Read Online Alena: A Novel by Rachel Pastan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rachel Pastan
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lamenters and the pale Christ and all the characters from those ancient stories who, struggling through their difficult lives, could have had no idea that they were shaping the history, hopes, terrors, habits, and morals of half the world.
Without artists, would this heritage have descended to us? Would the words and deeds—the revelation—have survived the arduous journey into the present without the painters, the mosaic workers, the storytellers, the stone carvers, the poets, the singers, the workers in stained glass? Wasn’t it art, I thought—as I watched Bernard open a handsome black wallet and remove a handful of lire—that had been the carrier of the divine? Popes had understood that. The Emperor Constantine. Monks in damp Irish monasteries illuminating the Word. Bernard folded the lire and passed them to the guard. The man’s eyebrows twitched as he tucked the packet of bright paper into the recesses of his uniform.
At our red-brick Methodist church in LaFreniere, everything—the pews, the altar, the garish windows, the hulking candlesticks, the leather hymnals—had been ugly. Why was that? What if the congregation had engaged real artists? Did such a thing happen anymore, anywhere in America? Why were artists considered heathen, dangerous, heretical, sly? Since when? Since Andy Warhol? Since Paul Gauguin? Since Manet and his
Olympia
—was it the fault of the French?
Another group of tourists filed in. Bernard came back to me and put his hand on my arm, its pressure conveying the thrill of the suave, illicit transaction. “We can stay as long as you like,” he said.
I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek with my burning lips.
6.
A ND HERE I WAS AGAIN, rising through the dark in the clanking elevator—my ungrateful heart, too, clanking—to face my benefactress. It was almost midnight. When we finally left the Scrovegni Chapel, we had walked through Padua, seen the cathedral and the university, the green parks and the Orto Botanico. We had dined at a small restaurant specializing in Venetian cuisine—risotto with peas, fish with olives,
baicoli
(from the local word for the sea bass these biscuits are shaped like), and zabaglione—then driven back to Venice in the soft black night. On the boat up the Grand Canal from the Tronchetto, the floating city shimmered like a city in the clouds, shifting and unreal.
In the fourth-floor corridor, however, reality returned. The hallway was dim and still, smelling of old carpet and cleaning fluid, the striped wallpaper faintly damp to the touch. In my room, the light on the phone was blinking. I had three messages, increasingly vexed, all from Louise. Well, she had the right. She had no doubt expected me back for dinner, though she hadn’t actually said so. Still, I was indignant. Listening to her angry recorded squawk (so like my mother’s scolding perorations), my body still reverberating with the thrill of the day, my fear of the consequences of my disappearance was tempered by the cold disdain that rose in my throat like bile. I stood at the connecting door, knocked, tried the knob. It turned.
The room had been neatened since the morning. The bottles and glasses had been cleared away, the floor vacuumed, the scattered clothes folded out of sight. A lamp on the desk cast a small circle of light by which I could make out a suitcase in the middle of the floor, half full, and also the shadowy shapes of three women huddled together like witches, the one lying in the tidied bed and the other two in chairs pulled close to either side of it.
“At last!” Sarabeth said.
“Where on earth?” April broke in.
“They found a body floating in the canal,” Louise pronounced slowly, her voice hoarse. “It could have been you.”
“No,” I said loudly into the silence. “That was a prostitute.”
“How do you know that?” Sarabeth demanded.
I thought. “I heard some people talking.”
“I would have felt responsible!” Louise cried. “What would
Without artists, would this heritage have descended to us? Would the words and deeds—the revelation—have survived the arduous journey into the present without the painters, the mosaic workers, the storytellers, the stone carvers, the poets, the singers, the workers in stained glass? Wasn’t it art, I thought—as I watched Bernard open a handsome black wallet and remove a handful of lire—that had been the carrier of the divine? Popes had understood that. The Emperor Constantine. Monks in damp Irish monasteries illuminating the Word. Bernard folded the lire and passed them to the guard. The man’s eyebrows twitched as he tucked the packet of bright paper into the recesses of his uniform.
At our red-brick Methodist church in LaFreniere, everything—the pews, the altar, the garish windows, the hulking candlesticks, the leather hymnals—had been ugly. Why was that? What if the congregation had engaged real artists? Did such a thing happen anymore, anywhere in America? Why were artists considered heathen, dangerous, heretical, sly? Since when? Since Andy Warhol? Since Paul Gauguin? Since Manet and his
Olympia
—was it the fault of the French?
Another group of tourists filed in. Bernard came back to me and put his hand on my arm, its pressure conveying the thrill of the suave, illicit transaction. “We can stay as long as you like,” he said.
I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek with my burning lips.
6.
A ND HERE I WAS AGAIN, rising through the dark in the clanking elevator—my ungrateful heart, too, clanking—to face my benefactress. It was almost midnight. When we finally left the Scrovegni Chapel, we had walked through Padua, seen the cathedral and the university, the green parks and the Orto Botanico. We had dined at a small restaurant specializing in Venetian cuisine—risotto with peas, fish with olives,
baicoli
(from the local word for the sea bass these biscuits are shaped like), and zabaglione—then driven back to Venice in the soft black night. On the boat up the Grand Canal from the Tronchetto, the floating city shimmered like a city in the clouds, shifting and unreal.
In the fourth-floor corridor, however, reality returned. The hallway was dim and still, smelling of old carpet and cleaning fluid, the striped wallpaper faintly damp to the touch. In my room, the light on the phone was blinking. I had three messages, increasingly vexed, all from Louise. Well, she had the right. She had no doubt expected me back for dinner, though she hadn’t actually said so. Still, I was indignant. Listening to her angry recorded squawk (so like my mother’s scolding perorations), my body still reverberating with the thrill of the day, my fear of the consequences of my disappearance was tempered by the cold disdain that rose in my throat like bile. I stood at the connecting door, knocked, tried the knob. It turned.
The room had been neatened since the morning. The bottles and glasses had been cleared away, the floor vacuumed, the scattered clothes folded out of sight. A lamp on the desk cast a small circle of light by which I could make out a suitcase in the middle of the floor, half full, and also the shadowy shapes of three women huddled together like witches, the one lying in the tidied bed and the other two in chairs pulled close to either side of it.
“At last!” Sarabeth said.
“Where on earth?” April broke in.
“They found a body floating in the canal,” Louise pronounced slowly, her voice hoarse. “It could have been you.”
“No,” I said loudly into the silence. “That was a prostitute.”
“How do you know that?” Sarabeth demanded.
I thought. “I heard some people talking.”
“I would have felt responsible!” Louise cried. “What would
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