Iain Pears - Stone's Fall

So I believe, and I have argued my case with many a sentimentalist who waxes eloquent about the glories of the past, and how human life has degenerated under the impact of the modern age. Nonsense. We are living at the highest point human civilisation has ever reached, and it is people like me who are responsible for it.

Yet I still have my Venice problem. Everything I say about it is true, and yet that first evening I walked without a break for food or drink or rest for near seven hours, forgetting my map, not caring where I was or what I was looking at. I was hypnotised, overwhelmed. Nor did I understand why. It was not what most people find attractive, the vistas and palaces, churches and works of art. These I appreciate well enough, but not to the point of passion. I would talk of the spirit of the place, although to do so would risk seeming foolish and, as I have indicated, the most obvious examples of its spirit were degenerate and corrupt. Nor was it the light, as for much of the time I marched in darkness, nor the sound, as it is the quietest habitation I have ever visited. The average English village of a few hundred people is a noisier place. I cannot offer a convincing explanation of my own, although when I told Elizabeth of my reaction she suggested that it was because I did not wish to resist its charms; that, having been disappointed by Florence and Naples and all the other places I visited, I wished to be seduced, that I fell not for what it was but what I needed it to be, at that particular moment. And that having generated such feelings in me, it became associated with that feeling for ever after. I had tried to be dissipated and failed, tried to be an aesthete and failed, and now I was attempting no project at all, and succeeding beyond my expectations. It is as good an explanation as any other, although had I given her a more detailed account, she might have come up with a different interpretation.

I ended back near the Campo San Stin, which contained Cort's palazzo, and there had a most unusual experience. I had what I took to be an hallucination, brought on by tiredness and irregular food. I am minded to mention it – at some risk of arousing amusement in any who might read this – because it has a bearing on the rest of my stay in the city.

I hope it is clear already that I am not of an hysterical disposition; I am not susceptible to delusions, and have never had any time for the mystical or supernatural. Even in this particular case, I was sure, both before and after, that I was witnessing only a phantasm. Nonetheless I could not fault it; could not discover any proof that it was merely an illusion playing out before me.

In brief, it was this: at (I believe) somewhere after midnight, I was on a bridge over what I later discovered to be the rio di Cannaregio. It was handsome enough; the canal curving away to my left, the looming shapes of the buildings rising up and reflected on the still surface of the water. It was very dark, as there was no lighting at all, not even from the windows of the houses which, for the most part, were shuttered. I stopped to admire the scene, and to consider, yet again, whether I was going in the right direction to get back to my hotel – which, in fact, I was not. As I wondered I stared idly back towards the Grand Canal, leaning on the iron balustrade.

Then I heard a noise, a sound of laughter, and sensed at the same time an immensely powerful feeling of not being alone. I turned around swiftly (Venice is an exceptionally safe city, but I did not know that at the time) and saw a most peculiar sight. There was a torch burning in a socket on the wall of a palazzo some thirty yards away from me, although I swear it had not been there before. And underneath, there was a small boat, which contained one man standing amidships, and singing. I could not see clearly in the flickering light, but he seemed short, wiry and almost ethereal, as though you could see the stucco of the building through his dress coat and breeches. His song was not one I had ever heard before, but it sounded, at one and the same time, like a lullaby, a lament and a love song, delivered in a soft but slightly reedy voice. Extraordinarily beautiful and affecting, although circumstance perhaps made it seem more so than it was.

I did not know to whom he was singing; one window, I now noticed, was unshuttered and slightly open, but there was no light within, and no figure to be discerned. The only human being in sight was this man, who was dressed in a manner more suited to the eighteenth century than to the present age. I saw this without any sense of it being unusual or strange. All I knew was that I desperately wanted to know what the song was, who was the singer, and whether the woman being so serenaded – surely that was what was taking place – was receptive to his song. Who was she? Was she young and beautiful? She must be, to produce such a wistful sadness in the man's voice.

I moved to get a better view, making enough noise to carry over the water. The man stopped singing – not abruptly, but rather as though he had finished his tune – and turned to look at me, making the slightest of bows in my direction. My first impression of age was correct; he had no beauty. His features were not horrible, but they were terribly old. He seemed as old as the city itself.

I watched, immobile, as he settled down in the boat, picked up the oars and began to row away from me, and then the spell broke. I walked, then ran after him, over the bridge, and left, up an alleyway which ran parallel to the canal, hoping to overtake him – he was not rowing very fast – and get a better look. After a hundred feet or so, another turn took me down to a small jetty, and I ran there, and began looking up and down. There was nothing. The boat had vanished. And as I stood there, wondering where he had gone, I heard faint laughter echoing over the water.

I was shaken by this, by my own reaction as much as anything, and turned round to retrace my steps. When I got back to the bridge, the windows of the palace were now firmly shuttered, and looked as though they had not been opened for years.

There was nothing else to do but to leave, and make my way back to my hotel, which I reached (after many false turns) about an hour later. I slept, finally, at about four in the morning, and slumbered until ten. But it was not an easy sleep. The atmosphere of that place had suffused my mind, and like some childish and irritating tune that lodges itself and will not be shaken out, the images of those few moments repeated themselves in my head all night.

Why do I write this? I have spent many an hour, many an evening, at these notes now. It has no real purpose, and I am not used to doing anything without a purpose. Only Elizabeth can manage to make me waste time, although with her nothing is a waste. It is worth any sort of nonsense or frivolity to make her happy, see her smile, to have her turn and say – thank you for putting up with that. For her I even learned to dance, although never well; but I am content to behave like an elephant to see her graceful, to feel her body move as I hold her in my arms. I am not even aware of others. I can honestly say that not once have I thought of how others might admire her and envy me, although surely they do.

But my happiness with her has been different from the sort I found in Venice. We have never experienced together the sort of irresponsible carelessness that I tasted that one time. Inevitably, I am sure; when I met her I was too old to make a fool of myself in the way that only the young can manage, and her life had been too hard, too much of a struggle, ever to be carefree. No; we have made something very different; a world that is safe and warm. We have done grand things, exciting things, pleasurable things together, but never foolish ones. Such things are not truly in my nature, and she knows too well the dangers of them.