Ever Dundas: Goblin

‘What are you doing? They don’t like the smoke, you’re upsetting them.’

‘You’re not fucking Catholic,’ she said. ‘You’re not a martyr.’

I was weak, but I struggled up, opened the door for Monty and the cats to get into the sitting room. I lurched back and fell into bed.

‘What are you burning?’

‘You’re not a slave to this pathetic self-hate. You need help.’

‘You need help,’ I said, curling up into a foetal position, pulling the covers up to my chin. ‘You’re burning my things.’

‘What does it all mean to you? Tell me.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Don’t be a victim of your mother’s hate,’ she said, waving a sheet of my writing at me. ‘She’s gone and you’re here with me in Venice. This is our life. You’re an adult, not a Goblin-runt baby blue.’

‘I tried to kill myself.’

‘I know,’ said Juliana, setting the paper alight. ‘I know.’

‘You know?’

‘Giorgio told me he pulled you out of the canal. I’ve never seen him so angry.’

‘Gio? I didn’t recognise him.’

‘He wouldn’t let up on it. Every time I saw him.’

‘You knew?’

‘I knew.’

‘Okay.’

‘I assured him I was taking care of you,’ she said, her face lost in a haze of smoke. ‘That you were coming out of it.’

‘It explains why he’s been such a sullen bastard recently,’ I said.

‘Do you know how many people have died in those canals? Too many. And who wants to die there? In all that silt and dirt and tourist garbage?’

‘No one,’ I said.

‘No one,’ she said, holding her hand up to the flames, feeling the warmth.

‘Me,’ I said.

‘No one,’ she said, putting more paper into the pot.

‘There’s nothing wrong with suicide.’

‘Are we getting philosophical now?’

‘No. Maybe… If I lost you I would happily drown in the silt and the dirt and the tourist garbage.’

‘That’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me,’ she said, her lips curling into a half-smile.

‘I’m glad I’m alive,’ I said. ‘Goblin-runt born blue. I’m glad I’m alive. I think I tried to kill myself after that too.’

‘You think?’

‘I think.’

‘How can you not know?’

‘It was lazy, a lazy death on the Bone Island. I was drunk, roasting in the sun. I was going to feed the plants and the lizards when another guardian angel saved me. No one will let me put myself out of my misery. Fall down that rabbit hole.’

She lit up my diary.

‘You’re going to set fire to my home,’ I said.

‘Marry me.’

‘What?’

‘I love you,’ she said, ‘marry me.’

I sat up and stared at her.

‘You’re burning my things!’

‘I’m burning your past. You don’t need it.’

‘Everyone needs a past.’

‘You don’t need to hold it so close. Tell a different story.’

‘It’s not legal.’

‘What?’

‘Marriage,’ I said. ‘We’re perverts.’

‘We’ll do it our way.’

‘You can’t fix me.’

‘But I can love you,’ she said. ‘I do love you.’

‘It’s too late.’

‘Then why are you here? Why are you even here? Why do you bother? You may as well just die.’

‘I’ve been trying.’

‘Not hard enough,’ she said, standing back from the smoke. ‘If you want to die, you’ll die. But you’re here. I know you want to be and I know you love me.’

‘I do.’

‘Well then, marry me,’ she said and opened a window. ‘Till death us do part.’

I watched as the breeze whipped the smoke round the room.

‘You don’t know what you’re getting into,’ I said.

‘I do. I know exactly,’ she said and set more of my things alight.

Venice, 24 July 1972

We got married on the Bone Island.

I wore one of mum’s old dresses. It was really a nightgown, a long cream slip with lace panels. Juliana wore a silk red dress that belonged to her aunt. We travelled to the Bone Island in Maria’s old motorboat, holding hands as we set off, our lace veils fluttering in the breeze. Our friends followed close behind us; the students I met at the bar and the protest, Juliana’s parents, Monty, Maria, Antonio, Gio, two of my neighbours, and one of the policemen – ‘I knew you’d attract a pervert and a crazy’.

Maria took the service. When she first found out we were getting married there was all sorts of fuss and histrionics. ‘It’s not real love, how do you even have sex? It’s not right – a woman like you, you need a man to look after you.’ I loved Maria like she was family, so I said to her, ‘You old dragon, you old conservative bitch, don’t tell me what is and isn’t love.’

She grunted and refused to discuss it. Eventually Juliana charmed her. They talked in Italian, so fast that I couldn’t keep up. They finished each other’s sentences and laughed like old witches.

‘What did you talk about?’ I asked Juliana.

‘This and that; art, love, life, Venice. She has a dirty sense of humour, that old woman.’

‘Did you talk about us?’

‘Yes. I said I loved you and she grunted and shook her head. I said, “Maria, you love Goblin. If you love her, you’ll accept she loves pussy.”’

‘You didn’t?’

‘I did, and the old lady went crimson then laughed like a sailor. She pinched my cheek and said, “You look after her.”’

‘She accepts us then?’

‘She accepts us, but you know Maria – nothing is ever straightforward.’

I spoke to Antonio, quizzing him about Maria’s turnaround.

‘She’s just jealous,’ he said.

‘Jealous?’

‘She lived a restricted existence – she wasn’t as free as her rebellious sister. She obeyed her parents. She was a good Catholic.’

‘She doesn’t really hate queers?’

‘She disapproves, but she’ll make an exception for you.’

I smiled and shook my head.

‘She’s good at – what’s the word? – keeping things separate, not seeing the contradiction. And she likes the late rebellion. She gets a kick out of it. “What would papa think?” she asked me. “He’d be scandalised,” I told her and she laughed.’

We had Maria’s mixed blessing and now the glorious old lady was our stand-in priest, our stand-in government official, and she loved every moment – it was just as much her day as it was ours.

We gathered on the island where I’d previously gone to die and we celebrated love, the present and the future.

I don’t remember which part was in which language, but Maria, as agreed, took the service in a mix of Italian, Venetian dialect, and English. My difficulty remembering is partly due to Maria’s liberal stretching of our instructions to mix it up. It seemed that every fifth or sixth word was in a different language, making the ceremony oddly fragmented, with the guests whispering amongst themselves, ‘What did she say? I didn’t catch it,’ before simply accepting the disjointed flow. I don’t remember all that was said, but I remember fragments, I remember the feel of it. The warmth, the sea breeze, the scent of jasmine from the plants Maria brought, the tinkling of the little bells that hung from the leaves. I remember the feel of Juliana’s skin as we held hands.

‘Carissimi, oggi siamo qui riuniti,’ said Maria, ‘par tacare in maridauro promiscolo these two beautiful and perverted creatures.’

She winked at us and our guests cheered. ‘Do you, Goblin, take Juliana Sophia Acciai come tò mojere proibio?’

‘I do.’

‘E tu, Juliana Sophia Acciai, vuoi Goblin to be your unlawfully wedded also-wife?’

‘Si, lo voglio.’

‘Vi dichiaro moglie bella e perversa and beautiful perverted also-wife. Voaltri vivarete na vita de amore e de sganassade finamente al dì che vu morìa e anca dopo – your love and laughter will echo down the generations, in the lives you touch, in the stories they tell.’