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  Now this is what I, Cecilia, found out at the convent, at Florian, and on the street about the happiest son of the happy city – Casanova.

  The Empress Maria Teresa of Austria took up a list of the deadly sins. Seeing that there were seven, she thought it possible to close an eye to six of them. But Maria Teresa hated Lust. Against it she unleashed all her passion, and sought it out everywhere for extermination. When Casanova was known to have entered Vienna in 1747, Maria Teresa set up an Emergency Chastity Commission. Girls walked the streets carrying rosaries to forfend him.

  Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (the very words send the tongue dancing and the saliva swilling round the mouth!) – how does one think of him? As satyr of the bedchamber, necromancer, gambler, alchemist, spy; the only man ever to escape from the Leads, the dread prisons of the Doges’ Palace. Not so much a man, was Casanova, as a trademark for louche behaviour. If he were rendered in stone – God forbid – it would be as the spouting priapus of the Grand Canal. You like to see him as universal human lusts written larger than life, complete with black cloak and foamy cravat. You have this sinister feeling about him: that he was irresistible, that he exerted occult sexual powers, that he devoured women as if sucking up a sherbet.

  But only one third of Casanova’s memoirs are devoted to his love-life. According to my present calculations, Casanova conquered one hundred and thirty times. He was erotically diligent for thirty-five years, so he conducted fewer than four love-affairs every twelve months: scarcely a matter for bringing out the rosary! The most vigorous organ of Casanova’s was his heart. Intimate congress was rarely mere recreation for him. He made love with love. ‘Without love,’ he always declared, ‘this great business is a vile thing.’

  He was fifty-seven when I saw him in the doorway with that doll-like girl. He was African-skinned, large-eyed, taller than any other man in Venice. We would have some months together which will stay with me for the rest of my life. There was another man, later – between them, they cut me in two, like a magician’s assistant. Always think of the numbers. Casanova did. He was a cabbalist: he believed in the spirituality of numbers, in the fusion of alphabet and algebra. His women and his trysting places were chosen scientifically, after delicious deliberations over charts and amulets, jujus and periapts. He loved the confluence of dates and times that brought him to his newest lover. If it did not work out, it was not meant to work out: thus he preserved himself and his lovers from pangs of disappointment or of self-doubt.

  It was an astonishing and fine thing to be desired by a man like Casanova. All his courtships were Arcadian. To win us, he would suffer any kind of physical or moral humiliation, philosophically. When he had time, he would win us with the most assiduous attentions and deliciously elaborate scams. When he was in a hurry, then, yes, sometimes he had recourse to gifts and money. Love always cost him all he had. Casanova gave everything in the shop window; he left nothing in the store-room. But when he had conquered, well, the women were the true winners, for he devoted himself to our pleasure with the intensity of a vocation. Indeed he believed fervently in female pleasure, thinking it greater than his own. After all, he reasoned, the feast takes place in our own house.

  The women he loved seldom hated him afterwards, and I believe we felt a kind of sisterhood. We knew about each other. This was a sorority of good fortune, of having known a man who was able to unite his heart, soul and sexual parts. A man who would say, ‘You are bewitching. How did you get that way?’ And truly want to know. He could tell you everything about yourself, every slightest motion of your soul, run a tender finger through every concealed fold of your thought. Here was a man who would be aroused by watching you eat a peach, write a poem about it, share the peach and the poem with you, and lick the peach juice from your chin on his way to your lips. And outside your window the next day he would leave a peach, the sight of which would turn to soft sweet pulp both your memory and the lining of your womb.

  He would be faithful to you, with regard to the peach, that is. No other woman would receive her tributes in this kind. One day he would make you and your peach immortal, by writing your story in his memoirs with breathless and renewing tenderness. In the meantime, he would sympathise with the monthly agitations of your loins. He had memorised the swell of your cheek and the turn of your leg. He knew the track of your life-line on your palm and exactly which kind of kiss caused your heart to fandango inside you. He would love your body odour, fresh or sour, and the sweat he distilled upon your skin during love was the sweetest smell of all to Giacomo Casanova.

  Of course my own womb was scarcely functional when we met. I would like to say that our first encounter was something extraordinary for him – as it was for me – but Casanova courted me in the ways long proven.

  He used his cat. This cat has become famous among the women of Venice, though the men know nothing of it. In the old days Casanova was adroit at climbing in and out of windows. But by the time he chose me for his lover, in the very young spring of 1782, he was no longer so flexible of spine and limb. He sent a messenger.

  Women first became aware of the cat in their dreams: the rhythmic throbs of its purr infiltrated their sleep. Eventually they would wake one night to find the cat sitting on their pillow, with its paw gentle upon their throat. The stroking of the throat was one of Casanova’s own signature gestures. The organ of ingestion was loved by Casanova, who adored food and adored watching women eat. For him, anyway, a throat was an amatory part, and one of his favourites.

  The woman would not know that yet. The eyes of the cat would unnerve her. She could no longer stay in bed. She would become suffused with unbearable heat and sexual electricity. If she had a lover or a husband, she would turn to him. Thinking that she wanted attention, he would shrink from her in pretended sleep. For Casanova was always meticulous in his research. When a new affair was the talk of Florian, he smiled to himself. A neglected wife or lover awaited him, whether she knew it or not.

  She would run feverishly down to the kitchen for wine or water, or to the canal, for air. There she would find Casanova waiting for her: Casanova would sweep her onto the kitchen table or into his waiting gondola, where they would shed their clothes like snake-skins, writhing in the dark. They would talk for hours in the tender intermissions, and she would return to her bed, happier than when she had left it. She might never see him again, or she might; she would know when the cat came to her in her dreams. Or she might find herself purring, and know that he was nearby, or ready for her. On summer nights, she might wake to hear Casanova’s feline violin below her window and turn to find the cat looking into her eyes.

  Sometimes the cat delivered love letters tucked in his velvet collar – charming leaves of paper in Casanova’s clear hand, notes that sang like his violin. These notes gave times and places for assignations, the more risky, complicated and difficult the better.

  As I have explained, I myself must have been chosen by number. He would never tell me which one. Was I, perhaps, the seventh convent girl to cross his path on the seventh day of the seventh month? Did my birthday or the hour of my conception run on a ley-line towards his bed? Was it my tough wit? (He would later explain to me that intelligence had become the medium that his blunted senses needed to enter into play in these depleted days of his middle age. In the old days, a pretty face or even a shapely elbow would have secured a hearty performance.) So it could have been my tongue, which was already sharpened on the tears of my sister, Sofia. Or was it something in my future – a dream, a child, a lover – that made me the piatto del giorno on May 1st 1782 for this hungry man?

  In view of what happened afterwards, I think that this last may have been the case: I was chosen for the future I already contained inside me. But, knowing Casanova, it could have equally been my eyes, or my hands, or it could have been the way I ate torta al cioccolato. The performance with the girl in the doorway – was it a gentle education for me? At the time I thought I would never know. Indeed, even now, I truly know only wha
t happened to me, that night I drank fragolino for the first time and took the bath that would become even more sinful than I had planned.

  I had taken precautions. If I was to be discovered, I had reasoned, it would be through the door, and by my mother or my sister. I made sure the door was barred and bolted after the maid had filled the bath with water. The maid warned me, as she left, that my namesake, Saint Cecilia, had been boiled alive in her bath as a punishment for her wilful nature. How many times had I heard this? Through the steam and the candlelight, the maid looked insubstantial, like an annunciating angel. But she gave me a very earthy smile as I lifted my nightdress over my head and unloosed the sheaf of my hair with a subtle thud against my naked back. This was followed by a little nod, acknowledging my maturing body. Then she was gone.

  It grew quiet. I entered the bath, sipped the fragolino from a crystal glass, and dipped the cake into it. The image of Saint Cecilia, thrashing like a lobster, faded, and I sank deeper into the water. I watched the candlelight posturing on the walls, like the warm ghosts of the watery reflections that keep us company by day in Venice. I assumed my Botticelli pose, a swag of my hair in my hand. The appearance of the cat, through the window, took me by surprise. I watched as he approached me, sat by the edge of the bath, and reached towards my throat with a soft paw. I am a lover of cats. I let him stroke me. Then I heard the violin.

  To this day I cannot resist a violin. That night, the fragolino fluttered in my blood, heated by the steaming bath water. The window was big enough for me to climb through. Still wet, still naked, still streaked with chocolate and with fragolino sticky on my chin, I dropped from the window-sill into strong arms. The fragolino had made me drowsy – I must have been a dead weight for him – but, big man that he was, he swept me easily under his cloak, through our courtyard and water-gate and into the gondola. I felt the lurch as we left dry land together. I smelt his breath in the darkness: garlic, cinnamon and prosecco. I felt the hairs of his wrists on my back, and his cool porcelain buttons against my wet breasts.

  All Venetian gondolas are black, by decree. In the extravagant days of our early splendour, they were every colour, darting like birds of paradise across the Grand Canal. Later, sumptuary laws had stripped them of their vivacity. But that was merely on the outside. Even the Inquisition could not penetrate the opulent secrecy of the felze, the surprisingly commodious cabin perched on the top of the boat. Inside Casanova’s gondola, where the moonlight leaked in through the felze’s black curtains, there was refulgence of crimson velvet and purple satin. I distinguished a low divan, draped with a coverlet of squirrel fur. Onto this, he laid me tenderly as an egg. I looked up and saw Casanova’s face. He kissed both my eyes, and both my feet. He laid his lips on mine, which fell open. After a long time, he drew away. His eyes never left mine while I watched him undress. I saw thighs and elbows emerging from brocade and velvet. I saw the unpeeling of stockings. I saw lace and linen discarded. When it was done, he kneeled in front of me, and reached for my hand, which he placed between his legs. My fingers curled around him and my thumb rested at the tip, where it seemed to belong.

  ‘Saint Cecilia,’ he said, his eyes swimming with tenderness, ‘still hot from her boiling bath. My beautiful little martyr, you are about to make a more gentle sacrifice.’

  He lowered his head but kept his eyes fixed upon mine. I kept my hand upon him while he licked the chocolate from my face, and the droplets of bath-water from my shoulders. He did not lose sight of my face for a second. I held my breath and felt the hot nudge of his tongue upon my ribs. I was not frightened. I was only afraid I might die of excitement before it was over. He bent to kiss my belly, my breasts and my throat, where he lingered a moment. When he moved up to my mouth, he whispered into it, ‘Yes?’

  Yes. I may have said it aloud. I cannot tell you if I did.

  That first time was silent, apart from my small cries, and finally, his. Then he blew quick puffs of cool breath over my efflorescent face and neck until I stopped trembling and could hear above the noise of my heart.

  The second time, he took inventory of my body. How grateful were his appreciations of my throat, my fingers, my breasts and my thighs! How grateful to my ear were those unfamiliar words: beautiful, exquisite, adorable! My feet were large, but in Casanova’s fingers they felt such little delicate china ones, little whispers of white skin and coral enamel. He found reasons to love even the parts of myself I disliked: my long arms and legs — ‘See they were built to be wrapped around a man!’ He told me things about my face I did not know before: about the conch-shell curve of my closed eyelids, the cat-like triangle of my jaw, the pomegranate-seed translucency of my lips and the interplay of the Tiziano reds and Tintoretto browns in my hair.

  ‘And you have Aventurine eyes, Cecilia,’ he told me, finally. I thought of the goblets in my parents’ palazzo: glistening brown Murano glass flecked with gold. Aventurine eyes, that’s what I have, I told myself.

  I had been addicted to beauty since I learnt, precociously, to distinguish one colour from another. Remember the ravishing green caterpillars! Now it occurred to me that beauty might also be found in my very own person. I held up my much-praised hand to the moonlight – yes! It was lovely! Casanova seized it and kissed it softly from fingertip to wrist, punctuating each touch of his lips with a new and more subtle compliment. Now he praised my unabashed curiosity and my instinctive skills in giving pleasure by accepting it. I was absorbent as muslin to this downpour of compliments.

  Hours later, when we had poled to San Vio, and lay throbbing like lizards in the moonlight, I asked, ‘Why me? How do you know me? Why did you want me?’ I was still greedy for extravagant tributes and endearments. After that night I always would be.

  But now Casanova took my hand and replied, very seriously, ‘Does it matter, now? Didn’t you find love a good thing, Cecilia? Must you question where it came from?’

  My curiosity was not to be repressed. ‘But why me? Was it because I was a virgin?’

  ‘It’s true that virgins are a delicacy, and that I love to pluck the first fruits. But then I have also loved brides-to-be, with their wombs ready in happy agitation, and even women with their bellies already swollen with a little passenger, which means that it’s the safest thing in the world. But in your case, let us say that I saw you. And that it was you who seduced me in that moment. And because you were difficult to obtain. For me, love gains in strength when I see that the conquest will cost me an effort.’

  ‘Do you ever fail?’ I found myself hoping that he did.

  ‘I prefer to relegate the possibility of failure to the category of impossibilities,’ he said, with a flourish of his fingers. ‘But yes,’ he added, with his hand clenched in his lap, ‘it has happened. It happens.’

  He ran a gentle finger over my eyelids and kissed my nose. I thought about the violin, the cat, the waiting gondola, his foreknowledge of my bath via the complicity of the maid. I thought about the performance in the doorway. It was more attention than I had received in my whole life.

  ‘I’m glad that you did not fail. I felt it very strongly. Something happened inside me.’

  ‘Yes, I know it did, my soul.’

  ‘But I loved it. I would like to do it again.’

  ‘Yes, I know you would, Cecilia,’ he said, and he stroked my throat down to my breasts. His fingers swam gently around my nipples. I writhed on the rug and he smiled. ‘But my steed is presently resting in his stable.’ He pointed at his depleted organ upon its bed of damp hair. I had never seen anything so fascinating. I could have gazed at it for hours. However, Casanova gently raised my eyes to his, with a handful of my hair. We looked each other fully in the face. ‘This intermission is a good thing,’ he continued, ‘because it means we have time to talk. Talking is in many ways the best part of the thing.’

  ‘But I can talk to anyone. I can talk to my sister.’

  ‘You and I have the privilege of talking in a special way together. We can describe the pleasure
s we have just enjoyed. I believe that I can feel myself stirring again when I remember them. We can describe what we want, which will bring fire to our desires, and then we can make our wishes come to life.’

  Outside the gondola, the moonlight wavered over the water and the pearly domes of Santa Maria della Salute. And inside I groomed the steed. Casanova talked in tongues to every part of me. Later, he asked me about my dreams. When I told him I wanted to be an artist, he stretched supine, opened his arms, and said, ‘Paint me.’

  ‘I have no brush.’

  ‘Then use your tongue, Saint Cecilia, patroness of all musical instruments, and inventor, I believe, of the organ.’

  Such confidence he had in his body! He showed no self-consciousness about the flowing sweat I licked up and the crepy crevices into which I, tentatively at first, but with increasing enthusiasm, inserted my tongue. He let me investigate all the little pouches of loose skin that hung at the base of his spine, the neat yellowed toenails, his sweet, tired hair-fringed nipples, the salty hollows under his arms. He did not stop me. I was welcome to everything. Where mere inquisitiveness might have stopped, a fervent new instinct took me further. For this kind body, author of such happiness in me that my skin now hummed with delight, I began to feel something I had not known before: a desire to give that same kind of pleasure myself. Casanova understood my epiphany the moment I did. He opened his eyes wide, grateful as a baby looking up at its mother before it takes the breast.

  ‘I knew it!’ he said, and turned me gently upon my back again.

  The third time, when he suddenly withdrew and released his joy upon the well of my stomach, he traced a word in the drying stickiness. I realised that he had done this each time, but only now was I sufficiently composed to question him.

  ‘What word is that?’ I asked, straining my neck to try to read it.