Urban Venus

by Sara Downing

  Eduardo greets me with big kisses on each cheek as I take up what has become my regular spot beside him for Signore Di Girolamo’s lecture, which today isn’t on Titian, thank God. After all the hoo-hah surrounding my own personal adventures in – purportedly – the life and times of Titian, I’m giving room twenty-eight a wide berth for today; I’m not sure I could cope with another instalment of Maria’s history, the way I feel right now. The topic today is completely unrelated, totally different period, style, everything, which is quite a relief for the time being. Not even a whiff of anything Renaissance for the next hour.

  ‘Come stai, Lydia?’ Eduardo asks me.

  He’s so lovely, I can’t possibly tell him that actually everything isn’t entirely ‘Bene, grazie’ at the moment. It’s good to have a friend who represents neutral territory in what at the moment feels to me like a war zone, who doesn’t know about my dreams, and to whom I don’t feel obliged to recount the latest development or reassure them that I’m not in danger of emotional meltdown. With Eduardo and this little posse of friends from my course, things are simple and uncomplicated. We meet for regular coffees, have a straightforward chat about life and the world in general or our course work, moan or gossip about the tutors, all the usual sort of studenty stuff, and don’t stray down the route of the deep and meaningful too often. It’s so refreshing, and I want to keep it that way.

  ‘You look tired,’ he comments. ‘Everything is OK?’ Bless him for caring, but I shrug it off with a flippant comment about too many late nights, give him a big, reassuring smile, and we settle down for the lecture, poised to be impressed by another gem of knowledge from the great man himself.

  Afterwards, despite my earlier resolve to leave Titian alone for today, I find myself wandering up to Signore Di Girolamo, with the intention of talking to him about his book. As far as I’m aware, and unless Vincenzo has told him he lent his copy to me, he doesn’t know I’m reading it. Nor would he be aware that I have such an avid interest in Titian, above and beyond the requirements for the coursework.

  ‘Can I talk to you for a moment?’ I ask the great man, who as usual is fighting his way through the student groupies and their reams of questions. He is one tutor who is continually mobbed by students, all desperate to get at a bit more of his great brain.

  ‘Could I talk to you about your Titian book?’ I ask again when the coast is clearer and I finally have his attention.

  ‘Yes – Lydia, isn’t it? Our English visitor?’ he replies, smiling, and suddenly his attention is focused on me alone. He dispatches the remainder of his groupies with a quick nod and a promise to talk to them later, and hones in solely on me and my query. ‘Ask away. What would you like to know?’

  ‘Well, I’m really enjoying your book,’ I begin tentatively, ‘but I’m baffled as to where you get some of your information from. I don’t want to seem rude or anything, but I can’t reference some of this stuff anywhere else,’ I tap the volume I’ve placed on his lectern as I speak. To start with he looks a little taken aback that I should dare say such a thing, his already grey pock-marked face paling further, and I wonder if I have gone a step too far. But then he seems to brighten, pulls himself together with a slight shudder, and gives me another of his rusty park-railings smiles (no lady-killer, this one) as I go on to say: ‘How do you get inside Titian’s head like that – it’s almost as though you knew him. How could anyone know those things about him?’

  ‘Sit down, Lydia,’ he says, leading me to the front row of the lecture theatre and taking a seat beside me. ‘You’re the first person ever to ask me that, you know.’ Actually he looks very pleased to have been asked. ‘But that could be largely due to the fact that I didn’t actually print many copies of this book. I only produced fifty and I still have half of those myself. I didn’t think it would be too much appreciated in the world of, well, proper historians, of which I am, of course, supposed to be a member.’ His smile becomes more enigmatic and I am confused even further.

  ‘I don’t follow you,’ I say, intrigued. ‘Are you saying it’s fictional then?’ I am mystified as to why a historian of such renown wouldn’t make his book available to the wider public – isn’t that how they justify the research grants and make the serious money?

  But instead of answering my question he says: ‘Can you come to my office later? Let’s talk about it when we have a bit of time and space.’ He glances towards the small crowd of students who are still lingering hopefully at the door. ‘I take it Vincenzo lent you that copy?’ I nod. ‘Yes, I thought so. Not that he’ll ever have read it himself, of course,’ he chuckles. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting he uses it as a door stop and kicks it about his office.’ How close to the truth he is.

  Signore Di Girolamo packs away his notes and folders and gives me a time at which I am to come to his office – half hour from now – then quickly leaves the lecture theatre.

  My mobile rings as I’m crossing the Piazza. It’s Stefano and this time, after what Sophia had said earlier – and what I’d promised her – I don’t really feel I can ignore it.

  ‘Pronto,’ I say, my voice sounding a little flat as I bravely hit the green button, despite an overwhelming urge to hit the red.

  ‘Lydia, ciao, come stai?’ His voice, the same as ever, has the effect on me, the same as ever, of turning my legs to jelly. Only this time that feeling makes me want to cry, as I remember how I’d walked out on him, and how I’ve cruelly managed to ignore him all week. What an awful person I am – he doesn’t deserve this.

  ‘Mi manchi tanto, cara.’ I miss you too, Stefano, only I don’t say it out loud; it stays in my head, along with all the confusion of emotions. I can’t say it out loud, it’s physically impossible as I’m too choked up and trying hard to pretend I’m not. I’m trying to put on a brave face, only Stefano can’t see that, he can only hear my muffled sobs.

  ‘Can we meet up?’ he asks, ever so tentatively, as though I might hang up on him at any minute.

  ‘I have to see Signore Di Girolamo now but shall I text you when I’m free? Are you around all afternoon?’ I manage to get my voice back sufficiently to ask him.

  ‘Yes – please,’ he says with an audible sigh, sounding relieved. ‘Thank you Lydia. See you later.’

  Signore Di Girolamo is waiting for me as planned. His office is wildly different to Vincenzo’s smart pad, every inch the abode of the mad professor. As far as I know he’s a single man (well, you’d have to get past those teeth, and although he’s a wonderful person, it would take a very brave woman…) and his room only serves to reinforce the impression that he totally and utterly married to the job, or rather the vocation.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many valuable-looking books in one place, other than in some of those palatial libraries you get in stately homes. The difference here being that these ones look like they are picked up and read on a frequent basis, not just catalogued for the sake of having a beautiful library to show off.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ I say, as he guides me to a rather threadbare chair, first relocating discarded piles of papers and books so that I might use this piece of furniture for its intended purpose.

  ‘I didn’t realise you had such an interest in Titian,’ he says. ‘Have you always been interested in him?’

  ‘Not really, no,’ I reply. ‘Only since I… um… came to Florence. It must be the effect of this place, I reckon. There’s so much of his work here after all, and as an artist he just seemed to hook me in. Right from the start really.’

  I can’t tell him about the dreams, can I? Just imagine the conversation: ‘Oh well, actually, Signore Di Girolamo, I have regular excursions to the sixteenth century in the guise of Titian’s lover. He paints me naked and I’ve even posed for the Venus of Urbino painting in my dreams. Beat that.’ No, I’m not sure he’s the sort of person I should be telling all that stuff to. Not yet, anyway – if ever; I hardly know the guy and I don’t want him to write me off as a complete fruitcake right from the start
. I want to find out more, not scare him off.

  An hour or so later – in fact I have no idea exactly how long I spent with him – I leave Di Girolamo’s office with my head in a whirlwind and just keep walking. Suddenly caffeine makes its way to the top of my must-have list and this achieved, I sit in an absolute trance, at a table outside Rivoire in the Piazza della Signoria, not caring that I have just paid seven Euros for the world’s smallest beverage, just needing somewhere for a few still moments to try and get my head back in gear. I am not people-watching and taking advantage of the perfect positioning of my table as I normally would, soaking up the wonderfully colourful Florentine comings-and-goings. I may as well be anywhere; this landscape is wasted on me today. The waiter passes by and asks if I’d like another espresso, and the second shot hits my veins as quickly as the first.

  Against my better judgement I had told Di Girolamo about the dreams – it all just kind of slipped out somehow, and his reaction had surprised me.

  ‘Please call me Antonio,’ he had ventured as I started my story, but somehow with him first names just seem too informal – I am still in awe of the man and not ready to bring him down from his pedestal just yet. As I nervously began the tale of my first trip back to the sixteenth century he turned as white as a sheet and began to cough ferociously. He staggered over to the other shabby armchair, clutching his neck, and to start with I thought he was having some kind of attack, and that I was going to be called upon to provide first aid or ring for an ambulance. Then he took a sip of water, seemed to regain his composure and within seconds the colour returned to his cheeks. He nodded cursorily to confirm his restoration to health and that I should continue, and from then on he sat riveted whilst I recounted the story of how I came to know so much about the man I believe to be Titian, and of course, Maria. It was as though the attack had never happened.

  ‘You talk about a girl a lot in your book, Signore Di Girolamo,’ I asked when I’d finished recounting my tales, ‘but you never actually name her. She sounds so like my Maria, it has to be her, but what I don’t get is that if you know so much about Titian and his personal life, all these details which no one else seems to mention, then why don’t you give her a name? Surely you must know who she is?’

  ‘She is indeed your Maria,’ he replied. ‘You need to read on, my dear, and then you will see that I do in fact give her a name. When I started the book I didn’t know her name, I only discovered it later on, and, well, as this wasn’t the sort of book to be edited and re-edited before going to print, I just never got around to going back and adding in her name whenever she gets a mention. But yes, she is your Maria.’ Here he sat back in his chair and smiled, as if my recognition of Maria was the best acknowledgement he could have of the accuracy of his own research.

  ‘Have you been writing all this down?’ he asked. ‘These dreams of yours? You really should. You might not think so now, you probably think you’re going mad or seeing things, or…. I don’t know what, but what you’re experiencing is of truly historical importance. You must keep a record of it all. The human mind is a very forgetful instrument, and it is so easy to distort the facts over time or indeed lose them completely.’

  A light-bulb of recognition suddenly came on in my head and I found myself asking: ‘Is that what you did? Did you have dreams about Titian, like I do with Maria? Is that how you know so much?’ I don’t know why I hadn’t recognised a fellow dreamer sooner. It all seems so obvious now.

  At this question there was a complete sea-change in his attitude towards me. Gone was the helpful professor; shutters up, discussion closed down, he escorted me from his office as quickly as he could, inventing, I’m pretty sure of it, some excuse about needing to get to his next lecture. Manners not entirely departed though, he closed the door on me with a perplexing smile and: ‘Fascinating to speak to you, Lydia, please excuse my having to rush off like this.’

  But he hadn’t convinced me; there was something going on and I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me sooner, what with all the hours I have spent poring over his book and trying, and failing, to find references to the facts elsewhere. Di Girolamo had to have had a similar experience to me in order to know so much about Titian – the man must have had dreams just like mine. I can’t fathom how anything but first-hand experience could have enabled him to write such things.

  But if he did, for whatever reason and despite sharing my own experience with him, he wasn’t about to divulge his sources to me.

  I am brought back into reality with a beep from my phone. Damn, it’s Stefano, and with a pang of guilt I beat myself up for having completely forgotten about him. After the way I’d felt when he called this morning, I really am desperate to see him and try to work things out, but you’d be forgiven for thinking he was the furthest thing from my thoughts at the moment. Well, he has been for the past few hours, but it’s not like I haven’t just had yet another major distraction to throw me sideways. I got caught up in the Di Girolamo thing and the afternoon slipped by without me realising.

  I call him straight back, apologising furiously and feeling like the meanest person in the world.

  ‘Are you still in the centro?’ I enquire. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d just given up on me and gone. In my dreamlike state I’d ambled through the streets unseeingly and I realise I have almost made it back to the apartment, so we agree to meet in a bar off the Via De Martelli, not too far from either of our homes.

  The Stefano I spy as I walk into the bar is a shadow of the man I know. He looks dreadful, like he hasn’t slept for a week, and his body language as he waits for me in the booth is of a broken man, shoulders hunched, head drooping down. Oh God, have I really done that to him? But other than ignore him for the past few days, which, yes, I know was mean, what am I guilty of exactly here? He doesn’t like me getting mixed up in all the dream stuff, but I did the honourable thing and was honest with him right from the start and still he chose to get into a relationship with me, didn’t he? He could have opted out early on and then we wouldn’t be in this mess. And more importantly, I wouldn’t have lost a friend – the aspect of all this which saddens me most. If our romance is to fail, which at the moment seems highly likely, I can’t bear the thought that we won’t go back to being like we were before.

  ‘How are you Lydia?’ he asks as I slide onto the bench opposite him, He leans over to kiss me – on both cheeks, not the lips. He hadn’t seen me observing him from the door, but as he greets me he seems to visibly brighten; he pulls himself upright and his eyes light up just a little bit, so that the familiar twinkle in them almost returns.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Stefano,’ I say, referring more to my lateness and forgetfulness than to my recent behaviour. ‘I was with Signore Di Girolamo for ages and time just seemed to run away with me.’

  ‘Something important, no doubt,’ he says, and the bright expression he is trying so hard to maintain is at odds with the underlying hint of sarcasm in his voice. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all week. Why didn’t you return my calls?’

  I don’t know why I didn’t. I suppose I was just too stubbornly upset by the fact that I seemed to have lost his support, and for no apparent reason. Until Sophia told me this morning about the conversation they’d all had with him, I hadn’t realised that the dream thing was such a big issue to him. I make a lame excuse about needing some time to think. Actually I’m still pretty cross with him about what he said to me when we last met, but I decide against bringing that up right now; the atmosphere is brittle enough as it is.

  I don’t interrupt as he goes on to explain why he is so concerned about me, why he feels I am not really ‘his’ when I have the dreams, how he thinks it’s dangerous for me to ‘time travel’ as he calls it. Gone is the empathy and the understanding for my situation, and in its place is what I can only describe as a kind of jealousy. Bizarrely, he says he almost feels as though I am cheating on him with Titian! I am so energized when I come round from the dreams, he says,
that he feels I have more enthusiasm for the relationship that’s playing itself out in my head than for the one we have together, or rather had, in the here and now.

  I suppose I can see to a point where he is coming from, but at no time have I ever felt like the dreams are overtaking my life, overshadowing reality. I’ve always tried to treat them for what they are – dreams and nothing more – and I’ve always involved him in what’s been happening with them. I know it’s hard for him to fathom; there’s no way he could ever fully understand the depth and reality of the emotions I experience in the dreams when he hasn’t been through it himself. But any attempt at understanding has gone, and for reasons I fail to comprehend.

  ‘I can’t compete,’ he says sadly. ‘Until these dreams have stopped, or you put a stop to them, or whatever it takes, I don’t think there’s much point us carrying on, is there?’ He speaks with his eyes downcast, and as he looks up to me a small tear escapes from the corner of each eye. I reach for his hands across the table, but he pulls them away, and goes to stand up, ready to leave. He can’t bear for me to touch him.

  ‘Don’t go Stefano,’ I plead. ‘We still have so much to talk about.’ Despite his views, I still feel I want to tell him about today’s events, but then what’s the point? It would only bang yet another nail into the coffin that was once our relationship.

  He sits back down, I imagine with the expectation that I will launch into an apology, or admit that the dreams are a bad idea and I won’t visit the gallery any more. But I can’t do that. I didn’t choose to have these dreams, they chose me, and I’d always thought he liked me – loved me – enough to understand that and to cope with it. Obviously not.

  ‘What about our friends?’ I say instead. ‘I don’t want this to spoil our little group of friends. You all mean so much to me.’

  ‘Huh,’ he snorts derisively. ‘So I suppose you’re going to throw that ‘let’s go back to being friends’ line at me are you? Pretend nothing’s happened and slip back into our cosy little ways, just like before? What do you think?’ he concludes and storms out of the café, calling ‘Goodbye Lydia,’ from the doorway.