Death in Florence by George Alec Effinger

Author:George Alec Effinger [Effinger, George Alec]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497605732
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1978-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

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A few days later Brant left Venice to return to Florence. Staefler missed her immediately. All the unfriendliness between them had disappeared. Even without Dr. Waters's intervention, Staefler had had a memorable time with her, sitting in sidewalk cafes, cooking with her, drawing eyeglasses and beards on minor masterpieces. Now Staefler had the prospect of having only the Arab kid for company and only his miniature golf course for an occupation.

He dreaded returning to work on it. Already salt water had left a white crust on the gold chalices. He had taken them from St. Mark's to use as obstacles on a few holes. The paintings which he had used in various ways were not standing up well to the elements, either. He thought of spraying them with some kind of lacquer, but it all seemed like too much work. It didn't seem like fun anymore.

A few days after Brant left Venice, Staefler decided that he needed to get away again. He didn't feel like making a long trip to Vienna or Munich or Budapest, although he wanted to go to Hungary or Yugoslavia, just to spite Waters. He called for the Arab kid. "I want to go to the Lido," he said. Venice's famous beach resort facing the Adriatic had been a popular vacation spot for centuries. Staefler had been there only twice, because the long gondola ride across the lagoon made him ill. Now, though, he wanted to see the Lido again, to look back across the lagoon at Venice's domes and spires, to see the distant mountains in the background, to turn and look out over the blue Adriatic toward the invisible Dalmatian coast, to walk the white sands where so many laughing German families and sensitive English poets had wandered, to sit on a folding canvas chair and wait for his skin to burn a bright and painful red, to get the grit in his eyes and mouth, to sting his eyes with the salt water, to watch the Arab kid digging in the wet sand like a fool, to wait and wait for a ship or a swimmer, and never to see either... .

Beauty constant under torture. Those were the words that Staefler found scratched into the wood of the gondola, as he glided over the water, rowed by the Arab kid. Beauty. Staefler thought first of Venice, then of Brant, then of Utopia 3. What beauty? Venice's beauty, tortured by him, Staefler himself. Brant's beauty, tortured by her empty past, her empty present, and the prospect of an empty future. Utopia 3 and its beauty, tortured by its own creator. Staefler's own beauty, his inner harmony, whatever remained of it, was being tortured by his growing knowledge, his new perceptions. He wondered what he could do to regain his contentment. Could he take his own soul, color its metaphorical hair black again, paint its lips carmine, rouge its cheeks? That wouldn't do. At the first crisis the blacking would run and mix with the watered rouge, and his soul would be revealed to be not only impotent but a fraud as well.

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