Politely, she had declined Charles’s offer to go with her. ‘No, no, it is quite safe and I enjoy the walk!’–for it was her private luxury that there was only one tall man she wished to have accompany her.
Walking home, she actually laughed aloud, recalling her faithlessness to the Reverend Crystal. Before coming to Venice she could never have imagined such an evening.
The next day Signora Mignelli said something incomprehensible and when it became apparent she had not been understood went and fetched a tall bees-wax candle and pointed to the Angelo Raffaele. ‘For Our Lady,’ she said, working her lips in an effort to make herself understood. ‘It is to clean?’
Some ritual to cleanse the church, perhaps? The ochre candle looked enticing, and later that afternoon Julia walked round to the fondamenta where the Archangel had first smiled down upon her. Looking up at him again, on his shelf above the chiesa door, she saw the sculptor had given him wrinkled stockings. What a comforting sort Raphael was! Somehow the stockings made her think of the Levantine merchant’s wife travelling across the seas to find her husband.
The dark green water-weathered doors lay open back. Stepping through the vestibule she made out a procession of candles punctuating the fine gloom with little swaying hollows of light. As she stood the notes of a chant started up. What a world she had entered coming to Venice; a world of strange ritual, penumbras, rapture. Timidity crept over her, the old insidious sense of not belonging, and she stepped back out of the wax-laden smell into the harshness of the foggy air.
Outside Nicco was dribbling a football across the campo.
‘Ciao, Giulia!’
‘Ciao, Nicco. Nicco, the chiesa. What is happening? What are the candles for?’
Nicco frowned. His father’s promise to send him to London was proving an inadequate spur to his mastery of English. ‘For Maria,’ he explained.
‘But the candles…?’
Nicco smiled. ‘I visit tomorrow.’ He scuffed at the football, too polite actually to run off.
Sensing his impatience she let him go. ‘All right, Nicco. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
It was Carlo when he called by who enlightened her. ‘It is the
feast of the purification of the Blessed Virgin,’ he explained. ‘Candlemas, if you prefer.’
Julia did prefer. ‘Why ever does she need purifying? Isn’t she dripping with holiness already?’
‘It was the custom after childbirth. Six weeks after the birth the woman must undergo the rites of purification. How is the boy you are teaching? I never see him here. You see him often?’ For the first time in their acquaintance Carlo’s face seemed to her to have an unfriendly aspect.
‘How very chauvinist,’ said Julia, more tartly than she felt, worried that she had maybe shocked him. ‘Nicco is extremely lazy, thank you for asking. I’m wondering whether I should really bother to go on teaching him.’ She began to tell him of her visit to the Cutforths but the evening which had gone so swingingly became boring in the recounting. For some reason there was none of the usual flow between them and he left more abruptly than usual.
I suppose they’re all touchy about their faith, even if they don’t make a song and dance about it, she thought, undressing for her bath. Waiting for it to fill (you could not hurry Signora Mignelli’s bath–the water pressure was low and the water arrived in trickles) she examined herself in the wardrobe looking-glass. Her body stared out at her, stringy, like a plucked fowl.
The water when she climbed in was hot and watching the heat turn her skin red she felt more than ever like ‘an old boiler’. Observing the limbs floating before her–almost as if they did not belong to her at all–she pondered on the unpredictability of human relationship.
She had spent her life avoiding people, afraid, as she now saw, of their dislike or disapproval. With her firm mind and her astringent views she had provided herself with the means to confound intimacy. If people had wanted to know her–and really she couldn’t tell whether they had or not–she had found ways of ensuring that they never approached too far. Carlo had been an exception–a delightful one–for if he had noticed any attempt at ‘confounding’ he had given no sign but had simply advanced, with long-legged aplomb, into relationship with her. And in so doing he had made out a way for others to follow.
And it was the case she had begun to take his good opinion for granted. Surprise at his seeming to want to go on seeing her–even to see more of her–had given way to the pleasures of anticipating his next appearance and the planning of their next expedition. And yet, today, something had, if not exactly gone wrong, certainly not been right between them. As if by some invisible and malignant presence she felt pulled down. The superstitious part of her related the small reversal in her relationship with Carlo to her pride in it the evening she spent with the Cutforths. Even to yourself, she thought, it wasn’t safe to boast.
Lying in the small bathroom the peeling yellow walls suddenly appeared drab and ugly. The book–she had made such slow progress with it, a book on Garibaldi about whom she found she did not much care–which she had taken to read while bathing, had got wet and she laid it down and began to think about her pupil, Michael Morrell. Where was he now? Had he become a crook or a bank manager? (Either seemed equally possible.) If he had not prospered no doubt it was in part due to her: she had been an indifferent teacher. It was evident that Nicco, polite as he was, found her so. And she had been so cocky about teaching him. After a while she nodded off and woke, knees bent, to feel her mouth beneath cold water.
Now that was unwise, she said to herself as, half covered in a towel, she poured some of the brandy from the square bottle which she had purchased after her lunch at Nicco’s cousin’s. The experience of sliding so easily towards death frightened her. Somehow she associated it with Carlo and her unclear sense of his possible displeasure with her.
Let us speak of exile. There are two ways with exile: you can fit in, lie low, ‘do as the Chaldeans do’, as we say–or you can stick out like a lone crow. No prizes for guessing which my renegade kinsfolk chose!
But I must own in the early days of exile I was glad enough to be in Nineveh once the shame of conquest was over. I missed the rolling hills and the pleasant pastures of Galilee. But I had a piece of luck early on in my time in Nineveh: the king took a fancy to me and made me his Purveyor of Goods, so that in those first years of exile I got to travel far over the mountains to the country of Media, bartering and purchasing for the king of Assyria, and often I met the children of Israel there. We are a shrewd people and our swift reasoning and inventive minds proved useful to our captors. Therefore, many found themselves, as I did, well settled in the new life into positions which commanded respect.
But the king of Assyria died, as kings do, and not long after I lost my place at the old court. The old king had had a great new palace built by many slaves with gardens of sweet herbs and tulip trees and broad, high walls built around the city by the River Tigris. In the old days I had lived within these walls with my wife and had walked in the gardens with my son among the monkeys and the peacocks. When the old king died the tribes of Judah made wars against the new king so that when he returned from battle, defeated, he took his rage out on those of us who had been settled in Nineveh. One day, in his chariot, he drove past me walking in the gardens and lashed at me with his whip. It had become dangerous to be one of the chosen people.
Brutal purges began, with the bodies of our people left unburied to stink on the city walls for scavenging dogs to devour. I hated those dogs. I still recall a certain yellow brute; head of a pack he was and I called him Khan after one of the devils in these regions who is reputed to relish dead flesh. This yellow canine devil got scent of what I did and would follow me around snuffing out corpses. Then it was often a struggle between him and me–whether I would get to bury the body or he would grab it for his pack. He bit