Chapter 39 Elena
E LENA
Elena rolls her neck to try and relieve the tension but it’s no use. Her muscles are rock hard. Christian hasn’t let her out of his sight all day. Faking morning sickness and encouraging him to take himself out for the day to Padua backfired on her spectacularly when he forced her to go with him.
He’s been so desperate for so long for her to get pregnant that she banked on him wanting to wrap her up in cotton wool, insisting she rest, so she didn’t risk the baby. She banked wrong.
‘You can’t just lie around doing nothing, babe. Up you get. It’ll be the best thing for you.’ He wouldn’t hear any arguments.
She could kick herself for being so stupid. Why did she have to bring a pregnancy into it? Now he’s going to make her take a test in the morning.
When their train back from Padua approaches Santa Lucia station, Christian announces that they won’t be going to visit Mamma tonight. ‘I haven’t shown you the Venice Rising exhibits yet. I want you to see the lit-up ones. You can see your mum tomorrow – she won’t mind.’
Elena looks at him dumbfounded. ‘We can’t not go to her again, Christian. Of course she’ll mind!’
‘She’ll be right, don’t stress.’
‘Her apartment’s only a few minutes away. Can’t we go for just a little while? We don’t have to stay long. Please?’
‘Tomorrow, babe. Come on.’ He kisses the top of her head and stands, holding his hand out to her as the train screeches to a stop.
Instead of going to Mamma, they walk to the esplanade and board the next vaporetto back to San Marco.
On the boat, he talks to her about the art exhibition and she nods, staring at the passing buildings and the dark water lapping up against them. With her fingernails digging into her palms, she channels white light, visualising it streaming down to surround her. Doing this stops her from crying. Christian’s voice becomes a faraway blur. Her breathing slows, her fists unclench.
As the vaporetto comes into San Marco, it passes the famous hands sculpture reaching up out of the water. They’ve gone past the sculpture several times on this trip but it’s only now she’s quietened her thoughts enough to really see it. The water sloshes around the enormous white forearms emerging from the canal. The hands’ stone fingers splay over a storey high on the pink walls of the Ca’ Sagredo Hotel.
The sculpture had been erected after she left for Sydney. She remembers how excited, how inspired she’d been, watching the Italian news on her phone, of the hands being ferried into San Marco, seeing the heavy machinery and the massive operation involved. The hands were the original climate action protest art for Venice, erected when helping slow down global warming was her biggest life goal. Back when she actually had goals.
The hands remind Elena that it’s not just her who’s drowning. She wants to be moved by this realisation. She wants the fragile state of the world to make the adrenaline pump through her with urgency like it once did. She wants to care again. Elena doesn’t want this vast emptiness inside her any more.
She follows Christian off the vaporetto onto the lit-up esplanade of San Marco. He leads her along the lanes to Campo San Moisè, where he points to a metallic blue hologram, shining starkly bright against the black night. A large crowd has gathered around the art installation in the piazza.
‘What do you think? Pretty cool, hey? This is the one the Church is trying to ban.’
The hologram of Jesus in blue robes hovers high above the ground. His arms are spread out, showing off the stigmata wounds in his hands and feet. Instead of blood, it’s aqua water that pours from them. Beneath Jesus, a hologram version of Venice is brought to life in astonishing detail. The entire city is underwater. The sound of a waterfall comes from speakers positioned around the piazza, and a deep male voice echoes through the still air, repeating the same few words again and again.
‘What does the recording say?’ Christian speaks loudly to be heard above the boom of the speakers.
Elena stands on her tiptoes and puts her mouth to his ear. ‘This is my Son, who has abandoned you.’
‘Whoa!’ Christian laughs. ‘That explains why the Catholics are losing their shit.’
Elena doesn’t take her eyes off the hologram. The city she was born and raised in is sinking. Art like this should make her weep. But she’s no longer the fiery law student who used to wipe the floor with anyone who questioned global warming. Right now, she’s no longer even a concerned Venetian. All she is is a woman whose empty stomach is twisted in knots because she has to stop the monster she married from finding out she’s not pregnant in the morning.
She doesn’t want to be this selfish person. She has to find a way to become herself once more; she has to care about the world again.