I suppose when people come to Venice they want to see everything and experience things to the full, so that when they return home, they can say, I have been to Venice and seen it all. But I doubt that will happen to me. I know myself too well. I shall just watch others live while I sit and wonder what it is that makes them so alive.

The view from my room is excellent and the food all that could be desired and sunlight flows down on me now as I sit by the window, wondering what to do first. I am told that Tchaikovsky stayed here back in the nineteenth century. I expect he knew what he wanted to see while he was here. The warmth from the sun makes me feel tired and less inclined to go anywhere, but I must make the effort. If only for Anton’s sake. Sonia, he’d say, if anything happens to me, you must return to Venice and relive our first meeting and the love we found. But his sudden death prepared me not at all for this. I am half-dead inside and wish only for a sudden death to complete it. Sonia, he’d say, pull yourself together, get out, and live. I can almost hear his voice, but it is memory, not him. Not him anymore.

****

I entered the church of S.S. Giovanni e Paulo. My cousin Connie had gone elsewhere and I was alone. She feared I may have lessened any chance she had of meeting some young Romeo while touring the sights, and decided we should separate and go our own ways. I ended up in the church by accident. I gazed around the various monuments in a rather half-hearted manner and had only just moved before a monument when a voice softly behind me said, “This monument is to the Doge Giovanni Moncenigo.” I turned and saw this rather tall, lean, man standing behind me. He spoke Italian in the way Englishman do and I was pleased my boarding–school efforts had finally allowed me to be tested.

“Are you one of the guides?” I asked. He shook his head and smiled.

“No, young lady, I am merely placing myself at your disposal for information, and an insight to Venice at no cost to yourself,” he said, bowing slightly, but with his eyes still on me. He looked at me for a few moments and his expression changed. It was as if he’d seen something that had pained him. He put his fingers through his dark wavy hair and sighed. “I forgot to tell you who I am. I am Anton West.” His words seemed suddenly solemn and deep.

“I am Sonia Kirchner.” I said shyly. He had the most profound dark-brown eyes that seemed to look right into me.

“No relation to the painter?” Anton asked.

“No, but I do paint myself,” I informed Anton, who now looked over my head at the church interior as if looking for something behind me.

“You are English?” he returned his eyes onto me again. I told him my mother was English, but my father was German, and that I was born in England. He nodded his head, then suddenly, unexpectedly, he took my right hand and led me off elsewhere to the sepulchral pyramid dedicated to the painter Melchior Lanza, he thought I should see.

***

As I walk along the Piazzetta San Marco. I imagine Anton is beside me, but when I turn my head to see him, he is no more. The place has a certain greyness about it now, and the colour and splendour we once saw, seems to have dissolved. Where shall I go? I ask despondently in a whisper to myself. I stop by the column of St Mark. I suddenly sense I should go to the church of S.S. Giovanni e Paolo where Anton and I first met. The feeling almost overwhelms me and I am like one possessed. I recall someone having said that if something is possessed by memory it is a fiction. Yet Venice and Anton are both possessed by my memory at this moment and they are not fictions. I cannot escape them: I do not want to escape them.

* * *

Anton took me on a gondola along the Grand Canal. We were like children in that we never ceased talking. His dark-brown eyes searched me and his features would light up and then go serious again as the subject changed.

“Have you brought your brushes and paints?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “I wanted to see first and then later paint from my memory.”

“Is that wise?” Anton asked seriously. “Won’t the painting be falsified by an inaccurate memory?” His eyes darkened.

“What makes you think I have an inaccurate memory?” I said.

“We all have, it’s part of our nature as Homo sapiens,” he stated.

“If I wanted and accurate picture I’d take a photograph, not paint,” I replied stiffly. Anton shrugged his shoulders and looked away. “I paint an interpretation of a subject, not an exact copy,” I added a few moments later. He said nothing more on the subject, but changed the subject and his face lit up again as he conversed on the architecture of the passing buildings. It was then I found myself actually feeling a sensation of being in love. I had never been in love before. The sensation was new to me, yet I knew it was love. And feeling as I did, I breathed deeply, so much so, that he looked at me with his dark eyes, and I was sure he felt the same. I was certain. It was contagious, like an illness, but an illness from which one never wanted to be cured.

* * *

I stand by the tomb of Doge Michelle Steno wanting to touch the head of the cold statue, but not doing so, when a voice beside me says, “Seems almost alive, like he’s asleep.” I turn to face the source of the voice and a young woman looking earnestly at the tomb seems miles away. “I know it’s only a statue, but I have a vivid imagination, or so my father tells me. It’s how I see things, makes them more real to me, rather than just cold stone.” She stops and looks at me. Her eyes are a lovely dark colour like blue or black, but seen through her glasses which enlarges them. “I’m Rowena Marks,” she says.

“Sonia Kirchner,” I say holding out my hand. She takes mine in hers and holds it warmly.

“Are you here with your parents?” I ask, letting my eyes slide over her features as if I was going to paint her at some later date.

“Gosh, no, I’m here with my sister and her husband,” Rowena says buoyantly, “poor dears, having me tagging behind them.” She smiles and then, removing her hand reluctantly from mine, she glides it gently over the head of Doge Steno. “And are you here with your husband?” she asks innocently. I relate to her about Anton’s sudden death and my reason for returning to Venice. Her exuberance transmutes to that of my seriousness and sorrow. “So sorry for you, you poor thing,” she says genuinely. “And only married to dear Anton for ten years. You are brave,” she adds squeezing my arm gently.

We move away from Doge Steno and walk on engaged in conversation that moves away from Anton, much to my relief, and on to matters relating to her sister and brother-in-law, whom she finds a bore. And as she talks, I study her deeply and find myself wanting to listen and see her more and more, as if she were some kind of opiate to anaesthetize me against my loss of Anton and the pain that gnaws at my body day and night.

* * *

Anton took me to the island cemetery of San Michele and showed me the tomb of Sonia Kailensky. “The island of the dead,” he said. And the island seemed haunted as if the dead actually owned it. “One spends one’s life actually trying to avoid any thought about the certain end one knows will come. This place reveals it in total vividness. Death is one of life’s undeniable certainties,” he went on as he gazed at Sonia Kaliensky’s tomb.

“Freud said the goal of all life was death, “I said staring at the tomb and the sleeping-like statue. Anton shook his head.

“Freud had a sex and death fixation,” Anton stated. We wandered around slowly looking at the tombs in a warm silence. He slid his hand in mine and squeezed it. Then, suddenly, he turned to me and kissed me on the lips. It was strange. I wanted him and yet was scared. After he pulled away, he stared into my eyes and I was certain then of his love as he was of death’s sad inevitability.

* * *

“We’re at the Locanda Vivaldi,” Rowena says as we cross the Bridge of Sighs. “Not far from you.” She hesitates for a few moments, then says, “Maybe we could meet occasionally, but only if you want to, I don’t want to force myself on you.”

“Yes,” I say, “I’d like to. Won’t your sister mind?”

“Gosh, no. she’d be glad to be rid of me,” Rowena states jokily.

“I’m sure she wouldn’t,” I say. “Best tell her where you’re going and whom you are with.”

“You sound like my mother, now,” Rowena says. She suggests we go meet her sister and brother-in-law so that they could look me over. So we go to her hotel and she introduces me to the couple who seem only too pleased to have Rowena removed from them occasionally. As we walk back to my hotel, I feel happy for the fist time in ages. My young friend may well be that opiate after all for my ills.

* * *

We had just returned from a visit to the church of Santa Maria Del Giglio where Anton had shown me the relics of saints, when Anton said suddenly, “Will you have dinner with me, tonight?”

“If my cousin Connie doesn’t mind,” I replied. I knew Connie wouldn’t mind in the least; in fact, she’d march me to dinner herself if I were unsure. I’d told her about Anton and she was pleased as that left her free to go off with her Italian Romeo whoever he was.

“Is she you chaperon?” he asked smiling. I said no, that we came to Venice together for the mutual company and a freedom which going with one’s parents didn’t allow. He nodded and studying me seriously for few moments, he had a look of sadness about him, as if it was the last time he would see me or he’d heard a sudden news of someone’s death. Then slowly he said, “Sometimes when I’m with you, I forget who I am. Forget everything, except the look in your eyes; the smile on your lips; the radiance of your smile. As if I were enclosed within a bizarre dream understanding, yet slowly forgetting, the rules of dreams, and the world of dreams.”

I said nothing, because he had just said what I had wanted to say all day, but never found the words to express it as he had done. We gazed into each other’s eyes and we both knew: words were now superfluous, like a handful of coins to a rich man. We walked along to my hotel hand in hand as if we were conquers of strange new lands.

* * * *

I didn’t want to return to the island cemetery of San Michele, but Rowena so much wanted to go there that I gave way. When we come to the tomb of Sonia Kaliensky where I’d been with Anton, we stand and stare in silence. After a few minutes, Rowena says, “How peaceful she looks. I feel that if I touch her she may awaken. I know it sound s mad, but that’s how I feeling I have.”

“You’re very sensitive,” I say staring at the statue. “You have a very vivid imagination, too.” Rowena turns and looks at me.

“My parents say much the same; my sister thinks me mad. But I can’t help how I feel and see things. Maybe I should be an artist or a philosopher,” she states moodily.

“I’m an artist,” I say suddenly.

“Are you?” Rowena says excitedly,” really an artist?”

“Yes,” I say, “really an artist. I paint.” Her eyes light up and she comes close to me and places her hand on my arm.

“Gosh, how brilliant! Could you paint me?” she asks childlike.

“I don’t often paint portraits; I’m more a scene painter,” I inform her. She nods and there is a glint of disappointment in her eyes. She turns and gazes at the statue as if asking aid for her venture.

“I’d sit still and pose ever so good. I can you know. I really can.” Her voice sounds like that of one praying. I feel her hand squeeze my arm gently. I see the look in her eyes and I know I shall paint her.

* * *

After dinner in the restaurant at Anton’s hotel, following a walk through Venice’s narrow passageways and by the Grand Canal, gazing at the moon, we returned to Anton’s room and made love. I had never made love like that before. It was as if the whole world had stopped and stared again, with Anton and me, there alone; there embracing, kissing, moving to an inner impulse, that would never end; that would almost, we felt be eternal.

“Worlds are born and then die,” Anton said. “We have loved at the birth of a world, and hope it will never end; but be eternal, endless, always endless.”

And as I lay in his arms, I whispered: “I hope so, Anton, I do hope so.” Then his lips silenced mine with a kiss and no more was said.

* * *

In my hotel room, Rowena sits quietly by the window posing. I have never painted as well as I do now. I look across the room at her occasionally and then dab at the canvas with y brush. Touch by touch she comes alive. Her image is being transferred, as if by some magic craft shown to me only moments before my brush touches the canvas. Her eyes are there and her smile. She says nothing, only poses, so still, so motionless, so statue-like.

Time passes. We are apart from the outer world; only we seem to exist. Then I stop and put down my brush. I stand back from the canvas and stare at it, then, slowly, lift my eyes as Rowena moves her head. Her eyes glance at me anxiously. I nod o her and she comes and stands net to me facing the canvas. Silence. There is silence as we gaze at the picture. Her hand touches mine and draws it to her side.

“You have captured me perfectly,” she says emotionally. “My eyes, my features, almost my very soul.”

I feel suddenly moved by her words. Words of my own come to me without me having power to stop them. “I see another world within your eyes. A world I wish to inhabit, to cosily wrap myself down in. It is a world of strange lights, all sparkling from an inner flame; a flame I can only surmise is your love. And such a love. A love I would gladly die for, die with die by if need be. Such a world; such lights; such love.”

Rowena stares at me, away from the canvas. She squeezes my hand nervously. “Me?” she says softly. “You love, me?” I nod gazing at her eyes. “I thought I alone felt that way. I have had sleepless nights, fearing I’d not see you the next day; that you would leave Venice and away from me forever. I feared that you would not be there when I awoke one morning, that Venice would be without your presence and I would be so empty and hollow.” She pauses for a few moments. “I have loved you since that first day when you were gazing at the statue of Doge Steno. I felt a pain pierce me in my heart when you turned and looked at me.” She pauses again and there are tears in her eyes. She takes my head between her hands and kisses me. A woman has never kissed me like that. I want it never to end; I want it to be eternal. We part and stand looking at each other. Another world is born, another love returns; all is endless, profoundly endless.

About the Author

Terry Collett

Terry Collett has been writing since 1971 and published on and off since 1972. He has written poems, plays, short story and short novels. He is married with eight children and eight grandchildren. His work has been published in magazines and anthologies on-line and off. His main ambition is to have a book of his stories and poems p