A Summer In Europe

by Marilyn Brant

  “Let’s do it as a round!” Dr. Louie suggested. “We’ll start in this gondola with ‘When the moon ...’ You guys”—he pointed to Gwen’s gondola—“you begin singing when we get to ‘pizza pie.’ And everyone over there.” He motioned toward Aunt Bea’s gondola. “You all join in on ‘amore.’ Got it?”

  Naturally, the Edwards brothers could sing, Gwen noticed. They could do just about anything, it seemed, and had strong musical voices on top of all their other gifts. Not remarkable enough to star in a West End production, perhaps, but their tone and range were nothing to be embarrassed by, either.

  In spite of herself, Gwen found she was swaying a bit. Well, Hester kept rocking into her, forcing her to move whether she wanted to or not, but she actually kind of hummed along with the melody. She was pretty sure no one but, maybe, the older woman beside her could hear her, since she always worked hard to keep her vocal contributions virtually inaudible. Still, Gwen tried to come out of her shell. After all, how many times would she be on a gondola in Venice?

  Even Cynthia had joined in. Gwen studied her. Sitting next to Emerson—singing shrilly and vaguely out of pitch—Cynthia looked happy. More contented than smug. Gwen got the sense that the other woman craved love and companionship so much that she’d put aside any possible ineptitude in the attempt to get it. And while it seemed, to Gwen, to be obvious that the Brit had thrown herself at Emerson that night, Gwen couldn’t discount the powerful aphrodisiac of courage. Cynthia was going after what she wanted in a way Gwen had not. A man who had guts, like Emerson, couldn’t help but admire that.

  He caught her staring at them, grinned and motioned for her to open her mouth and sing. She shook her head. His brother then nudged her foot with his and said, in between verses, “You must know the words to this.” She shrugged and hummed just a little harder. Before the end of the song, both of the Edwards men had rolled their eyes at her in exasperation, making her certain that her persistent self-consciousness was, indeed, a character flaw. Not that she could do anything about that. Not really.

  Back at the hotel, she was startled when Emerson broke away from his gang to come up to her, though, and whisper in her ear, “Don’t make any plans for tomorrow morning, all right?” He leaned in toward her. “I’m coming to knock you up at eight.”

  She pulled back and stared at him, unable to mask her astonishment. “You’re going to do what?”

  He tilted his head as if perplexed, balled up his fist and moved it as if he were pounding against something. Gwen knew she didn’t get around much, but this looked to be a very sexually suggestive gesture indeed. “Knock. You. Up,” he said slowly.

  That he was saying this in a normal tone of voice floored her. She covered her open mouth with her palm and shook her head vigorously. She removed her hand. “I can’t believe you just said that. Stop it.”

  He laughed out loud. “Oh, Gwen, you’re such an American. I’m just playing with you. I know your country’s idioms. It’s time you learned a few of ours. ‘Knock you up’ is a common English expression. It means, literally, to knock on your door. In order to wake you up.” He laughed at her some more and lowered his voice a tad. “It does not mean to impregnate you. Although”—he paused and shot a wicked grin at her—“I’m like James Bond. I never say never.”

  She felt her face flush hot as he swiveled on his heel and headed back to the other Brits, who were looking on with amusement (Thoreau), irritation (Cynthia) and confusion (Louisa). Gwen raced out of the lobby as fast as she could.

  The next day, true to his word, Emerson came knocking on her door just after eight a.m. To his credit, he only smirked a little bit when he was picking her up. Aunt Bea, on the other hand, was not nearly so circumspect.

  “Have fun, kids!” her aunt called with an unnecessary zing of energy. “And just so you know, I’ll be out of the room for most of the morning, just in case you get tired and want to ... um, take a break here before the afternoon tour.”

  Gwen glared in horror at her aunt, but Emerson just laughed good-naturedly and said, “Many thanks for the offer, Beatrice. We shall keep that in mind.”

  “Where did you want to go?” Gwen asked as soon as they were outside and she had recovered her voice. “To San Marco’s Square?”

  “I have a few sites planned, starting with the Rialto,” he told her. “I know we saw it last night, but it’s different during the day. Plus, we couldn’t stop the gondola to get out and shop yesterday.”

  “True. Is the shopping as interesting here as it was in Florence?” she asked.

  “I’ll let you decide for yourself.” He scanned the twisty path they were on, bustling with tourists, until he spotted something several yards away. “But first, gelato.” He picked up the pace.

  She glanced at her watch and had to skip a few times to catch up with him. “It’s not even eight-thirty, Emerson. No one eats ice cream this early in the day. Not even the natives.”

  He shot a look at her over his shoulder. “Willing to wager a bet?”

  As it turned out, no, she didn’t want to make a bet. Not with him. And certainly not after seeing a line of people waiting at the gelato stand. While the couple in front of them ordered their cones in fluent Italian, Emerson raised one eyebrow at her and nodded wordlessly.

  “Fine,” she murmured. “So what if you’re right?”

  He grinned. “You’ll find I am often right.”

  She didn’t waste her breath bothering to contradict him, but he remained a distinctly different breed of man than any she’d encountered before: cocky, but strangely good hearted; juvenile, but undeniably intelligent; a fan of the arts, but unquestionably masculine. Even after two weeks in his company, she still had little idea what to make of him—except that she felt persistently out of his league.

  They took their cones and meandered in what Gwen thought was an aimless promenade, but Emerson, apparently, knew his way around Venice—no easy-to-master skill given the serpentine walkways, the flowing canals at every turn and the countless unmarked little bridges. Suddenly, they turned a corner and there was the Rialto Bridge, about twenty yards ahead of them, flashing brilliant white in the scorching sun and already packed with a swarm of visitors.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. “We got here fast.”

  “Yes, well, I knew a shortcut.” He stopped to study the view. “Pretty, is it not?” Before she even managed to form an answer, he elbowed her and said, “Oh, look at that.”

  He pointed to the window of the shop nearest them on the sidewalk, and she peeked at the object of his interest. It was a chess piece—the knight from an elaborate set—displayed as a centerpiece behind the glass. “It’s lovely,” she said, leaning closer and noticing the rest of the chess set resting atop a polished board on a decorative table behind the ornate horse and rider.

  “Bloody gorgeous,” he whispered. “Handcrafted, too. Made of pewter. Painted with real eighteen-karat gold and sterling silver. Hmm.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He motioned toward a little placard near the piece. “It says.”

  She glanced at it and almost rolled her eyes. Yes, it said it all right. In Italian. “Is there anything you don’t know how to do?”

  He paused. Scrunched up his handsome forehead in thought. Squinted into the distance. “No.” Then he laughed heartily. “Of course, Gwen. There are scores of things I don’t know or cannot do. It’s because I didn’t know something, but I worked up the nerve to ask somebody or to give it a go anyway, that I learned. You need to stop being so afraid of looking foolish.”

  Or sounding foolish, she thought, remembering the impromptu singing in the gondolas the night before.

  “I’m going to slip in here for a moment. If they sell individual pieces, I want to pick one up for my brother. He celebrates a birthday next month. What do you think he’d like best? A knight? A king? A rook?”

  She recalled that one morning Thoreau explained the moves he’d thought she made in her ever-so-polite battle aga
inst Cynthia. “A bishop,” she told Emerson. “I think he’d like that piece.”

  He shot her an inquisitive glance. “Interesting choice. I always prefer the boldness of the knight myself, but Thoreau does use his bishops in surprising ways sometimes. Sneaks up on a gent.” He finished his last bite of gelato and tossed out the napkin. “Huh. I’ll be back momentarily.”

  While he was inside making his purchases, she saw a few paper flyers posted for some event coming up called the “Festa del Reden-tore,” and she asked Emerson about it when he emerged from the shop.

  “It’s a big celebration that dates back to the late 1500s,” he explained. “Always held on the third weekend in July. A feast day of thanks for the end of the plague that’d killed thousands, including the famous painter Titian, whose work I admire. There are fireworks, decorated boats in the Grand Canal and a long procession to the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer.” He shrugged. “It’s charming. Too bad we’ll be all the way up in Paris then.”

  Oh, she hadn’t thought of that. Paris! Just a week away. This trip was zipping by, almost too fast for her to assimilate it. She needed more time for reflection. Time to process everything she was seeing, hearing, feeling. But this was the thing about the tour that made it so very odd for her. That caused that parallel-universe sensation. Because she didn’t get a break from the constant activity and new sites, she was as overstimulated as a toddler during the first week of preschool. And if it wasn’t Hans-Josef introducing her to some new place or new cultural item, it was Emerson.

  They dashed up the stairs on their side of the Rialto and began inspecting the vendors crammed onto the bridge. Much like their bazaarlike experience on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, there were simply too many objects to focus on at once—a cacophony of colors, if she could hear them rather than see them. Nevertheless, she tried to direct her attention to one single thing at a time and found herself drawn to a particular piece.

  “Is that a Phantom of the Opera mask?” she asked, pointing toward a collection of Venetian masks hanging askew on a jaunty display pole. She walked over to it and picked it up. It reminded her of a mask she’d caught a brief glimpse of back in Florence and, of course, the most famous costume relic from her favorite musical.

  “Looks quite a bit like it, but that’s a very traditional style,” he commented. “This one is a popular shape and it seems to cover a little more of the face than the one the Phantom wears in the play. But it’s been a long while since I’ve seen the production. Why? Do you wish to purchase it? Take it home, hang it on your wall and pretend you’re Christine?”

  She laughed, far too embarrassed to admit how close to the truth he was, but she didn’t answer him of course. Instead, she fingered the black laces that were meant to tie the mask in place and ran her thumb across its white lacquered cheek. She noticed several masks in front of her that were similar. In peering at a competing mask vendor a few spaces down, she saw even more of them, along with others that were painted to look like suns, moons, leaves, jesters. The one she was holding felt very commonplace all of a sudden.

  She slid it back on the hook. “Are there any mask shops anywhere nearby? Ones that might have a larger selection or, perhaps, some truly original designs?”

  His eyebrows rose and the corners of his lips curled into a mocking grin. “My, haven’t you become quite the avid shopper? And so discriminating as well.”

  She shot him an annoyed look.

  “Gwen, this is Venice. There are masks and mask shops everywhere .” He paused and scanned the buildings along the canal. “I’ll take you to my favorite.”

  She followed him through a series of more twisty walkways and bridges, quickly losing all sense of direction herself, until they reached a little hole-in-the-wall place with a brightly painted wooden sign above the entrance. Upon it, in heavily slanted calligraphy, were the words Il Carnevale.

  “The Carnival,” Emerson translated unnecessarily. “Pronounced ‘eel car-nee-vall-ay’ in Italian. There’s a huge Mardi Gras celebration every year in the city. It’s crammed with people. About a hundred thousand tourists show up. And it lasts for a couple of weeks. Never had the daring to try to come down here then, though.” He waved her through the door and into the shop. “Come. Take a look around.”

  Gwen entered what appeared at first glance to be some kind of artisan’s workshop rather than the store she was expecting. She realized quickly that was precisely what this place was: a workshop. This wasn’t merely a spot to exhibit masks—although there was an entire wall filled with them and a window display, too. No. This was where they were created.

  Emerson, chattering at her as always, was attempting to explain the different types of masks that were made there. There were the oval moretta masks with black velvet and veils, the very simple volto masks and the bauta masks, which were the kind historically linked to Venice ever since the Middle Ages. Many of these masks covered the entire face with just eye slots, no mouth, and lots of gilding, while others concealed only the upper part of the face from the forehead to the nose, but allowed the wearer to talk, eat or drink as desired.

  “They’re useful for a number of purposes,” he said, picking up a striking, one-of-a-kind catlike mask and holding it up to his face so that he resembled a somewhat deranged lion. “Especially illicit romantic encounters.”

  She shook her head at his choice of bauta and pointed to this harlequinesque character mask that she’d seen depicted in a number of places around the city. “This seems to be a popular design. What is it?”

  Emerson set down his leonine selection. “You mean who is it, don’t you?” Emerson said, a split second before an older lady, who had to be one of the artists, walked in.

  She saw Gwen pointing and said, “That is Arlecchino. Do you know the opera?”

  Gwen shook her head.

  “It is a one-act opera. German,” the Venetian woman said in heavily accented English. “But the roles—the characters—they come from the Italian commedia dell’arte. It’s a funny story. A—” She paused, searching for the exact word. “A parody, yes?”

  Emerson nodded at her. “Yes. The main character, Arlecchino, has little faith in marriage and fidelity. He’s married to Colombina, but he wants to be with the tailor’s wife, the lovely Annunziata. It’s rather like a comedy of errors and a game of masks and disguises but, instead of everyone ending up with their spouses, the players get switched around. Arlecchino is united with Annunziata as his lover. Colombina gets a different guy for herself—”

  “Leandro,” the Italian woman interjected with a grin. “And Dottore and Abbate become lovers, too. But the poor tailor, Matteo. . .” She sighed.

  “Matteo, who is Annunziata’s husband, ends up alone,” Emerson explained. “And in the finale, as all the new couples form a procession onto the stage, Arlecchino removes his mask at last and addresses the audience. He explains the new arrangement of the couples.”

  “And he says they will last ‘until something new happens,’ ” added the woman. “So there is no promise of fidelity at the end, even among the new lovers.”

  “Huh,” Gwen managed. It figured Emerson would like a play like that. “I’m sure it’s hilarious,” she said wryly. “You probably just have to be there to appreciate it.”

  Emerson’s grin broadened and the Italian artist lady smiled gently. “You are just recently married?” she asked.

  “What? No!” Gwen cried. “We ... um, we’re—”

  “Friends,” Emerson supplied. He cleared his throat. His grin remained unchanged.

  “Ah, friends. Amici. Si ... forse. You will tell me if you need my help, yes?”

  “Molto grazie,” Emerson replied with a nod. When the woman had busied herself in the corner of the room, he pointed at the rows of unusual masks. “Well? Any you wish to take home with you?”

  She ran the pad of her thumb over the gold Mouth of Truth that she’d been wearing around her neck since Florence and said, “I tend to spend quite a bit of m
oney when I’m with you, don’t I?”

  “Perhaps. But you’re purchasing quality items.”

  She agreed, even though she suspected Richard would consider just about everything she’d bought on the tour so far an extravagance. She picked up a mask that was perched on a stick. No ribbons to tie. The wearer had to hold it up to her face. The design was a beautiful combination of celestial bodies. Suns, moons, stars and comets were all represented. And the colors! Rich shades of navy, teal and purple accented with silver and gold. It was like peering into the Milky Way.

  “This one is gorgeous, but I don’t want to get it now,” she said decisively. “I’d have to carry it all through the Doge’s Palace this afternoon. Maybe I’ll come back tonight or tomorrow before we leave Venice.”

  “As you like,” he said with a shrug. He took a closer look at the mask and laughed.

  “What?”

  “It’s just ... you know what? Never mind. You won’t enjoy it.” He bit back a smirk and took a few steps toward the door. “Let’s go.”

  “No,” she said, feeling a bolt of stubbornness rooting her feet to the floor. “I want to know.”

  “Fine, but no mocking me later.” He inhaled deeply and squinted into the distance. “ ‘Nun glüht mein Stern! Die Welt ist offen!’ ” he recited enthusiastically. “ ‘Die Erde ist jung! Die Liebe is frei! Ihr Halekins!’ ”

  “Let me guess,” she said, unable to hide her sarcasm. “String theory in German?”

  “I said no mocking. And, no. It’s from the opera Arlecchino. Loosely translated it means, ‘Now shines my star! The world is open! The Earth is young! Love is free! You Harlequins!”

  She squinted at him. “How many languages do you speak?”

  “Just one. The language of love,” he said, as overly dramatic as he’d been at that ristorante in Sorrento.