Ever Dundas: Goblin

We’d meet in the evenings at Gio’s, we’d walk through Venice together in the middle of the night, enjoying the quiet. We’d sleep at hers or more often mine, feeding the animals, playing with them, taking the dogs for walks. I fell for her but I thought I was just a phase for her, a passing affair. I buried the doubts and let it be, I let us exist in the present.

I thought I was happy until the evening I was tired and I got talking about the circus, giving away too much. I told her about the posters, about David, that I was still searching for the brother who escaped to the sea, but she asked too much so I left the bar early, telling her I had to go home to feed the animals. Instead, I walked to the Grand Canal and lowered myself in.

I swam for a moment, then floated. I thought of the tourists finding my body. I thought what a story that would be. I thought it was a shame that I wouldn’t be there to write about it. Goblin Drowns in Canal, no one mourns.

I let go, sinking. I thought of nothing at all. I felt cleansed in the dirty water. It wasn’t deep. It was a struggle to stay on the bed of the canal, with the rubbish and the fish. I floated and I thought of the animals. Juliana will look after them, I thought. I closed my eyes.

I was pulled and jerked out of my garbage grave. A mermaid, a merman, a pirate, a monster. I was to be devoured and my bones were to be buried beneath the silt and junk. They gripped my arm, so tight it hurt. They pulled me, but not down. Up, up, up we went and I saw the black sky again, a bat’s silhouette flittering across the bright stars. They held me round the chest as they swam for land. The canal spat me out and I spat out the canal.

What monster was this? Or guardian angel?

I heaved in air and rolled over, lying on my back, staring up at my monster-angel; he was small and fat, his face scrunched up and ugly. He shouted, limbs exploding out like pistons. He spat on the ground next to me and left. I turned onto my side and watched him barrelling his way down the street, disappearing into an alley.

I wondered how my monster-angel could just leave me. I could so easily roll over and sink back into the canal. But the moment had passed. My monster-angel knew that.

‘The moment of my death has passed into the past,’ I said and laughed. ‘The past is the past is the past.’

I laughed so hard I shook. I got up and walked back to my apartment, leaving a trail of water, drip drip dripping like black ink.

The next day was the same as every day. I looked after the animals, I wrote an article, I did the history tour and I met Juliana. The only thing that changed was the posters. I had grown weary of replacing them, but on this day I printed hundreds and I put them everywhere.

I carried his photograph with me. It was crumpled and a tear was worrying at the right hand corner. If the tear went further it would rip right through his head. I took a copy and left the original at home.

‘You seen this boy?’ I’d ask people in cafes, in restaurants, in bars. I’d ask tourists who stopped me for directions. ‘He’d be a man now,’ I’d say. ‘Imagine him in colour and not so pale. He’ll be tanned now. Swarthy after being a sailor for so long, probably a pirate. You seen this man?’

‘No,’ they’d say. ‘We’ve not seen him.’

‘He’s here for sure,’ I’d say. ‘I should have known it, you know? Of all the places. Where else would he settle? This fantastical realm made of water and glass and crumbling stone. Have you seen this man? Imagine him in colour.’

I put hundreds of missing posters all across Venice. They merged with the graffiti, fraying at the edges, spattered with paint. He had a moustache in one and in another a green penis grew out of his forehead, but mostly they were ignored; covered over, forgotten. Have you seen this man? In response I received smears of paint, tags, slogans: ‘Love the lost’.

My phone number was on the posters and in return I received calls from lonely people and old perverts. Love the lost, and I embraced them all. The police fined me for fly posting and graffiti but let me put the poster in their station and in ‘designated areas’. I’d go to the station every week to ask if anyone had seen him. The answer was always no, always ‘we’ll get in touch with you.’ They huffed when I walked through the door each week but they’d ask how I was, asked how many more dogs and cats and injured birds I had collected. I stayed for coffee and they asked if I had found a proper job yet, they asked if I’d settled down with a good man. They warned me not to put my number on the posters, not to answer calls from ‘perverts and crazies’.

‘“Stay away from my son, whore!”’

‘What? She said what?’

‘“Stay away from my son, whore!” That’s what she said. Her voice creaks, like old furniture. She sounds like she’s a hundredbillion years old.’

Juliana laughed.

‘The phone call after that, all I got was “Whore! Bitch! Who do you think you are?” That’s all. That was it. She hung up. It’s gone on like that for over a week now.’

Juliana raised her whisky, ‘To the old lady! May she forever be crazy! May she stalk you to your grave.’

‘To the old lady!’ I said, and we downed our drinks.

‘You need to find out who she is.’

‘I can’t get a word in.’

‘You’ll see, she’ll be lonely. Soon she’ll be your best friend. Soon she’ll be your grandmother, offering advice, telling you you’re all skin and bone and you need fattened up.’

‘I’ve never had a grandmother. I never knew her.’

‘Well, you have one now.’

‘She’ll stop calling. She’ll get bored of it and move on to someone else.’

‘I’m telling you,’ she raised her glass. ‘I’m telling you.’

She nodded and I shrugged.

‘We’ll see.’

I received a call every night from Maria. She told me her life story. She was rich, she said. Sure, I said. I live in a Palazzetto on the Grand Canal, she said. Sure, I said. Rattling around on my own, she said. Rattling, like my old bones. It’s hard to get around now, she said. And now my son is gone, I’m all alone. What’s your interest in him, whore? What’s your interest in him? Stay away from Antonio!

Next time she phoned she was polite, talking to me like we were old friends, like we were family, like she was some long-lost, concerned relative. Then she said to me, ‘If he wants to leave us, then let him, don’t go shaming my family name all over Venezia!’

She called every night. Some nights it was ‘Whore! Bitch! Who do you think you are?’ and other nights we’d talk for hours and she’d tell me about her family, about her friends, about her glamorous life before she got old and was forgotten. She was a socialite, she said. ‘All I did was go to parties, look pretty and slay the boys with my viperous tongue.’

‘I can believe that,’ I said, and she’d chuckle, a hoarse, dirty chuckle. ‘You should have seen me,’ she said. ‘You should have seen me back then.’ She’d grow maudlin. I heard the clink of ice in a glass, and she said to me, ‘Come visit. Come visit, it’s been so long. I miss you. I will show you all my photos from back in the day. I was beautiful then. I was everything then.’ I wanted to say, ‘You’re everything now,’ coming to realise that Juliana was right. Instead I said, ‘You don’t know me, Maria. I could be a serial killer. I could be in it to steal your fortune.’

‘In it? In what?’ she said, sharp, distinct. ‘In what?’

‘In this, our friendship.’

‘I call the shots,’ she said. ‘I called you and I call the shots. Now you come and visit me. Come round and I will fatten you up.’