Iain Pears - Stone's Fall

I thought I was in love because I knew so little. I thought I loved my wife, but Louise showed me that was mere affection, with not even much respect to solidify it. And then I thought I loved Louise, not realising it was simply passion, untrammelled by knowledge. Only when I came to Elizabeth did I finally understand, and by then I was getting old; it was almost too late. She saved me from a dry and empty life. I had looked for someone perfect, but did not realise until then that was not the point. Only when you can know someone's every fault, failing and weakness and not care do you truly know what love is. Elizabeth certainly has her failings; every single one of them makes me smile with affection, or feel sad for her sufferings. I have known her now for nearly two decades, and every day I know her better, love her more. She is my love and more than that.

But then Louise Cort, the image and remembrance of her, filled my days and my mind, and tinted the city I daily grew to know ever better. I became lover and saviour; my pride and vanity grew as my association with her contrasted my nature all the more powerfully with that of Cort. The practical matters were easily disposed of; there was a man who worked at the hotel I had initially stayed in. Signor Fanzano spoke English and had struck me as a robust, commonsensical fellow, worldly and discreet.

'I have a certain requirement for accommodation,' I said, when I discovered him near the kitchens of the hotel. 'I need some rooms that are comfortable but private.'

He did not ask what I wanted such a thing for, merely applied himself to the matter. 'Do I take it you do not wish anyone to know you have these rooms?' he asked.

'Yes. That is the main necessity.'

'So not in the centre. Not in San Marco. But, presumably, not too far away either.'

'Precisely.'

'Do you have any particular price in mind?'

'None.'

'And how long would you need this for.'

'I do not know. I will happily pay for three months to begin with. They must be furnished and clean.'

He nodded. 'Leave it to me, Mr Stone. I will send a message when I have come up with something.'

Two days later I received a message to apply to a Signora Murtano in a small street close to San Giovanni è Paolo near the Fondamenta Nuova. She turned out to be one of Fanzano's relations (although everyone in Venice seems to be a relation of everyone else) with a sitting room and bedroom to rent in a dingy house which had fallen far from its days of glory, if it had ever had any. But it had a fireplace (wood extra, as usual), a separate entrance and only the cruellest luck might have caused me to encounter anyone I knew as I was entering or leaving. The price was exorbitant, not least because I had decided to give Fanzano a handsome reward both for his dispatch and for his discretion. It was a good bargain, as it turned out: it acquired the loyalty of a man who served me well for the next three decades, but nonetheless, I felt at the time that the price of love in Venice was steep.

Still, it was done, and the day after I had made the arrangement, I arranged for Louise to accompany me on another tour of the city. We visited San Giovanni together, and then I showed her my find.

She knew exactly what I intended as we approached the front door, and I was afraid that the practicality of it might affect her sensibilities. And so it did, but only to make her more wild and passionate.

'Don't open the shutters,' she said, as I moved to let some light into the rooms so she could see it better. We spent the next two hours exploring a new land far more exotic than a mere city of brick and marble could ever be, even if it does float in the ocean like some fading flower.

She was the most exciting woman I had known. She brought out a recklessness in me that I had never believed existed. Only very occasionally did things go awry between us, then and every time thereafter that she could steal away for an afternoon, an hour, even on one occasion a fumbling, desperate encounter of less than fifteen minutes when she tore at me as her husband waited below. That excited me, thinking of her returning to her duties as a wife, clothes immaculately in order, face calm and showing no sign of the way I had only a few moments before pushed her against the wall and pulled up her dress to make her cry out with pleasure. He could not do that. I half wanted him to know.

Once she pulled away as I was reaching for her, I grabbed her arm and she turned angrily away, but not before I caught sight of a red weal across her upper arm.

'What's that? How did that happen?'

She shook her head and would not answer.

'Tell me,' I insisted.

'My husband,' she said quietly. 'He thought I had misbehaved.'

'Does he suspect that . . .'

'Oh no! He is too stupid. I had not done anything amiss. It does not matter. He gets the desire to hurt, that is all.'

'That is all?' I replied hotly. 'All? What did he do to you? Tell me.'

Again a shake of the head. 'I cannot tell you.'

'Why not?'

There was a long pause. 'Because I am afraid that you might wish to do the same.'

And so it went on; we found time to meet more and more often, sometimes every day; she became expert at slipping away unnoticed. We talked little; she became sad when we did, and in any case we had little enough to say. Then I did not think that mattered.

I had forgotten the Marchesa's salon, and groaned with disappointment when I remembered it. Nonetheless, I did my duty, and presented myself on the following Friday evening at seven. I was bathed, as well as is possible in a house with no running water and no easy means of heating what there was, shaved, changed, and felt moderately satisfied with my appearance.

I imagined an evening such as one might encounter in London or Paris; alas, it was very different – remarkably dull for the first part, deeply disturbing for the second. A soirée in Venice is a dreary, weary affair, with about as much joy in it as a Scottish funeral and a good deal less to drink. The spirit of Carnevale has so deserted the city that it requires real effort to remember that it was once famed for its dissolution and carefree addiction to pleasure. That pleasure is now well watered, and joy rationed as though in short supply.

I attended few such events in my time in the city and when I left them I felt I had been there for hours, though my pocket watch said it was less than half an hour on each occasion. You enter, are presented with a dry biscuit and a very little wine. Then you sit in a respectful circle around your hostess until decorum says it is time to leave. I freely admit I understood little of the conversation, as even the elevated talk in dialect, but the seriousness of the faces, the lack of laughter, the ponderousness of the speech all indicated I was missing little.

And it was cold, always. Even if a small fire burned bravely away in a far corner, its feeble heat did little but tantalise. The women were allowed to tuck earthenware pots of hot ashes about their persons to give some minimal warmth, but such things were not allowed to men, who had to freeze and try to forget the slow progress of icy numbness up the fingers and arms. Decline had expelled merriment, which belongs to greatness; the feebler Venice had become, the more humourless were its inhabitants. They were in mourning, perhaps.

The Marchesa was Venetian by marriage only, but had embraced dullness with the enthusiasm of a convert. She dressed for the occasion in black with acres of lace and a headdress which almost completely covered her face, then sat on the settee, quietly greeting those who arrived, conversing briefly with them and, as far as I could tell, waiting pointedly until they got up, bowed and left.

At least I was being introduced to Venetian society, although I later learned that the most respectable had long since refused to enter her door, and she had equally long ago ceased to invite them. There had been something of a scandal – the Marchesa, as I have mentioned, was not Venetian and, even worse, was penniless when she married her husband.