Miss Garnet's Angel

by Salley Vickers

  That night I dreamed. Among the things my father taught me which I still need was to pay attention to dreams: he told me dreams were messages brought by angels and how our ancestor, Joseph of the Patched Coat, earned fame through telling the meaning of Egyptian Pharaoh’s dreams.

  I dreamed I was walking by a river and I looked across to Sara’s chamber—as I had done, in waking life, the previous evening. But now, with the eye of the dream, I could see right inside the window and into the chamber.

  Azarias was there and Sara too. She was lying on the bed with her hands thrown back over her head and she was thrashing about as if she were demented. Azarias was standing there just looking at her—quite still.

  Suddenly he moved forward and I saw he had a rope in his hands. He whipped it round and bound her tightly and for a moment I saw her lying there, trussed up like an animal for sacrifice.

  I was so enraged by what I saw that I cried out and I must have cried in my sleep for when I woke Azarias was standing by the bed—smiling as he had smiled that first time I ever met him.

  3

  Julia did not go to the Cutforths’ for supper after leaving the Monsignore. Instead she walked round to St Mark’s. It seemed a long while since she had first stood beneath the pillared arcade at the edge of the Piazza.

  She stood now and looked at the basilica again, trying to be dispassionate. But why bother, she thought crossing the great square and entering through the porch into the atrium. Why bother to be dispassionate? Isn’t passion what it is all about? The passion of Christ. She had never thought about the words before. No, that wasn’t true: she had thought about the words but had not allowed them meaning. From the Latin—passio—suffering. All the jasper and porphyry, all the blue-veined marble and sea-green serpentine, all the refulgent gold—she was standing beneath the mosaic ceilings of the atrium—was there to recall the ardour of one man’s passionate sacrifice.

  Looking up she saw the creation of the world revealed in the southernmost dome. And after all, she said to herself, it is a revelation. In a spiral unfolded the division of night and day; the creation of the stars; the sun and moon; the seas; the fish; the birds; the beasts, down to the furthest edge of the dome and the hauling of Eve out of Adam’s side. From his rib—you could see it (just) like a turkey drumstick in God’s hand!

  The Japanese were out in force again. A party stopped and aimed a bank of phallic cameras at Adam and Eve. No wonder they felt embarrassed in their nakedness. Julia turned aside in disgust. Really, she thought, it should be made difficult not more easy to get to places of beauty. One ought to be required to pass a test before being permitted to enter St Mark’s.

  A notice reminded her that in all this time she had never yet climbed up to see the famous bronze horses. It was bound to be crowded inside the basilica. And she was curious to look down on the Piazza from the vantage point above. She set off up steep stone stairs.

  Coming out into the upper gallery she saw a body hanging from a tree. Judas Iscariot: the traitor. The mosaicist must have put him up here, away out of sight. Poor Judas! How must it have felt, betraying what you knew to be the best? Maybe that was the job of Saraqûel, the fifth angel? To defend us against self-treachery?

  But the horses? She had come to see the horses. It was said they were no longer safe to stand outside where the polluted air might ransack their gilded bronze sides. She had seen one of them once when, dutifully, she had queued in a line at the British Museum. But she had no proper memory of it.

  She made her way along the finger-smoothed marble and suddenly, she caught her breath for there, like ancient gods, they were, ears pricked, nostrils flared, each with a hoof delicately raised. Thousands of years old, they had survived magisterially their history as loot and plunder. Whatever were such riches doing in this poky room? Who cared about the pollution? They should surely be outside in the free air! Horses are like dogs, she reflected, hurrying from the room: guardians of our instincts.

  Julia went out and onto the roof. It was early evening and down below, with the heat beginning to abate, tourists had begun to fill the Piazza. On the sloping marble surfaces she walked past the replica horses, reaching up to touch one on the hoof. Tough always to be the substitute! She sat down at the corner, feeling the bulk of the basilica at her back, on a level with the blue and gilded clock-tower which strikes with hammers the quarters of each hour for the city of Venice.

  The Monsignore’s extraordinary story remained to be digested. It occurred to her that he might have been making it up—to console her—to help her through her unhappiness. She could not be sure, but he was the kind of man who might fabricate to assuage distress. But the bizarreness of the story seemed to work against that theory. There was reassurance in its very unlikeliness. And besides there was his other revelation.

  So what was the truth of the events of the previous night? She had not been mistaken, of that she was sure, about the nature of Carlo’s interest in Nicco. She had first begun to work out, in what she now inwardly referred to as her ‘walking cure’, that in just the same way as she had conceived an impossible passion for Carlo, he had conceived one for the boy. Sitting with the Monsignore, she had understood better the nature of that cruel hunger and thirst after the thing you could not have; call it ‘love’, call it ‘desire’. The Monsignore’s words hung in her ear: ‘…you have become resigned to this man being homosexual…’ Had she? Perhaps she had. The humiliation of loving Carlo had given way to something deeper—a sense that, like her, Carlo was also vulnerable. No doubt he too was ashamed of his feelings. We cannot commission desire, thought Julia Garnet.

  But the girl, Sarah. That was a different kettle of fish. (Here her mind ran distractedly off to Signora Mignelli’s story of the war between the priest and the adulterous fishmonger.) It was true what the Monsignore had hinted at: she was jealous of the possibility that Carlo had found Sarah desirable. And yet what right had she to be jealous?

  An English couple appeared, wanting to squeeze past her. She got up and moved back along the roof. To the south was the lagoon where the waters waited to swallow Venice up. It was too awful to think about. And yet, she mused (passing further along round to the corner of the Doges’ Palace), it is the things we don’t think about which do real harm. If Venice was in peril, it was only by being clear-sighted that the peril might be averted.

  A group of giggling girls were testing the railings, seeing how far they could lean over, their skimpy skirts riding up over their behinds. Beyond and beneath them, guarding the entrance to the lagoon, the two great granite columns from the Levant reminded her of the Monsignore’s other story—of the young man, the silk merchant, whose love, by the grace of the Angel Raphael, had summoned for him the power of life and death. On one of the columns stood the spurious St Theodore beside his crocodile, which Carlo had pointed out to her on their first meeting. Why a crocodile? (Too late to consult the Reverend Crystal!) She had been reading about crocodiles lately. Of course—in Vera’s book. The story of the great fish’s remedial powers in the Book of Tobit was perhaps attributable to the magical properties of crocodiles. Evidently the Egyptian believed that the dung and gall of the crocodile cured leucoma—the cause of Tobit’s blindness.

  But her own blindness—if only there were a cure for that! With a shock she remembered Sarah, standing at her balcony which looked across to the invisible mountains. Sarah had talked then of throwing herself down. Up here she saw how easy that would be: there was a kind of thrill attached to the idea. She and Sarah both afflicted unto death by love for Carlo?

  But that was silly, she remonstrated, as she returned to the gallery and made her way down the steep steps (for a whistle had blown to usher them all down). Sarah’s motives for throwing herself off her balcony were more serious than any passing fancy she might have had for Carlo. And if the Monsignore was right, and Sarah hadn’t slept with Carlo, what had he been doing there so early in the morning in her apartment? And why should Sarah lie about it anyway?<
br />
  On her own balcony, watching the reflected light of the setting sun colour the clouds over the campo, she wrote: Thefishes were the first in the story of the Creation. Old Tobit has got ‘above’ himself, up on his moral high ground—the girl, too, has to ‘come down’ from her chamber. They both need to have something fundamental brought to their attention. Maybe the fish ‘cures’ because it brings them down, not ‘to earth’ but to an even lower level? (NB Find out about Garum.)

  * * *

  In the end it was Nicco and not Sarah who helped transport her belongings to the Ghetto. Signora Mignelli, she learned when she returned for her last evening at the apartment, had organised it all for the following day. ‘We see you here again,’ she said, as if the matter were beyond question.

  ‘I don’t know when I will be back,’ said Julia, slightly melodramatic.

  ‘Of course you visit us,’ said the Signora, with her customary command. ‘You come to take coffee with me next week! Yes?’

  Nicco and Julia travelled across the city almost in silence. Her mood was not one for conversation. But the silence was not uncomfortable and, hoping (after he had hauled both case and holdall up the stairs) it had not been too great an ordeal for the boy, she was pleased to hand him a 50,000 lire note, conscious that this would not have been permitted under the dragon-gaze of Signora Mignelli.

  ‘No, no,’ said Nicco, declining fervently.

  ‘Absolutely, Nicco, I insist. You have been so kind.’

  ‘OK.’ Graceful as ever, Nicco allowed his resistance to be overcome. ‘I help you some more, Giulia?’

  ‘Thanks, Nicco, just put the books over here, would you? Then I’m fine. Now, let me give you my number here. And do, please, come and see me.’ And then, quickly, ‘Not for lessons—I shall be lonely.’

  ‘OK,’ said Nicco. And then, with surprising fluency, ‘Now you not live so near me, Giulia, I visit you.’

  Sarah, who had sounded relieved on the phone not to have to come over, had left a note, with the keys, with a young Irishman in the apartment below.

  Dear Julia—I’m leaving first thing tomorrow so am staying at Aldo’s so as not to disturb you.

  As if you haven’t disturbed me already! thought Julia.

  Everything fairly self-explanatory. If you get into difficulty Sean downstairs knows all about the apartment. He’s a film director and very on the ball! Take care and have fun! Sarah.

  There were three xxxs.

  Julia, too bone-tired to unpack, looked about for clean sheets to make up the bed. Was this something to ask Sean, the film maker, about? Doubtless there were reasons why he knew ‘all about the apartment’. Finding no sheets, she boiled a kettle of water for tea (at least there was a teapot) and not wishing to engage with ‘Sean downstairs’, she balanced her mug on a pile of magazines beside the bed and lay down full stretch on top of the bedspread.

  The London Library tome had been placed by Nicco beside the bed and idly she opened it at the first page of the General Preface.

  In its earliest use the term ‘apocrypha’ was applied to writings which were withheld from public knowledge because they were vehicles of mysterious or esoteric wisdom too sacred or profound to be disclosed to any save the initiated.

  In Ancient Greek ἀπόκρνϕα meant hidden. What was it the Monsignore had said to her? ‘The greatest wisdoms are not those which are written down but those which are passed between human beings who understand each other.’

  She read on. ‘Apocryphal’ has only latterly come to acquire its meaning of false or heretical. Charles had called the Monsignore’s story of the young Levantine and the building of the Chapel-of-the-Plague ‘apocryphal’. And yet all that the Monsignore had spoken of today made her sure of its validity. It all depended on the way you saw things. What was it Blake had said?

  I question not my Corporeal Eye…I look thro’ it and not with it.

  ‘Azarias,’ I said, still muddled in my wits. Whatever’s happening?’

  ‘You were dreaming,’ The clear voice drove out sleep.

  ‘Where is Sara?’ I asked, for the violent dream was coming back to me. ‘Azarias—what is wrong with her? Who are those men the maid talked about? What were you doing in her chamber?’

  Azarias tried to settle me down back to sleep but I wasn’t having any of it. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I am not a child and you are not my nurse and I am more awake now than I’ll ever be. Speak plainly, or I will leave for Raghes tomorrow.’ I was becoming agitated about my promise to my father.

  Azarias looked me dead in the eye and time held still as I had the sensation of being sucked towards the Vast. Then he lifted his gaze.

  ‘There is an evil spirit possesses her.’ He spoke in his sweet, severe tone. ‘Seven men who tried to enter her have died. But do not fear. Light for dark, I am his match.’

  Lying there, helpless and uncomprehending, I felt my stomach grow cold and all other feeling drained away. All I could think of were my father, my mother and how all this was happening without their knowledge; and I their only child.

  ‘Azarias,’ I said, and this time I did not protest or speak angrily. ‘I cannot in good conscience risk my life for this woman. For myself it is nothing but I fear lest I die and bring my father and my mother, because of me, to the grave with sorrow; for they have no other son to bury them.’

  (I hoped that what I said was true—I know I did at least have some part concern for my parents!)

  Azarias looked at me again, and again I felt myself being pulled into those whirlpool eyes.

  ‘Hear me, brother,’ he said. ‘Make no reckoning of the evil spirit for this same night Sara shall be given to you in marriage. Remember the great fish by the banks of the Tigris which threatened your life? And remember that I counselled you to save the heart and the liver and also the gall? Touching the heart and the liver, if a devil or an evil spirit trouble any man or woman and a smoke is made before them of the heart and liver of this same fish, then they shall no longer be vexed with the evil. When you come this night into your marriage chamber, take the ashes of the perfumed woods and resins which burn there and lay upon them the heart and liver of the fish and make a smoke with it. And the evil spirit shall smell it and flee away and never come any more. Then when you have entered your wife for the first time, you must rise up, both of you, and pray to the Wise Lord who is merciful and will have pity on you and save you.’

  Then he repeated the words he had said before to me but now instead of terror they inspired in me a longing and a wonder: ‘She was set apart for you before the world was; and you shall save her and she will go with you.’

  4

  Julia lay on Sarah’s bed re-reading the book on the Apocrypha which Vera had brought (such a long time ago it seemed) from England. The cautious, scholarly prose was soothing. It appeared that the author of the Book of Tobit was a Jewish exile too. An exile writing about exile. Maybe that was why she was drawn to the book, drawn to old Tobit whose dedication to the dead lost him his sight? Poor Vera! How mean to her she had been. There were horrible depths of meanness in her character—no wonder she found herself on her own now. But unlike old Tobit, or his anonymous author, she had no Jerusalem to mourn—one would hardly yearn to return to the temple of Ealing!

  It had grown dark outside. Conscious that she had not eaten, nor yet located the sheets for the bed, she hauled herself up. Her hip was hurting again and on top of that she seemed to have pulled a muscle in her arm. Lack of food, lack of sleep and the recent trek across the city with Nicco and the luggage brought on further dizziness. She did not want to make a journey down the steep stairs to the shops.

  There was some cereal in the cupboard and a carton of milk in the fridge. Not much else apart from an opened tin of anchovies and half a lemon. Wistfully, she remembered her arrival at Signora Mignelli’s: the apartment spanking clean, the bed made up with crisp lace-topped linen, fruit and flowers to welcome her.

  But this was babyish! She was a grown woman and n
ot a child who needed her mother. The cereal and milk and a cup of tea, nursery foods to be sure, would have to do until the morning. And the night was warm—the coverlet would do without sheets.

  Sitting up in bed with the bowl of cornflakes balanced on a magazine, she copied some words from the volume beside her into her notebook: At a Parsi funeral a dog (with certain spots above the eye) is brought in to gaze at the body and so exorcise the Nasu.

  There had been a Parsi girl at St Barnabas. The family came from Bombay and she remembered the parents had been thrilled when she had awarded their daughter a history prize. The family had invited her to tea and, unusually (for as a rule she did not socialise with her pupils—perhaps because the invitations were few and far between), she had paid a visit to their home in Brentford—a modest, terraced house but cultivated she seemed to think. The father had explained to her how the Parsis were the living inheritors of the ancient Persian religion who had fled to India when the Muslims curtailed their ancient religious practices. They were exiles too, the Parsis. But unlike the Jews they melted into the communities they landed up in. Maybe that was the choice—join in or define your own? Parsi or Jew. Either you fought your god’s corner, like old Tobit, or you took the local spirits as you found them, trusting to the universal recurrence of whatever it was that mattered to you in your own version of god.

  But who or what were these ‘Nasu’—nasty-sounding name? Obviously some sort of evil spirits. Like the demon who inhabits Tobias’s future wife. Poor Tobias. Whatever could it have been like, preparing to make love to a girl whom you knew to be filled with a murderous spirit? A spirit you knew, as you attempted intercourse for the first tremulous time, had killed seven lovers before you?

  Resting the notebook on her knee she wrote: Why does the dog have spots ‘above the eyes’? An extra pair to ‘see’ better? Dog as ‘seer’?