“Where do we get off?” I said, leaning to her ear to say it, so that now there was the smell of her, wool and skin and the faint trace of some perfume she must have put on for Bertie’s.
“Soon. I told you it was far.”
“The Lido?” I said, an excuse to stay close to her face.
She smiled, turning to me. “Not that far. Two more stops,” she said. Then she was silenced by a foghorn off to our right on some invisible ship.
We got off at the public gardens, leaving the old couple to keep drifting out into the lagoon. After a dark stretch bordering the park, the calles took on the usual twists through small deserted campos lit by hooded single bulbs at each corner. This was the tag end of Venice, neglected and out of the way, soundless except for Claudia’s heels on the pavement and a few radios chattering behind shuttered windows. The fog was thinner than it had been on the water, so that even with only a few lights we could see the facades of the buildings, plaster peeling from some of them in large patches. Occasionally, overhead, laundry still hung to dry in the damp air, as if someone had simply forgotten to bring it in.
“You see it’s not the Danieli,” she said as we walked along a misty canal. “But still, a water view. That’s San Isepo. I’m just there.” She pointed to one of the peeling houses. “Can you find your way back?”
“Is this where you lived before?”
“No. In Cannaregio. The ghetto. It’s a Venetian word, you know that? We all lived there, so it was easy to find us. And after, when I came back from Fossoli, I thought, no, anywhere but there. So I found this-the other end of the city. It’s far, but I like it here. At least I can’t hear it anymore, in my head.”
“Hear what?” I said, looking at her closely. We had stopped by the bridge just before her building.
“Nothing. A figure of speech. When I see the streets there, the ghetto, it reminds me. Of the sirens. Here it’s different, it looks different, so the memories aren’t like that.”
“What sirens?”
“For the air raids.”
“I thought Venice wasn’t bombed.”
“No, drills.” She looked away, then back at me. “You want to know? What it was like? They used the air raid sirens so nobody would hear. When they rounded us up. So late, all the screaming and the pounding on the doors, anybody would hear it. At the Casa di Riposo-how do you say, old people’s home-all the patients, so much noise. So they used the sirens to cover up the noise. So no one would hear.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, embarrassed to have said anything.
“They took all the patients. Even the ones too sick to move.” She turned away. “Well. Enough of that. Do you have a cigarette?”
I lit it for her, studying her face in the glow of the match. She leaned back against the wall of the bridge.
“So now you know all about me. Where I live, where I work. Now even my memories. I don’t go to Harry’s. I live here. Not Signor Howard’s Venice. Not yours, either.”
“No. Did they take you that night?”
“Later. In the fall.”
“And then what happened?”
“At Fossoli? You want to know that too? Everything?” She hesitated, then looked directly at me. “Yes, all right. Look how easy I say that. I told no one. Now some stranger at a rich party, and-” She stopped again. “Why was I lucky? One of the men who ran the camp raped me. Of course he didn’t call it rape. Only I thought that. Every time. So. Is there anything else you want to know?”
I said nothing. She drew on the cigarette, watching me, as if she were expecting me to turn away.
“No?”
“Yes. Why you wanted to meet me.”
She smiled a little. “That too? All right. I don’t know. Maybe I liked the look of you.”
I smiled back, surprised. “No one’s ever said that to me before. Are you always so-” I paused, not finding the word.
“You prefer the old Venice? The masks? The notes? I used to want that. How wonderful to look over your fan at La Fenice. So romantic. But now it’s what you say-everything’s different. I came back and it’s all different. So now I’m like this.”
“My mother came back because she thinks it’s all the same.”
She dropped the cigarette and ground it out with her shoe. “Good night,” she said. Then she looked up at me, studying my face. “Are we going to be lovers, do you think?”
I met her stare. “Yes.”
“You think so.”
“Don’t you?” I reached up my hand, but she stopped it with hers, letting our fingers touch.
“I don’t know yet. Maybe. But not the first meeting. I can’t do that.”
I leaned closer and lowered my face to hers. A tentative kiss, on the lips, a hint of salt water; then another, longer this time, our mouths slightly open; then more, taking our time until we were moving over each other, open and excited, and she broke away with a small gasp.
“Can I come in?”
“No, it’s too soon. Go home, think who I am. Then, if you still want to, we’ll-see each other.”
“Over fans at La Fenice.”
She smiled. “That’s right. Over fans. Do you know how to get back?”
“Walk toward the water.”
I waited while she put the key in the door.
“When will you know?” I said.
She made a teasing face. “When I know you better.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “Just follow the canal-you’ll see the gardens.”
On the boat back, I stood at the deck rail. As we moved in and out of the fog, toward the lights, then away again, Venice seemed more than ever dreamlike, something not really there. But once there had been sirens and dogs. Think who I am. Not just another folder on my desk in Frankfurt. More disturbing than that, here, tasting a little of salt. At home, staring out the dark window, for the first time in weeks I didn’t sleep.
It took hours for the room to fill up with light, reflecting off the water, then moving along the walls in ripples. I opened the window, listening to the canal sloshing against the house. Too late for sleepwalking but too early for open shops, anything else. I dressed and headed for the Accademia, but it would be hours before the tall doors opened. I could walk out to the Dogana, my usual morning seat, but all that now seemed to have happened weeks ago, somewhere else. How could anyone just sit, looking? I started up the broad wooden steps of the bridge. Over to Santo Stefano. A coffee and a newspaper. But that was idling. Who could sit? The point was to keep going, now that I had somewhere to go.
The sun held all the way through San Marco and along the Riva, bouncing off the white marble and back against the water. I walked faster. Even the air, after weeks of mist and damp, was sharp and dry, as if it too had cleared its head and decided what to do. And then, like a sudden shift of mood, it was over. The sky began to fill with clouds again, blown back in from the west, and by the time I reached the funfair at the far end of the Riva the shuttered caravans and children’s rides were as drab and dismal as they’d been all winter. The brick towers of the Arsenale, glowing like kilns a few minutes before, had turned gloomy.
I crossed the last bridge before the vaporetto stop suddenly feeling foolish, still hours early, the idea of coming here at all like something out of a song lyric, silly in the gray light. The sensible thing would be to catch the next boat back and go to the Accademia at lunch hour. Instead I waited, smoking on a bench near the floating dock, not willing to waste a morning. What time did the staff get to the Accademia? A few people were opening umbrellas. I felt a light drizzle on my face and took shelter inside the vaporetto station. So much for the expansive gesture, sunshine, and open arms. Now I was hunched over with a damp collar.
It didn’t matter. She came onto the quay and it was just as I imagined it would be-the same direct walk, a glance up from under the umbrella, a sudden stop, and her surprised face, unguarded, absolutely still until something turned over inside, loosening an involuntary smile. She was wearing the same wool coat and sharp- lapeled suit-her only one? — and for a second I saw how she would take it off, just the jacket, nothing else, sliding it back from her arms while she stared straight at me, taking it off for me. Now she hurried into the shelter, folding her umbrella, eyes still wide, disbelieving.
