Venetian Dreaming by Paula Weideger

Author:Paula Weideger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Washington Square Press

15

Revisions

At 8:50 A.M. on the twenty-seventh of August, four days before we were due to leave for Venice, la contessa Françoise Donà Marsot telephoned. I give her full title because she was about to give me the full treatment.

“I am sorry, but I will not be in Venice when you arrive,” she said. She would be going to Venice that very evening but would have to be back in Paris for work on Monday. “I will see you September sixth.”

Okay so far. Cool, but polite.

“I look forward to it,” I said using the formula I’d picked up from Giovanni.

Now to what was really on her mind.

“Francesco will explain to you that it is necessary to have a contract,” she announced.

I noted that she did not say a “new contract.” I did not remind her we’d already agreed on terms; we already had a contract.

Françoise and I had talked in Venice. When I’d gone to Paris on a short visit, I’d met with her again in the Café Marly at the Louvre to discuss further details of our agreement. The last time I’d seen her was at Waterloo Station in London, when she came to town on the Channel train for business. Finally she felt we’d talked enough and told me to mail my check to Francesco. He got it and faxed me confirmation of its receipt and the terms of our agreement, albeit in the briefest possible prose.

I mentioned none of this to Françoise now. What would have been the point? She knew it too. But I was also keeping quiet because I’d been caught off guard. I hadn’t expected the aggression in her voice.

Françoise had further instructions.

“You must pay the cost of insuring, via Lloyds of London, the paintings by Alessandro Longhi,” she said, “and certain mobile.” (That meant furniture.)

She might have said, “I am afraid I forgot to mention . ” Or, “I hope you will not mind, Paula, but . ” She didn’t. Forget kindness; there wasn’t even the suggestion that this might be an exchange, the beginning of a conversation. As far as Françoise was concerned, I was a mere foot soldier. It was for her, the general, to give orders.

I had not seen the paintings by Alessandro Longhi, but I knew their size: four simple plaster moldings had been set into the walls of the salone especially to hold them. This had been done in the eighteenth century when the stucchi decorations had been made. I’d seen a reproduction of one of the pictures in James Davis’s book.

The painting showed a man in a powdered ponytail with rows of curls above his ears. He was wearing a frock coat, deeply cuffed in silk brocade, and was accompanied by his whippet who looked up at him inquisitively. Davis suggests that this might be the portrait of the senator Leonardo Donà whose dates were 1750-1822. Presumably the stucchi had been his home in the family palace.

Historically, and aesthetically too, the return of family paintings to the walls for which they were intended was good news.

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