What Casanova Told Me Read Free

her way to the memorial service in Crete. And, of course, she had been intrigued when her aunt asked her to deliver the documents to the Sansovinian Library in Venice. It was the first time Aunt Beatrice had taken Luce’s archival work seriously, and she was flattered to be offered the role of custodian of the family papers.
    She carefully placed the journal back in its archival box, along with the photocopies and the Arabic manuscript. Outside the window, rows of terra cotta roofs steamed in the morning sunlight. It was going to be a sunny day, after all. She could see Lee in the courtyard below helping herself to a breakfast roll.
    She closed the curtains and began to unpack the knapsack she’d bought at a local camping store. First: the pendulum kit her mother had given her several Christmases before. Then her cache of books. Along with
The Stones of Venice
and her
Rough Guide to Venice
, she had brought with her some essays onCasanova, a hardback text,
Casanova: The Man Who Really Loved Women
by Lydia Flem, and a well-thumbed paperback of the first volume of
History of My Life
by Jacob Casanova, describing his Venetian childhood. She’d had to leave the other volumes of his memoirs at home as well as a prized copy of his only novel,
Icosameion
, a surprisingly modern science fiction fantasy about a new human race that lived in the bowels of the earth. Next: the small cloth bag with her mother’s makeup, which still retained the scent of her mother’s perfume. She stacked her books on the windowsill and started in on her new clothes. Not her usual style, but she had wanted something livelier to buoy her spirits. She hung up the three semi-transparent chiffon blouses and three clingy dresses, and neatly repacked her low-cut spandex tops and the pretty white Malibu pants she’d bought for Greece. On Lee’s advice, she’d thrown in a woollen scarf and her favourite jacket with the patchwork of Chinese-coloured silks sewn into its shoulders because Venice was cold in the spring.
    Unexpectedly, her fingers closed over the little figure Lee had given her that morning, and she pushed it deeper into her knapsack.
    Luce didn’t know how long she’d been asleep. She threw on a pair of beaded jeans and her favourite jacket and then lifted her ancestor’s travel diary out of its box again. Should she take it with her? Reading the user copy provided by Charles Smith wouldn’t feel as personal. Its loose, photocopied pages did not bear the original ink, the impress of a writer’s hand. Even though she knew she shouldn’t, she couldn’t resist. She wrapped the diary up in acid-free tissue from the archival box and placed it inside a small knapsack. At the hotel desk, she picked up thedirections Lee had left for her and walked out into the streets of Venice, carrying her ancestor’s journal.
    It was a little late in the day for her sunglasses but she was near-sighted and needed their prescription lenses to see at a distance. In the square beyond, she noticed a celebration. A figure in red robes and lace was swaying into the basilica, carrying a gold cross the length of a body. The scarlet figure was followed by a large throng of men and women and children singing a Latin hymn. She felt slightly awed, as if she was observing a mysterious anthropological rite. Her aunt Beatrice was the last member of the family to believe in a formal Christian doctrine. She had insisted on taking Luce to Anglican services when Luce was small and proudly shown her the family’s ancient copy of
The Optimist’s Good Night.
Held together with Scotch tape, her aunt’s well-handled little book of cheerful axioms listed over 230 selections, including Lord Byron’s recommendation that “to do a man’s best is the way to be blest.”
    There was her mother, of course—but her mother’s brand of religion was not what anyone would call Christian. And anyway she suspected that a wilful self-deception lurked inside all religious conviction—a