziano painted the fresco in just three days.”

The man’s voice, soft, in accented English, cuts through the tangle of languages outside the door. I am startled. I had forgotten he was there. He has turned and looks up at me.

With my index fingers, I spread the tears on my cheeks from a single trickle to a glossy sheen. I nod. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

“You’re young.”

It is a statement, but I answer as if it were a question. “I’m eighteen.” I lie. I don’t know why.

“A student? From America?”

“Yes.”

He indicates my sketch pad. “An artist?”

“I try.”

The man’s beard is trim; his black hair is tousled. He wears a blue tie. I raise my eyes to meet his. They are chestnut eyes, polished and moist, with deep creases in the corners where remnants of his own tears still gleam. I don’t look away; I can’t. We are connected for a weighty moment.

“Is it the fresco?” I am hoping.

He nods. “Sì. Sometimes, when I am overwhelmed, I come to see it. It always gives me . . . the word is not comfort. It gives me . . . power. Sì. Potenza. Potency. In the sense that I can carry the weight.”

I wonder what his burden is. He looks tired. His clothes are dark and graceful, but his tie is loose. There is a lion of San Marco on his tie clip, so I assume he is Venetian. Venetians hold themselves separate from other Italians, I’ve learned, still angry that Napoléon conquered their Republic more than two hundred years earlier. Even the word Venetian sounds like an alien from another planet.

“It would be nice to feel as confident as the child,” I say. “If you had St. Christopher holding you up . . . I guess that’s why some people pray to saints.”

The man climbs up two steps and stops. “You don’t pray?”

“I look at art. It’s like praying.”

“If you like art that touches the soul, there is another Titian, my favorite here in Venice, across the piazza on the ceiling in the library.” The man moves up another step. “It is called Allegoryof Wisdom. It is interesting to me because Titian has painted Wisdom as a young woman, confident and mysterious. Have you seen it?”

I shake my head. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.” I decide there is something attractive about him in a schoolteacher type of way, even though he is probably three times my age. There are green flecks at the edges of his chestnut eyes.

“I can show it to you, if you like.” The man hesitates. “If you have the time.”

“I would like that,” I say. I am feeling bold on my sixteenth birthday.

A British family, two adults and a matching boy and girl, enter the stairwell, attached by four headsets plugged into two cassettes. They talk too loudly, their hearing muffled by the recorded voice in their ears. The little girl is the first to turn to the fresco. She points: “There’s the Titian!” She runs up the stairs, forgetting the cable that connects her to her brother. Her headphones tumble to the floor.

The mother pulls off her own headphones and follows her daughter up the stairs, leaving the male members of the family with their cords dangling.

They sit two steps down from me. The girl wiggles between the mother’s legs and perches on her lap. The boy bounds up the stairs and presses close to his mother, who wraps her arm around his shoulders. She is Mother Goose, about to tell a tale. It is impossible for me to imagine a family outing like this. In Florida, my mom and I are lucky if we make it to Wal-Mart.

“It’s St. Christopher,” the mother explains. “They say the Christ child he’s carrying on his shoulders represents the weight of the world.”

The boy asks, “What’s a fresco?”

The father has climbed up the steps but doesn’t sit; he leans against the railing. He touches his chin as if he’s smoking a pipe. “You paint straight on the wall.” Their English sounds exaggerated, pompous and strange.

The girl asks, “How did Titian get up there?”

The father says, “On a ladder.”

The boy says, “He was a priest.”

The mother says, “No, that was Vivaldi, the composer. Titian was just an artist.”

I think: Yeah, and Einstein was just a scientist.

The father says, “He lived to be very, very old, to his nineties. That was very unusual for those days.”

I think: Ain’t too common these days either, mate.

The mother says, “They say the fresco brings luck. Whoever looks at it will have luck all day.”

The father says, “Well, we could all use a bit of luck, couldn’t we?”

I think: We certainly could.

I watch the family lean into one another, comfortable, a single unit, and I am sad. I feel like a jigsaw puzzle missing a few key pieces.

I see the black-haired man move to the bottom of the steps, his place conquered by the British. Some Americans wander in past him, led by a tour guide. They are dressed in sneakers and windbreakers, as if they’re going hiking.

“Three days, huh? I could paint that in two.” Their words are Southern, slow and drawling.

I pretend I am French and shrug my shoulders, disguising myself from my countrymen.

“Why do they call him Titian if his name was Tiziano?”

“I guess it was his nickname.”

“I read van Gogh’s story about four years ago. I should have read it like, four weeks ago.”

I want to snicker, but I don’t.

“Well.” The tour guide hesitates. He decides to be kind.

“That wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Van Gogh was born in 1853, almost four hundred years after Titian. And he was Dutch, not Venetian.”

“Whatever.”

A group of German university students pour into the stairwell, nudging the Southerners out the door. They climb the stairs, backpacks knocking into one another. They sprawl out over the steps, unzip their backpacks, and take out bottles of water and candy bars. It is a palazzo picnic. The leader of the group, tall and dressed entirely in black, barks out guttural orders, but no one pays attention. He bounds up the steps two at a time and stands right in front of me, blocking my view.

“Excuse me,” I say. He either ignores me or doesn’t hear. I tap his ankle. “Excuse me.”

He whirls around and glares down at me. “What? What do you want?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t see.”

“So stand up! What do you think, you own the world?” He turns away from me and defiantly spreads his legs.

My first instinct is to challenge him, but I am an American in Europe, and my rhythm is the beat of another continent. Instead I take a deep breath and wait, peering between his legs. I try to catch a glimpse of the black-haired man, but a crowd of Birkenstock sandals blocks my view.

I listen to the potpourri of languages. Three gray-haired Frenchwomen wearing flat heels have joined the crowd. “Voici le Titien!” These different cultures are comfortable with one another, meeting on a stairwell in Venice. They stand close together, strangers touching. Now that the Southerners have gone, I am the only American. The space around me is greater than the rest.

Finally, the German students pack up their backpacks and titter out the door, pulling the Frenchwomen along in their wake. The British family connects itself back together and shuffles out behind them, leaving me alone with St. Christopher. It takes me a moment to realize that the black-haired man is gone.

I stand, surprised that I am disappointed. I pick up my sketch pad and walk down the stairs. Outside in the great hall stands the man, hands in his pockets, waiting, I hope, for me. He seems agitated.

“Sometimes the crowds irritate me,” he says. “They show no respect.”

I ask him, “Are you Venetian?”

“I am. . . . Yes. I am.” The man waves his hand as if he were a king dismissing his court. “I shouldn’t let it annoy me. Come. Let us see the other Titian.”

He puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me toward the exit. I feel a small thrill at his touch, though he does it in a fatherly sort of way. But then, after a profusion of proxies, I have only been confused by the touch of a father’s hand and what, exactly, that is supposed to feel like.

We walk through the main floor of the palace and down the Scala d’Oro, the Golden Staircase, all gilded stuccos and white marble, and head out to the courtyard.

“My name is Marco.” His pace is fast, and I scurry to keep up. “My parents were not very creative, I’m afraid. I think every other man in Venice is named Marco, after our patron saint. He is symbolized by the lion, the Lion of St. Mark.”

I know this, but I don’t tell him so. We pass underneath the Porta della Carta, the magnificent marble entrance with its seventy-five lions. “My name is Fan,” I say. “My mother named me after Ebenezer Scrooge’s dead sister in ‘A Christmas Carol.’ My father wasn’t there to stop her.”

Marco pauses and holds out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Fan.” His fingers are long and spindly, like the bow of a violin. “Are you here on holiday?”

I notice he wears no rings. “Sort of. I’m visiting my aunt Ziggy, my stepdad’s sister. She lives here—she’s an artist. Well, she’s not really my aunt, and he’s not really my stepdad, he’s my mom’s latest boyfriend, but I call him my stepdad, so I call her my aunt. He sent me here for my birthday. Though I think they really just wanted me out of the house. They’re having problems.” I have no idea why I am revealing all this personal information to a stranger.

The brick bell tower, the Campanile, looms up in front of us; the Basilica, looking more like a magic castle than a cathedral, its four bronze horses galloping over the entrance, is to the right.

“Ziggy?” Marco pronounces it “Zeegy,” and his accent charms me like a snake. He takes my hand and tucks it through his arm. I know this is not unusual in Italy, friends linking together, men and men, women and women, fathers and daughters—but his touch throws me off balance and I stumble. Marco squeezes my hand with the inside of his elbow and steadies me.

“Ziggy is a nickname. I forget her real name.” My voice from the Florida suburbs sounds nervous and nasal, and I think I must speak more softly and accent my consonants.

“I believe I’ve met your aunt Ziggy,” says Marco. “At an exhibition. The Biennale, perhaps.”

“You have?” I am startled. “At the Biennale? The art festival?”

“It is not so unusual. Venice is a very small town. And Ziggy is a very distinct name.”

We weave our way across Piazza San Marco, the immense central square, which is crammed with visitors. We pass the outdoor cafés, with their dueling violins and pianos. An elderly couple, with pearls and white-tipped cane, dances a waltz. Dozens of languages from hundreds of people waft in between the notes; the bells on the Campanile chime six o’clock. I feel dizzy, as though I’ve stepped into an exotic painting, not quite real.

We stop at the opposite end of the square in front of an enormous double staircase. I know this is the Correr Museum.

“Napoléon tore down a church to connect the buildings in the square,” I say, wanting to impress him with my guidebook knowledge.

“Yes.” Marco smiles. “You’ve been studying our history.” I score two points. The green flecks in his eyes catch the sun, emeralds surrounding a dark stone setting. Again, he touches my shoulder to direct me forward. A finger tangles in my hair. He gently unravels it. “Your hair is the color of Titian’s paint.”

Now I really start to wonder if he’s coming on to me. I decide that would be okay. I touch the tips of my tresses and smile back at him, hoping I look demure. “Thanks.” My hair is burnt red and thick, like a lush, foreign material falling from my head. Sometimes I feel like nature made a mistake, and this shawl of curls was supposed to be given to someone more flamboyant.

We climb the stairs and enter the lobby. “The entrance to the library is at the very end of the museum these days, so we will actually walk all the way back to where we came, across from the Palazzo Ducale.” Marco ushers me toward a woman guarding the entrance to a long corridor. “It seems that entrances and exits are always changing in this city, like some madman playing a game. I have no control over it.”

I think that is an odd thing to say, especially when the woman at the entrance straightens up at the sight of Marco. “Buena sera, Sindaco.”

“Buena sera. I am taking this young lady to see the Titian in the Marciana.” Marco’s tone is authoritative, a superior to a subordinate.

The woman, however, smiles, as if she knows his secret. “Of course, Sindaco. Enjoy your visit.” She glances at me and winks, and I wonder what she’s thinking.

We set off again, hurrying past marble sculptures and antique maps, Renaissance paintings and ancient coins. Marco flings brief descriptions of each room over his shoulder.

“What does that mean, ‘Sindaco’?” I ask as we speed past a room filled with weapons and armor.

“Mayor.”

I stop. “You’re the mayor? The mayor of Venice?” Now I remember that Aunt Ziggy and her expatriate pals have gossiped about the mayor over evening spritzes at the bar in the neighborhood square, calling him a dangerous man. Aunt Ziggy said he’d licked her hand.

Marco nods and seems amused. “As you say, Fan—I try.”

We have arrived in a cool, dark room, curtains drawn, glass-encased manuscripts beneath a gilded ceiling. A gallery of canvases watches us, philosophers and gods, inventors and prophets. Aside from a spectacled fellow sitting behind a desk, we are alone. I think: I am alone with the dangerous mayor of Venice on my sixteenth birthday and I have never been kissed. I hear my heart beat. I hear myself breathe. Marco leads me through the room and into a smaller chamber. He positions me in the center of a large mosaic star on the floor.

“Okay, Fan. Look up.”

I realize I am trembling and try to get a grip. I take a breath. I raise my eyes. There is a single painting on the ceiling, a young woman floating on a cloud, bare feet dangling, nipples erect and poking through a billowy white blouse. Her head tilts toward a large, square mirror hoisted by a cherub. One hand holds a scroll; the other steadies the mirror. She lolls back, confident and contemplative, an elbow resting on a puffy piece of cloud.

“It is Sapientia, the patroness of wisdom.” Marco speaks softly. His murmur resonates off the chamber wall. “Eros, the god of love, holds the mirror.”

“She looks . . . in control.” I am aware, very aware, of Marco standing next to me. The fabric of his jacket brushes against my arm.

“She acquires wisdom by looking inward, with love.” Marco puts a hand on my waist as he speaks. “It is love that allows her to look in the mirror. It is power that allows her to harness her passion and examine the possibilities.”

I move closer, just a breath closer to Marco. I am in Venice beneath Wisdom and Eros, the god of passion and love. I think I am a pagan at heart and should embrace my Sapientia within. I want to gaze into the mirror held by Eros and float around the ceiling, dangling my toes off a fat, fluffy cloud. Marco turns his chestnut eyes down on me as I look up at the painting. Please, I think. Please . . . And then Eros answers my prayers and I feel his lips on mine, gentle and soft, a kiss from the gods, born in Mount Olympus and transmitted by way of Marco’s lips.

“Happy Birthday, Fan.” Marco wraps my tumbling curls in his hands and pulls the hair back off my face, forcing me to look at him. I see myself reflected in the mirror of his eyes and wonder just how wise I am.