Free What Casanova Told Me by Susan Swan Page A

heat. She thought of Dino Fabbiani and wondered if he would be waiting for her in the Piazza San Marco at one o’clock. She wanted to tell him he was mistaken about Casanova faking his escape from the Ducal Palace. If he would listen. There was a good-natured confidence about Dino that suggested he wasn’t used to women disagreeing with his views.
    Ten minutes later, the two women were walking up the narrow lane by the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. Their waiter had said Casanova’s house was near the Salute Cathedral on the Giudecca, but he had been vague about the street address. Following his instructions, they veered first left, then right,and ended up in a jewellery store. A salesgirl said the waiter was wrong—Casanova had been born near the San Samuele Cathedral. Starting over, Lee paid for tickets on the
vaporetto
to San Samuele and the two women found themselves in a lane where glassblowers sat working at the open windows of their studios. Each glassblower pointed them further down the lane past the stores whose windows were jammed with glass polychrome flowers and carnival masks.
    At the end of the lane, Lee and Luce found a house with a plaque declaring it to be the birthplace of the artist Giorgio Vasari, who had lived two centuries before Casanova.
    “I feel dizzy,” Luce murmured.
    “What did you say?” Turning towards Luce, Lee dropped the guidebook, and without thinking, Luce bent quickly to pick it up—too quickly. She saw the curious little square with its empty water fountain and then, of all things, stars. Such a cliché, she thought afterwards. Moments later, she heard a woman’s voice calling her, and she saw a little oval window in the shape of an eye. Lee’s face appeared in this aperture of light, tiny and frightened and Luce heard Lee’s voice ask if she was all right.
    Luce struggled to her feet as her vision cleared.
    “Sometimes an overnight flight does this,” Lee said.
    She grasped Luce’s arm and guided her through the crowd who turned to stare at the sight they made: the short, fierce middle-aged tourist in a dove-coloured fedora and the tall, bewildered young woman in a pretty chiffon blouse and bright turquoise jeans.
    At a water taxi stand, Lee found a young gondolier who said he was glad to help and called them an ambulance boat.
    “Better now?” As the launch sped along the Grand Canal, Lee rested her hand lightly on the girl’s shoulder.
    “I’m sorry to be a burden,” Luce whispered.
    “Oh, balls!” Lee said, and removed her hand from Luce’s shoulder. They sat in silence while the ambulance boat roared down a canal whose edges were lined with peculiar blue-tipped barge poles; in the distance lay the ghostly island of San Michele, with the famous cemetery created by Napoleon. Their launch swerved under a small bridge and came to a stop inside the hospital buildings, next to a door marked with a red cross. They disembarked and found themselves in the emergency room where a doctor in baby blue clogs confirmed that the disorientation caused by jet lag sometimes led to dizziness and fainting.
    “The rule of thumb for jet lag is one day for every time zone you cross.”
    He gave Luce a Valium and told Lee to go off and watch the regatta.
    “Thanks, but I’m staying with her,” Lee said.
    “No, please! I’m fine.” Luce stared imploringly at the doctor.
    “She needs rest,” the doctor said.
    “All right, Luce. I’ll come back for you later—we’ll make plans for dinner then.”
    Closing her eyes, Luce waited for Lee’s footsteps to die away in the hall. When she was sure Lee and the doctor were gone, she brought out the old journal and settled down to read on the hospital cot.
    May 4, 1797
    I look for evidence of Jacob Casanova.
    I took Finette with me when I accompanied Father to the Ducal Palace today. Father met with General Junot,Napoleons aide-de-camp last night, and the General asked him to make a report on the prisoners in Venetian gaols to assure our