Silvia finds herself in the garden at the Guggenheim before a sculpture titled People in the Wind. The bronze is of four figures of varying heights, all conjoined, each leaning forward at an angle, tilted against an invisible wind that could be propping them up, or forcing them back, it’s difficult to say. Their faces are flattened, almost featureless: hammered cheeks, a bony nose, the merest suggestion of ears. She counts six small hands jutting out from below, in greeting or in supplication, maybe. With their sorry little heads on their elongated necks they resemble a family of melded aliens, lost and naive, exposed to the elements, vulnerable to the wiles of this world.
To either side of the piece, what look like wings: a skirt billowing out, or the flap of a coat, maybe. Some thing, some one is in flight.
Behind the sculpture blooms a wall of jasmine; the air is heady with its perfume, tiny white stars against dark green. The five tubular petals of each flower are arrayed around the stigma like the blades of a toy windmill, like the one that Luca has stuck into the rose bed under the window at home. Star jasmine. She looks it up. It’s not a variety that thrives with them.
They seem to her to be winning, the people in a wind, to be making steady progress, despite the odds, with their peculiar heads and their rigid bent backs and their sturdy little legs. The smallest figure raises one oversized hand, palm turned outward, open, bigger than his head. He could be waving, or wishing to ask a question or is he reaching out to welcome the breeze? Why does she think of this one as a boy? What is it about the stance, the expression, the implied joie de vivre? He doesn’t seem frightened. He seems to be enjoying the thrill of the ride, like the grown-ups will protect him, like no real harm could come to him.
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Ralph has wandered off. She finds him seated on the terrace steps that overlook the Grand Canal, sketch pad balanced on his knees. He is looking towards the bridge at Accademia, sketching in pastels the carved wooden structure that spans the water, the blue and gold striped mooring poles, the balconied palazzi that line the sides of the canal in terracotta and cream.
At the jetty below the museum, a water taxi pulls up and they watch together as two passengers prepare to disembark. This is unusual. Most visitors arrive at the museum on foot. They take the water bus to the stop at Accademia or Zattere, wind their way through the narrow streets, form neat queues at the gates for admission.
The man who steps out on to the pontoon is, perhaps, in his eighties, his back a little bent; grey hair curling over his shirt collar under a Panama hat; sunglasses, a pale linen suit. He takes the hand of his companion, helps her step out of the boat. She’s of a similar age to him, elegantly dressed in pale green. Together they climb the steps, he raises the rope cordon, holds it aside for her to pass. A museum attendant moves forward, collects their ticket. The woman looks around, delights in the scene: the sun on the water, the passing boats, the flags and arched loggias of the building opposite. Together they walk up the steps into the garden. As they pass the Marini sculpture, positioned outwards to face the canal, they smile and exchange a coy look.
“Now that’s the way to arrive,” Ralph says and Silvia smiles at him.
They’re holding their nerve, Silvia and Ralph, playing out the last days of their affair. She knows it’s ending; she thinks he does too but neither of them is talking about it for now.
A few months further into the year, in the cold and rain of a Belfast November, they’ll be standing in the aisle of the supermarket together, after a long week of teaching, an overcomplicated commute. They’ll both be trying to remember what food there is left in the fridge, what they might buy to cobble together a meal, as the rainwater drips off their jackets, pools around their feet. She’ll be suddenly wearied by the discussion (we had pasta last night; rice the night before; did you use all the eggs? I think the bread is done) and she’ll pick up a bottle of Pinot Grigio and a bag of salad and a wedge of cheese and she’ll say that’ll do, she doesn’t care, can they just go now, she’s tired?
And they’ll go back to their overpriced rented one-bed with the single car-parking space. But for now, in Venice, on the terrace at the Guggenheim, they’re holding fast, still propping each other up. Neither of them wants to be the first to renege on the costly deal they’ve brokered. They watch together as the newly arrived couple walk on in to the museum.
They follow them in, past Marini’s The Angel of the City, the iconic bronze horse with naked rider astride. There is nearly always someone standing beside it, leaning against the horse’s rump having their photo taken, a broad smile on their face. The horse rider’s arms are thrown wide, head thrust back, blunt face raised to the sky, but it is the bronze penis aimed straight out like a truncheon at the passing traffic on the Grand Canal that brings a smile to the faces of the visitors. Ralph is at Silvia’s side.
“It’s detachable, apparently,” he says, “Or at least it used to be. Peggy would have the appendage removed when she was expecting prudish visitors, or on holy days when religious processions passed along the canal.”
“You’re a mine of information,” Silvia says.
He takes her hand. “Stick with me, kiddo,” he says.
Silvia has a husband and a child at home and she appears to have left them both. She has fallen hard and unexpectedly for Ralph. They met at an artists’ retreat in July, just over a year ago: a 40th birthday gift from her husband. (The irony has not been lost on them.) Silvia had always said she would like to write. For years she has kept a journal of sorts, chronicled her days in a stylised, not quite truthful manner: the detail a little heightened, always with an eye to an audience she was hoping to one day impress.
“This is your chance,” her husband had said. “Write a bestseller. Make me a millionaire.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” she had told him but she had been glad of the week away.
The retreat was like an enchantment: the big comfortable country house furnished with artworks and books; winding hallways that led to green baize doors; creaking stairs and mullioned windows with panes of old glass that distorted the view of the grounds. In the mornings, mist clung to the trees that ringed the lake, birdsong filled the air. At twilight, fawns and hares walked out of the woods, grazed side by side on the lawn.
She and Ralph had sat together at dinner the first evening, talked about what they were each trying to do, bonded over the frustrations of having to teach to make a living, the constraints brought on by family obligations, the multitude of ways in which time for creativity was squeezed. She felt a little treacherous.
She opened up to him. In the days that followed, at meals, on walks together in the woods he dropped snippets into their conversation: observations and incidents she’d forgotten she had mentioned to him. It shocked her a little, that she had told him those things, nothing transgressive, exactly, but intimate all the same: the writers that moved her; what their words had meant; her desire to be published, the validation of seeing her name in print. He was a stranger after all.
But it was flattering, to have someone listen so closely. It had been a while since she had felt listened to: Ralph heard everything she said. He talked to her too about the cities he wished he could visit, the galleries he would love to see. He invited her to the studio he was using there, to show her his current work. She almost laughed aloud when he asked her: it was all so predictable, like they were both following a script, like they knew the parts that were expected of them. And still she said yes, she would.
He was teaching himself screen printing, he said, trying out different techniques. The images he had made were of the lake in the grounds: shadowy deeps, dark trees reflected, a pale line that may have been a ripple on the water, that may have been the arm of a lone figure swimming. She had swum in the lake early one morning, had stripped off her clothes and treaded through rushes when she hoped no one else was awake to see. The water was bone cold and weedy; her feet sank into the mud of the lake floor, shucked out again as she walked. It wasn’t the restorative experience she’d hoped for but it had felt like something she ought to do: a rite of passage, an expression of freedom, an act of thanksgiving to the spirits of the place.
She still hasn’t asked Ralph if he saw her: if the suggestion of a figure in the print is her. On paper the work looked flat, even thin, but when Silvia put her hand on the prints, she could feel a grain under her fingers, could trace lines, junctions where ridges met, a crosshatching, the risen ink.
“How did you do that?” she asked him and he showed her the scrim: a cloth as light as a cobweb, as gauze, weighing almost nothing at all.
“Normally, it’s used to soak up excess ink from the plate,” he said. “It’s very absorbent, like a sponge. But I forgot to rinse it off and it hardened and dried. I was about to throw it out when I thought, maybe I could use it to make a mark instead. I quite like the effect. Would you like to give it a try?” he said.
He showed her how to ink the scrim, stayed well back, gave her space. Then, “You could try this,” he said. “May I?”
And when she said yes he guided her hand over the paper, applying a little pressure, suggesting what could be done. She couldn’t remember anyone doing that before: showing that much consideration, acknowledging that she may not want to be that close. And the asking of it, what felt like old-fashioned courtesy, along with all the other things (the interest, the attention to what she said) made her want to be very close indeed. Made her want to keep her hand there, move her fingers just like this, over his hand and up his arm and on to his shoulder, his neck, his face. There was something in the place that made her reach out for sensation, for texture, for touch.
Ralph was married too, with two children a little older in age than Luca. The situation was very unwise but it didn’t stop them from going ahead. For a while it felt easy to push everything else aside, to cast off their old familiar selves, to walk, open-eyed into the dream. And after the retreat had ended, they had continued to take risks. They devised elaborate ruses: work events, old friends’ reunions, excuses to be away for a night. Despite never having had any practice before, they were good, it turned out, at deceit.
But when the snatched meetings were no longer enough for them they opted to out themselves. It was painful and exhilarating all at once: the disclosures, the break-ups, the leave-takings, the logistics of new living and access arrangements, love doled out in increments in alternating weekends. At any moment she felt like one of them might hold up a hand, say it had been a mistake, that they’d been under some strange kind of enchantment, that they’d managed to break free of the spell. But neither of them did.
They kept the pact they had made. They met each other’s friends, the ones that had sided with each of them. They went out for dinner, a film screening, the theatre, they attended exhibitions. They acted like this new version of them was who they really were, like their former partners had been stifling them, preventing them from becoming their true selves, but a year or so later, they were just another couple, trying not to hurt each other, trying to be kind. It wasn’t an option to go back to their former lives. They had become each other’s means of escape.
They have seen everything they want to see at the Guggenheim so they walk to Accademia to take the vaporetto back. They are renting an out-of-the-way B&B on Giudecca, the cheapest they could find. As they wait at the stop, the wooden pontoon lilts and sways beneath their feet. The waterbus nears, and they watch, transfixed, as the marinaio lassoes the bollard on the pier, waits for the rope to take the strain, then go lax, unwinds the rope, rewinds it tighter, opens the gate once the side of the vessel is steady and secure alongside the pontoon.
“Attenti al passo!” the operator calls – the Venetian equivalent of “Mind the gap”. Silvia is fascinated by the speed and skill of them, their rhythm, their technique. They must learn to navigate watercraft the way landbound children learn how to ride bikes. Luca would love to see this, she thinks. She and Ralph step on to the boat.
They stand out on deck to catch the breeze. All week she’s been thinking about sensation: the dunt of the vaporetto when it hits the landing stage, the tremor under their feet; the spray of water through the open windows of the airport waterbus, the heat in the cabin, the shirts sticking to their backs; the smell of sweat and sunscreen; the sugary tang of limoncello, the salt and sweet of prosciutto and figs. A cruiser passes them; the boards beneath their feet creak and shift; the horizon tilts. The heat and the movement leave her feeling disorientated; the sense of lightheadedness lasts through the days. Such a slippery, watery place. Almost anything could happen here.
Back at their room, they shower and change, lie down on the cool of the sheets. They drop into sleep and wake again, reach out for each other in the shuttered dark. They know each other’s bodies well enough now to know what the other needs. Hands and fingers and legs entwine; lips and tongues meet skin; they fit together, slip apart, fall into sleep once more.
In the evening they walk out to a restaurant along the waterfront overlooking the lagoon. The tide has risen and the water is beginning to lap over the quayside. The waiting staff have placed wooden crates underneath the tables and the diners sit with their knees raised, feet balanced on the crates as the water washes over, then retreats again along the stone-edged banks.
It is quieter here, away from the crowded narrow streets of the city. Silvia and Ralph sit side by side, looking out over the lagoon towards the gleaming facade of the Salute, the pink lace marble of the Doge’s Palace, the red brick bell tower at St Mark’s. Clouds gather, lights begin to illuminate the buildings; they pick out the sheen of a copper spire, the gold of a weather vane. A second make-believe city is reflected, submerged, in the dark water below.
The sea laps a little higher, they sip their drinks, the sky darkens, the breeze begins to pick up. In the distance, they hear a rumble of thunder. A waiter wanders out, stands at the quayside, eyes turned towards the sky. From a neighbouring table, a napkin curls then lifts, is carried out across the water, drops into the lagoon. The waiter turns and there is movement behind them: the staff are clearing the settings from the unoccupied tables, are lowering the parasols, wrapping the fabric tight. Another rumble of thunder, this time overhead and the sky over the city lights up in a jagged flash, like a rip or a crack.
At the first drop of rain, the diners abandon their tables and gather together, glasses in hand, under the awning at the restaurant door. The wind picks up, catches the chair where Ralph has been seated, flings it back, sends it careering along the quayside. A waiter rushes out but fails to catch it. The chair slides and tips over the canal side, sinks into the lagoon. The rain pelts down.
“It’ll not last,” Ralph says. “It’ll pass over soon enough.”
And Silvia wonders what it would be like to turn the story back. Could you rewrite it with a different ending? Could you tamper with the script? Could you turn down the part that was presented to you? Might you say, in the big house, by the lake, by the trees, that you’re sorry, that seat is already taken? Could you say you don’t feel much like a walk today? Could you say no thanks, you won’t go to the studio; the writing is going well after all? Would it be possible to place yourself outside of the dream, to shake off the enchantment? Is it an option not to step into the water, to not go into the woods?
In the rose bed at home the pinwheel petals of the toy windmill must turn in the breeze and a small hand might reach out, to ask a question, maybe. “Where is Mamma?” Luca might say.
“She’s away for a while,” his father could answer. “She’s writing a story,” he could say.
Bernie McGill is the 2023 winner of the prestigious Edge Hill Short Story Prize for her collection This Train is For (No Alibis Press)
