— No. That night —
— Yes. That night Linka wrote you her first letter, which I confiscated in the morning, because I was so concerned for you and Mama that I was still thinking of calling the whole thing off. Now, however, it was she who would not hear of it; it was just like her to feel obliged to honor her promise to our Eastward-ho-ing doctor; and I grew so fearful that she might decide to make the voyage by herself that I had no choice but to give in. The next morning we went to buy traveling clothes more suitable for our trip than the lace dresses on Linka’s shopping list. We bought ourselves blazers like the coachman’s, and cork helmets for protection against the sun, and fine silk scarves for protection against the dust — here, this rag around my neck is what is left of one! At teatime we boarded a train for Arth-Goldau, and the next morning, by the lakeside there, Linka wrote you a second letter, which I expropriated too: I still had my doubts, you see, about the entire business. But evening found us on a train again, heading southeast, for Lugano, where we arrived on Saturday morning. Since we had a long stopover there, we rented a carriage to tour the town and even dropped by Frau Lippmann’s boardinghouse, entering incognito in our blazers and cork helmets for a gander at the dressed-to-kill yeshiva students who had just finished the morning prayer and were now assembled in the lobby to bless the Sabbath wine while keeping an eye out for possible wives. In the end, we introduced ourselves to Frau Lippmann. She was quite furious about the cancellation — she would not, she said, refund so much as a franc from the advance you had paid — she even refused to surrender a letter from you until Linka wheedled it out of her with gracious smiles. And so we sat down to read your lovely correspondence, passing it back and forth to make out what it said while thanking our lucky stars for sparing us the torments of such an establishment — after which we continued our tour of the town, which is quite beautiful. That evening we boarded a sleeping coach for Milan, from which I wrote you my first letter, although in my concern for you I pocketed that too. On Sunday morning we arrived in Milan. We found an overcast city drenched by a summer downpour with lots of Italians buzzing all around us — with church bells ringing — with all the restaurants shut down. And so we joined a crowd of worshipers for mass in the duomo, taking refuge there from the rain and kneeling when everyone else did, although you may rest assured that we did not touch the Sacrament. And that was all we saw of that gray, busy city, because we were in a hurry to catch the train for Venice — in the compartment of which we struck up a conversation with a most helpful German. (This was not the first time I noticed that Germans on trains befriended us with great ease. There was something about us they took to — we must have seemed to them a charming couple — and finding out that we were brother and sister only made them grow fonder of us.) This particular German was an educated man, a novelist, who traveled to Venice every year and was well acquainted with the city and its treasures; he gave us much useful information, such as the fact that there are epidemics in Venice at the end of every summer that the authorities try to hush up. We must not, he made us promise, drink any unboiled water or eat any fruit — indeed, he so thoroughly alarmed us that I all but pulled the emergency brake and returned to Frau Lippmann’s at once in the hope that she might take us in in her mercy.
— Yes. I had an attack of panic and wanted to turn around and head back — to pretend that it was all just a fantasy — a passing dream — that we had indeed never left Lugano. But when — exhausted and practically sleepwalking — we stepped out of the train station onto the Grand Canal and saw the marble palaces shimmering above the slimy water — saw that city — that jewel of culture — tottering on the banks of its fetid, scummy waterways — we grasped in a trice how magnificently tenacious the human spirit is — we felt such a surge of love for humanity — for its suffering and — yes! — its epidemics — that we walked — wide awake now — into that dream of our own free will, because Venice is in fact a waking dream…
— Yes… yes…
— Yes… we remembered… we both remembered it simultaneously…
— Yes… yes… so you were…
— It was Grandfather who paid for that trip? What ever made him so bold and original…?
— Yes… we were following in your footsteps without having planned it that way… how cunning the human soul is!
— Thirty years ago! Wait… that was in 1869! We kept imagining how the two of you must have looked then — you, Father, still with your sidelocks — a Jew in black in a black gondola, ha ha…
— A young woman, of course… hardly more than a girl… the same age as Linka…
— Thirty years, I kept telling myself. Perhaps I was even conceived there, eh, Father? The canals have rather a placental smell… was it there?
— But we wrote you every day!
— In back of San Marco, in the Hotel Roma…
— Two rooms, of course — each of them palatial…
— A thousand lirettas per diem.
— You can figure it out according to the exchange rate.
— Quite sumptuously… and no one would believe that Linka was Jewish… ma no, they simply all said…
— Terribly hot.
— There was not a sign of it — a pure figment of the literary imagination… One morning we crossed paths on one of the canals and called out jokingly, “Where is your plague, signore?”
— We were careful, naturally. We drank wine instead of water and asked for tea when we were thirsty and let it cool while looking out at the sea that sent its long, lavishly bejeweled fingers into the city — fingers, mind you, that could easily have seized and swallowed us had the tide but risen a little… On our last evening we went to the harbor to see if Mani’s ship really existed. And indeed, it looked like a mirage, a small, flimsy thing equipped with an auxiliary sail. I shuddered at the sight of its frailty — but Linka just laughed as though drunk and insisted on going to a restaurant by the water to eat seafood.
— Shellfish. Clams — snails — all sorts of underwater grasshoppers that are fried in butter…
— I don’t know what got into us… perhaps our excitement… or the sheer abandon of sucking away at all those pinkish mollusks…
— Perhaps we feared ending up at the bottom of the sea without ever having tasted any of those creeping-crawling-Christian delicacies…
— Most heathenishly… Linka could not eat enough of it…
— Boiled — fried — grilled… were you not there?
— No matter. We ate, and the next morning we rose early and went to the harbor to make sure of our cabins. We hung our clothing in their little closets and went ashore again — and only then, when I knew that you could no longer call us back, did I send my first telegram and let Linka post the letters to you. Then we reboarded the ship and waited on deck for Dr. Mani — who, however, did not appear. There was a steady flow of Arabs, Egyptians, Greeks, Turks, even an English couple, even some Russian monks — but our doctor had vanished into thin air, as if he indeed had been a fantasy of ours. A chill ran down my spine. What was I to do? Where, madman that I was, was I taking her? I was all for abandoning ship while there was time, but Linka refused to lose hope — no, not even when the ship began to rumble and a large sail was run up on the yard. And just then what did we see but the same carriage that had set out from Basel in the dead of night, crawling up the pier beneath its cargo — its coachman hatless, jacketless, in his shirtsleeves — his beard unkempt — most agitated and besotted — cracking his whip at the pavement. Beside him was our portly Dr. Mani in his white suit; bareheaded too, with his hat tied to a lanyard on his shoulder; but fresh-looking and in fine fettle as he ordered the longshoremen to unload. We shouted to him from the deck — he saw us at once and waved his hat buoyantly — the plotters and deckhands fell upon the carriage and — for time was short — quickly whisked all its baggage to the hold. Meanwhile, the coachman was tussling fiercely with Mani, who was wagging a little black notebook at him. We had no idea what the fellow was so upset about — he kept clinging to the bridle of the horse, which was pawing uneasily — until suddenly the Greek deckhands returned, hustled him away, freed the horse from its harness, pulled a large gray sack over its head, and — cheered by the onlookers — tugged it with much hilarity aboard the ship. Mani followed close behind them; the rope gangplank was raised; and the ship, which was straining at the leash, began to move from its berth, leaving the Zurich banker’s hansom all alone on the pier with its traces drooping on the pavement. The big coachman stood in the space vacated by the horse, a despairing and incredulous figure, until he and his carriage shrank to a single small dot.