Read Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice Online

Authors: Erica Jong

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Romance, #Time Travel

Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice (3 page)

BOOK: Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice
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I crank up the shutters and throw open the two giant windows that face the Adriatic. Diaphanous white curtains fly in my face propelled by the wind from the sea. It is still there—slightly tarnished by pollution, but eternal. Polluted or not, the sea is the very embodiment of eternity. “Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide,” said Joyce—who apparently said everything not said by Shakespeare. And there's the Lido: the Byzantine white tents of the Excelsior, reminding me of Visconti's film of
Death in Venice
; the fat little
bambini
gallivanting on the sand, reminding me how far away I am from all that—cut off from the quotidian demands of motherhood and wifedom;
the paparazzi
reminding me, as they coagulate on the
terrazzo
, of the whole absurd dance of fame and status, starmongering and starmaking, crescendo and diminuendo, which I feel somehow removed from even though it is the context (if not the inner texture) of my life.

Suddenly elated to be alone, I whirl around to inspect my room. I love it! From the great spun-sugar Murano chandelier, to the faintly old-fashioned mirrored armoires for my clothes, to the hi-tech Italian bathroom with its civilized bidet and its big, deep tub, to the “frigo bar” with its parades of little bottles—amber cognac, Scotch, and amaretto, crystal sambuca, deep golden Galliano and strega, pale golden champagne, dark golden Vouvray, Pouilly-Fuissé, and a variety of wines from the Veneto. I strip to my red teddy (bought in London, lavish with loverless lace), pick out a split of Pinot Grigio, my favorite, open it, pour it into a glass, and toast myself and the sea.

“To the sea,” I say in my best mock heroic manner, stepping up onto my little balcony and sipping the wine stagily.

“To Byron, to Browning, to Shakespeare. To Venice, the Serenissima…”

There's a knock at the door. “Shit!” I say and balance my wine glass on the stone railing. I throw a toweling robe—CIGA-issue—over my bare shoulders and stride (in my high heels) to the door expecting to find my weathered Vuitton luggage and especially my footlocker of books crammed with Shakespeare. Instead there's a flash of lights, yellow spots before my eyes, and when those clear, a dark little man in a brown hat, holding a Nikon aloft.

“Smile pleeza,” he says. “Say cheeza…”

Another flash. The camera goes off once more before I slam the door.

“Vada via!”
I shout from behind the door.
“Vada via!”

My little private idyll is ruined. The film festival has begun with a flash.

The luggage arrives a little while later and I glimpse the brown-hatted man—the Ron Galella of Venice—still lurking hopefully in the hall. This time I outsmart him by hiding behind the door as my bags are brought in. Oh, what stratagems we are driven to! I calm my nerves as I meticulously unpack, sipping a freshly poured glass of wine. I have brought ball gowns and cocktail dresses, bathing suits and blue jeans, sweat suits and sneakers, to carry me through the autumn filming of
Serenissima
. Most of all, I have brought books—for life on location can be a kind of imprisonment of waiting, and my usual way of dealing with this is to lose myself in books that will help me lose myself in my role. My footlocker is fairly bursting with Shakespeare, with books of Venetian history and Venetian art, with books about the Jews in Venice, Shakespeare biographies, Shakespeare criticism. I unpack it carefully and line up the volumes on my desk as if they could be my wall against the world, my protection, my fortress, my castle.

There
, I think, setting out the books, as well as a silver-framed portrait of my much-missed daughter, Antonia (taken from me with lengthy briefs and the lying testimonies of lying witnesses); a Rigaud candle to scent the room so that it smells like home; my little diary, the leather-covered journal bearing—or baring—my heart into the future; and the other objects that give me comfort: my magic rose-quartz crystal, my crystal ball on its little golden stand, the silver casket given me by my teacher and mentor Vivian Lovecraft, the great Shakespearean actress. (Graven on it are the words: “Jessica my girl, catch this casket; it is worth the pains.—Vivian”)
There
, I think, I am safe now.

But apparently I am not, for another knock comes at the door.

“Chi è?”
I shout, wrapping my robe tightly around me to foil my nemesis.

“Maid, pleeza,” comes the reply.

I cautiously open the door to discover a huge bouquet of long-stemmed white roses—three dozen, it appears—towering above a Venetian vase of candy-striped pink glass.

The Ron Galella of Venice is still lofting the expectant Nikon, so I snatch the roses and hastily shut the door, promising myself to leave a good tip for the maid later. I put the roses on the cocktail table by the window, dash back to bolt the door, and then collapse in a chair, admiring the blooms. Who could these be from, I wonder. Whoever it is, it must be someone who knows me well, for white roses are my favorite flowers; my garden in Pacific Palisades is full of white roses.

There's an envelope attached to one of the long stems with a white satin ribbon. J
ESSICA
is all it says. Inside there's a piece of heavy parchment which I open to reveal, lettered in beautiful calligraphy, these words:

To the Onlie Begetter

from her humble admirer W.S.

And then, in the same beautiful calligraphy, Sonnet Sixty-one.

Is it thy will thy image should keep open

My heavy eyelids to the weary night?

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,

While shadows, like to thee, do mock my sight?

Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee

So far from home into my deeds to pry.

To find out shames and idle hours in me,

The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?

O no! thy love, though much, is not so great.

It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,

Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,

To play the watchman ever for thy sake.

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,

From me far off, with others all too near.

A joke, I think. A message from Björn to get me ready for my part (as if I needed it). Björn is full of tricks like this. Posing as “W.S.”—how typical of him! Pleased as I am with the roses, I am a little put out by the Shakespearean imposture. Björn should know by now that I hardly need
his
tricks to get me into the part. I am a consummate professional—as professional as he, despite our occasional dives into panic, passion, and near-madness.

Merely arriving at the hotel has been an ordeal. First the photo session on the landing, then the delay for luggage, then being ambushed in my hotel room by the brown-hatted
paparazzo—
who, for all I know, is still outside. Then, these trick roses…I am not enough on my guard, I think. I am too vulnerable. And it is all the fault of Venice. Venice is the place where I let go. Venice is the place where I do not feel protection is necessary.

I had been there a mere two months ago, living in a friend's house in Dorsoduro, wandering from the baker to the
gelateria
with no
paparazzi
trailing, shopping for fish on the Rialto, reading my books on Shakespeare and Italy in the sixteenth century, preparing for my role as Jessica. Venice had been jolly in July. We'd had five beastly days of sirocco, but by the time Redentore rolled around, and the garlanded fishing boats bobbed on the Giudecca Canal under the fireworks and the full moon, the weather was perfection. Vivaldi and Monteverdi were heard over the waters as the entire city turned out for this
festa di tutte le feste
, the Feast of the Redeemer, the ending of the plague in 1576 for which Palladio's Church of the Redentore was built.

The Redentore
was
Venice for me—the most serene of festivals. Where else in the world could you float along in an old, leaky Torcello fishing boat, hearing Vivaldi and Monteverdi waft over the lagoon while firework nebulae exploded all around you? People passed food and wine from boat to boat.
Prosecco
poured over the prows, baptizing them anew. The rhythm of the sea, which is the essence of Venice, pulsed in the music of that glorious period when Venice was still the terror of the tides.

Each city has its own rhythm. Venice's rhythm is the Adriatic lapping. New York, my hometown, my springboard, has a whir like a dynamo humming in the night. Driving down from New England, you hit the Greenwich toll and hear it—a palpable whir like a million insects (cicadas or crickets, say—though they are probably really roaches) rubbing their legs together, all wanting to be first, to be best, to be king, to be queen, to be emperor, to be Caesar, to be doge. L.A., the Land of LaLa, my current home, has another rhythm altogether: deceptively calm—with a sort of cocaine frenzy underneath. The air is
soft
. The palm trees wave. The desert is not far off, and the sea—the great Pacific—is there, glorious as always. But wedged between desert and sea, a strange species of agents and moguls and women, who
look
like flesh and blood (but are really bionic), have managed to transform the City of the Angels into a city of very minor demons—demons of “step deals” and “power lunches,” demons of “turnaround,” “pay or play,” “net profits,” and “gross from dollar one.” People in the Land of LaLa look like expensive wax fruit. And they work hard to achieve that look. They have exercise coaches and psychic nutritionists, surgeons who specialize in tummy tucks and breast implants, lifts and lipectomies, rhinoplasties and rhytidectomies. Their clothes are scantier but in a way just as elaborate as the clothes of sixteenth-century Venice, for they, too, betrayed status. And the Land of LaLa has its own sumptuary laws: starlets wear clothes of one rank, the wives of moguls another, and the stars—the stars create the fashions as Queen Elizabeth, the great Gloriana, once did for her court.

In New York and Los Angeles I was used to being on my guard—but in Venice I let go. I had best remember that the film festival was not truly Venice but a sort of overseas branch of LaLa Land. I had best remember the rules, or I was sunk…

I glance at the sonnet again, then read it over to myself slowly. At first, it seems to be another sonnet about insomnia, Shakespeare's great theme—and lover's insomnia at that. But one line resonates as I read: “To play the watchman ever for thy sake.” What is Björn telling me? That he is still in love with me? That he is losing sleep pining for me? Impossible.

And yet it says, “For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere…” Is he waking in Sweden while I am sleeping in Santa Monica? No. Sweden is nine hours
later
than LaLa Land. It doesn't work. And Björn, when he plays tricks, plays tricks that work.

I order a light supper from room service, draw a bath for myself, and soak in it, awaiting my
carpaccio
and
insalata mista
. Aha, I think, I will outwait the little man—my nemesis, my Rumpelstiltskin, my flasher, my personal
paparazzo
. Here I am in Venice, the end point of exotic travels, and Venice has as usual made her doubleness apparent to me from the very moment of my arrival. City of grand illusions and funhouse mirrors; city of high artifice and low trickery; city of astounding greatness and impossible pettiness. City of history, mystery, doubleness, deception. It is all here and I am in its grasp.

2
Festival del Cinema

N
EXT MORNING, THE INTERNATIONAL
press has my red teddy (and CIGA robe) plastered all over. And my words are blown up to tabloid-size type, giving them a Garboesque resonance I never intended.

LA PRUITT DICE COME LA GARBO:

“I WANT TO BE ALONE”

“Vada via,” grida la star internazionale Jessica Pruitt mentre la fotografano all'apertura della Mostra del Cinema…“Vada via. Voglio star sola…”

You can imagine the rest. It is made to appear that I am camera shy and have fought off the good, decent, humble, honest press, hiding behind my haughty “incognita,” refusing even a flash of teeth. Teeth, indeed!

The Festival del Cinema opens officially with the
giuria
assembling in the lobby of the Excelsior. Again we are lined up for a group portrait.

“Jessica, Jessica,” comes the call of the
paparazzi
.

“Say
denaro
,” says one waggish fellow with a Hasselblad on a tripod—a rich
paparazzo
.


Soldi
,” I say, hissing. Already branded for the world as camera shy, what have I got to lose? Except that I have broken the cardinal rule: Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint.


Denaro
,” I say, relenting. I am caught in that moment of kissing the air with inky lips by thirty cameras disseminating my soul (by wire, in dot matrix) all over the world.

Journalists are everywhere scribbling away. (What could they be writing? We haven't
done
anything yet.) I see the surrealist poet with long white hair (Carlos Armada is his name) giving a lofty quote to an ink-stained wretch and laughing in that mirthless, self-congratulatory way public persons laugh on public occasions. I am acutely aware that all the other members of the jury are male and I the only female.

“You smile all the time,” says Grigory Krylov, the tall Russian poet with the arctic eyes. “A typical American.”

“I only smile when I'm nervous,” I say.

“And when you're not nervous, how are you?” asks Grigory.

“Then I don't smile so much.”

“Ah, the glah-morous Jessica Pruitt.” Grigory sighs, drawing himself up to his full height of six feet six inches. “Do you know that I'm the only man in the world who can destroy you? Is that why you avoid me?” He puts his arm around me possessively. I step away neatly.

BOOK: Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice
10.2Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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