Quinten realized that undreamt-of adventures were suddenly possible, as they were in the kinds of novels that Clara Proctor was always reading. Here was a mature, pretty, voluptuous woman, obviously also stinking rich, who wanted to take him under her wing — but at the same time he knew that it was not to be for him. He felt that he mustn't be carried away by chance meetings, although it wasn't clear what that would distract him from, because he had nothing special to do. He was simply messing around: he could just as well have been somewhere else.
When he said that he preferred to go back to his own room, she insisted on walking with him for a little while; she'd never been in Cannaregio, and she could take the water taxi back to the Lido. On the way she talked nonstop about herself, about her husband's vineyards in the Wachau on the Danube, which she now managed; fortunately she didn't ask him about his own circumstances. At the door of his hotel, under the laundry that hung like garlands from one side of the alley to the other, he was about to say goodbye; but she suggested having a drink somewhere first. A hearty Conegliano-Valdobbiadene prosecco, for instance, which went straight to your head: when you were in a place, you must always drink the local wine. Quinten never drank wine, but he was thirsty too.
Looking for a terrace, a rarity in this district, they emerged via a wooden bridge and a low, dark sottoportego onto the inner courtyard of the sixteenth-century ghetto, to which all later ghettos owed their name. The houses were taller than in the rest of the city and there were even a few trees, like almost nowhere else in Venice. By a round well with a marble lid they sat down on a bench. Most of the shutters were closed; in many plant tubs there were spinning paper windmills. Apart from the doves in the alcoves and on the weathered windowsills, there was not a living thing to be seen — and in the falling dusk they looked in silence for a while at the great silence that hung over the stones.
Suddenly Mrs. Kirchlechner put her cheek against his shoulder and began sobbing.
"What's wrong?" he said in alarm.
With her great eyes helplessly flooded, she looked up to him as if he were her father.
"I don't know what's got into me.. I'm in love with you, Quinten. The moment I saw you, it was like seeing a gold coin in the mud. At first I thought it was simply an impulse — I have those quite often; but now I realize that I obviously won't see you again. I can see that it's something completely different. I don't go for young boys at all, if that's what you're thinking perhaps. It's never happened to me. My husband was twice my age, and now I'm more than twice yours. Why aren't you twenty-six or sixty-six for all I care? Sixteen! It's impossible, I must be crazy!" Suddenly she stood up, took his face between her hands, and kissed him on both eyes. "Farewell, angel.. may things go well with you."
Before he could say anything, he saw her white figure waft across the campo, like a sheet that had freed itself from the clothespins, and disappear into the dark doorway.
He looked at the black hole in alarm. What havoc had he caused? Should he go after her? And what then? No, it was best like this of course. That kind of woman simply existed in the great wide world; you had to get used to it. While store shutters rattled in the distance as they were pulled down, he walked back to his hotel. He put his mouth under the tap and splashed water on his face with both hands. On his bed he was going to read some more of his guide, but he fell asleep almost immediately — and was visited not by the SOMNIUM QUINTI but by fire..
First he is living on the attic floor of a tall house, like those in the ghetto, where the square chimneys run along the outside walls. He calls out the window that the fire brigade should be summoned, at which everyone looks up and shrugs their shoulders. No problem. It'll be okay; just panicking over nothing. When the house is ablaze and all the beams have been transformed into architraves of fire, he turns out to be living somewhere in a basement. Suddenly smoke starts curling up there, too, between the slabs, and again no one listens to him, so everything goes up in flames. .
He was awakened by hunger. Outside it had grown dark; it was ten o'clock. He cracked his thumbs and got up with aching limbs. In a small restaurant near the Grand Canal he ate a plate of ravioli, surrounded by locals and gondoliers in striped tunics, everyone talking loudly in a language sometimes reminiscent of Italian. Now and then he had a vision of Marlene from Vienna. In the Excelsior, surrounded by Sikhs, Japanese magnates, and American oil barons, she was now of course eating lobster and caviar under crystal chandeliers; but it was as though his dream had already thrown up a barrier, relegating her to the past once and for all.
Thanks to the baron he was fortunately rich himself. He allowed himself a second espresso, put a five-hundred lire additional tip on the bill, and wandered into town for a little while.
In that deserted midnight Venice, with all the shutters closed, the terraces cleared away and no life anywhere, he stopped on a bridge over a narrow canal. To the left and right, weathered house walls with rainpipes rose up out of the motionless seawater; a little farther on, across a side canal, was a second bridge; at the end the view was blocked off by the refined back of a Gothic palazzo, which was of course really the front. He looked at the green seaweed-covered steps, which everywhere led down to the water from dark arches with barred gates and continued underwater. The complete silence.
Had his mother ever been here? His father? Max? Suddenly the silence filled with a scarcely audible rustling, and a little later a gondola appeared under the bridge he was standing on, the gleaming halberd on the prow. Three silent Japanese girls appeared, and then the gondolier, straightening and with the merest push steering the gondola slightly toward the side, where with an indescribably perfect movement — which formed a unity with the gondola, the water, the silence, the city — he propelled himself by pushing off from a house with his foot for a second to keep up speed.
At that moment Quinten saw a white glimpse of Marlene Kirchlechner on the other bridge, immediately disappearing when she realized that he had seen her. His eyes widened. While he slept she had been waiting for him all that time, had followed him to the restaurant, waited again, and again followed him. It was clear: he had to leave Venice at once — preferably this evening.
Maybe it was the sound of its name, Florence, that made him expect the town would be even more silvery and silent. But he found himself in a noisy, stinking cauldron of traffic that he had forgotten after five days in Venice. Moreover, if everything there was light and open, everything here was heavy, closed. The function of the sea, which protected Venice sufficiently, was here fulfilled by thick walls, colossal blocks of stone, bars, buildings like fortresses; the beauty was virtually only indoors, in palaces and museums. But exactly what distinguished Florence from Venice gave it a Citadel-like quality: that reconciled him a little with his disappointment. Because all the affordable hotels were full, he had to make do with a grubby hostel, where he shared a room with seven others, most of them students but also a few older men; apart from a bed he had only a chair to use, on which he could look at the crucifix above the door.
Surrounded by international snoring, he thought back for the first time to his room at Groot Rechteren. Or did it no longer exist? Had Korvinus gotten his hands on everything by now? Of course it wouldn't happen as quickly as that. He felt as if he had been away from home for months, but it was scarcely a week. He hadn't sent any message from Venice, and he now resolved to write to his grandmother as soon as possible. But not only did he not write a letter, even when he passed a stand with postcards on it — Piazza della Signoria, Palazzo Pitti, Ponte Vecchio, Battistero — an uncontrollable revulsion took hold of him, which prevented him buying one and writing even "Greetings from Florence" on it.