Chapter 3 #18
“We have to choose something,” she said at last. “The wrong choice, maybe, but we have to choose.”
I went to bed and could not sleep. Too many images floated across the walls of my mind, like those headlights from when I was a boy that seemed like enchanted figures, or portents, when they moved around the confines of my ordinary bedroom.
I was so afraid. I had made a choice without knowing what came next, like staying on a train after your stop has passed.
What was ahead? I almost panicked and picked up the phone to call Giacomo.
And then the strangest occurrence: like those crossed phone wires that allow one, at ghostly moments, to listen to some stranger’s conversation, my baronessa’s words from earlier began to play in my head—we have to choose—over and over, loudly—the wrong choice, maybe, but we have to choose—and it was almost as if I were trying to silence the sound, but I could not stop it before my heart overheard.
The images remained, a celestial globe of constellations turning in my skull.
Somewhere in those moments, sleep flowed into my mind and my thoughts dissolved there, turning into dreams.
I was awakened hours later by the sounds of whispering and of people moving heavy things; I must have left my dream-door unlatched because, at one point, my bedroom door opened and a menace, silhouetted in the dim hall light, seemed to have walked into my room.
He fumbled in darkness but departed with a thump of the door.
Minutes later, another thump and then no more; my dream intruder was gone.
How easily I can picture the wetted stones of the campo that Christmas Eve, the topos delivering fresh rolls or vegetables or foodstuffs; the garbage scows; the boats bringing bales of fresh linens to hotels, lifting them onto the walk with red-painted cranes; the ducks sleeping head under wing in the gondola shipyards; the pink-tinted glass of the lamps along the Schiavoni, precisely the same color as the morning sky; the waves crashing against the walkway as we arrived at the appointed spot.
I had awakened blearily that morning and found, for the first time, my employer dressed before me.
I put on clothes from the night before and barely got a coffee in me before we were on the streets.
I was to deliver her here and then return to the principessa’s, grab my duffel, and head to Florence for my flight home.
I wondered what awaited me there. I looked around.
Not a single boat was berthed; perhaps they were elsewhere for Christmas.
My baronessa saw a red wooden bench nearby, and we waited there, watching the sun (behind us) begin to catch the green bell tower of San Giorgio, the sky behind it lightening to reveal the dark angel standing at its peak, then catching the golden globe held up by two Atlases at the foot of the Dogana, a statue that swiveled in the wind.
Between, the water was striped wine red and black.
“I had some news from the villa last night,” she said at last. She sat with her cane upright between her feet, her hands balanced on its silver handle. “Our enemy is vanquished.”
“Pullman?” I said. “My God! What have you done to him now?” I wondered if the murder mysteries had given her too many ideas.
“The faina!” she said, turning to me with a smile. “She has died at last!”
I sighed with relief. “How did Ghazel accomplish it?”
“He did not accomplish it. She died,” my employer said, “of an overdose! She made her way into the house and found the fish oil. What a party she must have had! They found her curled up…on your mattress.” I saw both her admiration of her foe and her delight in having outlived her.
“I apologize,” I said quietly, “for calling you ridiculous last night.”
But she did not seem to hear; her mood was too merry: “You know I am worried for Estelle. That she will fall in love with the skipper I’ve hired.
I would fall in love if I were still in my seventies, and as you know, she and I have the same taste in men.
And the Caprice! I was pleased to discover they had not renamed her.
I’ve been through that once; it is an ordeal.
You have to give the old name to Poseidon, who it seems is still out there, and hail the gods of the wind. All sorts of things.”
I shook my head. No apology was necessary, apparently. “Where will you travel first?”
“To Split, I think. That is the closest city, and Croatia is quite beautiful. But I am thinking of returning to Jaipur, which I have not visited in many years.”
I went to a mental map of India. “Isn’t that…isn’t that landlocked?”
She considered this. “They were always speaking of building a canal. I’m sure they’ve finished it by now.”
We sat in silence after this bit of absurdity, watching as the water lost its blackness, as if dissolving the effects of night, becoming first striped in mauve and blue and then, as the sun rose fully into the sky, turning the streaked whiteness of mother-of-pearl.
She took the cane in one hand. “You are still thinking of America?”
“I have a ticket.”
She was saying: “We both know what would become of you.”
I snapped to attention. “And what is that?”
“You would go back to old habits,” she told me, tapping one of my slippers with the tip of her cane.
“Such as?”
“You would start thinking again that literature began with Hemingway and art with Warhol. That the fate of the world depends upon your presidential election. That a proper dinner conversation is to discuss your favorite television shows. Like every American, you would lose—”
“Really?” I broke in, irritated. “What would I lose?”
She looked at me at last. “Your sense of humor.”
I sighed and found myself chuckling, shaking my head.
It was true I would miss the ridiculousness of life at Villa Coco, her errant tales, and even more stories I had not heard and would now not be part of.
A passing boat sent waves that splashed over the seawall, and we pulled our feet back to avoid getting soaked.
“I have a funny story,” she began, this time without her usual verve for storytelling.
She seemed to be saying it not to me but to the sea.
“I lost the Caprice to a man! Of all things! He was a Ukrainian toothpaste magnate. Isn’t that absurd?
But very handsome and very charming. I met him at a party in Capri, and we took off our shoes to dip our feet in the pool, and tout à coup he grabbed my shoe and threw it far into the sea!
‘Now you can never leave me,’ he said. The most charming thing a man had ever done. I think you know a little about love.”
I said nothing as she looked out across the water. Concern creased her face; the hour had come and gone for her beloved boat to arrive. But she kept on with her story:
“Later I cheated him and was caught out. A little jewel. It is simply my nature. I could not give it back because I had already sold it to buy the Caprice and so on and time had passed. I told you Oscar and I had sailed her all the way to Istanbul! So the Ukrainian said, ‘Darling, I will save you from prison. I will take your boat and we will part as friends.’ I had no choice. Perhaps I loved him, but I loved my boat more and I have only my own bad character to blame.”
“Was he who you met at Florian?”
“No,” she said quietly. “He is long dead. That was his grandson.”
We sat for a moment as the morning sun lit the building across the canal.
“I see you have bought the slippers Oscar suggested,” she said. I lifted them into view. “Do you feel like the pope?” she asked.
“Not very,” I said, then added: “I guess this is goodbye.”
She sniffed and kept looking out to sea.
“I will always think,” I added, “of the most glamorous shit in Southern Europe.”
She let out a yelp of laughter and briefly touched my hand; I knew this was as close to goodbye as I was likely to get from her. I looked out again to the empty horizon.
“Do you think they are coming?” she asked briskly.
“Of course,” I said. “Isn’t that what you agreed?”
“I wonder if I should not have paid them in full last night. As you see, I can be foolish when I want something so dearly.”
I turned to face her. “Have you seen the boat?”
She seemed startled. “Not in many years.”
A feeling of dread overcame me. “How do you know he even has your boat? And you paid him already. That wasn’t wise.”
“You think not?” she asked. “I am becoming unsure.”
I put my hand on hers, and I could feel it trembling. “Oh no,” I said, “what if you’ve been fooled?”
The old larcenist, the old pirate queen, my baronessa—her eyes were wide, her mouth hanging slightly open as she looked far out across the Giudecca Canal at the brick Fortuny building.
A bit of sun broke through, hit the waters, and darted across her features, scribbling as if leaving its signature there.
She looked very old at that moment. Perhaps the years were flashing before her, not in sequential order like a train passing a village station, but in the strange associations of her mind in which all the nights in Jaipur, all the lovers’ words in French, all the Venetian childhood winters linked together and floated, in groups of two or three or more, like wreaths on Dal Lake.
A finale for the woman in the fourteenth row.
Perhaps it was occurring to her that this could be the end of her lucky streak; she had cast the shoe of fortune into the sea and now there was no leaving.
A cold wind came across the wintry canal and sent a shiver first through me, then through her.
Then through whatever ghosts attended us.
“Coco…,” I began.