Men and women were playing in kayaks, moving their arms rhythmically or simply coasting in the motionless water. Beneath the train, the soft clatter of ties was the only sound in the calm of morning. There was no horizon. The mist hid the distance. Immediately before me the water and the boats were crystal clear and perfectly focused, but within a quarter of a mile the air had thickened and turned translucent. It was impossible to say where the pale sea ended and the pale sky began. 

In the distance Venice waited, turning her backside toward the mainland, not yet looking like herself at all.

The train entered the station with a groaning of brakes and slowed imperceptibly to a halt. The crowds that were waiting to board her stood crouched at the doors, while those aboard struggled off. I returned to the compartment to find Susyn dressed and packed. I put on my backpack, picked up her suitcase, and let her squeeze ahead of me as we began the slow, belly-to-back walk down the corridor among the throng that had overfilled the coach.

The Ferrol station looks like any other station. But when you step out the front door, the whole world changes.

Suddenly, Venice. The Grand Canal runs by at the foot of the broad steps of the station. Water taxis and gondolas crowd the banks of the canal while powerful steel vaporettos tear its surface to froth. Beyond them the palazzios rise up in faded Renaissance splendor. The nearest bridge across the Grand Canal arched up so high above the water traffic that it seemed oriental.

Susyn said, “My God. This is really Europe. There is no trace of America here.”

That was the kernel in the nut. Venice was completely foreign. Any yet familiar. Not very different from the Venice Shakespeare wrote about.

We walked down past the stalls of fruit sellers and the lean black men up from Africa with their blankets of trinket treasures, up the steep steps of Ponte degli Scatzi to look down on it all from above. On the broad steps in front of the Ferrol, backpackers were sprawled on their sleeping bags, watching, talking, and letting Venice ooze into their pores.

“We need a place to sleep,” Susyn said.

“I don’t know anything about that. Venice was out of my price range when I was here before, so I camped on the Lido.”

“Is that in the city?”

“No. You take a vaporetto across the lagoon. I’ll have to check there for Raven.”

She took my arm and pressed it against her. “Let’s not split up, yet,” she said. “Come with me.”

We turned east from the Ferrol, where there were hotels to be had. Susyn paid with Senator Cabral’s money. The concierge took Susyn’s suitcase and led us to our room. Not a suite this time. Two beds in fingertip reach of one another. 

Susyn tipped the concierge and opened the window. Fruit-ripe air came in and swirled the lace curtains around her. I moved up beside her to look out; it was easy to see over her head. Twenty five feet away, our view was of a stone wall with bricked up windows, and forty feet below the dark waters of a cross canal glinted olive in the faint light.

I eased closer, pinning her against the window, and felt her take a sharp breath. I put my hands on her shoulders, feeling the firmness of her buttocks against me as I drew her upper body back hard against my chest. She leaned her head back against my shoulder and looked up at me out of one moist eye. Then I stepped back and she turned easily and naturally into my arms. Her lips came up, mine came down, and she melted against me. I put my palms flat on her rump and slipped them upward, under her blouse and into the small of her back. She moved against me, burrowing her hips into me. I unsnapped her bra. Then I eased her down onto the bed. more tomorrow

I picked my way through the bodies and back to our compartment. Susyn was awake. She said, “How long is the line?”

“Twenty minutes if you go now. It will get five minutes longer every minute you wait.”

She checked her watch, rolled over, and said, “Call me when we get to Venice.”

I left her there and closed the door. Down the corridor a dozen feet there was a space for me to stand. I lowered the window and leaned my arms on it. Power poles were swishing by so I didn’t lean out, but the morning air came in to me, mingling the sweetness of a country sunrise on damp croplands with the acrid smell of diesel welling up out of the streets. We were on the outskirts of Mestre, where the last of the fields are eaten up by industry, and Venice was only forty minutes ahead of us.

I put my chin on my arms and closed by eyes, lost in the vibration, the coolness, and the smells.

Why the hell was I here?

Raven had not merely left me, she had left me for Eric. For Eric! 

Ian Alisdair Gunn, don’t you have any pride at all?

I put myself on trial, spoke for the prosecution, spoke for the defense, and finally acquitted myself on a plea of partial disinterest. 

When I had wakened to find Raven gone from the Hotel St. Lazare, I would have followed her anywhere. Some of that feeling had disappeared when I found out she was with Eric. More of it had been abraded away in the days that followed. By Montreaux, or Salsburg at the latest, I would have given her up, if it had only been romantic attraction that was driving me.

But . . .

But it was not just that. She was in danger. I had only to open my eyes to the scar on the back of my hand to remember that. Sometime during the last week, I had stopped hoping for a reconciliation, but I owed her safety if I could give it to her.

So far, so good.

Now dig deeper. Go past the rational and find the real reasons for chasing a phantom halfway across Europe. Go down where decisions are really made. Go down into the sub-basements of the soul, and there confront an injured pride and a jealous, primeval sense of possession. Go talk to Grendel. Go to where the squatting, black monster mutters to himself in the darkness, “How dare she leave me!”

Enough. If she wasn’t in Venice, I would stop looking for her.

*       *       *

Ah, but Venice . . .

In all of Europe, there is no place where I feel less at home, or more enthralled. Venice is not like any place else.

The train moved slowly out of the lightly industrial area of Mestre and onto the Ponte della Libertà. The sun was well above the horizon, and there was a mist on the lagoon that hid the smaller, more distant islands. The surface of the water was like glass. Alongside the Ponte on the south another bridge carried automobiles to the parking garage in the northwestern corner of Venice. It was the only place on the island they were allowed. Out from the Ponte a hundred yards were a series of pole-pylons set in the mud of the lagoon that marked a highway for small boats going to and from Venice. A lean, low wooden launch was keeping speed with us, it front risen slightly from the still water in an unloaded condition, and leaving a rolling wake that ruffled the silicon smooth surface of the water. more tomorrow

Chapter Twenty-one

I woke early, becoming gradually aware of the rhythmic swaying of the railway coach. Beyond the curtain, the day was still gray and uncommitted. There was stale cigarette smoke in the corridor and stale sweat on my skin. I rubbed my eyes, pulled down a window and stuck my head out into the rushing cool morning air. The mixed smell of damp vegetation and polluted air swirled about me. In my stomach was an emptiness made up of one part morning hunger and nine parts loneliness.

The corridor was filled with sleeping forms. I stepped over them on my way to the toilet.

Every summer, the same pattern recurs. As June gives way to July and then to August, more and more passengers take to the trains, but the authorities make no attempt to provide space for them. Trains that were half empty in May and full in June, are packed in summer with twice as many passengers as there are seats. They sit on the seat-arms and in the aisles, in the corridors of the compartment cars, taking jump seats or sitting on suitcases, or sprawling on the floor, wedged against backpacks. Ragged backpackers and old Italian ladies in black, the youthful and the outworn, the poor and the middle class (the rich are in their reserved compartments, sleeping in their couchettes), having nothing in common but their humanity.

Crowded hip to hip, stepped on, pickled by cigarette smoke, jostled and sleepless – you would expect irritability and bitterness. It is not there. Instead, there is gentleness, kindness, politeness, and a warmth of underlying laughter at the absurdity of it all.

I made my way to the washroom at the end of the compartment. It was early. Most of the passengers were still trying to sleep, so the line was short. After ten minutes, I wedged the door shut behind me to dry shave and wash my face in the untreated water. I brushed my teeth, remembering not to dip the brush under the tap. Finally I lifted the lid on the toilet and spat toothpaste and saliva down onto the ties that were flashing by underneath.

I have always found something satisfying in the simplicity of that arrangement. A turd hitting the ties at fifty miles per hour will explode into a spray of material that dries and decomposes as naturally as a cow pie in a pasture. But try telling that to an American tourist.

Ah, Europe. With the most modern train system in the world and a hole in the floor to shit through. With two hundred mile per hour luxury trains running the same tracks with others that crowd their passengers like emigrants in steerage. The last time I was here, I had become tired of its foreignness after a couple of months. This time it was like a homecoming.

And today, Venice.

Any day that has Venice in it has to be glorious. more tomorrow

The local police hauled him away. Susyn explained, not entirely accurately, that the drunk had attacked me when I tried to stop him from harassing her. The drunk’s hundred proof breath went a long way toward supporting Susyn’s story. It helped even more that the officer had seen Susyn in daily conversation with his chief.

When they had gone, and we were settled in at the table, Susyn turned angrily and said, “What the hell was that all about?”

I didn’t have anything to say.

“I thought I knew you better than that. You didn’t have to beat up that bastard; he was harmless enough.”

“I know.”

“So why . . .?”

I put my hand over hers and said, “Please.”

Her eyes were inches from mine. I watched the fire die down in them, and watched sympathy replace it. She said, “You’re hurting.”

I shrugged.

She said, “Why? What did I miss?”

“I can’t tolerate drunks.”

“Why?”

I had told Raven about my drunken father, but I could not tell Susyn, so I did not reply. She chewed her lip, looking puzzled, and said, “You don’t drink, and you hate drunks. A lot. There has to be a reason.”

“A few of years ago,” I answered, “I woke up from a fourth of July spree and found out I couldn’t remember June.”

It was an exaggeration, but basically true. A small part of the larger truth that I could not share.

Susyn looked puzzled and angry. She could tell that was not the whole story. But it was all she was going to get.

*       *       *

We went down to Venice the next morning, to find Raven. It was a twenty hour journey that sent us through the eastern fringes of the Alps. We sat in desultory conversation, alternately reading and watching the scenery.

During the last week, I had begun reading newspapers again. When I was with Raven, there had been no time, and when she first left me I had had no interest. Now I read that East Germans by the thousands were going down to Hungary on summer vacation and not returning home. The Honecker government had sent protests to Hungary and some kind of international incident was in the offing. It didn’t seem like much to me, or to any western observer. Communist eastern Europe was falling apart before our eyes, and no one understood what was happening.

Including me. I had other things on my mind.

For the second time in a few months, I had been thrown into daily intimacy with a stranger. For the second time, that stranger moved me deeply. As we crossed the fields and forests of eastern Austria, Susyn went to sleep slumped against me. I shifted my arm around her and settled her into a more comfortable position. The miles slid by with the soft, warm weight of her against my side, and the smell of her hair in my nostrils.

Susyn had reserved a couchette compartment. After she was asleep in the upper berth, I lay awake a long time thinking. After a while, Susyn’s hand and arm slipped down to hang above my head. I wondered if she was asleep. Then her fingers twitched in a come-here motion. I reached up and took her hand in mine. We rode on that way for miles, silent, hand-clasped, saying nothing. Finally she gave a tug and pushed her tousled face over the edge of her bunk. I stood up. She put her arms around my shoulders and drew me closer. Her lips on mine were soft and undemanding. When we broke, there were tears in the corners of her eyes, but she put her hand on my mouth when I would have asked why. She simply said, “Good night, Ian,” and drew the covers up around her until only her violet eyes showed. more tomorrow

The next morning, I had made my rounds and was waiting in our favorite outdoor cafe for Susyn to return. For four days, we had made it our own, sitting through the early afternoon watching the tourists go by while we compared notes. From a table near the low stone wall that separates the patio from the narrow cobbled walk, I could see through a curtain of geraniums as I watched for Susyn’s return.

When I finally saw her, she was coming out of a cross street a block away, looking over her shoulder in conversation with a stranger. Something in her stance brought me fully alert. Her heels were tapping the cobblestones angrily. The stranger kept pace with her, but there was something wrong with his stride. His feet seemed to find the cobbles a bit sooner than his mind had anticipated. He did not exactly stagger, but he was by no means stable.

Not falling down drunk, but drunk nonetheless.

I rose and stepped over the low stone wall to wait on the sidewalk. Something black and old was rising up inside of me, compounded of remembered and half-remembered indignities.

When Susyn reached me, I turned her so that I stood between her and the stranger. Over my shoulder, I said, “Do you know him?”

“Not really. I met him an hour ago when I was showing Raven’s picture around. He has been following me since.”

His eyes met mine, and he tried to blink me into focus. He was further gone than I had thought. He said, “Wo sind sie?” and his breath would have taken paint off a wall.

Then he reached for me. It might have been an innocent move, but I don’t like to be touched by drunks.

I caught his right hand in my left, with my thumb in the cup of his palm, my fingers hard against the back of his hand, and rotated outward and downward. He winced. He should have cried out. Aikido locks are painful, but he was mostly anesthetized.

He jerked loose and I let him go. He staggered back a step and his face finally registered pain. He began to mutter obscenities, gradually growing louder, rocking from one foot to the other as he worked himself up to act.

I waited, letting the red haze build up inside me.

He threw a looping right. I stepped inside it, caught his collar with my left hand, broke his stance and dragged him forward in one rapid movement. At the same time I hit him in the side of the face. I caught his neck with that same hand and spun him in a tight circle. He lost what little balance he had and fell forward against the low stone wall. I stepped back and waited.

He rolled over on his hands and knees, and came up slowly, weaving and trying to find me with his unfocused eyes. I was aware of Susyn shouting at me, but it was distanced by my rage. He drew back his fist again. I hit him again as he threw his punch, a twisting blow to mid-sternum. He was coming in when I hit him. His ineffectual blow snapped the edge of my ear, and I felt the shock of my fist against his chest all the way to my shoulder.

His eyes rolled up and he sank bonelessly to the sidewalk. more tomorrow