So we gave short shrift to her membership in the Italian CP and her attendant sentiment toward our avant-garde simpletons of the thirties, attributing both to Western frivolity. Had she been even an avowed Fascist, i think we would have lusted after her no less. She was positively stunning, and when subsequently she'd fallen for the worst possible dimwit on the periphery of our circle, some highly paiddolt of Armenian extraction, the common response was amazement and anger rather than jealousy or manly regret. Of course, come to think of it, one shouldn't get angry over a piece of fine lace soiled by some strong ethnic juices. Yet \ve did. For it was more than a letdown: it was a betrayal of the fabric.
In those days we associated style with substance, beauty with intelligence. After all, we were a bookish crowd, and at a certain age, if you believe in literature, you think everyone shares or should share your conviction and taste. So if one looks elegant, one is one of us. Innocent of the world outside, of the West in particular, we didn't know yet that style could be purchased wholesale, that beauty could be just a commodity. So we regarded the sight as the physical extension and embodiment of our ideals and principles, and what she wore, transparent things included, belonged to civilization.
So strong was that association, and so pretty was the sight, that even now, years later, belonging to a different age and, as it were, to a different country, I began to slip unwittingly into the old mode. The first thing I asked her as I stood pressed to her nutria coat on the deck of the overcrowded vaporetto was her opinion of Montale's Motets, recently published. The familiar flash of her pearls, thirty-two strong, echoed by the sparkle on the rim of her hazel pupil and promoted to the scattered silver of the Milky Way overhead, was all I got in response, but that was a lot. To ask, in the heart of civilization, about its latest was perhaps a tautology. Perhaps I was simply being impolite, as the author wasn't a local.
he boat's slow progress through the night was like the passage of a coherent thought through the subconscious. On both sides, knee-deep in pitch-black water, stood the enormous carved chests of dark pa- lazzi filled with unfathomable treasures—most likely gold, judging from the low-intensity yellow electric glow emerging now and then from cracks in the shutters. The overall feeling was mythological, cyclopic, to be precise: I'd entered that infinity I beheld on the steps of the stazione and now was moving among its inhabitants, along the bevy of dormant cy- clopses reclining in black water, now and then raising and lowering an eyelid.
The nutria-clad sight next to me began explaining in a somewhat hushed voice that she was taking me to my hotel, where she had reserved a room, that perhaps we'd meet tomorrow or the day after, that she'd like to introduce me to her husband and her sister. I liked the hush in her voice, though it fit the night more than the message, and replied in the same conspiratorial tones that it's always a pleasure to meet potential relatives. That was a bit strong for the moment, but she laughed, in the same muffled way, putting a hand in abrown leather glove to her lips. The passengers around us, mostly dark-haired, whose number was responsible for our proximity, were immobile and equally subdued in their occasional remarks to one another, as though the content of their exchanges was also of an intimate nature. Then the sky was momentarily obscured by the huge marble parenthesis of a bridge, and suddenly everything was flooded with light. "Rialto," she said in her normal voice.
here is something primordial about traveling on water, even for short distances. You are informed that you are not supposed to be there not so much by your eyes, ears, nose, palate, or palm as by your feet, which feel odd acting as an organ of sense. Water unsettles the principle of horizontality, especially at night, when its surface resembles pavement. No matter how solid its substitute—the deck—under your feet, on water you are somewhat more alert than ashore, your faculties are more poised. On water, for instance, you never get absentminded the way you do in the street: your legs keep you and your wits in constant check, as if you were some kind of compass. Well, perhaps what sharpens your wits while traveling on water is indeed a distant, roundabout echo of the good old chor- dates. At any rate, your sense of the other on water gets keener, as though heightened by a common as well as a mutual danger. The loss of direction is a psychological category as much as it is a navigational one. Be that as it may, for the next ten minutes, although we were moving in the same direction, I saw the arrow of the only person I knew in that city and mine diverge by at least 45 degrees. Most likely because this part of the Canal Grande was better lit.
We disembarked at the Accademia landing, prey to firm topography and the correspondingmoral code. After a short meander through narrow lanes, I was deposited in the lobby of a somewhat cloistered pensione, kissed on the cheek—more in the capacity of the Minotaur, I felt, than the valiant hero—and wished good night. Then my Ariadne vanished, leaving behind a fragrant thread of her expensive (was it Shalimar?) perfume, which quickly dissipated in the musty atmosphere of a pensione otherwise suffused with the faint but ubiquitous odor ofpee. I stared for a while at the furniture. Then I hit the sack.
hat's how I found myself for the first time in this city. As it turned out, there was nothing particularly auspicious or ominous about this arrival of mine. If that night portended anything at all, it was that I'd never possess this city; but then I never had any such aspiration. As a beginning, I think this episodewill do, although as far as the-only-person-I- knew-in-this-city was concerned, it rather marked the end of our acquaintance. I saw her two or three times subsequently during that stay in Venice; and indeed I was introduced to her sister and to her husband. The former turned out to be a lovely woman: as tall and slender as my Ariadne and perhaps even brighter, but more melancholy and, for all I could tell, even more married. The latter, whose appearance completely escapes my memory for reasons of redundancy, was a scumbag of an architect, of that ghastly postwar persuasion that has done more harm to the European skyline than any Luftwaffe. In Venice, he defiled a couple ofwonderful campi with his edifices, one of which was naturally a bank, since this sort of human animal loves a bank with absolutely narcissistic fervor, with the longing of an effect for its cause. For that "structure" (as they called it in those days) alone, I thought, he should be cuckolded. Butsince, like his wife, he, too, seemed to be a member of the CP, the job, I concluded, was best left to a comrade.
Fastidiousness was one part of it; the other part was that when, somewhat later, I called the-only-person-I-knew-in-that-city from the depths of my labyrinth one blue evening, the architect, perhaps sensing in my broken Italian something untoward, cut the thread. So now it really was up to our red Armenian brethren.
ubsequently, I was told, she divorced the man and married a U.S. Air Force pilot, who turned out to be the nephew of the mayor of a small town in the great state ofMichigan, where I once dwelt. Small world, and the longer you live, no man or woman makes it larger. So were I looking for consolation, I could derive it from the thought that we now are both treading the same ground—ofa different continent. This sounds, ofcourse, like Statius talking to Virgil, but then it's only proper for the likes of me to regard America as a kind ofPurgatorio—not to mention Dante himself suggesting as much. The only difference is that her heaven is far better settled than mine. Hence my forays into my version of Paradise, which she inaugurated so graciously. At any rate, for the last seventeen years I've been returning to this city, or recurring in it, with the frequency of a bad dream.