THE BLACK SWAN GRACE ANDREACCHI

The right of Grace Andreacchi to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity of persons, places or events depicted herein to actual persons, places or events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2008 by Grace Andreacchi Hadas

All rights reserved.

Cover image: Venice sunrise by J.M.W. Turner, detail.

by the same author

SCARABOCCHIO

POETRY AND FEAR

THE GOLDEN DOLPHINS

GIVE MY HEART EASE

MUSIC FOR GLASS ORCHESTRA

ELYSIAN SONNETS AND OTHER POEMS

VEGETABLE MEDLY (FOR THE THEATRE)

Contents

I – Black Swan .................................................................... 1 II – Toast ............................................................................... 4 III - St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Interior ....................... 5 IV - St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Exterior .................... 13 V - The Creation - Black Swan Again ...................... 19 VI - Sunset at Sea ............................................................. 27 VII - Venice, Evening, Going to the Ball ................. 39 VIII - Morning, Returning from the Ball ................ 49 IX - ‘With drooping wings ye cherubs come...’ ... 67

1

I – Black Swan

It was winter when I first caught sight of him on

the pond in St. James's Park, for the sky was dark

gray, the air was cold enough to kill, the

snowdrops shivered in the wind like little mad

girls who had wandered out in nothing but their

chemises to die of the cold - It was winter then,

although later that day it would be spring, when

the sun appeared at last, and also in Venice of

course, where it was to shine more brightly then

ever upon the lagoon and in all the silver channels

that lap the walls of broken palaces - but in the

beginning it was certainly winter. I was cold, I

was sick unto death. I felt nothing, nothing at all.

I had felt nothing for a long time. I had been going

to die, for every winter I am going to die, and this

despite my love for the season, despite a genuine

love for cold air, snow and ice that goes back to

2

my childhood. As a child I liked nothing better

than to bury myself completely in the snow. I lay

perfectly still under the snow, and the snow

spread its white wings over me and brooded there.

Also I would eat the snow - it had no flavour but a

texture more ethereal than the most accomplished

soufflé, and I sucked the long icicles that grew

under the eaves - they were sharp as glass and

tasted of vanilla and soot. But in the long run this

passionate fondness for winter sports was to

compromise my health, so that now every winter I

am obliged to spend a certain timeless interval in

bed grappling with death. I had just emerged

from such a wrestling match, victorious but weary

indeed, when I saw the black swan for the first

time, trailing his inky feathers in the waters of the

pond. And I remember - I was startled, not so

much at his blackness, for I had seen black-

feathered swans before, if only in the ballet - but at

the unlikely crimson gash of his beak. That a beak

should be such a colour - a glorious midsummer

orange-rose, suggests a complicity on the part of

the Creator with all that is greedy, luscious, eager

for desire - the bite, the kiss, the lipsticked mouth,

the slithering tongue. I was startled by that beak,

3

unnerved by it. I suddenly felt I was going to cry.

Instead I kissed my son's cheeks - one and one. My

son has beautiful pink-white cheeks in the cold,

smooth as marble, fat as peaches, cherub cheeks,

just ripe for kisses - one and one. Thus he comforts

his poor mother's heart. Appearances can be

deceptive. Despite the robust appearance of a fine,

full white bosom, white as the usual (white)

swan's, which bosom is the legacy of numerous

well-set-up aristocratic Lombard ancestors, I am

often sick at heart. My heart's unsteady, it

wanders, it murmurs to itself all sorts of forbidden

things. It likes to run right up to the lip of death

and then draw back, with a sigh, with a wistful

glance. Happy is she who has recourse to a pair of

childish cheeks, peach fragrant, marble still. The

swan glided away from us across the pond. ‘It's

like a crescendo and a decrescendo,’ said Coral,

my son, who is a born musician, and often speaks

in musical analogies.

4

II – Toast

Every morning at breakfast boys in black and

white evening dress bring me toast. They are

English boys, fresh-faced, blond, with shy smiles

and slightly awkward manners. Not for them that

magnificent ballet, ‘Dance of the Waiters’, as

performed daily and nightly in the breakfast

rooms and bistrots of the better arrondissements -

(music by Debussy or, in lesser cases, Ravel). Not

for them the soft, insinuating tone, inclination of

the dark head of closely curled hair, questioning

fingers, as fine as a lady's, lingering over silver,

proffering the iced cookie, the sugar, the very

small cup - Caffelatte, Principessa? The toast is

brown and white, as is the room in which it is

eaten. Crisp brown and creamy, golden white.

Tea, taken with the toast, is of the same palette.

There are white flowers on the table, cream in the

jug, a brown carpet - I could go on. Things are not

always (not ever) as they appear on the surface.

Before I have done, this brown and white shall

yield to me whole kingdoms of unsuspected

beauty and passion. Beautiful brown and white

5

kingdoms of rigorous English passion. I eschew

marmalade.

III - St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Interior

Completed in 1726, the work of the architect

James Gibbs. Brown and white. Brown

wainscoting, creamy white walls, white columns

as refined and slender as a principessa's fingers,

each bedight with fine golden rings. A buoyant

open space under the wide barrel vault, floodlit by

a double set of grisaille windows. The cross a

single stroke of blue shining in the east, held up by

white fingers upon a Venetian window, the brittle

blue of the waters that swirl around the Salute, of

Titian's Madonna, of Englishmen's eyes. Above

this window three cherubs with chubby cheeks

and gilded feathers peep down from the creamy

clouds of heaven upon the mortal follies enacted

below. One is not surprised to hear that these

cherubs are the work of Italians - Giovanni Bagutti

and Giuseppe Artari - but one is almost sorry to

see them here, for all their confectionery

6

innocence. They introduce a gluttonous note; it is

as if a few bars of Austrian coloratura were

suddenly interpolated in a Protestant hymn. But

then they are such little cherubs, and so well-

behaved! Not at all like the rowdy babies that

have descended on the Abbey Church at

Ottobeuren, where they clamber into the pulpit,

climb upon the altars, play games with the sacred

symbols and even have stolen the cardinal's hat

from St. Jerome - not a liberty one imagines that

ill-mannered patriarch very likely to take in stride.

Not at all like the moon-faced Sicilian babies that

play at death in the Oratory of the Holy Rosary in

Palermo. The cherubs of St. Martin-in-the-Fields

confine themselves to a few discrete medallions,

nor do they overstep their allotted territory by so

much as a single misplaced curl. There are no

chubby arms and legs on view, let alone choicer

bits of infant anatomy - we must content ourselves

with the heads alone, and the little feathered

appendages that sprout, however incongruously,

from just below their necks, and guarantee a

sacred character. Without their arms and legs they

cannot play, and so are limited to a mere

spectator's role in the church. They look on

7

patiently, a bit wistfully, but quite accustomed to

their confinement and inactivity, like any number

of docile English children who have sat in the

pews and returned their stares with the same

wistful eyes these two hundred and fifty years.

The rest of the ceiling is given over to a rigidly

symmetrical design of scrolls and medallions,

relieved only by the royal coat of arms and a

gilded sunburst over the chancel that bears that

most esoteric evocation of the Creator - the

Tetragrammaton. On further reflexion one is

grateful for the cherubs after all. They are not

English - no - but they are so thoroughly

Anglicized as to serve for a perfect model of

English feeling and taste applied to the emotional

excesses of civilization. The English are an

intensely emotional people - perhaps the most

emotional of the European peoples. Poetry is an

English vice, and restraint its corresponding

virtue, for there can be no poetry without a

ruthless dedication to formal imperatives. The

formless declamation of the passions is not poetry

but confusion or, at best, prose. Poetry is born of

ardour, like God giving light to the world, but it is

made in a thousand careful delineations of tone

8

and meaning, force and counterpoise, like the

work of the six days. Every animal must have its

food, every plant its season, and every thing that

crawls or creeps or swims or flies upon the earth

must have its allotted work. The world is a great

poem - the greatest that ever could be, because it is

born of infinite love and made by an infinite

intellect. The attempts of the finite intellect to

order the upheavals of the mortal heart are known

as poetry. Look, for an example, at the grisaille.

The windows have been fitted with thousands of

tiny squares of glass, tinted in such a manner that

the light passes through unimpeded in its

brightness, but softened to a pearly luminescence.

What science and what art, what depth of feeling

for the truth of things was needed to achieve this

effect - a beauty whose workings are invisible to

the eye, for we see no colour in this light. We but

see that it shines like the rosy light that first shone

in Eden upon the interior world of brown-and-

white, so that brown is not merely brown, but the

whole richness of earth, the nap of velvet, the satin

sheen of chocolate; and white holds out the lily

and the rose, the mist at dawn and that at evening,

the pink-white of young skin, the blue-white of

9

snow, on and on - a multitude of whites that vary

with the hour and season. The palette of this

grisaille is strictly limited and of an almost

fanatical lucidity. It is precisely the palette of the

sky at sunset over the Channel. (Crossing back to

France, I was sick at heart with happiness and

wanted to die. And all because of the brown-and-

white, and a certain gorgeous boyish orchestra

conductor in the same national colours. But I

anticipate...) The sea is dark as pewter, but on the

horizon the sky is coloured: first grey, then silver,

blue, lavender, pink, white-gold, white. The sky

dark blue over. These are the only colours to be

found in the windows of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

And even if you have never been at sea on a

winter evening and watched the sun go down in

mist and cold, and the whole sky alight with arctic

beauty from that single source of hidden fire -

even so, you will feel before these windows the

peace and solitude of the sea. (There is a singular

aptitude here, for the church of St. Martin-in-the-

Fields lies close to the heart of the Admiralty in

Whitehall, and the bells are rung for victory at

sea.) As windows go these are not very

distinguished. There is grisaille at Chartres, and at

10

Bourges, of an earlier and better age that is

altogether superior to this in both design and

workmanship. And in the Minster at York the

Five Sisters bear witness to seven hundred years of

English supremacy in the art of self-restraint.

These medieval windows are set in complex

geometrical patterns, interlocking mazes of pale

colour that recall the barbarous splendours of the

Lindisfarne. The modest grids of St. Martin-in-

the-Fields are little enough beside them. And yet.

Like the sunset, they shadow forth a multitude of

things. Simplicity is but one of their many virtues

and, after you have studied them a while, you may

conclude that they are not simple at all, or rather,

that they are simple in the way a great lady's dress

is always simple. They would be at home at

Citeaux or Fountains, for the same hauteur informs

Gibbs's church as built St. Bernard's. If you are in

doubt we can descend to the crypt, where every

neatly groined vault and massive column speaks

aloud the name of France.

If you consider that there are windows on two

levels running the whole length of the nave, as

well as the large Venetian window at the east end,

and that all this glass recapitulates the same sunset

11

grisaille, you will begin to appreciate the force of

that blue cross. Mendelssohn was a composer

much beloved by the English in the following

century, and he used the trick again and again.

Let there be grey! and how a single stroke of blue

will tell. Gibbs repeats the moment outside the

church when he adds, to the magnificent white

spire that rises over the portico, the face of the

clock in blue. And God, too, when he made the

English, made them pale and colourless, but gave

them eyes of blue. Not the sombre grey-blue

common among the Nordic peoples, even less the

changeable green-blue, lit by mysterious

underwater lights that one sees along the

Mediterranean from Venice to Tyre - but the real

English blue, clear as glass and startling as an

English summer day. In those darker regions of

the globe that once bore allegiance to Her Majesty

the Queen it is still widely believed that an

Englishman's eyes are the real source of his

authority, for those two glassy orbs of

unadulterated blue are held to possess the power

of absolute command over whatever or whomever

they choose to regard.

12

When I walked into the church of St. Martin-

in-the-Fields with my son they were in the act of

regarding some hundred and fifty young persons

deeply engaged with Haydn's Creation. The glassy

orbs in question belonged to a certain Mr. Bennett

(Stephen to his friends, lovers, countrymen), a tall

brown-and-white person (dark brown hair,

creamy white skin) dressed with eloquent

understatement in various shades of brown and

white, sleeves rolled to the elbows the better to

reveal a pair of statuesque white hands, voice to

match the clothes - giving orders in the clipped

tones that bespeak a few hundred years'

cultivation of the best each generation has to offer.

The rose-lip't lads and maidens in the chorus and

orchestra were making the rafters to ring with

gladness as eine neue Welt sprang up at Mr.

Bennett's command. Then he cut them off in mid-

cry with a single stroke of the wand - it seems the

tenors had missed an entrance. They were pretty

children, especially one girl with very long, pale

gold hair who stood in the centre of the front row.

Yes, Mr. Bennett, I too, if I had to wrestle this band

all afternoon, would put her there, this girl with the

pale gold hair. After some vigorous

13

admonishments from Mr. Bennett they began

again, and again the harmonious world sprang up

anew. In the side pews the beggars, the particular

friends of St. Martin, slept on undisturbed beneath

the sunset grisaille.

IV - St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Exterior

Mystical Rose, Pray for us.

Tower of David, Pray for us.

Tower of Ivory, Pray for us.

House of Gold, Pray for us.

St. Martin was a catechumen and a soldier in

the Roman army. He is most famous for having

split his cloak in half with his sword, in order that

he might give half of it away to a beggar. When

Christ Himself appeared to him in a dream to

thank him for his gift, Martin had himself

baptized, and he went on to become a bishop and

one of the great Christian leaders. He cast out

14

devils, healed the sick, and raised the dead. It was

said of him that he had dominion over all created

things - the animal, the vegetable, and even the

inanimate elements. Once when a serpent was

crossing a river Martin commanded it to go back,

and immediately the serpent swam back the way it

had come. Then Martin's heart was heavy and he

cried out, ‘The serpents heed me, but men heed me

not!’

The beggars in the church of St. Martin-in-the-

Fields were all asleep. They probably wouldn't

have appreciated being woken up to be given a

cloak for which they had no need anyway. First of

all, it was quite warm inside the church - they

keep it nicely heated. Secundo - the only cloak I

had handy was a superb black mink that was

given me by my Jesuit uncle of whom I am

extremely fond. Tertio - the beggars all had cloaks

already.

Mystical Rose - The secret opening to a

woman's body that some men discover between

the ages of twelve and twenty-one. Others never.

Also, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

15

Tower of David - A tower. Exact location

unknown.

Tower of Ivory - This is Gibbs's tower for the

church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The base of it

straddles the portico, feet planted firmly apart, the

stance of the acrobat at the bottom of the pyramid.

A broad, muscular fellow, of course, adorned with

a single bull's eye on each side, that mirrors the

clock-face above. On these hefty shoulders stands

the bell tower, holding up its twin pilasters like

slender white arms; the hands, in the guise of

graceful urns, reach up to frame the hypnotic blue

eye of the clock. Above the clock two ravishing

girls have locked hands - the first, an open

octagon, stands perfectly straight, her arms over

her head to support her sister, who balances head

downward in a hand-stand, her ivory legs pointed

at the sky. The golden ball rests on the tips of her

toes.

House of Gold - also known as the Goldener

Saal. Once a concert hall in Vienna, famous for its

perfect acoustical properties and rococo-revival

gilded caryatids. It was destroyed by incendiary

bombs during the last war. Also, the Blessed

Virgin Mary.

16

For my sixteenth birthday I was taken by my

uncle, then a young Jesuit engaged in theological

studies, to hear the great Maria Malibran at the

Goldener Saal. Already the smell of war was in

the air, and the people shied like horses at the least

noise, expecting the worst. Already one saw with

the inner eye the golden house blackened and

smashed, the smooth bodies disassembled to their

various bloody parts, the silk gowns and black

evening coats burst to shreds that would travel on

the wind to the far corners of the earth and serve

there for a chieftain's headdress, a baby's shroud.

It was in December, just before Christmas. I wore

a gown of blue-white satin trimmed in white fur,

and the enormous ear-drops that had belonged to

my grandmother, Donna Camilla. (The ear-drops

were a birthday gift from my father, but I was too

young for them to look well.) That night for the

first time I understood that I was beautiful.

Suddenly I knew why the men turned their heads

when I passed by, why they glanced repeatedly at

my bosom, my hair, my profile, so that it was

difficult for me to attend to the music - I was

under constant pressure from the unmistakable

prick of human eyes. Suddenly I knew why the

17

women glanced away and frowned, why my

father no longer came into my room at night to

speak to me, why my uncle, the Jesuit had kissed

me so gravely on the forehead that very morning

and said, ‘I will pray for you, my child.’ I

understood that I was beautiful, but I did not yet

understand what it means to be beautiful. Wholly

innocent of the burden of my own beauty, I sat in

the golden house and listened to Madame

Malibran. I have forgotten most of the

programme, but I know that she sang Bellini's

Casta Diva, for it was then I decided to abandon

my plan for a life of contemplation among the

Discalced Carmelites. I hadn't known that such

pure, voluptuous sadness could exist outside the

church. At the close of the aria I bowed my head -

I can still remember the unaccustomed weight of

those ear-drops - and prayed that my life be

shattered into a million fragments of unbearable

rapture and pain. Be it unto me according to thy

word.

There is a mystery about acoustic. I have been

in only three acoustically perfect rooms in my life -

the old Goldener Saal, the church of St. Martin-in-

the-Fields, and the church of the Pietà in Venice.

18

Stephen and I, one night in Venice, went in a

gondola right into the church, for the greater part

of the west front has fallen away, the water lies six

feet deep in the nave, and Tiepolo's sublime

‘Triumph of Faith’ is a scabby ruin. Once Vivaldi

led a choir of orphan girls here, whose singing was

one of the marvels of this city of marvels. The

girls sang from the gallery, protected from prying

eyes by a grille of forged iron. The grille is gone

now - nobody knows where - and the gallery is

inhabited by flocks of iridescent doves. In the

moonlight their shadows moved across the face of

the water like phantoms, like dark, vanishing

dreams. Their voices floated down to us in tones

of blue-green arctic lucidity, sudden bursts of

phosphorescent light in the darkness. (Meanwhile

the concrete pleasure domes of Paris and New

York yield nothing to the ear but the dull chink of

money down the drain.)

‘Sing something, Stephen,’ I said. Stephen has

a beautiful voice.

‘Gracious Queen, Behold my fate!’ he sang.

Stephen has a knack for saying the right thing at

the right moment. The child in my womb turned

19

over, I thought I was going to be sick. A dove flew

down and settled on my hand.

‘Behold thy handmaid,’ I said.

‘Don't be sacrilegious, darling. It doesn't suit

you.’ And his eyebrow went up. Just the one.

On the way back to the palace I was cold.

Stephen saw me shivering and gave me his cloak.

It was a black velvet evening cloak lined with

white silk.

‘Stop if you see a beggar,’ I said. But we didn't

see anybody. They were all dead, or sleeping.

V - The Creation - Black Swan Again

When Adam and Eve finally make their

appearance in the third part of Haydn's Creation,

they begin with what is ostensibly a long hymn of

praise to the Creator's work. In parts one and two

Haydn has given us his own version of the six

days. Who can account for the cheerful, childlike

innocence of this amazing old man? For Haydn

20

was an old man when he wrote the Creation, which

breathes the same fresh spirit that animates his

earliest sonatas. This Creation is a very different

affair from the primitive mythology of the Old

Testament, let alone the puritanical, self-tormented

Milton, and yet these two provided the inspiration

for the (typically inadequate) libretto. With sure-

handed legerdemain Haydn writes his own story,

wherein the Garden of Eden takes on the character

of an Austrian valley, and the angels sing lilting

tunes in the jubilant style of the Stefanskirche

Domchor. When Adam and Eve first catch sight of

one another they launch into what the text informs

us is that praise of God for which they were

created. But who can doubt for a single instant the

real intention of that lyrical andante, of those

reiterated sighs of ‘so wunderbar’ that escape

repeatedly from the infatuated pair? How well

they admire and praise one another, and that most

ingenious of the Creator's inventions - love. The

soprano enters first, and the man comes in behind

to support and echo her. Haydn has made the

contrast between the two voices as great as

possible - Eve is an airy, weightless soprano,

Adam a bass - the better to draw our attention to la

21

sacrée difference. That Eve should lead stands in

delightful contradiction to the text, for a little later,

in the recitative leading into the beautiful love

duet, she is made to say, ‘Dein Will ist mir Gesetz.

So hat's der Herr bestimmt; und dir gehorchen bringt

mir Freude, Glück, und Ruhm.’ Surely a masculine

version of Paradise if ever there was one! But one

that Haydn is prepared to undercut here, at the

first appearance anywhere of man and woman,

and in his usual sly, musical way, for it is Eve who

leads.

The love duet actually begins with Adam's

invitation, ‘Komm, folge mir’ - Surely one is

permitted a smile at the first man's hope that

woman will ever consent to follow him in

anything! Even Milton knows better than that, as

his Adam relates: ‘Nature herself, though pure of

sinful thought, Wrought in her so, that seeing me,

she turned; I followed her.’ Next in the libretto is

Eve's declaration of obedience. Having disposed

of the spurious philosophy as quickly as possible

in recitative, Haydn gives us yet another melting

andante - one that speaks the ‘spirit of love and

amorous delight’ as well as anything sung by all

the counts and serving girls of the operatic stage

22

from that day to this. The allegro that follows it is

nothing less than a full-out depiction of the act of

love. Haydn has already treated us to several

earfuls of humorous tone-painting - the lion roars,

the tiger pads through the jungle, the deer runs

swiftly through the country of the imagination,

and the worm writhes in the dust - Why should

not the man and woman also engage in some

characteristic activity? The emphatic chords that

surround the repeated cadence ‘Mit dir, mit dir’ are

particularly graphic. (Stephen in rehearsal moves

the flat of the right hand up and down on these

chords to coax the desired emphasis from the

orchestra. They respond con brio, and the next

time those chords come by, making the vault ring

and the cherubs gasp with delight, he moves his

slender hips in time, and the suggestion of nuptial

bowers is so intense I bite my lips. Of course, you

won't see any of this in performance, when

Stephen becomes a black swan in his tail coat, and

all his movements are as proper as they can be -

Nor will you hear playing quite this lively either!)

The lovers prolong their delights in endless

development, complete with coloratura ecstasies

from the lady, and at last reach a suitable climax.

23

One wonders if Haydn's decision to repeat the

whole thing once more with flourishes should be

taken as a personal assent to St. Augustine's theory

- that Adam had full volitional potency before the

Fall. Be that as it may, Haydn has answered, in his

own fashion, the age-old question of just what sex

was like in the Garden of Eden, and according to

Papa Haydn it was terrific. St. Augustine's

answer, on the other hand, is surpassing strange.

The saint takes a lively interest in the question,

devoting several pages to its discussion in The City

of God, and why not? Augustine the man took a

lively enough interest in the thing itself, which

‘moves the whole man with a passion in which

mental emotion is mingled with bodily appetite,

so that the pleasure which results is the greatest of

all bodily pleasures.’ All of this is intensely

upsetting to a man who would forget Dido for the

sake of his soul, and it's no wonder Augustine's

Adam is not permitted even so much as the

penetration of the womb, for procreation is to be

accomplished by a kind of seepage, in a chaste

embrace. The seed is planted at will, without the

instigation of passion. He includes a long and

intriguing chronicle of men who have volitional

24

control over a bizarre variety of bodily functions,

such as ear-wigglers, musical farters, and those

who swallow and regurgitate numerous objects -

not a very appetizing version of sex. Poor Adam!

One begins to feel for him, that perhaps he is

better off with his stolen fruit and fig leaf. In this

Paradise is neither fear nor desire. And, although

St. Augustine doesn't say so, one feels that in this

Paradise, Beauty too is not. For what is beauty in

the eye of man or woman but ‘the lineaments of

Gratified Desire’? And to desire is immediately to

fear, for one fears lest one fail to obtain one's

heart's desire. If God made Eve beautiful, and not

merely female as He made the cow and the ewe,

then surely Adam desired her. There is no desire

in the animals, for the cow is not beautiful to the

bull. There is only the simple instinct that rises

and sets with the seasons and finds its complete

satisfaction in procreation. But man - oh, Man -

desires to possess the unpossessable, desires

Beauty for his own. And Beauty is of God, and

God made it, and called it Woman, and gave it to

the Man, that he might suffer, and know Him.

Even before the Fall, Milton gives voice to Adam's

eloquent distress: ‘Nature so fail'd in mee, and left

25

some part/ Not proof enough such Object to

sustain,/ Or from my side subducting took

perhaps/ More than enough.’ More than enough!

Who hasn't felt it knows not love. There is some

strange admixture here, some weakness, a fatal

flaw - the eating of the fruit from the Tree of the

Knowledge of Good and Evil will only make

manifest what is there already, as when a cracked

glass is held to the light. Once they have eaten the

fruit, Milton's Adam and Eve are at once overcome

by desire. Untrammelled by innocence, their love-

making is now passionate, compulsive and

exhausting, ‘the solace of their sin’ and the

fountainhead of all our sorrows. Afterwards, as

we all know, they were ashamed.

It seems there is much to be ashamed of in this

irrational subjection to Beauty. Lust requires

secrecy, according to St. Augustine, and even the

shameless, ‘though they love the pleasure, dare

not display it.’ The story is told of the abbot who

sought to convert a certain courtesan. When she

tried to entice him with her charms he said to her,

‘Follow me!’ and led her to the main street of the

town. There he ordered her to lie with him, that

he might have his pleasure with her. But she was

26

ashamed before the crowd of people, and refused.

Then he said, ‘If thou art ashamed before men,

shouldst thou not be more ashamed before thy

Creator, who knoweth what is in darkness?’

What is in darkness - Call it sin, desire, lust or

love, call it Beauty, call it Good or Evil. Not

without reason does that most passionate heart

among the saints, Augustine, long for a

passionless Eden. But he confesses that such a

state of affairs was only a speculation and never

the reality. There were toil and trouble brewing

before the fruit, before the Fall, when the Lord

God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be

alone.’ Why this evil in the hearts of men?

According to St. Augustine, the course of ages is

‘an exquisite poem set off with antitheses.’ What

appear to us as pain and suffering, as heartbreak,

destruction and death are to Him but the

ornaments of a great and terrible poetry. Stephen

is gliding up to the podium, black-swan-like,

while above the heads of the crowd the tower

glides white-swan-like upon the night air. He has

picked up the stick, the rose-lip't maidens in white

dresses are ranked before him like ever so many

27

swans, the light-foot lads are ready to play. Music,

Maestro!

VI - Sunset at Sea

We took the steamer to Boulogne, Stephen and

Coral and I. It was a cold, still afternoon, sunny in

the harbour, with a brilliant white haze hanging

over the sea. The boat was nearly empty. We sat

in the cabin and read the Times, and drank bad

Riesling that made my head ache. Coral fell

asleep, his cheeks were the colour of old marble,

with a yellow bloom that didn't look well, there

were beads of sweat on his brow, and a few damp

curls had stuck fast as if in stone. It was warm in

the cabin, for the late afternoon sun shone brightly

on the water. The wine was cold, tasteless, lit by

the sun to ethereal gold. The dark fur of my coat

sleeves and Stephen's dark, thick hair showed the

same soft animal sheen. One was surprised by the

infrequent crackle of a page being turned and

folded over. Stephen was resolute in his

absorption, reading with god-like gravity. I

28

studied his Apollonian brow, so very white, with

its twin ornaments - the black asymmetric curves

of the eyebrows. There is something decidedly

rococo about those eyebrows, they add a certain

depraved character to a face which is cast in a

mode of schoolboy perfection that might

otherwise be tiresome. Schoolboys are generally

tiresome, and Stephen is, after all, over thirty. I

was to come to intimate acquaintance with those

eyebrows, for they were to prove themselves the

only reliable clues to Stephen's moods and

meanings. I was to come to know their going up

in the mornings, their going down in the

afternoons, and their unpredictable evenings, the

entire secret language, as, for example, the one,

always the right eyebrow, shooting suddenly up

the forehead in sarcastic inquiry - this generally at

breakfast and liable to drive me to fits of

distraction that could spoil an entire morning. Or

another, the slightly drawn down don't-disturb

me-now-darling-I'm -terribly-busy, this in

evidence for anything from a sticky score to the

morning newspaper. Then there is the slight,

hopeful raising of the two together that says

aren't-you-coming-to-bed-now-darling? so often

29

seen on golden evenings, when the sun is going

down in glory behind the Salute, when we have

been sitting too long, hatless, in the sun, drinking

the pale gold wine of the Veneto, sitting on the

balcony listening to the bad singing of the ragged

gondoliers who go from palace to palace and sing

for a few centimes, or sitting on the piazza

listening to the valses tristes of an aged Austrian

band and watching the pigeons group and scatter

like winged shadows in the dusk. But that

afternoon on the steamer I had not yet had time to

become fluent in the language of eyebrows - I had

still a great deal to learn.

‘The wine is awful. Can't you ask for some

whisky?’ I said. He looked up reluctantly, I

thought, then glanced at his watch.

‘It's only four o'clock, darling.’ His mouth

moves so prettily, just like a child's. I dare say in a

few more years he will begin to grow fat, then

absurd, and at sixty he will be like an old woman.

It's not a kind of beauty that ages well, and even

now he is approaching the end of it, my poor

Stephen. But I like him all the better for that hint

of something drawing to a close, and the taste of

30

mortal decay that lingers somewhere in his not-

quite-fresh immortal beauty.

Later we went out on the deck to see the

sunset. Coral was still sleeping. There was

nobody at all on deck. The wind was fresh and

cold, it caught at our clothes, our hair, ruffled the

fur of my coat, pulled long strands from under my

hat and thrust them into my mouth. Stephen's

hair stood on end, the whole entire whiteness of

his brow looked out upon the sea, his eyes were

bluer than ever in that endless seascape grisaille. I

leaned against the railing and looked down to

where the water churned white like cream against

the sides of the boat. The water under the bows

was blue, or grey, or green. There was a veil of

white mist as fine as smoke on the horizon. Soon

the sun dipped behind the veil; then the entire sky

glowed like a great glass panel - silver and blue,

lavender and pink, and pearly white gilded in

streaks of jaune d'argent. Stephen looked round

quickly, then embraced me, eyebrows in the

hopeful position, little smile with the pretty lips

still pressed together, the upper curved like a

cupid's bow, the lower full and round above the

dimpled chin. I put my finger in the dimple and

31

he turned his head sideways and bit it, kissed it,

kissed my hand, my wrist, the sleeve of my coat,

my mouth.

‘Stephen, you're abducting me.’

‘Or the other way round.’

‘Yes.’ Then he began to sing. Stephen has a

beautiful baritone, a weapon he has been known

to use to serious advantage in tackling recalcitrant

soloists.

‘Wag ich Kopf und Ehr', wenn ich Sie retten

kann...’

‘Mein Ritter,’ I said.

‘Yes. Say it again.’

‘Mein Ritter. Ritter, itter, bitter. My knight.

My swan.’

‘Swan?’

‘Mein lieber Schwann.’ I put my finger on the

dimple again. I loved being allowed to touch him.

It was as if I suddenly had been set down in the

Louvre in the middle of the night, free to tiptoe

about the dark palace and fondle all the treasures,

32

and nobody to stop me. ‘Isn't it difficult to shave

in there?’ meaning the dimple.

‘You get used to it.’

‘Stephen, do you love me?’

‘Madly. Insanely.’

‘Good.’ I looked over his shoulder, to where

the light lingered on the horizon. ‘Look - a ship.

How odd. A black ship.’ Even the sails were

black. As it passed before the light of the setting

sun, a dark, wavering double appeared for a

moment in the water. Then it glided, swan-like,

away from us.

‘Let's go in now, darling,’ he said. ‘You're

chilled right through.’

Coral was sitting up reading Stephen's full

score of Die Entführung.

‘Are you all right, my sweet dove? Did you

sleep well?’ I took him on my knee, ran a hand

through his soft curls, straightened his little velvet

jacket, kissed his soft cheek. ‘Were you at all

afraid when you didn't see us?’

33

‘No. The steward told me you were out on the

deck.’ He let the score slip from his fingers and

slide down among the cushions.

‘Let's have that whisky now,’ said Stephen,

and went off to look for the steward. Coral lay

back against me, his face pressed into the fur of

my coat. I took his hand and he played with my

rings, a large coral set in Florentine gold, a band of

diamonds.

‘Where's Father?’

‘Still in Paris, I believe.’

‘Will we see him there?’

‘No, we're going straight on to Venice with

Mr. Bennett.’

‘Are we going to the Danieli?’

‘I don't know. I haven't asked him.’

‘Does he decide everything?’

‘Oh, yes. Everything. Mr. Bennett is

extremely good at deciding things.’

‘Is that why you like him?’

‘That's one reason.’

34

‘What are the others?’

‘Well, I like his eyebrows.’

‘I don't. They talk to me. Even when he's not

talking, they talk.’

‘That's exactly why I like them.’

‘Do you like Mr. Bennett very much?’

‘Yes.’

‘More than Father?’

‘I don't know.’

‘If you don't know, then why are we going to

Venice with him?’

‘Because Mr. Bennett decided we should.’

‘I see.’ He sighed, and slipped off my lap.

‘You don't feel ill, do you darling?’

‘No. Maybe a little.’ Stephen came back with

the drinks. There was lemonade for Coral.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Coral.

‘Don't mention it, son.’ Coral drank it up

quickly; I could tell he was thirsty. But he never

would have asked for a drink, for he hates to ask

35

for things, preferring to immure himself in a silent

need than to speak of a weakness, especially

before others, that is, people other than myself.

‘Please may I go out on the deck now?’

‘Yes, but take your coat. It's cold.’ I buttoned

up his coat, and pulled the wool sailor cap well

down over his ears. ‘Watch out for the wind -

don't lose your hat. And don't lean too far over

and fall in.’

‘I will. I won't.’

Stephen stretched out his long legs and

sighed. He was smiling again. The whisky was

hot and sweet, it went to my head just a little. Like

kisses, I thought, watching his red lips smile, like

kisses, yes, like kisses. We had another drink

before dinner. We talked about what was in the

newspapers. The King of Bavaria had

disappeared. There was a sale of Chinese screen

paintings at Sotheby's. A new Figaro in Berlin. At

seven Coral appeared just as we were thinking of

going down to dinner.

‘Weren't you ever coming in?’

‘Yes, sweet Mother. Here I am.’

36

‘And wherever is your hat, my darling?’

‘The wind took it, Mother. Don't be angry.

The wind took it right away.’

‘You're cold as a little fish.’ I took him in my

arms to warm him.

At dinner Coral was unable to eat. There were

shadows under his pale green eyes, his cheeks

were yellow as Parian marble.

‘I suppose it's the motion of the boat,’ I said,

but he lingered behind his usual reticent smile and

didn't reply. Stephen and I ate slices of pink

salmon that tasted of the orchids on the table. We

drank a bottle of champagne.

‘Mother, I'm sorry...I am sick, Mother dear.’ I

took him to his cabin, helped him undress and don

his little white nightdress. I rubbed his smooth

belly, and bathed his face with a cold cloth. It was

hot, close, there was a smell of orchids. I threw the

flowers out the porthole. Then I felt sorry for

them, for they looked forlorn on the great dark sea

- little orchids, little girls, like mermaids

swimming in the moonlight, opening their

fragrant arms to the night. I lay down on the

37

narrow bed beside my son and sang for him his

favourite arias from Mozart's operas. I kissed his

salty-sweet forehead again and again.

‘Mother, I need Lui.’ Lui is his bear, named

after the French pronoun. I gave him Lui and he

closed his eyes and sighed. ‘You can go now,

Mother.’ He kissed me on the mouth again and

again, the sweet, insolent kisses of childhood.

Coming in to the dining room I saw Stephen

before he saw me. The eyebrows were drawn

together tightly - not a good sign . He was staring

into the empty champagne glass. Then he saw me

and got to his feet.

‘You should have a nanny to do that,’ he said.

‘You horrible English,’ I said, as he slid in the

chair. ‘Never will I have a servant to steal the

heart of my beautiful child.’

‘Nobody said anything about stealing hearts.

It's a matter of clearing up after them and all that.’

‘Stephen, you don't know anything about it.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘So shut up forever on this subject.’

38

‘Very good, Principessa. Would you like some

coffee?’ We had coffee. There was nobody but the

two waiters, who stood by the bar talking to one

another in low voices.

We went out on the deck to breathe the night

air. The sky was black and full of stars, the moon

thin as a curved blade. In the dark the engines

sounded louder than before, the wind seemed to

blow more fiercely, to be tossing the boat gently as

one tosses a baby to play with it and I staggered,

or perhaps it was just the champagne and the

whisky, however it was I fell against Stephen and

he held me close against his chest. I couldn't see

him then but only smell him - wine and wool and

salmon and the indefinable Stephen smell that sets

me on edge inside like a bitch that has got a whiff

of something odd and intriguing in the garden,

and will dig and dig until she finds it, happy at

last, triumphant, tail wagging, though it be only

the carcass of a hedgehog - I felt the rough wool of

his greatcoat, the strength in his arms, the

rhythmical rush and retreat of blood and passion

to the heart. I lifted my head and the stars seemed

to spin in circles around us.

39

We lay down on the narrow bed and began

the ritual embraces of fugitive lovers always and

everywhere. It was hot, close, there was a smell of

orchids. At the crucial moment his eyebrows

nearly met, his mouth was open, the cupid's bow

rosy and slack, I could see his little white teeth. I

left a long scratch down Stephen's back. It was

then he began to call me Kitty.

‘Don't call me that. It's a stupid name.’

‘Nice Kitty,’ stroking me. ‘Nice little Kitty.’

He kissed me on the mouth again and again. I

heard the wind rising, and the boat began to heave

slowly from side to side in the dark, like

something alive tossing in its sleep.

VII - Venice, Evening, Going to the Ball

The first time I saw Venice it was with my

uncle, Amadé, who was then in the early years of

his novitiate at the Jesuit seminary in Louvain. I

was twelve years old, already tall, but still dressed

like a child in short frocks, and with my hair down

40

my back. I remember Amadé used to pull it

sometimes, gently, absent-mindedly even, when

he would happen to be standing behind me at an

exhibition. Standing before some sheet of canvas

covered with brightly coloured paint in a

semblance of unbearable loveliness, sick and dizzy

with beauty, staring my eyes out until the colours

dissolved to dancing patches of indecipherable

light, I would feel a sudden tug at the roots of my

hair - I knew better than to turn around, although I

could not have put my reason into words. Amadé

was my father's much younger brother - I never

called him anything but Amadé. He had been sent

to Venice to teach Latin to the boys at the Jesuit

school, but I don't believe he gave them much

satisfaction. His Latin was at best indifferent, he

preferred the English of Spenser and Ruskin, and

the Italian of Dante. He spent most of his time out

of school practicing Bach's Art of the Fugue on the

rather wheezy organ in the Church of the Gesuiti.

Some of the pipes no longer sounded, while

others, suddenly and without warning, would

emit the most dismal howls and shrieks - at such

moments the tense, exotic music of these late

contrapuncti was rendered positively apocalyptic,

41

and the old women on their knees before the Holy

Sacrament would cross themselves rapidly,

looking up into the painted vault in mingled hope

and fear. My uncle played well, with a patient

devotion and extraordinary strength of mind that

recalled the Spiritual Exercises. All this was before

the plague, of course, when Venice was still a

popular destination, and an indispensable adjunct

to a young person's education. I stayed with the

Carmelite Sisters of Santa Maria della Salute in a

room no bigger than the linen closets at home,

with a crucifix, a bed, a chair, and a view onto the

Grand Canal and the central building of the world.

In the evenings my uncle would call for me in a

gondola, and we went to dinner at Harry's or the

Gritti, or, less often, on the zattere beside La

Calcina where he read me long extracts from

Ruskin's Stones of Venice and Modern Painters in his

glorious, richly confused Italian-American-French

pulpit-declamatory style. It was May, the time of

long drawn-out lavender evenings, when the

water in the canals turns the colour of wine and

the dome of the Salute glows like a swollen moon

over the improbable city. The days were hot,

crowded with people from all the corners of

42

Europe and the Americas, all dressed in bright silk

clothing and all determined to enjoy themselves,

but the nights were oddly quiet. One heard the

splash of the oar, and the creak of wood as the

gondolier shifted his weight. We went by

moonlight to see the palaces, and my uncle read

out, before each house, the passage from Ruskin

that described its beauty and character in words as

lovely as the thing itself. Under my uncle's

tutelage I came to regard ‘Papa John’, as we called

him, as a kind of oracle, and Turner as a species of

god, bringing light to the world. ‘There is no God

but Turner, and Ruskin is His prophet,’ said my

uncle. I think now he probably meant it, though

he was laughing as he said it, and he said it often.

It came about years later that I was to carry out a

resolve made then, in childhood, to go to London

and see what Turner had painted of Venice. As

others are moved to visit a place by the beauty of

its representations, I was moved to visit the

Turners by the beauty of Venice. If I had not gone

to London to fulfil that ancient resolution, I would

not have met Stephen there. If I had not met

Stephen, I would not have ventured back to

43

Venice only to find it, now, in the throes of death,

even more beautiful than before.

My uncle was very handsome, he had the

abundant curly hair and large, sleepy sea-green

eyes of all the Ceniti, he was tall, rather frail, with

a nose and mouth of such Renaissance beauty they

would have been an embarrassment to a priest in

any country but Italy. Of course I loved him. I

would have done anything with him, I wasn't in

the least afraid, but we did nothing. Every night

he kissed me good-bye with cool lips, while my

heart pounded and I tasted the new, blood-bitter

taste of desire. One night in a gondola I put my

hand on his neck, and he let it rest there for a

moment. Then he unwound it carefully and held

it in his lap.

‘You are a sore temptation to me, Graziella,’ he

said, and smiled, just a little. ‘I like temptations. I

welcome them.’ And he held out his hands to the

odorous Venetian night to show how he welcomed

the temptations.

The Church of the Gesuiti lay in a quiet part of

the town, near the Fundamenta Nuove where the

funeral boats went back and forth to the

44

camposanto on the island of San Michele, far from

the tourist's town of noisy cafés and glittering

hotels. It was a poor quarter, and the houses were

built of brick rather than marble, and painted with

coloured wash in faded tones of ochre and blue;

the windows were crowded with pots of red and

pink geraniums. The shadows were deeper there,

the sun brighter. No one ever seemed to pass in

the little square before the church. You could hear

the water slapping the sides of the boats moored

in the nearby canal. There were always half a

dozen cats sunning themselves on the steps - I

believe the Fathers put out food for them. The

Church of the Gesuiti was the cause of a falling out

between ourselves and Papa John, for, while

admitting it to be ‘curious’ and ‘worth a visit’, he

found it to be ‘the basest Renaissance’, and both

Amadé and I were very fond of it. The interior

was completely covered in a remarkable marble

intarsia that gave the effect of enormous green and

white damask draperies, an effect Papa John found

mean, but nonetheless memorable. He didn't even

mention the marble ‘curtains’ about the pulpit.

These appeared to billow as if caught by a stiff

breeze - the breath of the Spirit that, it was hoped,

45

would inspire the preacher. I liked the pulpit best

of all. We sat up most of one night in the garden

of the Gritti, trying to make peace between Papa

John and those curtains. I could see Amadé was as

unhappy about it as I was. He said that Ruskin

was a solemn old ass, that all the English were

solemn asses and didn't know the meaning of a

joke. I had my first hard liquor that night. My

uncle gave me grappa to drink - it made my mouth

burn and my eyes water. He didn't laugh at me,

but watched me with serious interest while I

struggled not to cough. We drank a toast to the

Holy Spirit, and Amadé said that He would some

day enlighten the minds of the Protestants, but

until then it was best to forget them on questions

such as marble intarsia curtains. He took hold of a

curl that had fallen over my shoulder and pulled it

quite hard.

‘Drink, Graziella, drink. You must learn to

drink. Never be afraid of any of the gifts of God.

Never be afraid of temptation. You must learn to

love temptation, for it comes from God.’

‘Not from the Devil?’

46

‘The Devil too comes from God.’ When I had

finished the drink he took my hand and kissed it.

‘How hot your hand is, carissima. Do you have

a fever?’

‘Yes, oh yes.’ He held my hand to his lips,

testing it.

‘The climate here is very unhealthy. You must

take care not to fall ill.’

When I stood up to go the ground seemed to

leap from under my feet. I fell on the pavement

and cut my knee, there was blood on my white

dress and torn stocking. Amadé only laughed

shortly and put me in the gondola.

‘Be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect,’

he said. Now I was suddenly shivering, nauseous;

I pressed my mouth into the black stuff of his

soutane. Calmly, he patted my shoulder.

‘Graziella, you are already perfect,’ he said with

satisfaction. ‘Only you must learn to drink grappa.

But - ça va venir.’

The Sisters were terrified at the lateness of the

hour, the blood on my dress. I crawled into bed,

miserable and sick, sick as well with fear that there

47

would be a scandale, but there was nothing, only a

violent headache in the morning when the light

over the lagoon burnt into my eyes like fire. I was

late for morning prayers. I prayed with a furious

heart, that God would punish Amadé. In His

mercy the Lord disregards the prayers of the

moment, for I would not have harmed a hair of his

head.

In the same Church of the Gesuiti there was a

painting by Titian of the martyrdom of St.

Lawrence - it is not there now. I believe it was

stolen some time during the bad days of the

plague, when daring thieves helped themselves to

the accumulated treasures of Venice. The painting

was a dark and terrible thing. St. Lawrence was

roasted alive on a gridiron, and is most famous for

having made the stoical quip, ‘I am already

cooked on this side, turn me on the other.’ He

became one of the most popular of the martyred

saints, and, in another example of that essentially

Catholic sense of humour my uncle found so sadly

lacking in John Ruskin, the patron saint of cooks.

God loves a joke, and perhaps has made us to

love, serve, and amuse Him. Oddly enough, there

is no joke in Titian's picture, but a very dark night

48

indeed, lit by the hellish fires that burn under the

saint's body, and the light of heaven that opens

above him. When Lawrence was brought in to be

tortured, the Emperor Decius said to him,

‘Sacrifice to the gods, or thou shalt pass the night

in torments!’ And Lawrence answered, ‘My night

hath no darkness; all things shine with light.’ In

the painting the saint is drawn in such a position

as might admit either agony or ardour. His face is

turned to the light. According to St. Bonaventure,

it is God Himself who sends light into the world,

illuminating the soul of man by the action of

divine grace. In Venice, where the light is stronger

than anywhere else on earth, Titian made, to stand

beside the brightly coloured glories of his

‘Madonna Assunta’ and ‘Madonna di Ca' Pesaro’,

this vision of night and hell.

The picture frightened me, but Amadé forced

me to look at it carefully. ‘Don't be afraid! There's

nothing in it but love. Take a good look. Love is

like that.’

‘Do you love me, Amadé?’

‘Yes. But never tell.’

49

It says of St. Lawrence in The Golden Legend

that ‘As much as the ardour of faith burned in

him, so much did the flame of the torture grow

cool.’ And thus it was with Amadé. But as for me,

I was like Turner's Regulus, my eyelids had been

stripped away and I struggled under an

illumination so severe that palaces and water and

sky, people and things, were annihilated in a blaze

of living light. At last I fell into a nervous fever

and was taken off to Vevey to recover my health.

In the fall Amadé was sent on to a school in

Vienna. I didn't see Venice again for twenty-five

years, when I arrived on a winter morning with

Stephen - Regulus again, but this time I was

prepared. Or so I thought.

VIII - Morning, Returning from the Ball

Turner left an astonishing legacy of paintings,

both finished and unfinished, that bear witness to

the absolute luminosity of Venice. Before Venice,

his paintings typify the dark sobriety of English

50

passion - they range from grey to dark blue, they

are lit by fey moonlight and nipped by frost. This

fundamental sobriety is important to an

understanding of Turner's Venice, for his truly

arresting volte-face is only comprehensible in light

of his quintessentially English sensibility. He had

struggled bravely with sombre North European

subjects, he had fought the good fight with the

Claudean ideal, when at last he said: Let there be

light! And a new world sprang up in the Venetian

lagoon. In these pictures one feels the whole man,

reunited to his other self; there is a sense of poetic

justice, the coming to light of truth that Plato

intimates in his parable of love. Turner begins

with characteristic caution . In ‘Bridge of Sighs,

Ducal Palace and Custom House, Venice:

Canaletto Painting’ the hommage is openly

declared, the palette still relatively sober, and the

outlines clear. Then, with ever-increasing abuse of

colour-wash and white ground, he proceeds to

annihilate the quiddity of space and extension in a

mist of ethereal Venetian light.

As, for example, ‘Morning, returning from the

ball’, a golden crescendo of sky and sea and gilded

marble, and shapes in the water that shimmer and

51

dissolve: sea monsters perhaps, or water nymphs,

or even the blackened faces of the dead. For

Haydn, too, the sun rises on a long, pulsating

crescendo that begins with the finest, most delicate

rays of barely perceptible light, and ends in a

fortissimo blaze of glory. And Uriel, the Angel

standing in the sun, sings in a sunny tenor the

bright splendour of the day. Meanwhile Stephen

is dozing beside me, white tie askew, shirt

rumpled, the beginning of stubble on his pink

cheeks; the tilt to his nose, which is just the tiniest

bit snub, so particularly and oddly irritating in the

light of dawn; his eyebrows perfectly quiet,

exhausted after a whole night of social athletics,

his cloak thrown carelessly over one knee, the silk

lining bright as gold in the sun.

Everything Turner did afterwards was

touched by it, so that one may fairly say that, after

Venice, even those pictures that are not of Venice

are nonetheless pictures of Venice, as one may say

of a poet who has had but one great love, that all

his work, however intended, would not have been

but for her. So it is with ‘The Angel Standing in

the Sun’, or ‘Light and Colour, Goethe's Theory’,

or, of course, ‘Regulus’ - painted in Rome in 1828

52

on a Claudean model, but reworked in 1837 just

before the great Venetian paintings of the 40's and

as if in preparation thereof, for it depicts with

tormented clarity the absolute power of light.

Whereas Titian was a Venetian - he gives us back

the colours of lagoon and palace, of sky and sea in

all their seasons, he grinds them for his palette and

dips his brush in them. In the ‘Madonna di Ca'

Pesaro’ we feel the whole life and movement of

the Grand Canal; in ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’ it is so

palpable that, although it hangs in a London

gallery, as one gazes into its blue depths one

seems to feel the languid air, to hear the plink of

oars and the gondolier's ancient cry.

That first morning when we sailed into the

lagoon there was a black galleon riding anchor in

the harbour. Most of the hotels were closed, even

the Danieli reduced to a few rooms on the piano

nobile, but we had no trouble finding a place.

There were empty palaces for the asking, most of

them inundated by the tides and falling to pieces,

full of rats, but lovely still and on the Grand Canal.

As the future was uncertain, and the moral and

physical climate of the city doubtful, we thought it

best to send Coral to school on the mainland.

53

After making inquiries we settled on the

monastery school at Bagnacavallo. It was run by

the Premonstratensian Fathers, and had a good

reputation among the better Venetian families.

There were no schools in Venice, no children,

excepting the beggar brats of San Marco, for the

plague had carried them off, they died in

disproportionate numbers, and the families of

those remaining had taken fright and left the city.

The native population was essentially the destitute

and the unscrupulous; the visitors might have

served as models for the figured capitals of the

Ducal Palace, for they offered examples of all the

vices. No one had any business here. It was a

free-floating, international society, there was a lot

of money, although some were engaged in

separating it from others, who, they felt, had less

use for it than themselves. We were not surprised

at the occasional murder, certainly not at irregular

loves of every description. Men went about

openly with boys, people took drugs, both men

and women painted their faces, wore odd clothes,

stayed up all night and slept all day. It was

certainly dubious company in which to find

oneself.

54

The plague seemed to be in abeyance, but still

one heard rumours of isolated cases. The fabric of

the city, never strong, eaten over eight centuries by

the tides, was collapsing at last into dust and tears,

and the blue-veined palaces were sliding, stone by

stone, into the sea. The whole of the Riva degli

Schiavoni was gone, the water stood three feet

deep in San Marco at the fullness of the tide. It

was a sport among the visitors to go out on the

nights of the full and the new moons to see what

new damage the tide had wrought. Sometimes the

piles beneath a building would give way all of a

sudden under the force of the tide, and a whole

wall of parti-coloured marble would tumble into

the sea with a roar. There was a black, evil-

smelling cloud that hung continually about the

island of San Michele, but no one seemed to know

what they were burning there, or why. Every

morning at dawn the funeral boats went by, two

or three every day, draped in black crape and

decked with ostrich plumes that waved in the

wind like great black fans. Occasionally someone

we knew disappeared, but one never knew if he

had died or just gone away. Stephen was restless,

he missed his work. Given the relative merits of

55

orchestra conducting and sex, he certainly had a

point. Conducting offers a keener, more intense

mental pleasure, sex a greater physical pleasure,

but the two are essentially alike. There can be few

sensations to compare with that of the conductor's

when the orchestra is in full cry, and under his

thumb. To the sheer physical thrill of sound is

added that of absolute dominance - where else in

life do a hundred souls give instant heed to one's

every least command? And then there's the whole

question of judgement - tempi, dynamics, the

shaping of a phrase, the myriad shades and lights

that give life to a score. There are so many more

nuances in music than are possible between a man

and woman, although Stephen certainly did his

best. Yes, Stephen was restless. Fortunately, being

an Englishman he was romantic. I knew he would

stay at least until the child was born. Then, being

an Englishman, he disliked the position of cavaliere

servente - it embarrassed him. He insisted upon a

divorce, and my husband was not obliging. There

was vague talk of a duel, but I knew that as long

as we remained in Venice we were safe. My

husband is an American with a lively sense of

public hygiene - he would never enter a plague-

56

ridden town. Stephen was bored, these things

chafed. After all, one cannot be always going to

balls and making love. He occupied himself with

filing endless papers relating to the divorce, he

began the study of Armenian with the Orthodox

monks who ran a hospice for the dying on the

island of San Lazzaro, he drank, not too much, but

enough to take the bloom off his beautiful English

complexion. He was pale yellow now where he

had been white, and thinner, and more nervous.

The eyebrows more and more frequently were

drawn down as if he had just hurt himself.

Sometimes in the mornings he would wake, in a

boat on the Grand Canal, or in the great blue

silken bed that we shared in an otherwise empty

room of peeling gesso where the light came in

through Moorish ogives - outlined black against

the morning light they were exactly like the line

drawings in The Stones of Venice and made me

think of Amadé and the girl I had been then - he

would wake and the eyebrows would wander up

his pale, chaste forehead in mute inquiry - I

realized then that he had absolutely no idea where

he was, or what he was doing here.

57

I cannot say that he ever complained. And

although, as time went on, we were not happy, for

we knew we were lost, this very unhappiness only

served to increase our pleasure in one another's

company. We had a gondola, a harpsichord, we

sang duets, we spent whole nights roaming the

little canals, rocking together in the dark with only

the murmur of the oar in the water and the wild,

bird-like cries of the gondolier to tickle our ears.

We went roving among the ruins and tried to

piece together the old mosaics, to decipher the

half-obliterated features of saints and nymphs that

stared back at us from leprous frescoes. Once we

went to the Gesuiti - the marble curtains had stood

up well, the pulpit was still in place, but the Titian

of course was gone, and the four angels that

formerly had stood in the croisée had fallen on

their faces in the dust. Stephen touched the

curtains and smiled.

‘It's not real,’ he said. ‘What a marvellous

fake! Come here - Touch it - Look - It's not real.’

‘Yes, I know. I've been here before.’

‘Oh well, if you've been here before...’ He

went up to the loft and tried the organ, but was

58

unable to coax a sound from it. ‘I don't know how

to play the organ anyway,’ he said. ‘I used to play

the bassoon.’

‘The bassoon, Stephen?’

‘Yes indeed. A most bracing instrument, the

bassoon.’ The eyebrows alone should have told

me.

As the months passed it grew hot, sultry, the

sky turned pale blue, then white, then sulphurous

yellow. I don't know how much champagne we

drank - three or four bottles a day at least. It was

the best thing for keeping cool. The scirocco blew

day after day. We talked about going away, to the

mountains perhaps, we were always making

plans, but somehow the days slipped by one after

another, every day the same as the ones before.

We went to the piazza and drank champagne, and

ate ices, lemon ices, chocolate ices, champagne

ices. We saw the oddest people - elderly

gentlemen in silk ball gowns, pretty boys, rouged

and powdered and wearing fabulous jewels that

must have belonged to the countesses at whose

tables they sat and ate, their eyes glittering like

darker jewels in the night; black-skinned Moors

59

who went from table to table selling love charms,

philtres, and little poisonous green snakes. One

of the local favourites was a dwarf with a large,

heavy head, tiny arms and legs, a huge belly and,

apparently, a correspondingly large natural

endowment. He was much in demand among the

ladies of Venice, indefatigable in their service, and

could often be seen hurrying from palace to

palace, sitting upright in his gondola in a tight

blue jerkin and a pair of parti-coloured tights with

a huge cod-piece. There were never fewer than

three or four ladies at his table. There were dwarfs

in blue and yellow suits and feathered caps who

did tumbling tricks. There were beggar brats,

eager, pushing, who would scramble for a

centime. There were other, older beggars with the

tell-tale marks of the plague survivor on their faces

- they stood in the shadows under the arcades and

rattled tin cans for money. There were thieves

with stilettos lurking here and there, under the

bridges and on the quays, and Stephen always

went armed. There was a pathetic band of two

violins, a piano and a cello who did their worst to

Léhar and Strauss. Stephen put up with the

dwarfs and the beggars, he was prepared to face

60

the thieves, but when the Austrian band began to

play I knew it was time to go home.

We ate odd things, jellied eels, chocolate fish,

and we did odd things too, to one another in the

blue silken bed, odd sweet things I hadn't thought

of before. Some of them made me laugh. Stephen

was proving to have a superior imagination.

Amadé was wrong about the English, I thought.

It's just that you have to know where to touch

them.

When it was too hot to sleep we sat late over

sputtering candles and watched the moonlight on

the Grand Canal. The wind blew like a hot breath

in our faces and didn't cool us at all. Stephen

wiped his brow with a handkerchief, then sat with

his hands on his knees, humming something - a

song of Purcell's, a Stabat Mater, the Kyrie from

Mozart's ‘Coronation’ mass. He was far and away

the best hummer I have ever heard. Or I would

play the harpsichord for him. He had a great

liking for simple things - Purcell's suites, the

pavanes and galliards of William Byrd. Or he sat

over a book, cogitating the mysteries of the

Armenian language.

61

‘I understand from my tutor that the terrestrial

paradise was certainly in Armenia. I always

wondered where it was.’ And the right eyebrow

went up - just the one. I tried to send him away

but he only came back at me with Milton:

‘How can I live without thee, how forgo

Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly join'd,

To live again in those wild Woods forlorn?’

Then Mimi turned up. Mimi is my elder son, a

cadet at the École Militaire. He came to see me

about the divorce. I don't know whether he came

by himself, or his father sent him. He seemed very

tall, for he is always so much taller than I can

remember, and the uniform somehow makes him

appear taller still. He came striding in stiffly, his

sword jangling, the white plume bobbing on the

hat under his arm. He bowed stiffly and kissed

my hand, and I kissed his cheeks which are still

soft, and then he kissed me again and again.

Fortunately, Stephen was out.

‘Mimi, whatever are you doing here?’

‘Whatever are you doing here, Mother dear?’

62

‘Oh Mimi. Please sit down.’ He sat down in

Stephen's chair.

‘I've come to bring you home, Mother dear.’

‘No, Mimi. It's out of the question.’

‘But Mother...’

‘I said no. You shouldn't have come.’

‘But I missed you.’

‘I missed you too.’

We went to the Lido and had lunch. There

was sand in everything - the lobsters, the wine,

our hair. I ate but little, but I watched him eat,

gladdened by his enormous and indiscriminate

appetite. Watching him, I thought of other

lunches tête à tête at the Grand Vefour, the silent

swoop and dive of the waiters, the pink and

yellow and chocolate food, and Mimi set down

like some fine-feathered migratory bird amidst the

red plush, eating everything in sight and the

prettiest thing in the place. Afterwards it was

Phèdre at the Comédie Française. Now I watched

him consume the sandy offerings of the Lido with

the same ruthless enthusiasm. I watched his

63

beautiful sea-green eyes. I touched his curly hair,

the braid on his sleeve.

‘You're beginning to look just like your Uncle

Amadé.’

‘Your Uncle Amadé.’

‘Yes.’

‘Which reminds me, he asked me to give you

this.’ He took out a long envelope and handed it

to me.

‘A letter?’

‘I don't know.’ Later, when he wasn't looking,

I dropped it into the canal. I already knew what it

was going to say.

When Stephen came home I made the

inevitable introductions. They danced around one

another like a pair of angry egrets. ‘I'll talk to

him,’ I said. ‘Let me alone with him tonight.’

I lay in the blue silken bed. The windows

were open; there was moonlight on the silk

curtains and on the canal. Mimi came in and sat

on the bed.

64

‘Please, Mother, come home with me now like

a good little Mother.’

‘I can't, Mimi. I'm going to have a child.’

‘Mother! At your age!’

‘You have an exaggerated idea of my

antiquity, my darling.’ He sat for a while,

digesting this unwelcome piece of news.

‘Then I suppose you shall have the divorce?’

‘Yes.’

‘And marry Mr. Bennett?’

‘Yes. Englishmen are very romantic, I'm

afraid. Mr. Bennett believes in marriage.’

‘He didn't believe in yours!’

‘Now darling, don't be dense. I encouraged

him.’

‘Mother...’

‘You'll still be my darling...’

‘No I won't.’

‘And Mr. Bennett's very nice.’

‘I hate him!’

65

‘I know you do, my darling.

‘You'll go to hell, Mother. It's against the

Church.’

‘I know. Hush now. That's enough. You

must go back to school. Kiss me good-night.’ I

kissed his hair, his cheeks, his hands which once

had been so little and weak and were now so

much larger and stronger than my own. At last he

went to bed. When I got up in the morning he was

already gone, although the dawn had just begun to

unshadow the faithful dome of the Salute. A

funeral boat went by, black plumes waving on the

wind.

We went to the Church of the Pietà when the

moon was full - the tide came rolling in across the

lagoon and we sailed right in through the

crumbled doorway. Part of the roof had fallen in,

and the moonlight shone into the church - it was

bright on the water, but shadowy under the walls.

‘Sing something, Stephen,’ I said. We wanted

to test the acoustic. Stephen began to sing, the rats

scurried up the walls, the pigeons fluttered in the

66

gallery. One heard each tiny footfall, each rustling

wing, one heard, of course, each plaintive, lovely

note.

‘Gracious Queen, Behold my fate!’ he sang. A

dove flew down and settled on my hand.

‘Behold thy handmaid,’ I said, for just then I

felt the child.

‘Don't be sacrilegious, darling. It doesn't suit

you.’ One eyebrow. Then something bumped

against the side of the boat.

‘Stephen, what is it?’ Bump. Bump. The

water was sloshing over with the incoming tide,

the boat tilted crazily from side to side. The

gondolier shoved with the oar and the thing

moved off.

‘Something there, Signore.’

‘Yes. Let's have a look.’ Stephen lit a torch

and held it above the seething water. It was a

man, floating on his back. His eyes were wide

open. On his face were the tell-tale marks of the

plague.

67

IX - ‘With drooping wings ye cherubs come...’

Stephen took up pistol practice in the wild,

overgrown garden. He was a good shot, able to

hit a wine glass at twenty paces. Soon we had

nothing to drink from, and the path along the

garden wall was littered with red and blue

fragments of Murano glass. Then he managed to

get hold of a bassoon somewhere, and blasted the

air with its lugubrious tones. It sounded like

somebody crying somewhere in the house. Every

week I received a diligent report from the

Premonstratensian Fathers. Coral was happy at

the school. I had the occasional note in his own

hand, reassuring if not exactly informative. Once

a month Stephen and I made the short journey to

Bagnacavallo. Coral looked well - his colour was

fresh, his spirits even, if a bit subdued. Then one

day I received word that he was suffering from a

slight fever. The fathers were not at all alarmed,

but I wanted to go to him. Stephen thought it

unnecessary. In the end we compromised and

sent our own private physician to attend him. The

doctor's report was satisfactory. But two days

later I received another letter, this time by special

68

courier - the child was worse. We set out

immediately for Bagnacavallo, but by the time we

arrived my son was dead.

There was nothing at all to be done about it.

The Fathers were very much affected, some were

openly in tears, for Coral had been a great

favourite. When Stephen heard of it he turned

mortally pale, I was afraid he was going to faint,

but he did nothing of the kind. We brought my

son back to Venice in a white coffin with gilt gesso

and cherubs on the lid. They were St. Cecilia

cherubs, the kind that are all heads and wings, like

the cherubs at St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

They set him down in the empty drawing

room beside the harpsichord, under the rose glass

chandelier. There were lighted candles at his

head, flowers, heaps of flowers, at his feet.

Everyone we knew and many people we didn't

know at all had sent flowers. The air was thick

with sweet, warring scents. The servants were

discreetly sorrowful, moving on tiptoe. They

spoke in whispers before us. But as I sat all day

with my dead son I heard their natural voices

rising up from below stairs to echo in the silent

house. My son was self-contained in death as he

69

had been in life. With horror I kissed his cold

cheeks that felt and looked like marble, with

horror touched the dead hair still shiny with life.

There was a silk cushion on the floor beside the

coffin. I knelt and prayed to the Holy Mother of

God. I begged her to take care of him there, where

I could not follow him. It grew dark and cold, it

began to rain. The wind blew rain through the

open window onto my son's face, but he never

moved. When I saw how he never moved, even

though the rain was pelting his face, I began to

scream.

Stephen came in and put me to bed. He

promised to sit by my son for the rest of the night.

He was there beside the coffin in the morning,

paler even than my dead son, his head bent over

the Armenian grammar. I kissed his pale face,

then Coral's. There must be no delay about the

funeral - already he no longer smelled like a child,

but like something dead.

Now it was our turn to ride in the early

morning on the black boat to San Michele. They

had decked it with white ostrich plumes for the

death of a child. As we passed along the Grand

Canal the world was on fire with light - sea and

70

sky, boats and broken palaces, all dissolved in a

golden mist of tears before my eyes. A cloud of

evil-smelling, greasy black smoke hung over the

island. They were burning the bodies of the

plague-ridden dead, hoping to reduce the spread

of the disease. The rats ran freely among the

naked cadavers. We put my son in the earth and

returned home.

Stephen took up pistol practice once again.

From the window I watched the top of his head

moving in the wilderness of the overgrown

garden. The odour of gunpowder mingled with

that of flowers. Mercifully, he no longer

attempted the bassoon. Nor did he speak to me of

my dead son. I was beginning to appreciate the

depths of Stephen. My time was drawing near.

Then Amadé turned up. I nearly didn't

recognize him, for I don't remember ever having

seen him dressed otherwise than in the distinctive

black soutane and biretta of his order. He was

dressed like an ordinary gentleman in dark

clothes. He shook Stephen's hand and looked very

hard into his eyes. I saw the eyebrows go up, then

swoop down to meet over the bridge of the nose. I

went with Amadé to the camposanto to lay

71

flowers on my son's grave. It was cold out on the

water, the light was oblique, already the autumnal

chill was sweeping down from the Alps. There

was a black galleon riding anchor in the harbour,

its sails furled close like the wings of a swan at

rest.

‘How is John taking it?’ I said, meaning my

husband.

‘He's taking it. He'll take anything from you,

won't he? Why did you marry him?’

‘What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Let me alone, Amadé. A girl has to marry

someone, I suppose.’

‘You never loved him.’ It was a statement, not

a question. I considered it carefully before

replying.

‘You know perfectly well whom I loved,

Amadé.’

‘And do you love this Englishman?’

‘Yes. But never tell.’

72

At dinner it was just the three of us. We spoke

of Coral - it was easy to speak of him with Amadé,

who had known him all his short life.

‘I offered my last mass for him, not that he

needs it, poor little soul.’

‘Your last mass?’

‘Yes, Graziella, my very last mass. I've come

to save your honour, as I despair of ever saving

your soul. So you've been breeding bastards, have

you?’ He looked significantly at my swollen

figure in the black silk gown. Stephen got to his

feet.

‘I don't know if you're capable of giving

satisfaction...’ he began.

‘I have come here for no other purpose.’ A

little smile crossed Stephen's lips and his eyebrows

flickered for a moment like two moths at a candle.

Why, he has been waiting for this, I thought. I

knew then there was no use trying to reason with

either of them. Men are ridiculous.

They went to the Lido at dawn, hoping to kill

one another. Stephen was killed. Amadé turned

the gun on himself. They brought Stephen home

73

and laid him on the bed. There was a trickle of

blood like a twist of silk thread running out of the

corner of his mouth. His eyes were wide open -

they seemed to have absorbed the entire blue of

the sky. His eyebrows were raised in one last

hopeless inquiry at the strangeness of it all.

Amadé I never saw again. They knew better

than to bring him here. Perhaps he went out on

the tide - I cannot say.

Once more I made the trip in the early

morning, up the Grand Canal, then into the rio dei

Santi Apostoli, past the Gesuiti and across the

lagoon to the island of San Michele. This time the

plumes on the boat were black. I saw him laid in

earth, and I threw a handful of earth into his

grave. I think the dead sleep well there, for it is

quiet in the midst of the sea.

At sunrise on the third day after the duel,

Stephen's son was born dead, in the civic hospital

on the rio dei Mendicanti. From my bed I can see

the painted paradise on the ceiling, which I once

examined through a pair of opera glasses with

Amadé. My heart no longer murmurs, but shouts

74

aloud its distress. I am bleeding slowly from

somewhere inside. I am not expected to live.

I often think of Stephen, and how he must

have lain there in the sand under the rising sun,

his eyelids fixed open by the swift hand of Death,

how the sun must have burned inexorably into

those poor eyes, so that the blue of the sky was

fixed there forever, as the colour is fixed in glass

by the heat of the fire. I wonder what his blind

eyes saw, that looked so long at the sun? Perhaps

an Angel standing there, stronger than Death, and

more beautiful than the light that shone in Eden.

THE END

75

76

Grace Andreacchi was born and raised in New

York City but has lived on the far side of the great

ocean for many years - sometimes in Paris,

sometimes Berlin, and nowadays in London.

Works include the novels Give my Heart Ease,

which received the New American Writing

Award, and Music for Glass Orchestra, and the play

Vegetable Medley (New York and Boston). Stories

and poetry appear in both on-line and print

journals. Her work can be viewed at

http://graceandreacchi.com.