A Venetian Affair

by Andrea Di Robilant

  In June, as Giustiniana waited for the dreaded departure to the countryside, Andrea’s trips out of town increased. There was more to attend to than the consul’s demands: his own family expected him to pay closer attention to the Memmo estates on the mainland now that his uncle was dead. As soon as he was back in Venice, though, he immediately tried to comfort Giustiniana by reiterating the logic behind their undertaking. He insisted that there was no alternative: the consul was their only chance. He argued for patience and was usually persuasive enough that Giustiniana, by her own admission and despite all her reservations, would melt “into a state of complete contentment” just listening to him speak.

  Little by little she was beginning to accept the notion that deception was a necessary tool in the pursuit of her own happiness. But the art of deceit did not come naturally to her. When she was not in Andrea’s arms, enthralled by his reassuring words, her own, more innocent way of thinking quickly took over again, and she would panic: “Oh God, Memmo, you paint a picture of my present and my future that makes me tremble. You say Smith is my only chance. Yet if he doesn’t take me, I lose you, and if he does take me, I can’t see you. And you wish me to be wise. . . . Memmo, what should I do? I cannot go on like this.”

  “Ah, Memmo, I am here now and there is no turning back.”

  In early July, after weeks of preparations, the Wynnes had finally traveled across the lagoon and up the Brenta Canal and had arrived at Le Scalette, the villa the consul had arranged for them to rent. The memory of her tearful separation from Andrea in Venice that very morning—the Wynnes and their small retinue piling onto their boat on the Grand Canal while Andrea waved to her from his gondola, apparently unseen by Mrs. Anna—had filled Giustiniana’s mind during the entire boat ride. She had lain on the couch inside the cabin, pretending to sleep so as not to interrupt even for an instant the flow of images that kept her enraptured by sweet thoughts of Andrea. Once they arrived at the villa and had settled in, she cast a glance around her new surroundings and had discovered that the house and the garden were actually very nice and the setting on the Brenta could not have been more pleasant. “Oh, if only you were here, how delightful this place would be. How sweetly we could spend our time,” she wrote to him before going to bed the first night.

  The daily rituals of the villeggiatura began every morning with a cup of hot chocolate that sweetened the palate after a long night’s sleep and provided a quick boost of energy. It was usually served in an intimate setting—breakfast in the boudoir. The host and hostess and their guests would exchange greetings and the first few tidbits of gossip before the morning mail was brought in. Plans for the day would be laid out. After the toilette, much of which was taken up by elaborate hairdressing in the case of the ladies, the members of the household would reassemble outdoors for a brief walk around the perimeter of the garden. Upon their return they might gather in the drawing room to play cards until it was time for lunch, a rather elaborate meal that in the grander houses was usually prepared under the supervision of a French cook. Afternoons were taken up by social visits or a more formal promenade along the banks of the Brenta, an exercise the Venetians had dubbed la trottata. Often the final destination of this afternoon stroll was the bottega, the village coffeehouse where summer residents caught up with the latest news from Venice. After dinner, the evening was taken up by conversation and society games. Blindman’s bluff was a favorite. In the larger villas there were also small concerts and recitals and the occasional dancing party.

  Giustiniana did not really look forward to any of this. As soon as she arrived at Le Scalette she was seized by worries of a logistical nature, wondering whether it would really be easier for her to meet Andrea secretly in the country than it had been in Venice. She looked around the premises for a suitable place where they could see each other and immediately reported to her lover that there was an empty guest room next to her bedroom. More important: “There is a door not far from the bed that opens onto a secret, narrow staircase that leads to the garden. Thus we are free to go in and out without being seen.” She promised Andrea to explore the surroundings more thoroughly: “I will play the spy and check every corner of the house, and look closely at the garden as well as the caretaker’s quarters—everywhere. And I will give you a detailed report.”

  The villa next door belonged to Andrea Tron, a shrewd politician who never became doge but was known to be the most powerful man in Venice (he would play an important role in launching Andrea’s career). Tron took a keen interest in his new neighbors. As an old friend of Consul Smith, he was aware that the death of Smith’s wife had created quite an upheaval among the English residents. Like all well-informed Venetians, he also knew about Andrea and Giustiniana’s past relationship and was curious to know whether it might still be simmering under the surface. He came for lunch and invited the Wynnes over to his villa. Mrs. Anna was pleased; it was good policy to be on friendly terms with such an influential man as Tron. She encouraged Giustiniana to be sociable and ingratiating toward their important neighbor. In the afternoon, Giustiniana took to sitting at the end of the garden, near the little gate that opened onto the main thoroughfare, enjoying the coolness and gazing dreamily at the passersby. Tron would often stroll past and stop for a little conversation with her.

  Initially Giustiniana thought his large estate might prove useful for her nightly escapades. She had noticed that there were several casini on his property where she and Andrea could meet under cover of darkness. But thanks to her frequent trips to the servants’ quarters, where she was already forming useful alliances, she had found out that Tron’s casini were “always full of people and even if there should be an empty one, the crowds next door might make it too dangerous” for them to plan a tryst there.

  In the end it seemed to her more convenient and prudent to make arrangements with their trusted friends, the Tiepolos: their villa was a little further down the road, but Andrea could certainly stay there and a secret rendezvous might be engineered more safely. Giustiniana even went so far as to express the hope that they might be able to replicate in the countryside “another Ca’ Tiepolo,” which had served them so well back in Venice. She added—her mind was racing ahead—that when Andrea came out to visit it would be best “if we meet in the morning because it is easy for me to get up before everyone else while in the evening the house is always full of people and I am constantly observed.”

  As Giustiniana diligently prepared the ground for a summer of lovemaking, she did wonder whether “all this information might ever be of any use to us.” Andrea was still constantly on the move, a fleeting presence along the Brenta. When he was not with the consul at Mogliano, he was traveling to Padua on business, visiting the Memmo estate, or rushing back to Venice, where his sister, Marina, who had not been well for some time, had suddenly been taken very ill. Giustiniana might hear that Andrea was in a neighboring village, on his way to see her. Then she would hear nothing more. Every time she started to dream of him stealing into her bedroom in the dead of night or surprising her at the village bottega, a letter would reach her announcing a delay or a change of plans. So she waited and wrote to him, and waited and wrote:

  I took a long walk in the garden, alone for the most part. I had your little portrait with me. How often I looked at it! How many things I said to it! How many prayers and how many protestations I made! Ah, Memmo, if only you knew how excessively I adore you! I defy any woman to love you as I love you. And we know each other so deeply and we cannot enjoy our perfect friendship or take advantage of our common interests. God, what madness! Though in these cruel circumstances it is good to know that you love me in the extreme and that I have no doubts about you: otherwise what miserable hell my life would be.

  A few days later she was still on tenterhooks:

  I received your letter just as we got up from the table and I flew to a small room, locked myself in, and gave myself away to the pleasure of listening to my Memmo talk to me and profess all his tendernes
s for me and tell me about all the things that have kept him so busy. Oh, if only you had seen me then, how gratified you would have been. I lay nonchalantly on the couch and held your letter in one hand and your portrait in the other. I read and reread [the letter] avidly, and for a moment I abandoned that pleasure to indulge in the other pleasure of looking at you. I pressed one and the other against my bosom and was overcome by waves of tenderness. Little by little I fell asleep. An hour and a half later I awoke, and now I am with you again and writing to you.

  Andrea was finally on his way to see Giustiniana one evening when he was reached by a note from his brother Bernardo, telling him that their sister, Marina, was dying. Distraught, he returned to Venice and wrote to Giustiniana en route to explain his change of plans. She immediately wrote back, sending all her love and sympathy:

  Your sister is dying, Memmo? And you have to rush back to Venice? . . . You do well to go, and I would have advised you to do the same. . . . But I am hopeful that she will live. . . . Maybe your mother and your family have written to you so pressingly only to hasten your return. . . . If your sister recovers, I pray you will come to see me right away. . . . And if she should pass away, you will need consolation, and after the time that decency requires you will come to seek it from your Giustiniana.

  In this manner, days and then weeks went by. Eventually, Giustiniana stopped making plans for secret encounters. There were moments during her lonely wait when she even worried about the intensity of her feelings. What was going on in his mind, in his heart? She had his letters, of course. He was usually very good about writing to her. But his prolonged absence disoriented her. She needed so much to see him—to see him in the flesh and not simply to conjure his image in a world of fantasy. “I tremble, Memmo, at the thought that my excessive love might become a burden on you,” she wrote to him touchingly. “. . . I have no one else but you. . . . Where are you now, my soul? Why can’t I be with you?”

  While she longed for Andrea to appear in the country, Giustiniana also forced herself to be graceful with the consul. He called on the Wynnes regularly, coming by for lunch and sometimes staying overnight at Le Scalette, throwing the household into a tizzy because of his surprise arrivals and the late hours he kept. He took Giustiniana out on walks in the garden and spent time with the family, lavishing his attention on everyone. There was no question in anybody’s mind that the old man was completely taken with Giustiniana and that he was courting her with the intention of marriage. Even the younger children had come to assume that the consul had been “tagged” and already “belonged” to their older sister, as Giustiniana put it in her letters to Andrea.

  As she waited for her lover, Giustiniana watched with mild bewilderment the restrained embraces between her sister Tonnina and her young fiancé, Alvise Renier, who was summering in a villa nearby. “Poor fellow!” she wrote to Andrea. “He takes her in his arms, holds her close to him, and still she remains indolent and moves no more than a statue. Even when she does caress him she is so cold that merely looking at her makes one angry. I don’t understand that kind of love, my soul, because you set me on fire if you so much as touch me.” She was being a little hard on her youngest sister. After all, Tonnina was only thirteen and Alvise little older than that; it was a fairly innocent first love. But of course every time Giustiniana saw them together she longed to be in the arms of her impetuous lover.

  Mrs. Anna, unaware of the heavy flow of letters between Le Scalette and Ca’ Memmo, could not have been more pleased at how things were developing. With Andrea out of the way, the consul seemed increasingly comfortable with the idea of marrying Giustiniana. It was not unrealistic to expect a formal proposal by the end of the season. The other summer residents followed with relish the comings and goings at the Wynnes’. The consul’s visits were regularly commented upon at the bottega in Dolo, as was Andrea’s conspicuous absence. Were they still seeing each other behind the consul’s back, or had their love affair finally succumbed to family pressures? Giustiniana’s young Venetian friends often put her on the spot when she appeared to fetch her mail. However circumspect she had to be, she could not give up the secret pleasure of letting people know, in her own allusive way, that she still loved Andrea deeply. “Today we were talking about how the English run away from passions whilst the Italians seem to embrace them,” she reported. “I was asked somewhat maliciously what I thought of the matter. I replied that life is quite short and that a well-grounded passion for a sweet and lovable person can give one a thousand pleasures. In such cases, I said, why run away from it? The same person pressed on: ‘What if that passion is strongly opposed or if it is hurtful?’ I answered that once a passion is developed it must always be sustained. . . . Must I really care about what these silly people think? I have too much vanity to disown in public a choice that I have made.”

  The consul’s repeated visits—and Andrea’s continued absence— created an air of inevitability about her future marriage that took its toll on Giustiniana. In public, she did her best to put on a brave front. But as soon as she was alone the gloomiest premonitions took hold of her. The hope that when it was all over—when the marriage had taken place—she would be free to give herself completely to the man she loved sustained her through the performance she was putting on day after day. But she could not rid herself of the fear that for all their clever scheming, once the consul married her she would not be able to see Andrea at all. As an English friend summering by the Brenta whispered to her one day, “I know my country well, and I am quite sure the first person Smith will ban from his house will be Memmo.” She wrote to Andrea:

  Alas, I know my country too! So what is to be done? Wait until he dies to be free? And in the meantime? And afterward? He might live with me for years, while I cannot live without you for a month. . . . True, any other husband would stop me from seeing you without having the advantages Smith has tooffer, including his old age. . . . But everything is so uncertain, and it seems to me that the future can only be worse than the present. Of course it would be wrong for the two of us to get married. I wouldn’t want your ruin even if it gave me all the happiness I would feel living with you. No, my Memmo! I love you in the most disinterested and sincerest way possible, exactly as you should be loved. I do not believe we shall ever be entirely happy, but all the same I will always be yours, I will adore you, and I will depend on you all my life. . . . So I will do what pleases you, [but remember] that if Smith were to ask for my hand and my Memmo were not entirely happy about it I would instantly abandon Smith and everything else with him, for my true good fortune is to belong to you and you alone.

  In August Marina’s health briefly improved and Andrea was finally free to go to the country to see Giustiniana. He was not well—still recovering from a bad fever that had forced him to bed. But he decided to make the trip out to Dolo anyway and take advantage of the Tiepolos’ open invitation. Giustiniana was in a frenzy of excitement. “Come quickly, my heart, now that your sister’s condition allows you to. . . . I would do anything, anything for the pleasure of seeing you.” It was too risky for Andrea to visit her house, so she had arranged to see him in the modest home of the mother of one of the servants, thanks to the intercession of a local priest in whom she had immediately confided. “I went to see it, and I must tell you it’s nothing more than a hovel,” she warned, “but it should suffice us.” Alternatively, they could meet in the caretaker’s apartment, which was reached “by taking a little staircase next to the stables.”

  These preparations were unnecessary. Andrea arrived by carriage late in the night, exhausted after a long detour to Padua he had made on behalf of the ever-demanding consul. He left his luggage at the Tiepolos’ and immediately went off to surprise Giustiniana by sneaking up to her room from the garden.

  The following morning, after lingering in bed in a joyful haze, she scribbled a note and sent it to Andrea care of the Tiepolos: “My darling, lovable Memmo, how grateful I feel! Can a heart be more giving? Anyone can pay a
visit to his lover. But the circumstances in which you came to see me last night, and the manner and grace you showed me—nobody, nobody else could have done it! I am so happy and you are wonderful to me. When will I be allowed to show you all my tenderness?”

  Giustiniana fretted about Andrea’s health. He had not looked well, and she feared a relapse: “You have lost some weight, and you looked paler than usual. . . . I didn’t want to tell you, my precious, but you left me worried. For the love of me, please take care of yourself. How much you must have suffered riding all night in the stagecoach, and possibly still with a fever. . . . My soul, the pleasure of seeing you is simply too, too costly.” Yet she was so hungry for him after his long absence that she could hardly bear not to see him now that he was so close: “Maybe you will come again this evening. . . . Do not expose yourself to danger, for I would die if I were the cause of any ailment. . . . If you have fully recovered, do come, for I shall be waiting for you with the greatest impatience, but if you are still not well then take care of yourself, my soul. I will come to see you; I will . . . ah, but I cannot. What cruelty!”