Read Online Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice by Erica Jong - Free Book Online

when I realize we could all be crushed or killed or burned in this melee. But then I use my old stratagem of impersonating a brave character I myself have played. What would Lady Macbeth do? Would she succumb to fear? What would Rosalind or Portia do? Dress up in men’s clothes and solve the crisis! Well, then, I shall do no less—even in spike heels, a Merry Widow, and a Victorian gown!
    Fortunately, the side doors are opened and the panicky counts and countesses, players and playboys, can escape into the moonlight. Grigory makes his way through the crowd, pursued by screaming kids; Björn, Lilli, and Leonardo stagger bravely on, flanked by punk youngsters chanting, “We want Björn! We want Björn! We want Björn!” as if in a parody of something they have seen in an American movie.
    I rush to Björn’s side, take his other arm despite Lilli’s obvious disapproval, and whisper to Leonardo that he must summon the security guards at once.
    â€œHow are you?” I ask Björn, who makes his gentle way like a bemused Hamlet, his elegance somehow untouched despite the frenzy all about him.
    â€œâ€˜In sooth I know not why I am so sad,’” he says, quoting the first line of The Merchant of Venice .
    â€œâ€˜Your mind is tossing on the ocean,’” I say. “‘There where your argosies with portly sail / Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, / Or as it were the pageants of the sea, / Do overpeer the petty traffickers / That curtsy to them, do them reverence, / As they fly by them with their woven wings…’”
    â€œExactly,” says Björn, but his face looks ravaged.
    â€œThink of the next film, Björn—our film, Serenissima . And think of what all this publicity will do for this film. It will make you rich!”
    â€œBjörn never wanted to be rich,” says Lilli. “He wanted to be respected.”
    I laugh. “So did we all,” I say. “But this is show business!”
    The security guards arrive and officiously take charge of Björn and Lilli. I am pushed out of the way. The air is thick with the resinous, sweet smoke of pot and hash. A fire under these circumstances would be disastrous.
    For a moment I am locked within the grip of the crowd, pushed forward and back will-lessly by stampeding bodies. Then all at once a wave takes me, as if from the depths of the sea, and I am borne forward on it toward the door, down the teeming stairs where I clutch at the banister wildly, trying to keep my balance in my spike heels. Carlos Armada is behind me and he gallantly seizes my shoulders, steadying me on the stairs.
    â€œWhere is your Soviet escort?” he shouts.
    â€œAh, politics is his true love,” I say. “He is off somewhere making love to her.”
    I toss this off as a joke, not knowing for the moment how terribly true it is.
    Carlos says, “I survived the Civil War in Spain, Jessica, and I shall also survive the War of the Lido and the Biennale.”
    Arm in arm, we allow ourselves to be pushed down toward the exit. All dignity is lost in the squirming, screaming mass of bodies. At last we reach the bottom of the stairs, and the doors of the theater are in view. At last we are pushed through them along with the whooping masses of kids. As we burst out into the street and the sea air hits us, I truly feel reborn.
    There’s a full moon over the Lido and the breeze from the Adriatic is fresh. Motorcycles roar by, but even they cannot spoil the sense of relief I have at being free.
    For the first time we have a real event at the film festival, a real crisis, and the photographers are nowhere in sight. Where are they? Crowds of people are pouring out of the Palazzo del Cinema (later, I even hear that some people have been stampeded in the crowd and badly hurt), but there are no paparazzi at all to be seen now—only curiosity seekers and fans with little instant cameras snapping away at