Women in Sunlight

by Frances Mayes

  Camille feels a visceral desire to own a stack of this thick paper.

  Matilde fixes the deckle over a rectangle of screen and scoops up some of the slurry mixture from the vat. “Shake it to even the fibers, smooth it out.” She hands the tray to the art historian. Everyone leans in to see the goopy, drippy slush flatten out.

  After water oozes off, Matilde shows Camille how to press on a piece of felt to absorb moisture, when to pull off the deckle. Matilde carefully lifts the paper onto another felt and presses again. The students take over, Matilde and Serena guiding.

  During the lunch break, Camille buys a panino at the bar with Rowan Volk, the fine press printer from Berkeley. He’s planning a limited edition of poems on mourning and hopes to go home with enough paper. Camille does not say that’s the last thing she wants to read. He shows her a Bologna artist’s border of cypress trees for his cover. “You see them at every cemetery in the Mediterranean world,” he says, “and I’ve fallen for the way they punctuate the landscape here.” He pulls books out of his bag. She admires the line drawings and the way crisp type bites into the creamy pages. She recognizes the names of only a couple of his poets— C. D. Wright, Jane Miller. How lucky they are to be immortalized in these fine books. “You need to meet my neighbor. Kit Raines. She’s a famous poet, too.”

  “She lives here?” A small piece of cheese falls into his beard.

  “Yes, for years. She and Matilde are good friends.” Camille made a mental note: order Kit’s books. She gestures a flick away from her chin and smiles. He gets it. She wants to hear more about his press. She’s just understood that the paper isn’t at all passive but plays an active role in how what’s printed on it is experienced. He goes first to wash his hands, then pages through the books with her. He’s engrossed. She loves that. He shows her the hand-sewn folios, how the cover boards are papered, and how the finished book can be the balance point for the text. She takes out her pen and draws a lean cypress tree on her napkin.

  “I’m going up to Bologna tomorrow to meet my artist and to a book arts exhibit. Want to come? It’s just a day trip on the train.” He cocks his head and pushes back his chair to stretch his long legs. He’s quite attractive, she notices.

  “That would be splendid. I’m going to Venice on Monday, but tomorrow I’m totally free. I’ve seen fine press exhibits but I think I didn’t understand that you’re after a concept for the words, or would you say an extension for words?”

  “Yes, both. Camille—Venice. That’s a place for paper. There’s this monastery out in the lagoon that prints books in dozens of languages. You must go. Lord Byron used to study Armenian there…” He seems to know everything about paper but never has made it himself. His eyes, black as obsidian, dart and dart, intense, tracking both of hers. They talk, talk all the way back to the bottega.

  * * *

  —

  Late in the afternoon, Serena shows them how to stack the paper they’ve made according to size and to squeeze each bundle under the ancient wooden press. Like handkerchiefs and scarves, they’re hung to dry. Camille’s favorite shape is the tall rectangle with roughly the proportions of a door.

  Walking home, Camille casts about for the right design of her own watermark. 3C, she thinks, Charles, Camille, Charlie. Then no, this is for me. An arch with a keystone lettered VA for Villa Assunta? Where my work will take place. VA, Virginia, where I learned and first met artists.

  * * *

  —

  The toasty aroma of baking fills the kitchen. Susan and Julia are making a flat cracker. “I saw the recipe,” Julia says. They roll out a second batch, pulling the first out of the hot, hot oven. “Carta di musica—sheet music. The simplest recipe on earth—it’s from the south of Italy. See, it’s a flatbread as tactile and thin as old sheets of music. This batch is flavored with rosemary; the next with fennel. It’s nothing but semolina flour and water—look how it puffs, then settles. The Italian miracle—something great can emerge from very little.”

  She breaks off a piece and hands it to Camille, who gives them both a hug. “This is just like the paper we made today! It seemed edible, too!” They gather by the fire with red wine and the savory crackers. Camille tells them about the day, mentioning that she’s going on the early train to Bologna with Rowan. Can she explain the supercharge she got from the papermaking and the conversation about art books? “Let’s go out for dinner. It’s too late to cook. There’s much to say.”

  When Julia invited me on the trip to Venice, I said yes immediately. “I love Venice. I’ve loved Venice since I was seven, when my parents took me there,” I told her. “I was dressed in a dirndl dress from our previous stop in Austria. A little Heidi. I adored the sprigged floral pinafore over the ruffled white blouse. The first day, I left my handbag with felt cutouts on the gondola. It held coins from all the countries we visited, and my red diary, forever locked, the key on a ribbon around my neck. I was inconsolable. Daddy did his best with gelato stops, and my mother took me to a store for a new diary with nice paper.”

  “Camille may search for that shop. She’s fallen in love with handmade paper. She’s in Bologna today with this Rowan guy she met at the workshop. He’s a fine press printer from Berkeley.”

  “Not Rowan Volk? He publishes the famous Volk Editions. They’re works of art. In rare-book libraries everywhere.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Anyway, they bonded. All I know is he’s skinny and has a beard. She wants to ask him to dinner when we get home. Will you and Colin come?”

  “Yes. Love to. You don’t know how perfect an escape is for me this week.” I realized that I rested my hand across my middle. “I know Fitzy will be happy at Leo’s. Annetta gives him scraps.”

  “Susan’s boarding Archie at a farm outside town. She’s worried that he doesn’t ‘speak’ Italian and won’t understand what he’s told.”

  “Oh, I know the Bruni family—they’re wonderful. Archie may not want to come home.”

  * * *

  —

  Organized Susan has made all the reservations. Oddly, though they’ve all been to Europe, none of the women has been to Venice. How will they react to that watery world? I go stony when someone says, “It’s too crowded,” or “Venice smells bad,” or “I don’t like Venice.” When I hear that I think, Well, I don’t like you. You have to be tone deaf and blind not to respond to the beauty of Venice.

  Coming up—a chance to walk over narrow bridges, look up through Gothic windows at frescoed ceilings, look over the Grand Canal at Santa Maria della Salute’s massive volumes rising out of the lagoon, look down at the colors of the palazzi swirling over the water’s surface. Look, look, look. That’s all I want to do.

  * * *

  —

  The train into Venice arrives conventionally but that’s the end of normal. Out of the teeming terminal we enter a chaos of vaporetti disgorging passengers with too much luggage, a crush of tourists waiting to board, elegant water taxis for those who can’t face the crowded ferries, and on the Grand Canal, the first sight of gondolas, those graphic black silhouettes drifting by as though in an etching of Venice.

  Susan has reserved a water taxi, all gleaming wood and leather. Our driver performs a fast U out of there, sending spray over the people boarding the adjacent boat. He quickly slows—if everyone hot-dogged down the canal, the combined wake would further damage the buildings. Already, and for centuries, doors are worn or boarded up at the bottom, the embarking steps long since submerged.

  Having made his gesture, he’s in no hurry at all. We pile our carry-ons in the cabin, jackets, too, since it’s warm, even humid. So that we miss nothing, we move to the open stern.

  Leaning on top of the cabin, Julia props her chin on her hands and gazes. Susan has brought her good camera from her real estate days. She zooms in on the gardens we glimpse. “You all, this is too much,” she keeps repeating. And it is. What a slide show—i
ntricate façades of peach, ochre, the carmine shades, and gilt; cupped domes against sun-splotched, mottled sky; candy-striped poles; working barges loaded with trash, bottled water, and crates of vegetables. A long boat loaded with roof tiles lists precipitously, but one thing is for sure: Venetians know how to ply these canals. We glide by a row of particularly gorgeous palazzi throwing down their colors upon the water, and I see Camille turn away her face, her cheeks streaked with tears. They’re dazzled—each with eyes wide open, mouths, too. Innocents abroad, as Henry James would have it. Maybe we all become innocent when we travel. Down stream, Palladio’s severe church Il Redentore, plucked out of the air by a giant hand and placed on the quay. It’s an offering to us, a building this perfect. I remember the chilling light inside, white as an icicle. Every color of Venice drained off. To stand in the coldness of that light you are purified. (I will go there tomorrow.)

  I’m a bit queasy. I duck into the cabin and take out my notebook. What words fit this place? Impossible. I jot down: shimmy, glimmer, shimmer, labyrinthine, a thousand mirrors, stippling, mercurial, elegantissima, gnarls of water, spumes like angel wings, water, water everywhere.

  We’re here. Hand it to Susan. She scored a major scoop on some last-minute app. This hotel is a palace, almost a museum—those are Tintoretto frescoes in the grand hall. We’re shown to a two-bedroom suite (four sumptuous beds, all draped), a living room between rooms, and a terrace smack on the Grand Canal. Enormous paintings, brocade, and tassel-and-swag everything, marble baths fit for princesses. “You are getting stars in your crown,” I tell Susan. “Colin and I usually stay at this tiny inn on a tiny canal. It’s sweet. But holy madre, this is incredible. We could be visiting the doge! Clearly, Susan, you have a killer instinct for real estate in all forms.”

  “True. I do. I can’t help it.”

  Julia waves at boats passing below. “Don’t ever stop!” she tells Susan. “This is genius. I’ve never stayed anywhere remotely like this.”

  “What did you tell them?” Camille asks. “That we are wives of sheiks—I’m floored. They’ve left flowers.” She gestures toward a vase of pink roses on a painted chest.

  * * *

  —

  I’ve learned not to intrude with first-time visitors. If you know a place well, you tend to natter on, blocking the fresh impressions people have on their own. Susan will get them from A to B. I plan to soak in the grand tub, then take a long walk. We agree to meet on our terrace for drinks at six. Drinks! Well, little parachutist the size of my thumb: Shirley Temple with a cherry, here I come.

  * * *

  —

  “First to San Marco,” Julia instructs. She’s in the lead over bridges and down narrow calli. They step into a portico at the end of the grandiose piazza. Stunned, they see at the opposite end San Marco looming like a fairyland caravansary in a mirage of the east. Familiar from books and movies, long arcades line the piazza, and the tilting tower anchors the whole scene to earth. They follow the strains of, could that be, “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” over to Florian’s Café. The late November sun feels warm as they arrange themselves to face the raucous façade of the basilica. Susan looks up the history on her phone, Julia reaches into her bag for her guidebook, and Camille just stares at the winged lion and the powerful prancing horses that look about to leap into the piazza. “Our trouble must be that we come from a place with no winged lions,” she observes.

  “Symbol of Saint Mark. The place was built to house his bones. Much ado about saints’ bones back then,” Susan says. Julia shows them the photo in her book of the horses. “What we’re seeing are copies—bronze. The real ones are copper. We’ll find them in the museum.” The waiter brings their lunch of pasta with clams and salads. “Their history goes way back, maybe to second-century Greece, then they somehow migrated to Constantinople where they were above the race course, the Hippodrome. The crusaders looted them and shipped them to Venice. Big war booty.”

  “So not the four horsemen of the apocalypse?” Camille asked.

  “No, preceded that. You dig back and almost everything Christian has a pagan explanation,” Julia said. She reads on. “Listen to this—Napoleon stole them and took them to Paris. They’ve traveled. He installed them over the Arc de Triomphe and after Waterloo they somehow got home again. But, in World War I they were sent to Rome and in World War II they were hidden in a convent in Padova.”

  “I think that’s going to be the story of Venice,” Susan said. “Layers upon layers upon layers. All floating.”

  * * *

  —

  At dinner I heard about their basilica visit. It was interesting. I haven’t been inside for years because of tourist mobs but today they breezed right in. Early winter is best. Maybe I will go tomorrow now that they’ve described the circles of patterned marble floor tiles repeating the circles of gold glass tesserae on the ceiling, and the curves everywhere. “Our own architecture is quite square,” Susan observed. I wonder if Colin has noticed this, how round the internal architecture is. Camille has an especially good eye; she made these circle connections.

  We’re in Venezia: we order all four courses. Julia takes out her notebook. “Risotto all’onda,” she says, “to the wave; perfect for my Learning Italian. And perfect for Venice—a stage of cooking compared to water movement. Look at this—black rice. You know what that’s from?”

  I don’t say.

  “Squid ink.”

  Susan frowns. “Wavy squid ink. Wow. Tastes better than it sounds.”

  Next comes an orata baked in salt crust. The waiter attacks the fish with a small saw, deftly skins and bones it, lifting off flaky slices and serving them with simple boiled potatoes on each plate. Julia has ordered, just to taste, moeche, tiny male crabs of the lagoon, crunchy and succulent. Outside the window, night boats ply the black-as-squid-ink canal. I have a few sips of the most excellent Friuli wine so I don’t call attention to my abstinence. (Most pregnant Italian women I know don’t give up a glass of red wine with dinner.) Heaven, a hint of apple, and an astringent mineral bite. Ordinarily, Colin and I split a bottle. Susan orders a second bottle and toasts travel around the table.

  Camille has been preoccupied all evening, but suddenly she asks, “Did you notice the entrance to the Doge’s Palace, that Gothic door right by San Marco? It’s called Porta della Carta. Paper door. I love the name. Paper door! That resonates. Doors you can push through, doors that are impermanent, doors impossible to lock, transparent doors between two states of being, or doors you thought were closed to you, doors that are not doors.”

  “Beautiful metaphor,” I say. “You could work with that.” (I could work with that.)

  “Why’s such a substantial door called that?” Susan asks. When no one knows, she looks it up. “Maybe because it’s near an archive. Maybe because people petitioning the council stood outside with pieces of paper.”

  “That works, too,” Camille says. Paper, she thinks. Tomorrow I will find good paper. Some for Rowan, too. Umm, Rowan. She bites her lip. What have I done?

  Susan puts down her fork. “That was one fine dinner and I am so finished. If anyone wants dessert, I might manage one bite. But back to the horses—they look alive. I was stunned that someone, some maker, back in the second, maybe third century saw exactly as we see. I’m not even sure what I’m saying, but it’s like he could walk in right now and we could pick up a conversation we’d left off yesterday. Did you notice on the real copper horses that the artist half cut a little gash on the eyeballs so they catch the light? He wanted the glint of life on those horses. He’s telling us so.”

  I am thrilled to hear this. “Yes! The crescent cut is called la lunula. Little moon in Latin—it’s on your fingernails.” I hold up my forefinger to show the rising moon at the base of the nail.

  “And someone knew to describe the cut on the horse’s eyes like that. I’ve lived so long without knowing all these inc
redible things,” Julia laments.

  “You know what you need to know, my friend.” Susan takes a bite of the ginger crème brûlée and slides it over to Julia. “Ginger. Write that in your book. Must be one of the spices the Venetians brought back from their saints’ relic raids.”

  They are catching at the heartstrings of Venice quite well.

  * * *

  —

  Wind comes up over the water. A wind blowing from Constantinople, across centuries, blowing a puff of dust from the races in the Hippodrome? Pulling our jackets tight, hoods up, we retrace our steps to the hotel. In our own living room, we do what women through the ages have done. We put on our robes and curl up on the sofas to talk. This is when I learn much of their pasts and they learn some of mine. Around two, Julia nods off, then jerks awake. “Seppioline,” she says, “little cuttlefish. I like the word. Also branzino, sea bass, orata, bream. They sound bronze and golden. Buona notte,” she says, “I’m fading fast.”

  We all head to bed.

  * * *

  —

  At four, Camille feels afraid that her tossing could disturb Susan. She slips out of bed into her robe and tiptoes into the living room. She eats two chocolates left at turndown and pages through the hotel’s fashion magazines until water reflections swirling on the ceiling draw her out to the balcony. The city is still alive. The wind has blown elsewhere, and it seems that the stars jangle, but it’s only metal clanging in the moorings of boats along the quay. What was the word she’d just read in one of the magazines? Gibigianna. She says it out loud. The flashes of reflected light on water, how evocative. Rowan would like that word. Rowan. Charles, gone eighteen months and she’s saying Rowan. Well, that’s the least of it after yesterday. Sex was the last thing on my mind, she thinks. Since Charles died, sex is the subject I shove aside. That’s over. And I’m old so that’s okay. I had my share and more, all those years of freedom and easy connection with love and fire. She tries to envision Charles above her, looking intently into her eyes, Charles afterward at the bathroom sink, his broad back and nonexistent bottom, his quick wash of his “gear” as he called it, his glance at himself in the mirror and the smiling surprise she could see on his face. One thing she loved best about him was that he never lost his wonder that such a thing as making love was allowed. He was perpetually the eighteen-year-old who scored with the prom queen. Now this. Betrayal came to mind. Disloyal.