Iain Pears - Stone's Fall

To that end, I needed to find an appropriate site. A preferred option would have been to buy some ground in the centre of the city and demolish all the buildings to make way for a modern and efficient structure. I soon learned, however, that such a proposal was unlikely to come to anything. Permission had to be gained from the council for any work of that nature, and the local government had the instinct to oppose anything which smacked of the modern. Permission to demolish half a dozen palaces on the Grand Canal (however magnificent the result) was unlikely and, in any case, the initial cost of purchasing the site would have been prohibitive.

Nonetheless, I hired a gondola for the next morning and instructed the rower to go wherever he wished. It was a pleasant enough pastime, idling along broad canals and narrow ones, watching the water carriers fill the wells, the faggot vendors selling wood, all the business of the city carried out in the strange way that must evolve in a city drowned in water. Listening to the echoes of voices against tall narrow buildings, made slightly sharper and more diffuse by the effect of the water, began to bring back to me the mood of odd peacefulness that had overcome me my first evening, and which was so opposite to my supposed purpose.

In brief, I indulged in all sorts of fantastical notions. This happened time and again during my stay. My wonder was, not that the citizens of Venice were now so idle, but rather that they had once been sufficiently energetic to raise themselves from the lagoon, and turn their wooden huts on mud flats into the great metropolis that had once ruled the Mediterranean. Had the Venetians of old been more like me in mood then, they would still be paddling about in silt up to their knees.

I write as I remember, and give some sense of my mood that fine September morning, as the gondola slowly turned a corner, and I saw Mrs Cort walking along the side of the canal we had now entered. It was easy to recognise her; she looked and walked in a way which meant she could only be English – more upright, and with more bearing than Venetian women, who do not discipline their bodies into deportment.

On top of that, she was dressed in the same manner as when I had met her, eschewing a top coat in honour of the fine weather, and wearing only a hat to guard her fine white skin from the sun. I called out to her and gestured to the gondolier to pull over to the side, where there were some landing steps.

'I have been to the pharmacist for some cough medicine,' she said once we had exchanged greetings. It did not matter what she said. I noticed that her eyes were bright and met mine when we spoke. She stood closer to me than I would have expected from a woman I hardly knew.

'And is this your son?' I asked, gesturing at an infant in the arms of a stocky peasant woman standing a few feet away. The child looked sick and was whimpering. The other woman – a nurse or nanny of some sort – rocked it gently in her arms and sang a crooning song in its ears.

'Yes. That is Henry,' she said, scarcely giving him a glance. 'He is very like his father.'

The conversation faltered. I was pleased to see her, but had nothing to say. That easy talk which passes between men, or couples of long acquaintance, was not possible. Neither of us wanted to go on our way, but neither could think how to prolong the interview.

'And you are seeing the sights?' she said eventually.

'After a fashion, although I do believe I have been down this canal three times already. Or perhaps not; they all begin to look the same after a while.'

She laughed lightly. 'I can see you have not benefited from Mr Longman's expertise,' she said. 'Otherwise you would know that that house on the corner,' she gestured behind me, and I turned to look at a nondescript pile that looked long deserted, 'was once the home of the lady with the skull.'

She smiled at me as I looked again. 'Do you want to hear the story as he told it to me?'

'By all means.'

'I do not know when it happened,' she said. 'Most stories in Venice have no date to them. But, a long time ago, a man was walking down an alley a short way from here. He was thinking of the woman he was about to marry, and his happy thoughts were disturbed by a beggar, asking for money. He was angry, and kicked the man for his insolence, and caught him on the head with his boot. The beggar rolled over into the canal, struck dead, and the young man ran off.

'The wedding day came and eventually the bride and groom were alone in their bedchamber. There was knock on the door. The man, cursing, opened it and saw a horrible apparition. A corpse, flesh dropping from its bones. Eyes staring from their sockets. Teeth protruding where the flesh had been eaten away by fish.

'The man screamed, as you might expect.

' "Who are you? What do you want?" the man cried.

' "I am the beggar you killed. I want burial," the apparition replied.

'Again the man ignored the request. He slammed the door, and bolted it. When he had recovered enough he went back upstairs to the bedchamber.

'But when he walked in the room, he turned pale and fainted.

'"What is the matter, my love?" cried the wife.

'She got up, and began to walk towards him. But as she passed a mirror, she turned to look at herself.

'Her face was white and skull-like, the hair torn out, the eyes staring from their sockets, the teeth protruding where the fish had eaten away the flesh.'

She was talking ever more softly, and I found myself moving closer to her as she told this hideous, fascinating fairy story. When she ended, I was close enough to feel her breath on my face. She looked openly and frankly at me.

'And the moral of the story is, never be unkind to beggars,' I said.

'No,' she replied softly. 'The moral is, do not marry a man who is cruel and heartless.'

I came to myself and stepped back. What had just taken place? I did not know, but it was as though a charge of energy had surged through me; I was in a state of shock. Not the story, but the teller, and the manner of the telling.

It was the way her eyes fixed on me that caused the true shock, so far beyond what was correct, and to which I responded. Or didn't; I initiated it, perhaps. Perhaps she responded to me.

'Now I feel dissatisfied to travel so ignorantly,' I said.

'Perhaps you need a guide.'

'Perhaps I do.'

'You should ask my husband,' she said, and registered the disappointment in my face. 'I'm sure he would allow me to show you the sights of the city.'

Again those eyes.

'Do I need to ask his permission?'

'No,' she said with a touch of contempt in her voice.

'I do not wish to trouble you. I'm sure you are very busy.'

'I could spare you some time, I'm sure. I would enjoy it. My husband is always telling me I should do more out of the house. He knows there is little of my own here, not that he does anything except apologise.'

I could not get the encounter out of my mind, then or later. It grew in me, like my feeling for the city itself, without me even noticing. But I was aware that what I saw and did was blending with my thoughts, almost to the point of not being able to tell one from the other. Although I wished to clear my head, I also wished the strange state to continue. It was luxurious to surrender to the least impulse, to allow any thought to pass through my head, to abandon that careful discipline I had steadily cultivated. To be other than myself, in fact.

I needed company for distraction, but I also wished to discover more about Louise Cort. What was her history, her nature? Why had she talked to me in such a fashion? What sort of person was she?

I had only met her on two occasions by this point, and only for a few minutes in all. Not enough to explain her place in my thoughts; certainly no other woman – and by then I had met many more charming, more beautiful, more notable in all respects – had such a rapid effect on me. For the most part I had forgotten them the moment they had passed from my sight.