The Lost Diary of Venice Read online

  She nodded. “There’s a place on the corner.”

  Joel wasn’t behind the counter when they walked in. Instead, a heavyset girl with black-framed glasses and blunt Bettie Page bangs took their order. William paid for their drinks—shaking his head when she reached for her wallet—then led them to a corner table. They sat down opposite each other, near the large picture window stenciled with the café’s name. The slanting light cast typographical shadows across their faces. The girl carried their drinks to them: milk nearly pillowing over the rims, two hearts marking the froth.

  Rose took a sip, watched her espresso-heart stretch and tear, small white bubbles of foam gripping the edge of the cup. For a long beat neither spoke. Rose didn’t know where to look, so she stared at his hands, at the dark hair on his wrists and the veins that branched out around his knuckles. In his grasp, the cup seemed comically fragile. She examined her own slender fingers, her bird-boned joints.

  “I just…” He stopped, then continued on. “I wanted it to be a diary, that was my dream, but I never actually thought it would be.”

  “I honestly didn’t think it was. There weren’t any dates, which is usually the telltale sign.” She looked through the window at the flower boxes outside, petunia petals flaming violet in the sun. “Can I tell you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “Ever since I saw the first portrait, I couldn’t get that woman’s face out of my mind. I even started having dreams about her and Giovanni.” She glanced back. “Have you had any dreams?”

  “Yes.” He was staring into the surface of his coffee.

  “William.” He raised his eyes when she said his name. “Do you think Giovanni had a child with her? Because he doesn’t seem to have any children when he’s writing, but you look just like him, you obviously have the same genes. I guess he probably had brothers or sisters, but still…”

  “You like the idea of them being together.” A flash of smile before he took a sip, mouth disappearing behind his cup.

  “Don’t you think they were, though? Those sketches, with the story…”

  “She was definitely his muse, in the sense of the word you don’t like—”

  “Ohhh,” Rose groaned playfully. “I just meant that I wish we got to see more work from female artists, especially in the Renaissance, that’s all…”

  “I know, I know, I’m only teasing.” Another grin. “But if she was the courtesan to an admiral, an affair would be pretty risky business, wouldn’t it?” He set his cup back in its saucer carefully.

  Rose realized she’d never considered the possibility of an unconsummated relationship. Her face must have betrayed her, because William tucked his chin, shooting her a piteous look. “Hey, I didn’t mean to burst your bubble—we just don’t know yet one way or the other.”

  It wasn’t like her to gloss over black-and-white facts. It wasn’t like her at all. Shame churned her stomach, the same feeling she remembered from childhood when she’d raised her hand in class and given the wrong answer, seen all those watching faces, smirking. How could she have been so foolish—to get invested in a relationship she might have simply made up? Still, something in her resisted. “But, that story of the egg and the tree, all those sketches…They’re so intimate…” She tried for more words but sputtered out.

  William thought of his own paintings, the series he was now nearly finished with. Canvas after canvas, marching melancholic images across his studio walls. “Maybe that was the closest he could get, or”—he saw her face fall again and rushed to appease her—“or maybe they were together, maybe they do end up together.”

  Rose had to laugh at his efforts. At herself. “Sorry, I…I’ve just spent so much time with the book, I started imagining too much—”

  “No, you could be right about them, we don’t know yet. I do know you’ve done an amazing job with the restoration.” A half smile, shadows sliding across his face.

  “Oh, it’s not even finished.”

  “But it’s being translated already, so fast. I’m impressed.”

  Feeling herself flush, Rose looked down and studied her coffee. William coughed politely, then steered them back to the book. “I still can’t sort out why he wrote over his diary, though.”

  “I know. That’s what I don’t understand, either. Something must have happened for him to scrape it away like that. If he was in Venice, it wouldn’t have been hard to find other paper to write on.” Rose pondered. “I guess he could have moved somewhere else and had to reuse the vellum, but…I don’t know. It feels like more of a personal choice. Mostly because he kept the undertext so clear in certain spots—and it isn’t like he scraped away any drawings.”

  “I wouldn’t erase my journal unless I was trying to…maybe close the chapter on something? Or unless I knew I wouldn’t be around to reread it, I guess. I’d scrape it away to protect my privacy.”

  “Or to protect the people you were writing about. Aurelio could have been a target for the Inquisition—they definitely considered alchemy a kind of sorcery. The diary could’ve been used as evidence.” She thought again of the woodcuts she’d seen in the library, of so-called witches being burned at the stake.

  As they drank their coffee they continued to speculate. Who might have turned Aurelio in to the inquisitors? What other reasons could Giovanni have had to write over his journal? They agreed that the unnamed woman was likely the figure from the portrait, and considered when Venier might have left for battle—and what could have happened in his absence. Finally, William asked the question they’d both been wondering all along.

  “How do you think it will end?”

  “I don’t know. For some reason, I feel nervous. I have no idea why, but I’m worried something bad might happen. Might have happened.”

  “What if it did?”

  “Then it’s a tragedy, I guess. We add them to the list.”

  “Tristan and Isolde, Giovanni and…whatever her name was.” He swirled the last of his coffee before drinking it.

  “Exactly.” She considered the mark her lipstick had made on the rim of her cup.

  “Do you think it’s worth it? Him finding his muse even if they weren’t able to be together?” He was looking down into his coffee dregs, as if he’d find the answer there.

  Rose thought about it, flicking her spoon back and forth on the table, light flashing and spinning over the concave silver. “Yes.”

  “How so?”

  She weighed her words a moment. “Well, look at that beautiful portrait, those sketches. They exist because of her—and they let us see through Giovanni’s eyes all these years later.” She started flipping the spoon faster. “And she could have been part of the reason he pursued his dream and wrote the treatise. She could have helped motivate him to do that, you never know.” The spoon flew out of her grasp, clattering onto the floor at his feet. He bent to pick it up. She looked at the back of his neck as he reached down, the arc of dark hair against his skin.

  “So what’s your dream, then?” He straightened up and set the spoon back on the table next to her cup.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Giovanni had his treatise…what would your goal be?”

  “A survey,” Rose blurted out before thinking. “I want to put together a history of restoration. Something to get people—especially students, I guess—interested in conservation.” The idea had been simmering in the back of her mind for a year, slowly taking form. She’d never spoken the wish out loud before, not even to Joan; once the words left her mouth she felt exposed, transparent and breakable as glass.

  “Help them appreciate the art form a little bit?”

  “Sure—something like that.” She took a sip from her cup even though there wasn’t any coffee left.

  “I like that.” Another flash of dimple.

  She smiled back at him, then silence.
What to say next? “And you—you’ve found a new style for your paintings…”

  “I have.” He was fingering the faint scar on his thumb.

  She forced more polite words into the space between them. “And, now you know your ancestor was a painter too. Remember that first day, when you realized it was a book about art?”

  “I do.” His hands closed in around his empty cup, knuckles squeezing white. For a moment, she was afraid he’d crack the ceramic. “Thank you for all of this, Rose.”

  “But I didn’t do—”

  “You did, though. Thank you.”

  She waited to see if he’d say anything more. Finally, he raised his head, and they both glanced around the café. They’d stayed longer than they should have. The barista had begun to count out her register, letting the coins clatter loudly back into the till. Taking the hint, Rose stood to leave. William followed suit, plucking her jean jacket up from where she’d draped it over an empty chair back. Standing behind her, he held it open. First the left arm, then the right. His breath on her neck. The barista watched them from the corner of her eye.

  Out on the sidewalk, the sun was slipping behind buildings, turning the sky a lullaby of faded peach and lilac.

  “I’m this way.” He jerked his head in the direction opposite the bookshop. She nodded, raising one hand in goodbye. Then, in an instant she’d spend hours reliving, dissecting, and interrogating, he grasped her wrist and she was suddenly tucked against him. His right arm had wrapped itself around her back, her cheek pressed into his shirt, just beneath his shoulder. She could feel the heat of his chest through the cotton and hear his heartbeat: a muffled pounding.

  She shut her eyes.

  She fit him perfectly, just as he’d imagined she would. He was holding her in both arms now; her weight against him, the arch of her back under his hand. The powdered-flower smell of her. She tilted her head up, and he pressed his mouth to her temple. For a long moment they remained there, exempt from anything but sensation, familiar as if they’d been molded together that way. Then her voice in the air outside them, quiet and low.

  “William…”

  He understood her tone, knew what she’d say next. “Don’t, just—”

  “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t let go, but shifted so that his cheek was against the side of her head, his mouth hovering just above her ear. When he spoke, warm breath skimmed her skin. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re marr—”

  “I know. I know that, Rose.”

  She pulled back then, to look up at him, without stepping away; one of his palms still lay heavy across the small of her back, another in the gap between her shoulder blades. His face was so close she could see the texture of his skin, her own reflection suspended in his dark pupils.

  “So, you aren’t…separating, or…?” The second she said it, Rose realized with a terrible, crystalline certainty that this had been her unspoken wish all along, ever since Joan had shown her his website. This entire time, all these weeks, she’d been holding out space for hope, for a possible path for them both. One in which his every gesture was imbued with meaning, all his commitments resolvable in a way that freed him—and cleared her. And somehow, inexplicably, she’d kept those desires half-hidden from even herself. In an instant she felt dissociated, as if she were standing outside her own body, watching an alternate version of herself stare up at William with a grasping expression.

  He dropped his arms and took a step back, then rubbed his face in his hands. When he reemerged, his skin was pinked and he looked profoundly tired. “No. We’re…we’re trying to make it work.” His mouth pressed into a straight line.

  Rose heard her voice without being conscious of forming words. “Then I don’t think this helps.”

  He didn’t say anything but crossed his arms and shook his head. He was staring at the laces in his boots. She kept going. “I think we say ‘enough’ now, William. Because I can’t be—”

  “I know, and I would never ask that of you. None of this is fair to you. I’m sorry.” He glanced at her and his eyes were wide; he seemed scared and she suddenly realized that he was. “I’m so sorry,” he repeated, then turned around abruptly.

  She watched him walk away. The broad slope of his shoulders, his hands shoved into his pockets.

  “William.” He halted at his name and looked back at her, half-turning. She would never have imagined herself capable of doing what she did next, but she did it all the same: took the four steps to meet him and lifted her hands to his cheeks. His stubble pricked a rough pattern into her palms. Rising up on tiptoe, she sailed her face to his, eyes open until they shut. Mouths touching then parting, firm and warm and sleek and no separation then, just a joining, and they fit together perfectly, and it wasn’t over, it was still twisting, and a single breath ran through them both.

  Then she pulled away, but not too far, close enough that he was able to rest his forehead against hers. Her feet were still on tiptoe; she was clutching the back of his neck.

  “Now enough, okay?” She barely had to whisper. The hair at the nape of his neck bristled between her fingers. He nodded, the movement rocking her head along with his. His hands had found their way to her hips.

  “Okay.”

  She didn’t look at him again, just stepped and spun and started walking back toward the shop, the taste of him burning her tongue. As she passed the café window, she glanced in at the barista clearing their table. She saw the shape of her own mouth on the rim of the cup, a dark red stain on white.

  Enough. Rose thought. That’s enough now.

  * * *

  William drove north not knowing why, trees and houses flashing past. The sun was still fading as he crossed the wide river that snaked through town. Soon, he’d reach the freeway. He could continue on, farther—to other cities and streets and lives. On an empty stretch of road, he made a wide loop to turn around, the yellow centerline running flat in both directions. Slower this time, he slid past the same houses as before, rooms lit up now against the dusk.

  He’d turned the ringer on his phone to Silent hours ago.

  The gravel of the driveway crumbled softly as he eased the truck in and turned the ignition off. He stayed in the driver’s seat. Through the front window he could see pizza boxes on the dining room table, opened and already abandoned. It must have been a hard day at the office if Sarah had ordered pizza. After a long while he finally got out, shutting the door quietly. He pressed the flat of his palm to the hot hood and breathed in a lungful of fertile air. Letting his head fall back, he stared up into the sky. Stars were just beginning to wink awake. What could he ask for, from the great namelessness, to help him now?

  Instead of going inside, he traced the length of the house, heading toward the backyard. As he passed by the windows, still-life scenes from his own world slid into view: the dining room table, plates cleared but crumpled white napkins still littering the surface, grease stains seeping through the cheap cardboard of the pizza boxes. Then Sarah’s empty office, papers in neat stacks on the desk, light from the hallway spilling in through the half-open door. He knew the girls would be in the living room by now, their faces bathed in the electric blue of a cartoon character’s great adventure.

  He unlocked the studio door and slipped inside. From the walls his paintings stared back at him: feathers and broken shell, the pattern of tree bark, the texture of sand. Before the book, he never would’ve imagined making paintings like this, but now they seemed inevitable—the single answer to a formula. He felt a ghost sensation on his palms: the small of Rose’s back, the tips of her shoulder blades under his hands again. His throat tightened. What had he done? What would he do next, when the rest of the translation came back?

  Suddenly, he remembered his own journal.

  As a rule, he didn’t keep diaries, but this had been an experiment, a New Year’s re
solution he’d maintained with perfect discipline, then gradually abandoned once Sarah had come into his life. By pure chance, it’d turned into a record of their first year together. He must still have it somewhere, in the archive of past lives he kept stashed in the cupboards. In seconds, he was kneeling on the floor in front of the open cabinet doors, frantically pulling out boxes. A half hour later and the room was littered with scraps of notes, books, photographs—small treasures only he knew the secrets to, the memories that could unlock them.

  Midway through the fourth box, he stopped and leaned back on his heels. A photograph stared up at him from beneath the papers and books. Sarah. Sarah and his own face, unrecognizable with youth and happiness. They were sitting outside at a dinner party, looking at each other, empty platters and half-full glasses on the table in front of them. Without even trying, he remembered the evening in perfect detail—how the host had spilled wine on the white tablecloth, the glowing lights strung from the trees overhead and someone’s good-natured bulldog wandering the grass behind their chairs. How they’d walked home hand in hand in the night, passing a teenager with a lit sparkler spraying gold into the darkness. They’d just found out she was pregnant. The camera had caught them sharing that terrible wonderful secret, lost in a small universe of three. He remembered it all.

  So much returning without warning or order. The walk-up they’d rented together that was so small they’d called it Château Bateau and laughed and didn’t care and set up a crib in the corner. How he used to watch her get ready in the morning in the narrow bathroom next to their bed. She’d leave the door open while she did her hair and put her makeup on in the round mirror they’d kept until it broke in a move. He’d had an old acoustic guitar back then—a beat-up Fender rescued from a yard sale—and every night he’d pluck out melodies while Sarah drowsed beside him, her belly growing, growing, more each day. He didn’t know how to read music, so he’d sound out the songs by ear. He learned to play a halfway decent version of “Blackbird” by the Beatles, and he’d always end with it, singing along with himself, wondering if their daughter would recognize his voice when she arrived. As soon as they had the money to spare, they’d said, they’d sign him up for real music lessons—they’d shook on it even, with absolute solemnity—but of course that became just another plan they never got around to doing. One of the many vows they weren’t able to keep. The guitar itself left the house on a false pledge, loaned to a guest who’d never brought it back. William hadn’t forgotten it over the years, wondering from time to time if Sarah ever thought of those nights, all the promises they’d made to themselves. To each other.