Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice by Erica Jong

Author:Erica Jong [Jong, Erica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Romance, Time Travel
ISBN: 9781480438859
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-10-08T04:00:00+00:00

8

A Mirror of Monsters

I AWAKENED, EXPECTING A world of toaster ovens and telephones, motorbikes and microwaves, Concordes and Explorer satellites, atom bombs and submarines—for present-consciousness doesn’t slip away so fast. But when I was indeed awake, it was in a walnut bed with writhing columns, the sound of children running in a courtyard far, far below, water sounds under a queerly boarded and bricked-up window (open only a sliver on top, as if by chance), and over it the faint ripple of light on a ceiling—la vecia, I now remember the Venetians call it. Fare la vecia: to squint as the “old woman” squints—that ripply glistening on the ceiling of a room, which one sees in only one city on earth.

Perhaps I have died and gone to heaven, I think, and heaven for me is Venice, that city of the heart; but the actual growling of my stomach convinces me that I am not in heaven, for surely heaven, whatever configuration it takes, has no hunger. (But what about hell? Has hell hunger?)

My maid runs in. She has come to empty the slops and fill the water jug, open wide the shutters on the campiello, stoke the fire, and help me dress.

She babbles to me in a curious dialect—part Venetian, part Hebrew, it sounds to my sleepy ears. If Arlecchina has sent me back in time, why has she not given me the language? My head is clogged with the clutter of inventions that have not yet been invented, words not yet shaped to the tongue, the useless impedimenta of the twentieth century. Strip all these away, I command myself. Sink or swim. Here I am alone in another time, knowing neither the language, nor the rules, nor my own position, age, history. All I know is that my name remains Jessica. Well, this will have to do.

The girl helps me up. I stagger to my washstand and looking glass, eager to see my face—whether it, too, has changed. It has not.

The same hazel-golden eyes, the same russet curls (though tinged with henna at the front), the same bosom, the same hands, the same feet. Even the hangnail I had some days before—in the twentieth century—is there. What a curious relief!

I allow my maid to help me wash, dress, and do my hair, hoping that with each motion, each garment, I may acclimate to this world in which I find myself. Perhaps even the memories of this past life will flood back to me so that I do not seem like an amnesic but rather like a normal person going about her normal life. Yet it is hard to stay calm in these circumstances. I am transfixed with wonder and terror that Arlecchina’s magick has worked.

Then, all at once, a tingle begins in my toes, rises to my knees, my thighs, my quim, my navel, my waist, my breasts, my shoulders, my neck. My face becomes flushed and prickles as if with heat rash. My temples pound. It is as if I am a vessel filling up with the hot liquid of memories, dreams, desires.

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