What Casanova Told Me (15 page)

BIGGE REWARD FOR BOSTON GIRL!

ANYONE KNOWING THE WHEREABOUTS OF MISS ADAMS OF BOSTON PLEASE CONTACT FRANCIS GOOCH AT THE HOTEL FENICE. SHE DISAPPEARED FROM THIS GRAVE OF VIRTUE, JUNE 4. HER FINANCE DOES NOT KNOW WHERE TO FIND HER. SHE WAS A KIND GIRL WHO LIKED TO HELP HER SICKLEE FATHER. MR. GOOCH LEAVES FOR AMERICA IN 3 DAYS.

June 15, 1797

Dear Isaac
,

A thousand thanks for our safe departure, old friend! Our stowaway came to the Molo, looking her part in a black silk vesta. Naturally, I felt sad to leave the city of my birth to Napoleon and his pack of French wolves. But I could not risk another run-in with the Corsican. He has borne me ill will since one of his men told him falsely that I had made love to his youngest sister. How fortunate for me that you keep up with your spy work and that my old enemies on the Council will now be under his guard. The fall of Venice has that at least to be said for it.

Peering through a knothole in my hiding place, I heard Nino whisper that he would take Miss Adams to meet me at the crab fisherman’s hut. She seated herself in the felz not far from where I lay, and I was moved by the expression of hopeful equanimity on her face. I believe Miss Adams is braver than other women. Alas, the wind rose after we set out, and I realized a June storm would soon overtake us. You know such storms, Isaac. They turn the sea cold and unfriendly and make the horizon appear a thousand miles off.

In no time, the gondola began to bob and quake, while Miss Adams continued to regard the lagoon with a hopeful look. She seemed pleased to see my little Finette again, who sat by her feet, staring directly at the place where I lay hidden. My pet wore the
forgiving expression that says she wants to understand but, failing an explanation, she will wait loyally for a signal from me.

The journey through the gloomy marshes took many hours and I confess I fell into a heavy sleep. The
bricoli
that mark this deserted part of the lagoon are few in number, and it was twilight by the time we came to the islet of Cason dei Sette Morti. As soon as Nino saw the old stone house, he tapped the coffin lid with his oar, and I showed myself to Miss Adams. She uttered a cry, as she believed the corpse in the coffin was coming to life. When I spoke to her, she put her handkerchief to her mouth and couldn’t answer. The poor child had lost her voice, so overcome was she by the strangeness of her circumstances.

I cursed myself for falling asleep and promised I would never again allow her to think she was alone and in danger. Then Nino, thinking to divert her with his macabre wit, told her the story of the seven dead fishermen who once lived in the stone house. I do not think you know this story, Isaac, as few go any more to the lagoon’s southwestern marshes: Six fishermen and their cook, who was no more than a boy, lived in the old house. One day the fishermen found a corpse floating in the water. They took it back to the boy, telling him the corpse was deaf and dumb, and asked the boy to feed it. As they sat down to a meal of red-cheeked
triglia,
the dead man came to life, and greeted the fishermen. Then the hearts of all seven men stopped. In the end, the boy swam away to Venice to tell his tale.

As you can imagine, this story did her no good. Nino and I were obliged to lift her out of the boat and into the shallows by the shore. In the confusion she lost her copy of Seneca’s
De beneficiis,
but the dear child said not a word of protest. Tears streaming down her face, she followed me as I ploughed on through the waves, holding my satchel and shoes above my head. Nino came after us with our belongings.

In the kitchen of the old stone house, I found a large pile of dry kindling and built a fire. After we drank tea, she squeezed my arm gratefully. “Monsieur, I am sorry for the trouble I caused you. Today, I was too frightened to move or speak.”

“Dear child,” I said, “there was no need for speech in the bobbing gondola. It is my fault for not showing myself to you sooner.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Casanova. It is true I am downcast because Father is dead but I am glad you are with me.”

Could there be a more charming statement, Isaac? In the morning, we made a breakfast from crayfish we found on the shore, and she went about with the hopeful resolve I associate with her people. The Americans set out on an unknown ocean believing the Lord would take care of them, and in this she is true to her race. The Venetian people, may God bless us, exhibit no such willingness, and our empire lasted a thousand years because we expect the worst of everyone. And now it, too, has ended.

And so, dear friend, thank you for the ducats that secured our passage. The crab fisherman comes shortly to row us to the frigate anchored outside the Lidi. The vessel is taking a shipment of Murano glass to Corfutown. Then we will go on to Athens, where Miss Adams will be safe from her fiancé. We’ve spent the past ten days or so hiding in this old house and I’ve learned much about Miss Adams’ circumstances.

Your friend always,
Jacob Casanova

June 21, 1797

Somewhere on the Adriatic. A new world and a new life.

I am writing this on the deck of our frigate, using Monsieur Casanova’s portable writing box. He is pacing the deck near me, an arresting figure in his frock coat and Kevenhuller. Just now, when he saw me looking his way, he took off his hat and bowed joyously.

We have been almost a week at sea and I am subject to fits of homesickness, wondering if I will see Quincy again. He has apologized for the difficult start to our journey and the long wait in the lagoon marshes. It was done to fool Count Waldstein into believing my companion fell into the canal and drowned after a night of gambling. How relieved we were to see the crab fisherman who poled us to our frigate. Our ship was preparing to set sail, having given up any hope of seeing us.

Monsieur Casanova has been encouraging my journal writing, to distract me from my homesick longings. So perhaps it is only fair—if there is to be a reader of these journals—that I explain my upbringing. I was born in 1772, shortly before the Revolution, when courtesy was still revered. “Never be seated until required, ask for nothing, speak not, salt only with a clean knife, spit nowhere in
the room but in the corner,” was Father’s dictum. As a baby, I wore a necklace of wolf fangs to keep away the pox, and my schooling began in 1778, in Quincy, Massachusetts, six years after my mother’s death and my birth. My lessons were supervised by the woman I call my aunt Abigail Adams, wife to the president, known for her kindness to her female cousins. Despite the limitations of colonial life, she was able to pass on to me a devotion to the principles of honesty and self-reliance that have formed the basis of my character. I read Shakespeare and Seneca at home. Aunt Abby taught me to admire Seneca for denouncing the notion of women as frail vessels for men’s seed. “Should women wish it,” Seneca wrote, “they have an equal amount of vigour, an equal capacity for the performance of good deeds; they endure grief and suffering equally with men if they have been trained for it.”

Aunt Abby believed women were men’s equals and she was fond of saying that if she’d been born a man, she would have been a rover. But Uncle John, for all his interest in my aunt’s philosophy, is more concerned with feminine skills. So like most young girls in Massachusetts, I was taught to make dresses, sing from the New England Psalm Singer in our Congregationalist church, and stand each morning against a board that braced my back so that I would grow straight and tall. In my case, it seems to have worked.

During those years, when Father ran his orchards, I learned to spear eels with my male cousins and pick cotton in the fields near Quincy, and when my aunt could not make ends meet, I helped her sell her Canton china to passing salesmen. It was sad to see her struggle because the American government paid Uncle John poorly, but Aunt
Abby showed me how to live frugally. As I grew, she taught me to leave behind my country ways and hide my muscles under my sleeves like a Boston lady.

She was glad for me when Uncle John sent Father abroad on the trade mission. For three months, I enjoyed my life as Father’s hostess in Benjamin Franklins old house in Passy outside Paris. Father was not happy there because he never trusted the French—no matter what pronouncements he made publicly about their revolution. In his heart, like some of his friends, Father remained loyal to the British crown. But he would have died sooner than admit such a heresy.

I credit Aunt Abby for my ability to accept French ways. It was she who encouraged me to see that it is possible to like the French without forgoing our republican simplicity—as she herself had learned earlier during her years in Paris with Uncle John.

As for my religious instruction, I received it in Quincy’s Congregational church. We listened to the Sunday sermon from the front pew. Behind us sat the shopkeepers and the millworkers and, last of all, the two sections labelled BM and BW (Black Men and Black Women).

I admit I do not have strong religious beliefs. Perhaps this is because I am the daughter of an Atheist. After Mother died, Father said God had withdrawn from him so he would withdraw from God. My parent stopped attending church and was no longer capable of receiving visions. Father told me he had once seen God’s face in Halley’s Comet, warning of Doomsday. On another occasion, our founding fathers turned into the seven sins before Father’s eyes. Jefferson was vanity, Franklin sloth, while Uncle John became the image of pride—an Adams failing.

A Sombre Notation: A few hours ago, I broke off writing and wept. Father is dead, and my aunt will be gravely disappointed in me for breaking the Fifth Commandment: Honour thy father and thy mother. For all her talk of being a rover, Aunt Abby is stern with family members who put aside domestic duty.

At least I am helping a friend while doing a little roving. I could not save Father or lighten his dour mind, but I can do my best to help Monsieur Casanova find Aimée Dubucq de Rivery. If Seneca speaks the truth, and I believe he does—the practice of virtue means we are obliged to perform good deeds without expecting a reward in return.

First Inquiry of the Day: Will I ever return home to America and see my Aunt Abby and my cousins John and Nabby?

Lesson Learned: Freedom is so close to exile it may well be the same word.