A Ticket to Voltaire's Garden

 1

People had told me to avoid Giovanni, then, one New Year’s Eve night, while alone in my Paris apartment, I received a text message from him.  My phone beeped a melody and his neon-fire name filled me with a powerful, racing excitement.

Six months had passed with no news of him. Other text messages were dreary and dim compared to his name’s letters. I reached for the faithful vessel of the phone, wanting to read the message at once, but as I did, I felt a strange, incomprehensible reticence, and put the phone down again.

Why?  Though I wanted his brain in my ears, his words tingling with my words, some part of me felt wary.

I recalled meeting him that first time, over a year earlier, and his sweet memory returned.  We had met in the summer.  Frederic, my old boyfriend had just dumped me.  I remember that I had been sitting on a train, composing a letter to Frederic.  

Dear Frederic,

I hope you and Cécile are well.  You really mustn’t worry about having left me for her, for I am now dating a famous painter who is rich and lives in Venice.  He adores me and I’m rich now, because he sells all my paintings in big galleries.  This new boyfriend takes me with him to lots of different countries and he’s crazy about me, I didn’t know that love like this was possible. Good luck with Cécile.  I hope you are both very happy,

From Clara

I fantasised entering the rich world of this Venetian man whom in truth I had only just met.  His email address was glowing from the wallet of my purse, nagging at me.  I had kept it there for a few days, strapped up in the dark wallet, out of view, and I kept hearing the eagerness of his voice – offering me help when I got to Venice.

But in reality I was packed into a squashed carriage on the night train to Venice.  Two fox-faced men, with the faces of a hard, poverty stricken life, didn’t smile back. 'I don't believe it! I'm to sleep in a carriage with misogynists!’ I felt a panic but acted all calm.  The men began to jabber in a language unknown to me, one of them with sour breath. There was a zoo-like chimpanzee sound of human voices, undecipherable. All six of us were stuffed into this tiny carriage of blue, stiff, upright seats watching the cliff-edged buildings like large chunks of cheese.

"Madame, Madame, vous ne pouvez pas laisser votre baggage là" shouted the female steward, all flustered. She had white, rectangular glasses; long, brown hair and a snub nose with a sulky look, making me wonder if she was sick to death of this job and dreaded another long journey to Venice.  No-one checked my ticket either.

Summer’s flourishing leaves puffing up amid them like magic green smoke.  Pigeon wings flashed upwards into the smooth warmth of the sun, whose corn yellow threw shadows over the Paris buildings and sprinkled them with icing sugar.

“If you need any help in Venice,” I had heard the Italian man’s voice.  I had met him a week earlier.  Was it authentic?  Or was he a con merchant?  “I have a house in Venice,” he had said.  “I’m divorced…. I’m divorced…..”  I could not get the chattering voice of this man out of my mind. He was like something deeply important, popping into my mind, like basic necessities, but deeper.  Something you really, really need.

Like a drummer, setting the rhythms of a bass drum there was the crashing of symbols and the bottom of the train sounded like a rock band, with no melody.  The surface of my skin was slowly streaked with stroboscopic flashes of the sunset. My cabin companions had profiles like gazing stone Greek gods and there was a hypnotised silence. 

I had met the Italian man in the park, where I was exhibiting some paintings I’d done in the pavilion of the Jardin de Luxembourg.  I was supervising my show.  The Jardin de Luxembourg is Paris’s lung, a recreation ground left by Marie de Medici, for Parisians to play boule, tennis, sail toy yachts and ride ponies.  Its grass was deep green, speckled with daisies and toasted with the shadows of the horse chestnut tree, transforming sometimes into bright lime green.

I’d just been longing for affection. My father had fallen ill that spring.  I kept worrying about the imminent operation.  My family were worried, but the doctors were optimistic.  I kept myself busy and cheerful, but my thoughts often fell to despair and fear.  Then my ex-boyfriend had just visited but barely stayed with me ten minutes.

“Sorry Clara,” I have to leave, Cécile is waiting for me,” he explained.  His new girlfriend took precedence.  “I’m taking her to Istambul!”  That cut me hard, since he had always spoken of taking me to Istambul.  I had felt inconsolably sorry for myself.  ‘If only my father could be better and I could have a boyfriend’

That night I’d had a peculiar dream. I’d dreamt I had filled out an application form for an ideal man.  I saw the blazing whiteness of the form and my reaching hand, clutching the pen, writing my request and signing it.  Then, like a fleeing comet, the form’s effulgence fled into the darkness.

Yet I had consoled myself.  The garden around me was a treasure trove. ‘I am totally complete, and don’t need a boyfriend at all!’  I had watched the pigeons, felt the warm sun fall on my cheek and heard the treetops’ sparkling jewels against the cyan blue sky.  Pigeons trailed their fanned out tails.  Some had overweight fat beer bellies, their heads bobbing up and down.  The males would puff up their feathers and strut, bowing as if the female were an altar.

Voltaire once said ‘Life is bristling with thorns and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one’s garden.’  So above all I wanted to get to Voltaire’s garden. Voltaire’s garden was one of those unseen places, not a physical place but an inner garden, like those mythical gardens: Eden, Gethsemane, and Paradise. Successful gardens were results of inner work: and I loved to read about gardens in Shakespeare and Alexander Pope and Monet’s garden outside Paris at Giverny.

The Venetian man’s conversation had been stimulating and rewarding.  He was refined, conventional, with trimmed beard and a bourgeois look.  He had worn an elegant camel coloured coat and had pressed trousers. His brown, cinnamon eyes were glinting interestedly, reminding me of an intrigued bird’s who had landed, his head perched quizzically, perhaps in expectation of a crumb.

 “Are you Italian?” he had asked me

“My grandfather was” I nodded.

“Where was he from?”

“Carpi, near Padua” I said.  He nodded as if he knew the place.  “Do you know it?”

“Yes, yes, I’m Italian,” he answered.

“You don’t have an accent” I replied.

“Oh, I learn languages very quickly, I did a PHD in England,” I sat up, impressed.  “Did the PHD, set up my own company, got married, had children, ticked all the boxes,” he said, smiling, “then got divorced,” I glanced at him quickly.  ‘Divorced?’ I thought.

Now that I knew he was divorced, I felt more attentive to him.  Sometimes I watched the men in couples, passing the pavilion.  They all seemed like Siamese twins, cannibalising on the woman’s energy, as if attached to some invisible leash.  They lost all heed to the peeling of their intuitions, so caught up in tangos and the comfort of familiarity, so lost in the murk of their caves their dreams were less and less in view.

“You’re a very happy person,” he said, nodding his head at one of my paintings. His attention made me feel dazed. My paintings felt vulnerable to criticism.  The skin of the oil paint was as sore and exposed as nakedness.  “What are you reading?”  The man was looking back at me with interest, waiting expectantly. 

 “Death in Venice by Thomas Mann” I replied.

“What’s it about?” he asked

“Oh, a man who falls in love in Venice and it opens him up, bringing out the mythical other life, beyond the physical.  He dies, but it’s symbolic of a new birth,” I said.  He grinned, as if stirred by something.

“And the other book?”

“It’s a guidebook on Venice.  I’m going to Venice soon” I told him.  I felt pleased.  I was travelling alone. “I want to see the art there”

“I have a house in Venice,” the man said, “on the Grand Canal, or at least my parents have a house”

“Oh?” I said, quietening.

“We have a motor boat, I have an atelier there, the house and its balcony.”  I tried not to act impressed.

“What do you do?” I asked

“I’m a painter,” the man said. “I’ve had a big painting exhibition here in Paris,” he said.  When he told me that, I tried hard to hide my interest.

“Oh yes?” I said.

“I’ve exhibited all over,” he shrugged.  I felt awe at his success. 

“Are you able to live by painting?”

“Yes,” he nodded “I make a good living by it” I sat up. I assumed he must be a very graphical draughtsman.

“What do you paint?” I asked.

“Buildings,” he answered, “The last show was a whole room of buildings.  I sold everything!”  Then he said, as if to himself.  “I haven’t spent this long talking to anyone in ages” and he stood up.  “I’d better go,” he said

Looking at the clock, I was surprised to see that he had already sat beside me talking now for nearly an hour.  Sometimes, while we’d been speaking, people from the park wandered in to look at the paintings, leaving the traces of their sandy footprints on the pavilion floor, and I’d not noticed them.

Suddenly his eyes fell on my business cards and he picked one up.

“If you need anything in Venice, send me a line” he said, before departing. “Here is my email address,” he had said, pointing at the email address.  He waited a split second and I pondered the black felt-tip letters that he had spelled out. “I will show you around Venice,” I took the card politely and put it in my wallet. “Email me,” he added.

I looked at his address on the business card cautiously but then I put his email away in the back wallet.  It seemed dangerous and I didn’t understand why I had warning bells?

“I promise I will,”

I saw his figure disappear through the bright doorway out into the park and heard his footsteps tap their way down the steps and disappear. I felt a sting of disappointment that he was gone and craved more of his pleasant company and the pleasant sensation his presence had given me.  Without him there, my solitude felt dank, heavy and thudding. It felt that he had gone, pulled away and it was like a transaction had been made, he had given me a place to find him and then he had run, like a game of chase was begun and he had ‘pulled’.

                                                     2

The phone lay on the table, the message still unread.  Seeing Giovanni’s name on its screen, I felt a tingling feeling of wonder.  What had he written?  My eyes looked out of my apartment window, where fireworks of New Year’s Eve now banged and sprayed gold over an abyss of black night, glistening between the crooked fissures made by the trees.

‘It’s from HIM!’ I thought, wondrous. ‘What did he want to say to me?’  I got up and, to give myself space to reflect, left the living room and entered my bedroom. The bedside lamp was radiating a soft blue tone over the wall.  The bed was turned back invitingly. I was dressed into a comfortable nightdress, about to read my book under the soft warm duvet.

Loitering there, I wondered again and soon went back to the living room, looking at the phone still.  Finally I picked it up, unlocking it swiftly to read the message.

‘Happy New Year Clara,’ said the text.  ‘I often think of you.  I have been keeping to myself and keeping my head buried in the sand like an ostrich.  I would love to meet up for a drink, that’s if you want to meet up with an ostrich that is’

I tingled with surprise.  ‘Meet for a drink?’ I thought quickly.

I tingled again.  My immediate emotion was passion and my answer was ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ and I wanted to tap it straightaway.  A phone is a meeting point: a train station of departures and arrivals. It leaves bedsides to fly straight to pockets and bags.  It is cupped in hands like a chick, escorted on buses, trains; it is the human brain’s nervous system – a travelling thought of cyber electrical charge, travelling to its destination with a beep.

But then I dithered and slowed down and held the phone cautiously again.

The window on the phone was like a small doorway into his mind.  I looked at the phone, mulling it.  Why was I hesitating?

‘What did he mean by ostrich?’ I thought back to him.

That hot summer, on my way to Venice, the Italian man had trickled into my mind.  He was like an insidious treacle. 

‘I must never ever contact that man’ I warned myself. 

Yet, on arrival in Venice, I had asked the hotel receptionist for wifi

“Of course you may have it,” she said, “I will give you the wifi code,” She wrote the name of a code on a piece of paper.  I sat down in the little reception room and tapped the code into my phone and at once my email popped up onto the screen.

‘It was very nice to have met you,’ I had typed politely to the Italian man.  “I am staying in a simple hotel near the St Mark’s Square’ and then I had hesitated.  What was I doing?  It was crazy.  What if he ignored me?  How would I feel?  I stopped and did not send it.

On the journey to Venice I had taken out his card a lot but I felt the feeling was dangerous.  Perhaps he was just a charmer?  A man full of hot air?  Empty words and empty promises?  No action?  The light bulb reflection on the black window of the train cabin was like a moon and I had peered at his address in the white light and couldn’t help wondering about his wealth.  I thought about the man’s house and his motorboat and luxuries. I could not help thinking about him.

Famished, I got up and went down the corridor to sit in the train’s restaurant car.

"You’ll have to sit with the others," the train waitress had said unfeelingly.  Two deaf Chinese men seemed happy to let me sit at their table, but I felt lonely.  They were signing to each other with swift hand movements, hands flitting nimbly into different forms and tutting consonants. 

I had said to myself ‘No, I mustn’t be led into this Venetian man’s trap.  He’s just an aloof games player who’ll hurt me as usual’ I was hopeless at choosing the right men and looked over at a man drinking half a bottle of red wine.  He had a plump face and smiled at me when I sat down, as if relieved as I that I'd a place to sit. 

I was consoled by a wedge of lasagne, which was surprisingly tasty, filled with tasty lumps of artichoke and coated with crisply melted cheese, which I powdered over with Parmesan.  But I yearned for companionship and the Italian man was refusing to be rubbed out of my mind. Was his invitation all talk?  Would he keep his word?  Was he a slippery liar who was addicted to chatting up women randomly?

"You can sleep," said the man back in my carriage, as the train pulled into Dijon.  I gratefully mounted the ladder to get my bunk.

"Lock the door," said the Italian woman "for in Switzerland it stops for ages and anybody can get on the train to steal" 

Next morning, looking out of the carriage window, I knew with foggy excitement there was a red thumb print sun in the sky.  Putting in my lenses I saw a flat field of wheat, sheaths large and ribbed in line with a fluffy, cotton wool haze hovering over it.  On the skyline there were the pale blue mountains and the city of Verona. 

While the noise of the rails ricocheted through me, I still wondered what I should do about the Venetian man.  ‘Maybe I should just contact him and see what happens?’ I thought.

As the train wheeled along the long peninsula leading to Venice, I saw a gondola adrift before a dirty factory with a plume of smoke.  The image was like an anachronism. I thought of the man.  It was his country.  I wondered if he was in Venice too?  Would he really welcome me?

Crossing the bridge, I entered the massive labyrinth of Venice.  I saw coloured boxes of ‘gelato’, the jewelled masks, smiling or menacing, the glass ornaments twinkling, the glugging of canal water, the archways and bridge-ways and endless passages.  I mounted bridges and descended steps.  I followed the long, deep passageways between the ravines of buildings.

Ahead of me was an arch. I passed through it.  Ballooning over it was the papier-mâché grey of the domes of the basilica, like a lung inflating with oxygen.  It was a golden morning on St Mark’s Square.  The empty café tables were crowding the sides of the square like lily leaves encroaching the side of a grand pond. The piano turner tapped some chords and the deliverymen dropped their carts of rattling bottles. People rushed around confused as if not knowing where to buy love.  They foraged their way into Louis Vuitton and the other mass consumerists on the scent of jewels, handbags, dresses and suits.

My hotel was just off St Mark’s Square and after mounting four flights of a dark staircase; a quiet receptionist was sitting at the desk.  There was a cheerful lamp and a few pamphlets, the Italian flag, a little sofa and tourist magazines on a coffee table.

“Bonne journo Signorina” said the lady softly.

“Bonne journo” I answered, relieved to have found the place. “I have booked a room here under the name Lorenzi” The lady looked in her books with a procedure of calm.

“That’s right, we have your booking,” she said.

I had gone to my room.  It was cleanly whitewashed, with a vast queen bed.  I opened its shutter with slats as thin as the slits between the teeth and was flooded with morning light. I could just see the basilica over the rooftop.  There were clanging bells and voices from the streets below.  

Then I thought I would test out this man.  I thought: ‘Why not see what this slippery charmer will do?  I had, after all, promised to mail him. If he was a bad man, I could prove to him that his talk was full of hot air and no action!’

So finally I sent the email. I did not know for sure what kind of man he was yet.  On pressing ‘send’ for a moment I felt afraid.  But then no longer the man niggled in my mind and I felt a sense of peace.  

https://www.amazon.com/Ticket-Voltaires-Garden-Part-One-ebook/dp/B00WT6DIAM/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1500479502&sr=8-6&keywords=Keziah+Shepherd