by Diana Cachey
“As I closed my eyes, prayers began to flood into my mind in a rush of words. I prayed for the people who put pictures of children there, for children in the pictures, for all sick children, then for all children and for all sick people in the world. Soon I heard voices, could see flashes of people in my mind, heard a multitude of people praying. It wasn’t scary, it was joyful. I saw flickers of bright, bright light.”
Thinking the woman to be insane, Louisa turned and tried to walk away. The woman pulled her back.
“Finally I opened my eyes, walked over to the tomb and put my right hand where his corpse lay inside and I rested my forehead gently on it.”
“When my forehead touched it, an electric-like bolt of energy moved through my arm to my heart and rested there. It was forceful like someone pounding on my chest. It made me gasp for breath but I was fine and barely moved. I rested there a moment and all that came to mind was: thank you for listening to our prayers. Strange and powerful but I simply walked away. No tears or fears. Capisce?”
Louisa nodded and the woman continued:
“It gets more interesting. Afterwards at lunch, I pulled out a photograph of my south Italian grandpa to show my friend. It was taken during the war and it has been in my wallet since he died. Next to it lie a holy card I got from my grandfather’s house and it came with a medallion. It had settled in my wallet such that the medal covered the saint’s face. It is very old but grandpa kept it in original plastic and it looks new. The face of the saint was identical to the one in the Basilica. A man in a brown robe, holding a lily in one hand and a child in the other. A picture of St Anthony, whose tomb I had just touched, was in my wallet.”
Louisa wasn’t sure she believed any of this story, but the woman told a fascinating tale. Louisa wanted to hear the rest. She waited for more. The woman, sensing Louisa’s interest, began to whisper, to this foreigner, to Louisa, her audience.
“The card said, St Anthony, Saint of Miracles, and starts, O holy St Anthony reach down from heaven and take hold of my hand. Assure me that I am not alone.”
The cat woman waited for Louisa to respond. When Louisa did not, the old woman explained further.
“As if St. Anthony was showing me that he had reached down to tell me I was not alone and my experience was real. Si? O no?”
“Si,” nodded Louisa.
Louisa’s eyes had alternated from raised brows, to squints, to staring at the cats that had started to accumulate behind the woman. Louisa mentally tried to ask the cats if she should run now, run away from the crazy elder. Would this tiny woman pull out a knife as she’d seen happen in Venice in a movie once?
Frail fingers reached out and wrapped around Louisa’s own. Louisa jumped but when she saw the woman’s tender face, she felt strangely safe.
“Saint Anthony looks like mio nonno, my grandfather. The next day, when I thought about this experience, church bells rang,” said the woman.
“Church bells?”
“Church bells,” confirmed the woman. “I thought about St. Anthony’s tomb, they rang and rang. When I looked up, I saw that I was standing in Campo San Antonin.”
What is with all of this Tony stuff? There he goes again.
The elderly woman handed Louisa the holy card with the prayer in Italian. She motioned for Louisa to flip it over. Louisa did so. She flipped it twice. Louisa was surprised to see that when she flipped the card, the picture disappeared and in its place was Tony’s prayer in English:
Assure me that I am not alone. You are known to possess miraculous powers and to be ever ready to speak for those in trouble. Oh Loving and Gentle St. Anthony, reach down from heaven I implore you, and assist me in my hour of need. Obtain for me (mention your request here).
Louisa knew it couldn’t be possible that the picture had vanished and the prayer had changed from Italian to English. Although it was possible for the woman to have such an experience at St. Anthony’s tomb, the card couldn’t possible change languages like magic.
My mind is playing games again?
The card’s prayer never changed back to Italian no matter how long Louisa stared at it or flipped it over.
Dearest St. Anthony, reach down from heaven and guide me with thy strength. Plead for me in my needs. And teach me to be humbly thankful, as you were, for all the bountiful blessings I am to receive. Amen.
Louisa twirled blonde strands of her hair with one hand while she flipped the holy card over with the other.
The woman rolled her eyes and grabbed Louisa’s twirling hand from her hair to stop her. She motioned Louisa’s to the back of Arsenale, to what looked like a secret or private entrance. The woman flicked her hand at Louisa then flicked it back to the entrance again. She was signaling for Louisa to sneak into the Arsenal at the secret gate?
“Prova,” the old woman said.
Try.
The frail woman of Arsenale handed Louisa some cat treats, the St. Anthony medal and a piece of paper that said, in Italian, “they are not fish.”
Louisa just stood there, twirling her hair in one hand, and staring at the treats, paper and medal in the other. The cats tried to lead her into a secret entrance through the high brick wall. When Louisa wouldn’t move, they began to circle her. Ignoring the cats and the old woman, Louisa walked to the vaporetto dock instead and sat down.
Three of the cats, a huge black and white one and two orange tabbies came by and started to hiss and growl in the direction of the wall. She stroked their backs and gave them a few treats and soon all three had curled up into her lap, their large front paws hanging listlessly over her thighs.
“What do I do? I’m afraid. Tony?” she said to the face on the medal that the woman gave her. “No, I should pray to Santa Lucia, the virgin who helps the blind to see. Please help. Send me a messenger.”
The vaporetto arrived and one of the boat tenders finished his shift. When it departed, he did not. Louisa noted that he looked very much like a more weathered version of Antonin.
He saw her twisting a long strand of her blonde hair and petting the cats.
“Do you need help? Are you lost?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I show you the way along the wall on my way during home from work.”
A short cut to Venice proper. She saw locals coming from that direction along the wall on a metal walkway facing the cemetery. She decided to go with him because the route wasn’t hidden from Venetians, only from tourists.
They walked along the wall, at first in silence, but he kept glancing sideways at her until he finally spoke.
“You are not Venetian. You are American. How long you be in Venice?”
“I first came to Venice many years ago.”
“You like Venice, no?”
“I found out that everything I heard about Venice was true.”
“How do you mean?”
“Dusty, damp and wonderful.”
“American women love Venice. It is more than a fine wine to them. It is a drug,” he said.
“How did you know I was American?” she asked in her best Venetian dialect.
“Is easy. As Venice is to you, so you are to me.”
“I don’t understand,” said Louisa.
“Like our La Serenissima, you are more than a fine wine, to Venetian men you are a drug.”
This was a new line. Not only did he look like Tony but he was magical too.
“A drug? Why?”
“All is addicting and make us high.”
“Really?”
“Si, si.” He nodded. “Your smile, your hair, your eyes, your smell. Most important? Your adventure spirit.”
“I see that Venetian men are not above stealing lines from Twilight vampires, like Edward, for their seductions.”
“It is not a shame to steal from the best. We are not above stealing, you know, it is our legacy.”
Quite true. Venetians had stolen marble, gold, spices, art, women for as long as their great power could sail away with it, and do it al
l in the name of the Most Serene Republic.
“I’m not ashamed to steal either,” she said thinking of the fur hat she’d practically stolen from the nuns at the thrift shop. She also planned to steal Antonin from any Buranese beauty who sought to claim him.
The man stopped on the bridge high above a canal, which led into the Arsenale through the fortress brick wall. He turned to face her.
“Steal a kiss?”
“No,” she said.
Stealing is just that, it is not a request, so he took one kiss from her lips. He hadn’t been asking, he had simply announced his breaking and entering.
“This one kiss, I won’t tell. It’s only for a moment, I am Venetian,” he said.
She knew he would tell the instant he found a listener.
A speed boat passed along the wall and its wake shook the stairs of the bridge they stood on, her on the highest one, he below her, so accessible, to one kiss. Or another, after another, until they were making out on the bridge.
It can’t be happening again, she thought, and with what looks like Antonin’s cousin, and with his bed within our grasp in a calle just ahead of us beyond the wall. Her mind floated with him to that bed. He pulled off her fur hat and was gobbling her hair, her head with both hands, his tongue on fire. It rolled over hers.
“You must go,” he stopped and said.
“Yes, I must,” she said, both thankful for, and resentful of, his restraint.
Without so much as thinking about it, he had almost peeled off her coat but instead of finishing, he said, “Go.”
“Go?”
He had stopped kissing her but his eyes had not. He still held her in his arms too.
“He is lucky,” he said and released her.
“Who?”
“Anyone.”
“Anyone?” Hmmm. That was another line she hadn’t heard from a Venetian man before. Very unusual for a Venetian to be so original during seduction. She had found over time that Venetian men had certain choice English phrases ready to say to their prey.
“You must go,” the man repeated. “My cousin knew you would not follow the old woman’s directions when you got here.”
“Your cousin?”
“He send me here.”
“Antonin?”
“Si.”
“Si,” said the old woman, who had either followed them or hid somewhere nearby and now was standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up at Louisa.
She pointed to the cats walking towards the secret Arsenale gate, back where Louisa first found this whimsical Venetian cat lady. The cats kept walking away from them, but turned every few steps as if asking Louisa to follow them, their tails raised high and twitching.
Louisa sensed this man was not for her but for Rouge, who would meet him and have her drug flow through his veins. Vein. The four of them were like a squared party. Louisa and Tony, Rouge and his cousin, who happened to be a taller, broader, suntanned version of Antonin. A Marlboro man version.
“Why must I go?” Louisa asked the Marlboro man.
“It’s your destiny. We cannot do it.”
“Why not?”
“Too dangerous,” said the woman. The man nodded in agreement.
“Not too dangerous for me?”
“Feed cats along the way,” said the old woman.
“Remember you are a drug to Venetian men,” said the man.
“Pretend you are lost.”
“Use your drug.”
Louisa laughed at what was beginning to sound less like a very stupid idea and more like an act in a play. Louisa stared across the water at the cemetery full of ghosts and graves. Here she stood by the Arsenal trying to find more ghosts.
She turned back to the wall and looked around for the man and woman who had told her to sneak into the naval yard. But the old woman had vanished and the man was climbing into a nearby boat. The cats remained.
All of the cats piled on her lap, purred, then got up and walked down the stairs towards the gate into the naval complex. Louisa followed them along the walkway, passed the vaporetto dock, through the first gate, and towards a chain link fence. It appeared to be closed to tourists, and perhaps it was, but the gate wasn’t locked.
The cats pranced through the fence, came back to her then hid in window wells. They began to meow, hiss and growl. Then silence. She saw pigeons and seagulls circling a clearing. They, too, seemed to direct her route, flying over her head then back to the clearing.
A naval officer walked by her and she did as the woman said, she pretended to call out, “i gatti,” to the cats.
She stretched out her hand filled with imaginary cat treats. He paid no heed except to ogle her butt when he passed her.
“Prego,” he said in approval of her feeding the cats or, more likely, her rear view.
At the clearing, the birds became silent. They landed on the rails of three large barges that appeared to be dry-docked for repairs. She crept up to them. Frightened was not a strong enough word to describe what she was feeling. In her head, she ran through the lies she would tell if caught, lies would flow easily in this scene due to the intense adrenaline flowing through her body. She climbed on one of boats and peeked over the deck.
Laying across the hull were rows of rows of them. Dead.
Slaughtered.
She jumped down and stepped backwards. She knew better than to run. She looked for another, better, route back to the vaporetto. She decided to walk straight ahead towards the back of the Arsenale, to see where it would take her. She hurried through thick trees until she found the metal walkway where she had kissed Antonin’s cousin. She trailed it out to the nearest campo.
Free from the sight of the death, she stopped in a doorway and heaved.
“Those are not fish.” She said it out loud but no one heard her. Or so she thought.
Barbara awoke sensing something off-kilter, and more than a chill in the air, a chill in her bed. Massimo wasn’t in his bed, waking her with soft kisses and vigorous strokes, unusual for him because, as he liked to say, “I’m always up in the morning.”
Where was he? Why were the shutters closed? Even during the cold evening, he hadn‘t closed the shutters. He had allowed the moon to shine through. It reflected onto the sea, easily viewed from his huge bed with its burgundy printed fabric headboard, carved into a creative shape, and detailed with gold pins to secure its forest green crushed velvet trim.
This morning, the sun wasn’t allowed to shine on her. The blasting fire had been extinguished, flue shut tightly. Not even an ember remained.
Silence clanged in the cold, vast, damp room around her. She shuttered like the room’s barely visible glass panes in the wind. She pulled covers up to her chin, sat up slightly and peered over the rich taffeta comforter that provided little comfort in this moment. Eyes darting about the seeming monstrosity of an empty room, she spotted new details all at once, her senses, particularly sight and sound, in hyper-mode. She spied the gilded antique chair they first enjoyed together then knocked over with their energy. It now sat perfectly straight against the opposite wall. The bureau, which filled the other wall and had been giddily swung open and emptied of some of its treasures, had been closed, and worse, it was now locked with a chain. All the rich, wondrous Venetian costumes that added to their pleasure had been neatly stored away. None of them lie on the floor where they had both strewn them carelessly, when nothing had mattered but the pleasure of the moment.
The mask she had worn during one episode was hung onto the wall, staring at her, smiling with allure as if to say, “Strange girl, I am his true lover, I live here, I belong here, not you.”
Barbara felt like an interloper who needed to leave. Her unwelcome presence like being at a small table for a quaint family dinner, one where she didn’t even speak their language.
She spied a black, brownish and white photo on the wall.
Had it been here last night? She couldn’t be sure but it now hung perfectly straight, directly above where
they had made love on the chair. Surely it would have fallen, shattering its glass, during all of their kicking and rolling and frolicking about it.
Perhaps the bastard Massimo reframed and rehung it, you know, while he had been so very busy cleaning any sign of their glorious events in the night? Purifying it? Was he ashamed? Or was it simply time to move on to the next catch, a top of the food chain mammal ever fishing for new prey?
The picture drew her over to it. She gazed into the eyes of the man in the photo. She felt him piercing her soul and beckoning to her heart. But the woman in the picture seemed sad, almost resolute with determined stature, her delicate head tilted towards him in obvious adoration. The man was Massimo but the picture appeared to be old.
Wasn’t it?
Louisa bolted across what seemed like a hundred bridges to escape the vision of what she’d seen at Arsenale. Venice was still cold outside but inside she was numb.
How does this fit in with who is killing glassmakers? Don’t think about it. I’m gonna boil-up some prosciutto-filled tortellini, no, capellini, not little donuts but little caps of pasta.
Was this what people did when in shock? Trauma ignored and food needed? Food.
I’ll make a sauce of tomato and olives. I’ll serve it with a wonderful salad topped with olive oil, no balsamic vinegar. Shoot I’m out of oil. I love the pure taste of Florentine oil.
Like it or not, she was forced to stop into a deli down the alley from her little apartment.
“A taste of Firenza for you today?” said the young man behind the counter as he wrapped up a finely strained bottle of oil, fresh from the Tuscano countryside, for Louisa.
“Si,” she agreed. In no mood for chit chat, she didn’t look up.
Used to her friendly chatter, the young man who didn’t notice the brush off and said, “Venice cold. South Italy good.”
She’d bought some guidebooks at the thrift store, in Italian but the pictures spoke a universal language and she quickly warmed to the idea of a southern journey to blind her from what she saw at Arsenale. She made tentative plans to get out of Venice while she maneuvered through throngs of costumed marauders on the way to prepare a huge meal and possibly pack for an early morning escape.
