A Venetian Affair by Andrea Di Robilant

forever.
    Giustiniana’s dramatic break cleared the air. Within days the poisonous atmosphere that had overwhelmed them dissolved and they were in each other’s arms again, filled with love and desire. Giustiniana even laughed at her own foibles:
    Oh God, my Memmo, how can I express these overflowing
emotions? How can I tell you that . . . you are my true happiness,
my only treasure? Lord, I am crazy. Crazy in the extreme. And
what about all that happened to me in the last few days? Do you
feel for me? . . . With my suspicions, my jealousy, my love. . . .
Only you can understand me because you know my heart and the
power you have over it. . . . I don’t know how my mood has
changed so quickly, and why I even run the risk of telling you
this! No, I really don’t know what’s happening to me. . . . Anyway, we’ll see each other tomorrow. Meanwhile I think I’ll just go straight to bed. After having been wrapped up in sweet thoughts
about my Memmo and so full of him, I couldn’t possibly spend
the rest of the evening with the silly company downstairs!
    Andrea was so eager to hold Giustiniana in his arms again that even the twenty-four-hour wait now seemed unendurable to him. Alone in his room at Ca’ Memmo he let himself drift into erotic fantasies, which he promptly relayed to his lover:
    Oh, my little one, my little one, may I entertain you with my
follies? Do you have a heart to listen? I am so full of dreams
about you that the slightest thing is enough to put me into a cosmic mood. For example, I read one of your letters . . . and I focus
on a few characters in your handwriting and I begin to stare at
them and I tell myself: here my adorable Giustiniana wrote . . .
and sure enough I see your hand, your very own hand, oh Lord, I
kiss your letter not finding anything else to kiss, and I press it
against me as if it were you, oh, and I hug you in my mind, and
it’s really too much; what to do? I cannot resist any longer. Oh my
Lord, oh my Lord, now another hand of yours is relieving me, oh,
but I can’t go on. . . . I cannot say more, my love, but you can
imagine the rest. . . . Oh Lord, oh Lord. . . . I speak no more, I
speak no more.
    In such moments of playful abandon Andrea felt he was capable of doing “even the most irresponsible thing . . . yes . . . I feel this urge to take you away and marry you.” And when he opened up that way, Giustiniana always gave herself completely: “My Memmo, I shall always be yours. You enchant me. You overwhelm me. I will never find another Memmo with all the qualities and all the defects that I love about you. We are made for each other so absolutely. All that needs to happen is for me to become less suspicious and for you to moderate that slight flightiness, and then we’ll be happy.”
    After these moments of ecstasy, however, the gloominess of their situation would steal over their hearts once more. Andrea wondered how their relationship could possibly survive. “We will never have a moment of peace and quiet. Meanwhile, you, believing as you do in everything you hear. Good Lord, I don’t know what to do anymore! You will never change as long as I have to be away from you. I see that it is impossible for you to believe that I am all yours, as I am, and it is impossible to change your mother, or your situation, so what am I to do?” he asked Giustiniana with quiet desperation. “I don’t know how to hold on to you.”

CHAPTER Three
    In early December 1755, news quickly spread that Catherine Tofts, the elusive wife of Consul Smith, had died after a long illness. She had once been an active and resourceful hostess, often giving private recitals in her drawing room. There is a lovely painting by Marco Ricci, one of Smith’s favorite artists, of Catherine singing happily with a chamber orchestra. But the picture was painted shortly after her marriage to Smith and before the death of her son. As the years went by, she was seen less and less (Andrea never mentions her in