What Casanova Told Me (17 page)

June 29, 1797

More about our arrival in Athens.

The customs official gave us our papers, and we started out for Athens just before sunset. Monsieur Papoutsis hired a large cart driven by a friendly Greek. His face broke into a toothless smile when he saw me. I ignored him and helped Monsieur Gennaro with his luggage, to his surprise. He was concerned the journey would damage
the painter’s tools. At last, the baggage was secured and we set off. Monsieurs Gennaro and Papoutsis rode in front with the driver who clasped a blunderbuss in his lap. In the back, Monsieur Casanova and I were bounced around by the road, doing our best to restrain Finette. Whenever we passed a shepherd with his sheep, the dog barked joyfully, sniffing the air as if she had never smelled anything so glorious.

The sun was setting on the Attic plain, turning the boughs of the poplars and plane trees on either side of the narrow road a pale gold. The light fell on the groves of olive trees and harvested cornfields, colouring the withered corn plants the same honey shade as the retsina I had drunk with Monsieur Casanova. All around us, the land of Greece glowed with swallowed light. My large body felt light, as if I, too, was being transformed. Even Monsieur Casanova’s face looked youthful and happy.

And then, darkness fell. There is no twilight in this beautiful land, I am learning. A mile or two along the lonely road, we came upon a house by some plane trees. Monsieur Papoutsis shouted to our driver who stopped the carriage, and without so much as a glance at us, he and Monsieur Gennaro climbed down with the driver and disappeared into the house.

“Is the road safe from robbers?” I asked.

But Monsieur Casanova was fast asleep in his seat, and so I sat with Finette in my lap, looking out at the ridge of low mountains whose bumpy hilltops glowed with a soft amethyst light. Athens lay somewhere in that direction. I felt alone in this rough place, and I cursed myself for having set off on this wild journey. Who in Athens, I thought, will know America? Perhaps even the name will only draw puzzled stares.

In a while, and just as the moon peered over the top of the farthest hill, Monsieurs Gennaro and Papoutsis stumbled back out, talking noisily and clapping one another on the back. They clambered on board, urging the horses to a trot, which woke Monsieur Casanova from his nap.

“Manolis and Domenico have been sampling the mysteries of the east,” he whispered.

But when I looked puzzled, he did not explain. I told him I was thirsty and he poured me a glass of ouzo. No one thought to bring along food or water so I made do with the smelly liquorice-flavoured drink.

For about an hour, our carriage rattled along the country road, barrelling through the towering trees whose trunks and branches could be clearly seen now because the full moon was high in the sky. I began to feel unwell and felt greatly relieved when we caught tiny glints of light moving like fireflies on the craggy silhouette of a hill rising up out of a huge, dark plain. Monsieur Casanova said these lights were Athenians carrying lanterns in their hands. On the top of the moonlit hill, I recognized the bone-white columns of the Parthenon. And through the roof of this glorious antiquity soared the spindle of a minaret.

“Oh, Venus, you who are known here by the name Aphrodite, bless this place,” Monsieur Casanova whispered, and crossed himself. My new friend is Catholic but he sees God differently from most Papists. In one breath, he speaks of the Supreme Being as his mistress, and in the next, he throws in womanly Providence for good measure. To Monsieur Casanova, it seems all great powers are feminine.

We passed through cornfields whose silvery stalks glittered in the moonlight and came to the city wall that Monsieur
Casanova said had been built to keep out pirates. By its gate sat a turbaned man, his feet swaddled in rags.

“What’s wrong with his feet?” I whispered, as the guard swung open the gate.

“Bastinado.”
Monsieur Casanova hissed the word. “Beating a man’s feet is a common punishment in these parts.”

Athenians filled the evening streets, many of them carrying the lanterns we had seen from a distance. As we turned down a dirty lane, I felt my stomach churning. Elevated gutters ran along its sides, spilling out foul-smelling sewage. I made out half-starved dogs in the shadows of a Christian church that stood beside a small mosque. As we rattled by, the dogs barked and howled at us, until the whole village rang with their cries. So this backwater is Athens, I thought. I am disappointed.

June 30, 1797

Dear Isaac
,

My health is better, my friend, than it has been in months. We arrived yesterday in Athens—only four days from Corfu under a hot, cloudless sky. Sadly, my friendly overtures to the Mussulmano family were misunderstood by the father. I will not go into it here, Isaac, except to say that providing the customs official with baksheesh saved the Mussulmano’s wife and child.

Thanks to my reputation as a man of letters, our guide was able to find us lodgings at the home of the widow Mavromatis. The name means black eyes, but hers are a cornflower blue—the legacy of a Venetian ancestor.

As we unpacked, she brought out letters from English guests who had stayed with her that year and asked if I would write to
them and offer cheaper rates upon their return. My hostess was surprised when I explained that English is a language I have yet to master. (Please excuse the blotches, old friend. The widow secured the ink from her son who says he makes it himself from Aleppo galls grown near Smyrna, along with sulphate of iron, water, gum Arabic and verdigris—if I understood his Greek. He keeps this primitive concoction in a wooden keg for months before he strains it into one of the little bottles sitting before me. As I write, I am careful not to touch it with my fingers in case the green goo burns my skin.)

We have our own suite of rooms opening onto a pretty courtyard with five or six large lemon trees; my room has a writing desk—apparently a gift from the French consul—and several chairs, a rarity in Athens whose inhabitants still practise the habit of floor sitting.

The night is as close and warm as the day, so some hours after we arrived, I went out to a small bathing shed in the courtyard, looking for a jug of water to wet my sheets—the method you taught me for keeping cool on hot nights so many years ago. I stepped inside the shed. The wall of the partition separating the sexes is designed for beings smaller than myself and I could see easily across the barrier into the women’s area. I looked there out of curiosity and spotted a head of auburn hair. A moment later, the lovely coppery head swung up, and I was staring into the frightened eyes of the Puritan girl.

She stared back horrified and then bowed her head.

“Monsieur Casanova,” she sobbed. “Help me! I am inebriated.”

“Jacob.”

“Yes—Jacob.” I heard her retch miserably.

“I will look after you, dear girl.”

The confined quarters in which we are lodged have had the happy result that I am on better terms with Miss Adams. Of
course, she is not a true Puritan although she exhibits a charming interest in self-improvement. Those joyless folk were, after all, her ancestors.

I bade her sit and tenderly bathed her forehead with a wet cloth, and when she could walk with some steadiness, I took her to my room. For all her brave boasts about not needing a protector, my young companion is still an innocent. After I settled her on my couch, I lay wearily upon my own bed. In minutes, my limbs were damp again with perspiration, and, for the first time in many months, I experienced the full breadth of myself. My head, my heels and my hands, each of my limbs equidistant from the next, like the five-pointed star that is Leonardo’s splendid sketch of a man. This is the genius of Greece. It gives us mortals back our bodies, and reminds us that the base of all metaphysics lies in the physical. No wonder Philhellenes the world over offer up thanks to the cloud-free skies of Greece.

I slept under the widow’s late husband’s bedclothes on a straw mattress stretched across two trestles, and I was as comfortable as if I was lying in the Doge’s Palace. And in the morning had the pleasure of watching the widow’s daughter sweep the dust with her hand broom into a large crack in the floor seemingly designed for that purpose.

And now, dear friend, it is time to turn to a copy of
Ad Helviam
by Seneca. I intend to prove to Miss Adams that her beloved Seneca scoffs at the notion of Platonic forms. If I have learned anything in this lifetime, Isaac, it is this—one should never try to realize the ideal, but find the ideal in the real.

Yours,
Jacob

June 30, 1797

Last night, very late, I awoke to the sounds of moaning. At first, I thought I was delirious from fatigue and insect bites, and then I understood the noise was coming from myself. Across the moonlit room, a corpse-like figure lay beneath a mosquito curtain.

“Jacob?” I whispered, still uncertain about using his name. At the sound of my voice, Finette leapt onto my stomach and licked my face.

“Come here, Finette! That’s a good girl!” The corpse-like figure shook off a layer of bedclothes and I beheld Jacob Casanova in a long undershirt. A rope of reddish-grey hair hung down beneath his nightcap. I have never seen him without his wigs, and indeed, wig bags of all shapes and sizes lay on the writing desk by his bed. I stood up and the room whirled about me. I fixed my eyes on the desk in an attempt to steady myself. The desk was as fine as any in Mr. Franklin’s formal house in Passy. It was large and curved, with a bronze lip at its edges to prevent papers sliding onto the floor, and he had placed his journal with its packet of scraps and letters on the veneered surface. But it was no use. The room still spun wildly. I sat down quickly and he turned away from me. As he bent over his plate chest, I noticed that his nightshirt was hitched up at the back. I tried not to stare at his pale haunches glowing in the moonlight. Despite his age, Jacob Casanova’s buttocks are manly and firm.

“You drank too much ouzo, Miss Adams,” he said, pulling down his nightshirt and handing me a goblet of water. “If you feel well enough, I can accompany you to your room. I will be no danger to you.”

“You have not harmed me before so there is no reason to think you will do so now.”

He laughed. “Miss Adams, you have an empirical habit of mind, like my friend Monsieur Voltaire. You would get along with him, whereas I had difficulty doing so.”

“You and he did not agree?” I was making conversation to hide my nervousness.

“Voltaire argued that we must be free of superstition. But superstition is linked to faith. And faiths of all kinds—both big and small—are how we understand the mysteries of our lives.”

“I have faith in you, monsieur,” I said.

“And that, Miss Adams, is possibly the very place you should not put faith. I am, as you can see”—he tugged the greying rope on his shoulder—“less than I appear.”

“That is no reason not to trust you.”

“Dear girl, I am honoured. But do not depend too greatly on Giacomo Casanova.” He seated himself next to me and I could feel my heart battering my ribs.

“Do you ever worry what Aimée will look like now?” I asked. “Perhaps—perhaps she has grown fat.”

He startled me with a laugh. “What does it matter, when I am not as I was? Every part of me is crumbling. Look!”

He lifted his hand so I could see his fingers clutching a small ball. For the first time, I realized the knuckles on his thumb and forefinger were badly swollen.

“Rheumatism. See! I loosen my hand every day with Finette’s toy.”

I could not answer him. The truth was I felt greatly excited to be alone with Jacob Casanova.

I do not know when it happened. Perhaps when his hand fell glancingly across my chest, grazing my skin with a touch like a Massachusetts sea breeze. I shuddered, thinking of the twinkling glints of light the sun makes on the great Atlantic. And my lower regions rang like a wind chime, reverberating with delicious sensations that echoed one upon another in a chaos of feeling I lacked the skill to orchestrate.

He drew back, staring.

“Miss Adams, did I bring you happiness?”

I was still quivering with the after-effects of pleasure and could only nod yes.

“Ah, then I am still good for something,” he murmured.
“Shall I continue with these old warriors?” He held up his hands, smiling.

I shook my head. “I wish to think about what has happened.”

“Of course! You will need to test and verify, will you not, Asked For
Philosophe?”
He smiled. “May I call you Asked For now that we are better acquainted?”

“You may,” I said.

I retired to my room. What do Jacob Casanova and I mean to each other? It is as if he is all things to me and none. I feel I know him as intimately as I know anyone and yet I do not know him at all. I am never certain how much to believe him, or in what light to take the tenderness I feel for him.

First Inquiry for the Day: Why is my body not My Good Friend when it can ring with joy?

Fruitful Thought Never to Be Forgotten: Jacob

Casanova belongs to the woman who has borne him a son.