Stone Virgin (19 page)

Francesca’s mood of excitement increased as we walked down the short street on to the
salizzada
. She made loud remarks about other passers-by and raised her concealed face often to laugh. She was determined, on this great occasion, to enjoy everything, right from the beginning – and of course she had to show it. I began to understand how high-strung she was. How violent she could be I had yet to learn.

From the Rio di Fontego we took a gondola towards San Marco, one of the best routes in the city in my opinion, the water broad enough and the way winding, with very varied views. The evening was warm, with a light
scirocco
blowing. The bridges and
rive
were all lit up, crowded with idlers and strollers and pleasure-seekers of every sort, and those who live by them, whores, mountebanks, pedlars, pimps, all doing a brisk trade, Venice being full of strangers just then, come to see the celebrations for the visit of the King of Portugal. That day there had been a big regatta on the Grand Canal and fireworks were promised for later. Hoping for more money our gondolier began singing for us, ‘Venezia, gemm’ adriatica, sposa del mar’. He had a tenor voice, not very strong, but sweet. We kept the curtains of the cabin open so that we could sit looking out at the people and the lights. Francesca laughed and exclaimed less and by this I knew she was beginning to enjoy herself. The moon, not quite full, was straight before us, low in the sky, over the Bacinto. We descended at the Ponte de la Canonica. I paid the man extra to avoid a wrangle and we made our way from behind the Basilica into the Piazza.

We began at once to cross the square in the direction of San Moise, where the Ridotto was. But I was worried still about money. I had about eleven liras in all, barely a ducat. It was possible Francesca had nothing with her – I did not want to use her money in any case. Now at the Ridotto, even in those days, in order to play
faro
or
spigolo
one needed more than this, they did not play small games; and to play the numbers, without enough to cover initial losses, was to invite an abrupt end to our entertainment. I was hoping for a good deal from this evening and I wanted no failures.

As we passed under the Nuove Procuratie I happened to notice the sign of the Guardian Angel, and I suddenly remembered the Moro coffee-house alongside, which I had used to frequent once, with the two small inside rooms, where they had card tables and a
biribisso
wheel – the place has been closed down since. On the spur of the moment I suggested to Francesca that we should try our luck in there. The stakes would be lower. Besides, I thought, she should see something of the underworld of Venice there, which she would not have seen before. Had she not said that she wanted to do things for the very first time?

It was crowded and hot inside, the usual rabble of rogues and harlots, mingled with some of the best blood in Venice. There were faces I recognized: masks were obligatory here, but they were often too flimsy to conceal the features, mere tokens – the doorkeeper kept a stock for people arriving without one; an eye-mask or a false nose was considered enough. The din was great; sexual commerce was incessant at the fringes of the tables, conducted by prostitutes and by women who had lost at cards and wanted to play again – for a few liras they would copulate standing up in the passageways off the gaming rooms, enveloped in the folds of their cloaks. The place throbbed with noise, reeked of sweat and wine fumes and sexual discharge. And Francesca loved it. She laughed as we jostled through to the tables and her eyes were gleaming in that white mask.

Fortune favoured us, as I shall relate. A man in a black mask that left nothing but mouth and chin exposed, was making good use of that mouth at the
biribisso
table, boasting he had understood the system. His manner was truculent. His purse, which he made no attempt to conceal, bulged with sequins.

It was this casual display of gold that made me suspicious. I have a nose for dupes and this was not one. It seemed to me that he was acting a part. He had begun by asserting loudly that the wheel went in certain runs and sequences, four on red, two on black, the third red always in the zone of the twenties– or some such thing – it is a long time ago now. The croupier – the only one without a mask – told him to play or move off. In a rage – real or simulated – he put down a handful of gold sequins on the middle band of the red. And he won. And he won again.

Since then I have seen the trick played often enough. Always there is someone who claims to be an infallible winner. Others are sceptical but when they see him win they begin to believe it and they put their money with his. When there is enough on the table, everybody loses. The money of the boaster returns to the bank.

Simple enough, but effective. Then I had only instinct to go on. I gave my money to Francesca for luck and told her to put it with his. With eyes if possible more brilliant than ever she did so. We doubled our money twice. Then I took it up. At the next turn the bank took everything.

From that point onward everything went well for us. We played
faro
and won. We played
bassetto
and won. Francesca brought me luck. She sat beside me and sometimes played a hand, sometimes whispered advice. I asked her if she wanted to go on to the Ridotto but she preferred to stay where she was, here where we were winning, amidst the uproar and the reek. She loved every minute of it – I never knew anyone to enjoy things as she did …

When we finally rose from the table it was after midnight and between us we had won some thirty sequins, over six hundred liras in the exchange of the time. It was more ready cash than I had had for years. We went out to the front room of the Moro and sat in a corner and took the masks off our heated faces and drank a bottle of champagne together, glass for glass.

What time it was when we left I do not know. The Moro used to stay open till three or four in the morning. We walked arm in arm to the San Marco boat stage. There were still a good many people about on the Molo – Venice being then as now a city of inveterate noctambulists – and the gondolas were plying. It was quiet on the water, full tide – the level at the Molo was not more than a few inches below the bank. There was a thin mist, making the moonlight seem luminous. Where the oar broke the surface the ripples gleamed. We were both slightly drunk: with champagne, with the elation of winning, with the sudden quiet and beauty of the night. Our boatman this time was silent but in the distance, towards the Lagoon, we could hear singing, voices answering voices. Francesca herself sang, a snatch from an old song,
gentil mia donna
. She trailed a hand in the water. She allowed me to kiss her, on the cheek several times, once on the mouth.

We returned by the side canal that ran below the house. Thus it was that we came through the garden. We lingered there; and there the lady did something else
for the very first time
.

Ziani sniggered mechanically to himself and reached for his snuffbox. He was becoming increasingly uneasy. He sought to recall that nighttime garden of long ago. Not dark there but twilight – dawn was not far away. Scents of the garden, the roses, the acacia blossom – musk smell of early summer. Deep steady smell of the roses. There was the brackish smell of the canal. The statue glimmering in her alcove – her form and the roses, the white ones, the only defined things in the garden, as if they were first to anticipate the day. And the oval of the girl’s face. They had sat together in the dimness of the arbour, on the wooden bench against the wall, behind the statue – she was at the entrance, their guardian angel. No, I knew already that this had been a cloister, we were on church ground. I knew she was the Madonna Annunciata, I had found Longhi’s book by that time, in my delvings in the library, among those neglected volumes, though I spoke of it to no one. I knew who she was when I crowned her with the roses …

His uneasiness grew. If I had not done that, he thought, perhaps Francesca would not have done what she did. Before going into the arbour they had made a chain of roses for her head. Alternate red and white roses. She split the stems with her nails. Then he had laid this circlet of roses round the stone brows. He had addressed a mock plea for lovers to her, and genuflected, to make Francesca laugh, calling her lady Venus, Our Lady of Lovers. There was an emanation of light about her, a light different from that elsewhere, or so it seemed – an illusion, trick of the mingling of day and night in the garden. The roses had smelt of their wounds as well as their perfume. The Madonna had seemed to listen …

I must get back to myself, he thought. Man of the world, stylist. What is needed now is some general observation on the nature of the fair sex, followed by a deft description of the romantic ambience, then graphic details of how I had her.

I have often remarked that when the ladies grant us their ultimate favours and surrender the keep, it is not because we have roused their appetites or dominated their wills, still less because we have convinced their minds, but because, generous creatures, they wish to make us gifts. It is in the arranging of suitable circumstances that the man of the world shows his mettle.

Our hearts were full to overflowing with the beauty of the night, our minds with the sensations we had experienced, the excitement of the tables, the return over the moonlit water, the tranquil garden with its sweetly mingled odours, where the last of the night contended with the first of the day. There was everything here that was needed to appeal to the fancy, touch the sentiments, incline the mind to thoughts of love.

We were sitting together in the arbour. I had kissed her earlier, but briefly and playfully, and she had evaded some kisses, allowed others. Now, however, when I returned to the assault, I found a warmer welcome. Far from evading, her lips sought mine. We began to kiss long and eagerly, myself in a seventh heaven of delight, still not quite daring to believe that the highest felicity would be vouchsafed, though now her mouth was opening to the kisses and her lips had assumed that softness of consistency that a man of the world will recognize as denoting readiness in women. Ziani my boy, I said to myself, the moment has come to sound the charge. I got my hand under the skirt of her gown, lost my way among her petticoats, found it again at the junction of hot flesh and stocking-top. She pressed her legs together at first, made some attempt to ward me off, push my hand lower, but the gesture was half-hearted and feeble; and when I moved the hand up between her legs and touched her cunt her own hand fell away, her thighs loosened, all resistance was at an end, she sighed, she was mine. By now I was vastly swollen in the nether part and impatient to make the breach, but held off a little longer, rubbing gently at the threshold and especially that little nipple they so love to have fondled, while we kissed and she panted and the milk of her pleasure wet my fingers. Then, when further delay threatened my own equilibrium, I knelt before her, a position more suitable for prayer, but it was the only way the thing could be done on that narrow bench against the wall. I was unbuttoned and my weapon was out, rearing up, huge. (I had a huge one in those days and always rearing up at moments opportune and otherwise but now most opportune.) Because of my position and the indistinct light I don’t think she was aware of this great spike that awaited her, she leaned murmuring to kiss me and I drew her downwards, holding her in my embrace, pulling her gently forward until she slipped from the edge of the bench and so transfixed herself on my braced and eager
uccello
. As she slid down I slid up, impaling her with one great resistless thrust.

All this I had intended for our mutual pleasure; but I heard her exclaim in a startled way as she came down on to me and when our faces were level I saw hers twist with pain. My own spasms were not long delayed, but I realized in that moment that Donna Francesca, four months married, had just ceased to be a virgin, and that my versatile dagger, piercing her, had in the selfsame stroke wounded old Boccadoro more grievously even than I had intended.

Ziani stopped, laid down his pen. He had grown excited, writing this; the ancient gristle between his legs had stirred; but that small heat soon died away, lost in the terrible doubts he had had since starting this section of his
Mémoires
. Had he simply been her instrument all along, a convenient length of piping? Such thoughts, the suspicion that he had been somehow a
dupe
– which of all things he most dreaded being – all this was difficult to endure. But there was more, much more: there was the thing she had done afterwards, the thing that had put him in thrall, subjugated his memory ever since, destroyed his whole vision of that evening, the moonlight, the roses, his masterful importunity, her sighing sacrifice of maidenhood. She had dispersed these sentimental wraiths for ever. She had shocked and frightened him.

While he still knelt there, spent now, his pride limp and flaccid, she had sat back from him and in his full view lifted skirt and petticoats, with deliberate gesture and smiling face – a pagan smile – touched her own torn parts, raised her hand so he could see on it, in the dawn light, the glisten of blood and seed, and holding this hand extended before her had walked to the front of the statue – the Madonna! – and anointed her on the forehead, just below the crown of flowers.

Restoration 2

All Below the Waist

1