Carnevale Read online

  Sofia hankered for dresses with large panniers. She was duly reproved by my father, ‘That is the most stupid fashion I have seen in years. Looks like a net for catching birds! A cauldron! I’m afraid that the noble ladies have adopted it as a good way of hiding bastards.’ He wanted his daughters to be like our palazzo: unobtrusive on the outside and perfectly set up on the inside. We had furs and family jewellery but they were rarely aired. It was enough for my father to know that he had secured them for us. In the happy city, my father was one of the rare men who felt that way He was a Venetian, so he could not avoid a weakness for beauty, but he knew how to discipline it.

  As little girls, Sofia and I wore our hair parted in the middle and coiled at the back. We both started the day with a white linen cap. Only Sofia came home with hers still on. My hair was always wild. No one was willing to withstand the screams and bites that ensued if they tried to untangle it. I refused pomade and demonstrated how powder made me retch and cough. I carried a feral smell, always. The nuns often seemed about to tell my mother something incriminating about me, but they could never quite bring themselves to the point. My body was always at fault. In my sleep my skin grew hot, bathing the sheets in sweat, so they had to be changed daily. In winter my hands were always cold. My mother would plunge my wincing flesh into hot water to unlock my coiled cold fingers and then she would clap them together. Then my fingers shuddered to life like little crab legs.

  In Antonio’s studio, I never had any problem with my hands, unless it was reaching too often for the same colour Antonio required. Too many sitters were asking for me, and there were days when he sat doing his accounts, while a family, former clients of his, sat for me. They would not meet his eye, even when they handed him the fat purse I had earned for him.

  The situation with Antonio became too difficult. With Casanova’s help, I found a studio of my own. It was a large room just off the courtyard of the Palazzo Balbi Valier at San Vio. From my mullioned windows, I could see the Grand Canal and the glory of the Palazzo Barbaro opposite. I could also step out between the three arches of the courtyard, onto the water steps, and bathe my feet in the iced flow of Venice’s crucial artery on hot days. I could watch the seaweeds flapping slowly like aqueous bats around my toes and feel my blood cooling inside me.

  It was convenient for Casanova, who would arrive by gondola when my clients had left and sweep me off. He was ever considerate of my work, preferring to wait, endlessly scribbling diagrams of duplicating cubes, a favourite obsession, while I finished something properly, even though his smell made my paintbrush perform distractedly. Sometimes we would stand, wrapped in each other’s arms, looking at my work. And very often the same exclamation would rise to both our lips at once: the left eye is too green! The right hand is unnatural! She has a bitter taste in her mouth!

  Casanova’s cat came to live in the studio. The pantegane, the monstrous Venetian water rats, had easy access to my courtyard, which the cat now patrolled with severity. He was also useful in my work, posing as the winged lion for many a Venetian or tourist who wanted the symbol of Venice inserted in the background of their portrait. The cat posed willingly with his paw upon a stone Bible. I swear I came in to find him examining my portrait of him more than once. He seemed a little embarrassed and swaggered off. But I knew what I had seen. I did not laugh at him, because he honoured me with his love. Cat love is always conditional. He rejected all other cats, except the females he took and quickly fled from.

  ‘You are selfish,’ Casanova told him, ‘there’s enough love here for twenty cats. My friend Crébillon in Naples had eighteen or twenty of them, and none suffered a deprivation of caresses.’ The cat twined knowingly around our legs, tolerant of our point of view, but absolutely resolute against the personal enactment of it.

  I wanted to ask Casanova, ‘And you have love enough for how many women?’ For I had heard something that week about a woman named Francesca Buschini. But for the moment, though my curiosity was alerted, my sense of safety was stronger. Casanova had as much love for me as I could ever want. I would not be selfish, like the cat.

  Sometimes Casanova took me to the island of San Michele, inhabited by the monks of the Camaldolese order. There was one particular grave where we loved to make love, feeling the cool moss upon our backs, each in turn. We most often went to the softly mossed tombstone of Fortunato, a young novice who had died a hundred years before. Sometimes we would be able to read sweet phrases from his epitaph afterwards, etched upon my shoulder …

  Con culto d’amore

  spargono fiori e pregano pace …

  In the name of love,

  Scatter flowers and beg for peace …

  … diede l’ultimo de’ suoi dolci sorrisi …

  ... he gave us the last of his sweet smiles …

  Fortunato

  sempre estraneo alla terra

  anima fatta per cielo …

  Fortunato

  Always a stranger upon this earth

  With a soul made for heaven …

  The arrival at San Michele always excited me. The tall cypresses jutted out of the ground. Jade waves licked both sides of the church on its promontory. The baptistery was exactly like a large pale breast with an elongated white nipple … the sight of which started Casanova musing aloud about the milky delights that might be had with an albino lover – or two.

  You would think I might have felt hurt by this but I did not. The trick with him, with the way he did this, was that I suffered no jealousy, for no man ever had more tact or gentleness in this respect. Casanova made me feel that I was complicit in every enjoyment. He made me feel that I was the pinnacle of his pleasure, and everything else was merely an experiment in novelty. That being the case, one could not begrudge him his memories or his fantasies any more than a wine-lover’s mistress can begrudge a drop of Merlot upon her lover’s lips. They simply did not hurt me. In those days I was potent with love and happiness. My curiosity was stronger than my insecurity. More than that, I enjoyed Casanova’s strange tales with him, for I was already starting to realise that we were the same: that I was an addict of novelty myself. Every story he told me was a novelty. Every woman he described was a novelty, a glimpse at another life.

  I can picture him at the prow of his gondola, swaying slightly with the dipping waves. We had no need to make love in the graveyard. We made a special excursion to do so. It was the variety and the eroticism-in-death that excited both of us, and the picturesque ritual of our journey. We were not alone in feeling the seduction of San Michele. The island had not yet become our communal cemetery but its small graveyard had always held an unworldly lure for the Venetians, for we are all half in love with death. So there were always whispers, moist noises, exhalations and sighs of satisfaction from other graves, and other gardens, and pairs of hastening shadows stippling the moonlight. On damp nights, the tears of the evening trickled down the gravestones, and droplets wept gently from the needles of the cypresses, into the welcoming earth, and upon our naked skins. We loved those nights the best. Afterwards we carried an unearthly distillation of scents upon our skins, and made a pact not to wash until we saw each other again. I became unpopular at the convent in this period. My father would be disturbed by my smell at the breakfast table.

  ‘You smell like a swamp, Cecilia,’ said Sofia, who always smelt of milk and soap. ‘A swamp, in which something died.’

  ‘Wash yourself!’ said my mother.

  I went to the ewer in my bedroom and splashed water vindictively all over the floor. I touched myself with fingers still slippery from Casanova, until I lay panting upon the marble floor. All day at the convent, I would finger the embossing upon my shoulder and remember.

  Even when I go to San Michele today, I feel the erogenous tug of the place – all the souls are there because of copulations; extensive procreation alone has created the compost for this little field of death. I often wonder how many of these cadavers had, in their lives above the earth, made love as often as the
y wanted to? How many of us ever do? How many have made love in a way that makes the absence of it burn? When I was with Casanova, I was contaminated with his relentless optimism, and refused to think of the obscure future of our love. No, I thought only of the moment, of the sensation, and of the next novelty. I had not yet learnt to be afraid. In those days I never asked myself, But what am I that I should have your love? Can I hold it? Will it last? Am I worth it to you? I would learn to ask myself these things. I would learn that unrelenting vigilance for the first sign of ebbing love: that constant monitoring of the language of the mouth and the body, the first encounter with a hand that no longer rises a millimetre to cup itself snugly under yours. With Casanova I never needed to know such things. I had no sense that my happiness was in danger. I was happy and I had no thought that I could ever be otherwise.

  Sometimes we even gave truth to my alibi; we went out to San Lazzaro, once the island of the Venetian lepers and those unfortunates merely suspected of being so. In 1717, the Venetian Senate had granted the island, in perpetuity, to a small order of Armenian monks, fugitives from La Serenissima’s old Ottoman enemies. Within twenty years the industrious Armenians had transformed the island into a beautiful sanctuary, self-supporting and outward-looking. Visitors were welcome to visit their quiet cloisters filled with oriental flowers and the library full of impenetrable documents rescued from the fragile but violent history of the Armenian civilisation. The monks devoted themselves to the scrupulous search for and rescue of any Armenian manuscript that could be saved. They kept their race alive by saving its words.

  Sometimes I think we went to San Lazzaro for its silence, for the pleasure of hearing one hard green olive dropping from its tree and then the soft sucking noise of the dry earth welcoming back its seed. In the distance, we saw the fathers’ terraced walks, their oleanders and cypress trees. We lay in the long grass of the foreshore in each other’s arms.

  ‘I feel good here,’ Casanova announced. ‘Paint it for me, Cecilia. Please, my darling.’ He pulled a paintbrush from my pocket and traced the curve of my buttocks with it, slowly.

  ‘But I don’t paint landscapes,’ I protested. He tapped the brush in affectionate admonition. I seized it and took my turn to reprimand the contents of his pantaloons with it. Through the squirrel fur of my brush I felt the steed raise himself for another race.

  When we were replete with lovemaking, I painted. We talked about what would happen with our lives. We declaimed with equal enthusiasm upon this subject. The difference in our ages meant nothing. Casanova’s plans were even grander and more complicated than mine. It was as if an endless pageant of life and possibility still stretched out in front of him. But he also saw ways of making use of the life he had already lived. Even then, for years in fact, he had been considering the idea of writing his memoirs. Why not? I believed in him. I had heard him speak and had fallen under the spell of his words. Others would too, I was certain of it.

  My ambitions were of as tender concern for him. He continually plagued me to improve my French. ‘Make yourself elegant in that language, my soul,’ Casanova told me. ‘With perfect French you are the equal of anyone in any dining room in the world.

  ‘I shall, for example, write my memoirs in French, for the French can read. And will be permitted to read them. All civilised Italians, Germans and even the barbarous English speak French. I lived for months in London, barely needing a word of English. French is the language of exquisite snobbery, the private club of the rich, that same club from which you will draw your clients.

  ‘Remember that when an Italian novel is published they print the lie on the frontispiece that it’s “translated from the French”, otherwise no gentildonna will want to be seen with it on her balcony! Remember your painting heroines, Angelica Kauffman, Rosalba Carriera – fluent in French, both of them. Try to be like them. And even English, brutish as it sounds, is going to be important one day. There are things afoot over there.’

  ‘I would rather spend the time painting. I want colours, not words.’

  In the new studio, after setting up my easel, I had painted a large screen with a recital of the colours I loved and prescriptions of the ways to use them. Casanova reminded me of the screen and of what I had written upon it.

  ‘Darling, words are colours too. At least, they are in your mouth, in your words! That’s why your portraits are turning into poetry. Love poetry. You feel colours the way other people experience their emotions.’

  The Language of Colour

  Ultramarine Blue, the queen and courtesan of the blues, the most noble and most flexible of hues, both common and royal. Buy it by the ounce according to its goodness, or by the grain, if exquisite. The most precious blues are ground from lapis lazuli, brought from Phoenicia in tall ships. The most sought-after demimondaines have eyes of this colour.

  Cobalt Blue, a very bourgeois lady, cool and efficient, sometimes wanting to be greener. But she can be contained, with skill. You can add a little Lead White to maintain her blue intensity.

  Cerulean Blue, charming the birds out of the trees with its transparency and luminosity. Good for the background skies of happy people.

  Prussian Blue, of fighting strength, though, surprisingly, it can be softened to baby-slipper colours, when mixed with white. Middle-aged men and small boys should be painted wearing this colour.

  Indigo, a spicy pod, staining to dark blue-black. Think of the sky in the dead of a summer night. That’s Indigo. Use it for backgrounds to suggest a mysterious past.

  Cochineal Red, pressed from the carapaces of Mexican insects. From the corner of your eye, you sometimes see their ghosts writhing in the gallipot. Lips!

  The genial family of Cadmium Reds, with tints leaning from yellow to blue. Not to be used for outdoor work as they fade in the light. But inside the studio, they glow. We have a whole dialect of reds upon our palates in Venice – cremisino (crimson), scarlatto (scarlet) and sanguineo (blood) for wool, silk and cotton. In other words, senators and cardinals and harlots.

  Vermilion, oh so expensive, and how fickle in performance! It will turn black if not shielded from cruel light. Save it for the noblewomen in their dark cool parlours.

  Rose Madder, or Alizarin Madder, like Merlot, red bleeding to purple-brown. The rubia tinctorum is extracted from the madder. Lovely on the shadowed crook of an elbow.

  Carmine, a crimson as translucent as a licked lip.

  Venetian Red, or Red Ochre, which lasts forever, and glows like lava.

  Indian Red, or Terra Rosa, not unlike our Venetian Red Ochre, but blushing blue at the edges. For those too timid to wear Venetian Red.

  Cassel Earth, brown juice of the ancient rottings of animals and plants. Unlike the Tuscans, we Venetians esteem the hues of brown. We prefer them for the shadows on our flesh to their greens.

  Mummy Browns, from the crushings of Egyptian corpses, for the mortally ill and melancholy.

  Burnt Terra di Sienna, a deceptively tame-looking brown that catches fire when mixed with oil so that flowing golds and ambers are born on pale sheets of background colour. Good for the hair of young men.

  Terra Verte, blue-grey with longings only towards green, and of the earth. It can cling to Viridian, to remind it of the earth, and casts a brown undertone on all the colours it touches.

  Lead White, or Flake White, like albino Parmesan cheese shaved by our cook. Outside Cremona, they sometimes call it Cremona White. I call it ‘virgin skin’.

  Titanium White, like the scum of cream on the pail of milk in the dairy. (By the way, will someone explain why lilies symbolise purity when the yellow stamens enfolded in the petals can stain you indelibly with their soft dust?)

  Zinc White, pale and stark, like the cold blue on the lips of the dead. Like death, it slows the artist, for it drags out the time of drying.

  Lamp Black, almost pure carbon. Perfect for visionless windows in the background and the eye-hollows of skulls placed on the table to show the futility and brevity of life. I do not
like this kind of portrait. But this colour also works well on the dark ridges of velvet, to throw into relief the lights on the edges of the folds.

  Charcoal Black, impurity incarnate, vegetable and mineral. Mixed in with white and other colours it makes the grey shadow we call berettino. Lurking in the shadows of white fabrics, strangely it makes for warmth.

  Cadmium Yellow, ranging spicily from orange to lemon. A young woman’s colour, a sherbet of a colour, shows excitement.

  Naples Yellow, extracted from lead, and liking to be brackish amongst friendly browns and greens. Its use is now lapsing except among the glass-blowers. But good for a playful older woman’s costume.

  Yellow Ochre, from the earth, pure and good. Use it to make white satin happy.

  Raw Sienna, the swarthier cousin of the Yellow Ochre. Uniquely transparent, and able to spread brown warmth, like goodness, over everything it touches. Adding it to yellow, you can make the wonderful fawn lionato, the colour of lions and angels’ hair!

  Viridian Green, like melted emeralds, and greedy for oil. It sucks up more than any other colour. You can marry it to one of the blacks to make your shadows verdant.

  Violet and Red Lake, which make a tender mauve when mixed with Ultramarine, the way Bellini did it. Shadows under downcast eyelids. But be careful, for the Violet and Red Lakes drain away in the light, leaving only sighs of themselves.

  And you want your portrait to last forever.

  Chapter 4

  Ocio de pesse lesso, inamorào fesso.