Miss Garnet's Angel

by Salley Vickers

  One day, these thoughts running through my head, I asked, ‘Do you worship, Azarias?’ and then felt awkward for a man’s god is his own affair.

  But Azarias was not the kind who made you feel awkward. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘You might say worship is my business!’

  That was rather too enigmatic for me; Azarias was a hired hand who gave his labour in the marketplace. ‘How so?’ I asked.

  But to this he gave no reply. He was having trouble with one of the camels, a bad-tempered beast at the best of times, and he was talking coaxingly to it. Eventually he said, ‘Maybe you will find that out when we get to Ecbatana.’ Then he whistled his bird-call whistle at the camel, who sneezed at him.

  The mention of Ecbatana drove all god-interest from my brain. ‘Ecbatana? Why Ecbatana when we’re for Raghes?’ The city by the far sea, my father named it.

  ‘No,’ said Azarias. ‘Not Raghes. Ecbatana.’ He whistled some more at the camel.

  At this I grew alarmed. ‘No, no, Azarias,’ I cried out. ‘My father demands we go as quickly as possible to Raghes to recover his debt; he will be counting the days to our return. We must do as he desires.’

  The camel seemed to have calmed down and was now walking sedately beside Azarias with its high-stepping gait. ‘Tobias,’ Azarias said, and I realised then that this was the first time he had addressed me by name, ‘we shall not go to Raghes tonight. We shall go first to where your kinsman, Raguel, lodges in Ecbatana.’

  I had never heard of this Raguel. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I think you misunderstand. In the absence of my father I am the master here and you the servant. So let’s have no more about Ecbatana, please. We are going to Raghes and that’s that!’

  When I was a boy the king had a steward, a fat old eunuch who, never having promise or a child himself, took somewhat to me. He told me tales of the fierce Sea People and of terrible creatures from far-off lands. One he told of could look at you and turn you to stone with its glance. Azarias did not look at me like a basilisk, for his glance felt as if it could turn you not to stone but set you on fire—but that is the closest I can come to describing the effect it had upon me. All I know is I cried out, ‘Very well, very well, we will do as you say. To Ecbatana, by all means Ecbatana!’ and I said nothing for several miles.

  After a while we descended to a wide plain and stopped. Azarias wordlessly pointed to a city of high towers lying before us. ‘Ecbatana, I suppose?’ I said, speaking as coldly as I could, but he just swung on down leading his camel.

  At the outskirts of the city Azarias, who was still walking ahead, motioned me to halt. ‘I have a thing to tell you,’ he said. ‘Listen. There is a girl here; she was set apart for you from the beginning.’

  At these words I became strangely frightened. I knew that one day I must marry. And I had had thoughts of girls as I lay in my bed. Once, when we were travelling in the desert and had passed the night in the company of one of the bands of nomadic people, I had seen a slave girl with her breasts exposed and felt myself become excited. She had eyed me and inclined her head towards her quarters—but I was too lily-livered to go after her. In the nights which followed I thought of her often and cursed my shyness. But I had had no marriage thoughts of any particular girl. And now here was Azarias speaking of the beginnings of time.

  ‘But my father…’ I said weakly. (There was little point because I already knew that even my father was no match for Azarias.)

  ‘Raguel is of your father’s tribe.’ Azarias was coaxing the camel again with camelish grunts so that you would swear he was one of the beasts himself. ‘He has one daughter, named Sara. I will speak for her that she may be given you for wife.’

  Then he added something which I did not understand but my spirit quaked within me as I heard it. He said, ‘She is one in whom the dark is equal to the light.’

  The book about the Apocrypha was heavy but enlightening. Julia, lying on Signora Mignelli’s sofa, was re-reading the cautious, scholarly prose a second time. The Book of Tobit, the editor conjectured, although dealing with the events of the eighth century BC, was probably not formally written down until the last quarter of the second century BC by a Jew possibly living in the Jewish colony on the island of Elephantine in Egypt. Persian soldiers may have brought the story to Egypt. The tale almost certainly contained elements of much older legends.

  Lying back, Julia closed her eyes and thought again about Tobit who had been carried off into captivity over twenty-eight centuries ago from his own country of Israel. She had looked up the event in the Old Testament. According to the Book of Kings the northern kingdom of Israel (which was distinct from Judah, the separate kingdom in the south), had grown lax in its worship of Yahweh: They set them up images and groves in every high place and green tree. But not old Tobit! By his own account he toiled off down south each year with his tithes to the Temple in Jerusalem, which was in quite another country—for the tribes of Israel had quarrelled, split apart and become two kingdoms.

  Poor old Tobit, whose insistence on the law lost him his own sight! Opinionated and censorious as he was, she felt for him—as if he might have been a brother or a cousin she had never had. For after all was she herself not somewhat akin to the cantankerous, faintly comical figure who made such heavy weather of always doing the right thing? And then, when things didn’t work out for him, such a business about his uselessness and wanting to die! Didn’t she just know (as Cynthia Cutforth might have put it) how he had felt?

  The phone rang. ‘Julia?’ She could hardly believe the voice. ‘It’s Cynthia—I rang to say “Hi!”—we’re back in town.’ A muffled noise at the other end. ‘Charles says you can’t call Venice “town”—you see what a pedant he still is! Now, when can we have you come over?’

  Julia, a little stunned at the prescience of her own train of thought, asked where they were staying and Cynthia explained they had taken an apartment on the Gindecca, the island which almost faces the entrance to Venice’s Grand Canal. ‘So you can run across to us easily on the 82,’ she said, naming the boat-line which ran from the direction of the Raffaele.

  Two afternoons later Julia was sitting on the Cutforths’ wide balcony; across the water her eye ranged over buildings painted rose, buildings painted terracotta, blue, ochre, pistachio green. Before them, dipping and criss-crossing, veered boats carrying crates of vegetables, boats carrying buckets, boats carrying sugar, detergent, cornflakes, lavatory paper, boats carrying steel shafts, sand, planks, green garbage boats, blue police boats, one with birds in cages and chickens in coops and others conveying humankind of all nations. Man’s ingenuity is the product of difficulty, she thought: the Venetians have made of their watery environment a way of life which is an art form.

  Although the three of them had met only once before, the lapse of time, since their first encounter six months earlier, had somehow swelled out the acquaintance. They had been talking—or more accurately, Charles had, with the women listening with varied degrees of concentration—of the Chapel-of-the-Plague.

  Lighting one of his cheroots, Charles stretched back in his chair, the smoke curling up in the air before him. ‘It’s fascinating. I must tell you how grateful I am to you, Julia, for drawing it to my attention.’ He had a hint of pomposity and a way of nodding his head while he spoke which Julia, observing it, guessed his wife might find maddening. ‘Absolutely fascinating. There was a death—I think you said so, our evening at the Gritti—or a near miss, anyway. A young woman looked like dying of the plague during the Black Death and then when all her relatives believed she was a goner, bingo!’ he snapped his fingers—his nails, Julia noticed, were pink and carefully cut—‘she recovered. Being the fourteenth century they called it a miracle.’

  ‘Charles is a true man,’ said Cynthia comfortably, ‘and can’t bear to imagine that there is more to life than meets the eye.’

  ‘I’m afraid I was like that once.’ Julia, who had in the past objected to the attribution of rationality as the prerogative of the male s
ex, spoke remorsefully. ‘Who was she, the girl? Did you find out?’

  ‘The only stuff I’ve managed to get hold of is kind of vague. From what I can make out she was the only daughter of one of Venice’s numerous minor nobility. It sounds as if there was something wrong about her before she ever got the plague, because they kept trying to marry her off and she came home every time with the marriage unconsummated.’

  ‘Probably psychosomatic’ Cynthia folded her hands across her stomach, confident that here was an area in which she was better versed than her husband.

  ‘But could one recover from the plague? I’m so foggy on my medieval history.’ And it was true that her old certainties had been fast vanishing.

  ‘I guess some folk did—but it was rare enough. And then there’s the name—the Chapel-of-the-Plague, although that may have been adopted later—after a series of supposed cures. You know how these superstitions grow?’

  ‘Superstitions?’

  ‘There was supposed to be some icon—reckoned to have healing powers.’

  Julia said nothing. Her mind had veered dangerously towards Toby and the missing panel. No word of either had been heard since that day she had watched his departing shoulders at the airport.

  ‘I like angels,’ Cynthia said. She did not want the conversation to become too scholastic.

  Sometimes Julia woke in the night, and realised it was not herself but the blue angel she was anxious over. She had said nothing further to the girl—but with the passing weeks the time when the authorities must be informed drew closer. And then it would become a matter for the police.

  Charles had risen to fetch a book and the smell of his cheroot wafting past her suddenly brought back Carlo. Another who, like Toby, had disappeared into the dark. Perhaps it was her? Maybe, like the girl in the Book of Tobit, she cast a baleful spell upon men?

  ‘We are planning a party,’ Cynthia said. ‘Just a few people we’ve gotten to know over the years for drinks. Promise you’ll come.’

  Charles returned with the book he had been searching for. ‘See, here.’ He indicated a photograph among the illustrations—the chapel, but desolate, surrounded by what looked like barbed wire. ‘That was taken just after the war. Looks a mess, doesn’t it?’

  Julia, looking, mused, I wonder if he was there then? The Archangel Raphael, who had elected to walk on foot with young Tobias across the mountains from Assyria to Media, had also travelled across the seas with the sailors to Venice. Aloud she said, ‘Charles, how did the plague get here? My brain’s getting soft; I can’t remember any of the things I used to know.’

  ‘Tragically, it came in on the shipping routes, on the trade ships from the east.’

  So that was why he had come! She pictured the long feet striding the seas, keeping swift invisible pace over the water alongside the ships which harboured the death-dealing rats.

  ‘Weren’t you going to take Julia to visit the Monsignore?’ Cynthia asked.

  * * *

  They took the 82 across the water.

  ‘Damn, I can’t phone,’ said Charles, putting away his mobile. ‘I’ve left the blasted number behind.’

  A man in blue working-overalls sped by, his dog standing alert on the stern. Looking at the dog Julia said, ‘The icon. Did you discover anything about that?’

  ‘No, but Giuseppe may know. Hell, what a nuisance. I should have rung before we left but Cynth was harassing me. She doesn’t like the Monsignore.’

  ‘So she’s palming me off on him!’

  ‘Yes, but I reckon you’ll like him,’ said Charles, not understanding the joke. ‘He’s an authority on the East. But he’s an authority on all kinds of things. If anyone knows about your chapel it’ll be him.’

  With nothing else to do, Julia said she was glad to accompany Charles as the water-bus took them in its zigzag journey back across the water to the island of San Giorgic.

  ‘Look at it, our finest piece of Palladio.’ Charles waved his manicured hand as San Giorgio Maggiore’s imposing façade slid towards them.

  Julia, about to agree, changed her mind. ‘I don’t like it. I’m probably being philistine but it feels unholy, somehow.’ Once she had ventured inside the famous church’s marmoreal interior and had crept out again, frozen to the bone. ‘It’s so cold there. Have you been?’ Only the great weather-beaten bronze angel which usually tops the campanile had warmed her interest. It had been brought inside for repair and furtively she had bent and kissed its great angelic foot which peeped from beneath its brazen gown. But this she did not confide to Charles Cutforth.

  ‘I guess I’m not too hot on what is holy.’

  He is a nice man, she thought, as he extended his arm to help her onto the landing stage. It was on a waterfront they had first met. How different she had been then. To her surprise she found herself saying so to Charles. ‘Oh, I was against everything the least bit “holy” before I came here. Venice has changed me.’

  ‘Well, I guess beauty can do that.’

  They strolled by the tethered, bucking gondolas, along the waterfront towards St Mark’s. She had not been back since she had seen the sparrow which had led her to the marble Madonna. Thinking of that day she remembered the purple-clad priest who had frightened her in the confessional box. Perhaps he had been the Monsignore. ‘Charles, what exactly does the title “Monsignor” mean?’

  A crowd of camera-waving tourists was pell-melling round them and he steered her through the chatter and up a narrow calle. ‘It’s a priest without portfolio—an honour given by the Pope for special service. In Giuseppe’s case he did sterling work with the Vatican’s secretary of state, Ottaviani, which involved him in all kinds of diabolical diplomatic intrigues. I met him, in fact, when he was over in the States on Vatican business. He’s been retired now for many years and free to pursue his own interests, which in Giuseppe’s case is practically everything. If anyone does, he’ll have the dirt on your chapel.’

  They had stopped by a stone gateway with a garden behind. Roses, reaching towards the light, reared leggily over wrought-iron gates. On the gates a painted heraldic sign featured a lion and what looked like a palm tree.

  Charles looking at it said, ‘An ancestor with connections in the East. Giuseppe comes from one of the oldest families in Venice. He’s quite a character. Remind me to tell you about his sons.’

  ‘Sons?’

  Charles laid a finger on his lips as, in answer to the bell, behind the gate there were sounds of bolts being pulled back and a woman with a visible moustache appeared through a gap in the wrought iron.

  Charles produced his card and spoke fluently in Italian and the woman, after a few minutes, returned and opened the gap wide enough for them to enter a leafy courtyard around which ran a green-painted veranda.

  Seated beneath the veranda, a pug dog at his feet, was a man in a black gown. Even seated, and at some distance, it was evident he was ugly and very short.

  The man in the black gown opened his hands, ‘Carlo amico!’ Just for a second Julia’s heart contracted painfully before she remembered that Carlo was the Italian version of Charles.

  ‘Giuseppe!’ Charles was striding towards the veranda. ‘How fortunate that you are here. Forgive me for not telephoning. Like a blasted idiot I mislaid your number.’

  The Monsignore had got up from his chair and was embracing Charles. He must have been a good foot shorter for his arms seemed to come somewhere only a little above the tall American’s waist. Gesturing towards Julia Charles said, ‘Giuseppe—this is our English friend Julia Garnet.’

  ‘The garnet is my favourite stone.’ The Monsignore had bright brown eyes like a bird’s—a blackbird’s, perhaps—though his face looked rather more like his dog. The dog, having lost its protection from the clerical gown, had moved under the table and was staring up at Julia with its comical snubby face. ‘My mother was convinced I was homosexual when I was a boy because always I loved to wear her jewellery. She was not correct in her fears. But in any case, you see I subl
imate any homosexual impulses by wearing rings and a dress.’

  He proffered a freckled hand on which gleamed a large garnet ring and Julia shook it, unsure how to respond to this introduction from a dignitary of the church.

  ‘Julia was the first person we met here back in the New Year,’ Charles said, sensing his companion’s awkwardness.

  ‘Sit down, sit down. Oh, your pardon, Marco!’ Inadvertently the priest had trodden on the pug which had given a protesting yelp. ‘It is hot for him—he likes the shade of my gown. If nothing else my position gives protection for my dogs! Some prosecco?’ and not waiting for an answer the Monsignore called out, ‘Constanze, Constanze, prosecco per favore!’

  Julia, who had been disconcerted by the reference to homosexuality so close to the reference to Carlo’s name, was even more put out at being offered the drink she associated with him. She sat, feeling supernumerary, while the two men exchanged pleasantries.

  After a while the priest turned back to her. ‘And flowers. Being English you must like flowers, Signora Garnet? I insist you admire my roses. Of these I am most proud.’

  ‘Julia, please,’ said Julia as she was propelled towards the blooms which had met them at the gate.

  ‘They are a colour I especially admire. The colour almost of your name.’ Cupping a dark red rose with his mottled hand the Monsignore breathed in its scent. ‘Of this I never tire—it is even more lovely than the perfume of women. And so, garnet’—tapping his ring—‘it is a propitious name. You are a historian, Charles tells me.’