‘I’m not sure that I like that,’ said Henry with a feeble attempt at jocularity.
‘Well, you know what she meant. And it is hard on her, isn’t it, when she’s made so many preparations. And she said the nicest things about Annette. I really don’t think we could let her down now—do you, darling?’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Henry doubtfully.
‘And oh, Henry—I nearly forgot—she said you needn’t be afraid of the mosquitoes because there wouldn’t be any. She’s thought of the most amusing way of keeping them out. She thought of it entirely for you, she said. It’s to be a secret until the evening of the party.’
Henry realized that there was nothing for it but to give way with a good grace.
Somehow or other he managed to survive die next two days, but not unscathed, however. Taking his morning stroll to the flower-shop in San Stefano (he had to renew the flowers in their sitting-room every day, for after twenty-four hours they had wilted from the heat) he suddenly felt dizzy: the sun seemed to strike right through him, like a sword, as if the proper defences of his body had ceased to operate. ‘Colto da malore’! In a panic he looked about for shade but there was none: the sun stood right over the long, acorn-shaped campo. Then he espied an awning and staggered to it. Standing in its exiguous shadow he felt as a shipwrecked man might feel on a rock, with the ocean raging round him. But where next? Frightened though he was, he didn’t want to risk the moral defeat of going back without the flowers: besides, Maureen would be so disappointed. Half-way to the shop a projecting doorway lent a modicum of shade. He gained it, and gaining it retained some of his lost confidence. It was all nerves! But no, it wasn’t, for scanning the campo he saw other pedestrians pursuing the same policy as his; avoiding the torrid centre where the statue was, they were slinking round the circumference, hurrying from one island of shade to the next. Still, none of them dropped down dead, and soon he plucked up courage, and almost swaggered into the flower-shop, where the flowers were being sprayed with jets of water and the sudden coolness was unbelievably delicious.
But he didn’t go out again that day till after sundown, and the next day, the day of the party, which dawned as hot as noon, he gave the flowers a miss and didn’t go out at all until their gondola drew up to the brass-railed landing-raft and Maureen said to the gondoliers, ‘Palazzo Bembo, sa!’ as if, on that evening, there could only be one destination.
Casa, Maureen should have said; house, not palace. In some ways the Bembos were old-fashioned, and affected the nomenclature of an earlier day than that in which the houses of patrician Venetian families came to be styled palazzos. Theirs was one of the few ancestral homes in Venice inhabited entirely by the family who built it, and kept up in appropriate state. This evening that state had been much augmented. If there was not a powdered footman on every step of the grand staircase, there were a formidable number, all the same; and if they were not professional footmen, but farm-workers imported from the Bembos’ country estate and put into livery, the effect was none the less magnificent. Passing them on the staircase, and vaguely noting their white-gloved hands and red, perspiring faces, Henry felt that afflatus of the spirit which earthly glory sometimes brings. Other Venetians gave parties that were like parties everywhere; but the Bembos’ party had its special cachet.
Light-headed but heavy-footed he stumbled, and clutched at the plaited rope of crimson silk that, threaded through stylized hands of polished brass, hung in festoons against the wall. Good luck! said somebody. A step or two ahead of and above him were Maureen and Annette: what energy was displayed in their sprightly, springy tread! His ankles were swollen under his black socks, and the slight exertion of climbing the staircase was bringing the sweat out on his back.
In an ante-room off the sala stood Loredana Bembo, an imposing figure, splendid in jewels, and by her side her husband, a short, thickset, baldish man, but with an unmistakable air of authority about him. ‘it was so good of you to come,’ she said to Henry. ‘And I promise you a hundred lire for every mosquito-bite you get to-night.’ A hundred lire was something in those days; it will pay me to get a bite or two, thought Henry, and waited for the buzz, but it didn’t come, and when at last they all sat down to dinner, he saw why; the windows were defended by thin metal grilles, of mesh so fine that even a mosquito couldn’t find its way through. He had seen them before, of course; his own sitting-room in the hotel was fitted with them. They couldn’t be the secret Countess Bembo had spoken of.
He wasn’t sitting next to her, an ambassador and a man of title occupied these coveted positions. Of his two neighbours, one was an Italian, one an Englishwoman who always came to Venice at this time.
‘What is Countess Bembo’s secret?’ he asked her. ‘Or haven’t you heard of it?’
‘There is something,’ she said.
‘Do you know what?’
She shook her head. ‘Loredana always has something up her sleeve,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope it won’t be too peculiar.’
A member of one aristocratic Venetian family, married into another, Loredana Bembo was a law unto herself. Conventional when she chose to be, if the fit took her she would flout convention. At such times a reckless look would come into her eyes. ‘E originale,’ her friends said of her, ‘she is an eccentric,’ and if they sometimes criticized her they were also proud of her and a little afraid. What she said went, what she did got by.
The champagne flowed, and as fast as Henry drank it his labouring, overheated skin discharged it. He dabbed his neck, his face, his hands. Perhaps it would have been wiser not to drink, but he could not forgo the momentary relief each swallow brought him—the immediate physical relief, and the deliverance from his nervous premonitions. All nerves they were: to-morrow this time he would be at Merano breathing freely. Drinking freely he could better imagine that paradise. The faces opposite him were a blur, but one was Maureen’s, and another, farther to the left, between a Nino and a Gigi who were both talking to her at once, was Annette’s.
At last the chairs scraped on the smooth terrazza and they left the dining-room, in Continental fashion, the men and women together, a little group of white shirt-fronts and bare shoulders. Up they went, upstairs into the second sala, for the Palazzo Bembo had two, two great galleries that ran the whole length of the building. Breasting the ascent, however, they stopped, as a crowd stops, automatically, almost barging into each other: and little cries broke out and circled over Henry’s head. ‘Ah, che bello!’ As they moved on and up, these exclamations, and others like them, screams and trills and chirrups of delight, went on, and Henry, reaching the top, saw what it was that had provoked them, though for a moment he didn’t quite take in what it meant. He blinked and looked again: what was it, this array of snowy surfaces, booths, tents, tabernacles, this ghostly encampment under the great chandelier? Then, drawing nearer, he saw: it was an encampment, an encampment of mosquito-nets. Following the others’ lead, Henry began to circulate among them. They were of all shapes and sizes, some square, some domed and circular, some tapering to a peak like army tents. To one and all gaily coloured pennons were attached, indicating their purpose. Under the chandelier, where the light was brightest, was pitched a cluster of square tents meant for bridge, as their label, ‘Per far una partita’, testified. Beyond them, farther from the light, round and square forms alternating, were other tents reserved for conversation: ‘Per far la conversazione’ was the device they bore. Beyond them, where the light was fainter, was ranged another group, only big enough to hold two armchairs apiece: ‘Per far l’amore’ was the legend that these temptingly displayed. A gasp went up; had Loredana gone too far this time? And beyond these again, one in each corner of the room flanking the tall gothic windows, where the light from the chandelier hardly reached them, almost out of sight, were two much smaller refuges. These at once aroused the curiosity of the guests: what could their purpose be? They peered and peered at the labels, which were not coloured or cut into fantastic shapes, but sober rectangles of white cardboard, with plain black lettering on them. Then there was a chuckle, which sooner or later was taken up by everyone: ‘Per i misantropi’, they read, and soon the words were on every lip.