Bitter Greens (9 page)

All my family died of a terrible fever, Pascalina said, tracing gentle circles on Margherita’s brow.

Where I came from, we called it
blitz-katarrh
, for it hit with the power and suddenness of a lightning bolt. One day, my mother complained of a sore throat and a headache. A few days later, she was dead, and my whole family was tossing and burning with fever. I did my best, I really did, but I was sick myself and only fourteen. And I had no one to help me. Soon, they were all dead: my parents, my grandparents, my little sister and my baby brother.

I cannot tell you how terrible it was. I did not know what to do. The corpse-bearers came and dragged their bodies away and flung them in the death-pit outside the town, but I was nailed up in my house and left there alone for forty days and forty nights. I think I went a little mad. I had nothing to do but pace our little house and pray, and sing myself lullabies. The days passed, and I marked them off on the hearth with a stick of charcoal. On the fortieth day, no one came to set me free. I smashed my way out through the attic window, to find the street deserted. Nearly everybody had died.

I foraged for food, stealing from the empty houses. In one house, there was a dead woman with a dead baby beside her. No one had come to
take them to the death-pit. I left them there and took some coins off the mantelpiece.

I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I walked to the main road and followed it downhill because it seemed the easiest way to go. I walked and walked, begging for food or work as I went. Sometimes, people were kind to me. Sometimes, they were cruel. Nowhere did I find happiness or tranquillity. My family’s deaths haunted me.

Two years after my family died, I came to Venice. It seemed like a magical city, floating on the lagoon as if conjured by an enchanter’s wand. I sat in the meadow and stared at it, picking meadow flowers from around my feet – clover and daisies and wild garlic – and making myself a wreath. I walked down to the shore, and a boy in a boat gave me a lift across the lagoon in return for a kiss.

By that time, I was dressed only in rags. My feet were bare, and I was so hungry I felt as if I was made of thistledown. But it was summer, and the paving stones of the squares were cool under my feet. I wandered through the city, going wherever my feet led me. I came to an ornate bridge, rising above its wide stone arch like a little city built on a rainbow. I climbed the steps till I reached the seventh archway, with its cocked stone hat, and there I stopped, leaning over the handrail. Far below, I saw my rippling reflection in the water and wondered who that girl was now … that thin-faced girl with a wreath of weeds on her fiery hair. She looked nothing like the Pascalina I knew. I think I began to weep. Suddenly, a face appeared beside mine in the water, the face of a young man.

‘Why do you weep?’ he asked.

I almost said that I was lonely, but then I was afraid he would misunderstand me, so I told him I was hungry.

He was quiet for a moment, then said, ‘Will you sell me the flowers in your hair? We rarely see such pretty flowers here.’

I nodded, and pulled the wreath off my head and gave it to him. In return, he gave me a small coin and told me where I could find the markets. I thanked him, and then waited till he was out of sight before creeping after him. I saw where he lived, in a shop hung with the most beautiful
and strange things I had ever seen, masks that glittered with jewels and gilt and bright paint. It was a treasure trove. Above the shop was a window, with flowers and herbs growing out of a box on the sill, and hanging on a line strung above my head was a fine carpet, which a kind-looking woman was beating with her broom. I could smell soup and freshly baked bread. It was such a homely picture that I began to weep again. I longed with all my heart for a home like that.

Still clutching the coin in my hand, I crept a little closer, wanting to peep in the window. I heard laughter and the sound of a teasing voice. Then the young man who had given me the coin replied, right above my head, ‘Very well, then, I admit it, she was pretty. She had the most beautiful red hair. That’s not why I bought the flowers, though. She looked so sad …’

I did not wait to hear more, afraid I would be caught eavesdropping under his window. I crept away down the alley, looking back to make sure no one saw me. When I turned to go, it was to find a woman was watching me from the end of the alleyway. She was very beautiful. She wore a dress like nothing I’d ever seen before, sewn with so many jewels that she glittered as she moved. Her hair was golden-red like mine, and she wore it hanging down her back like a young girl. Her eyes were exactly the same colour as her hair.

She smiled at me. ‘Are you hungry?’

I nodded, and she pulled open a doorway in the wall. Beyond was the most wonderful garden you could imagine, stretching cool and green and beautiful, towards a grand palace at the far end. There were orange trees in tubs, and all sorts of herbs and vegetables and flowers, all grown within green hedges clipped in the shapes of flowers themselves. More fruit trees were standing against the high stone walls. I saw apricots and plums and pomegranates and figs. The smell made my mouth water.

‘Help yourself,’ she said.

I did not rush heedlessly into that garden, I promise. I had grown wary over the past few years. I looked at her suspiciously. ‘What would you want in return?’

‘Just to talk to you.’

I looked longingly at the garden again, but I dared not cross the threshold. The walls were high, too high to climb over, and the door she held open was made of heavy wood as thick as my clenched fist, and crossed with ornate iron bands. A heavy iron key was in the lock. It would take her only a moment to turn it and lock me inside.

‘We can talk here,’ I said.

She smiled at me and stretched her hand through the doorway, plucking a fruit from a tree and passing it to me. It was a fig. Its skin was the colour of a twilight sky. I thought about how it would taste on my tongue, how its juice would trickle down my parched throat. For a moment longer, I resisted, then I remembered the coin in my hand. I offered it to her.

She was surprised and then amused. ‘You’re right. There’s a cost for everything. For that coin, you can have some bread and wine as well. Come in.’

The smell of fresh-baked bread was a torture to me. When she took my coin and went through the doorway, I followed her, cramming the fig into my mouth. She led me through the garden to the terrace, where a table stood under some grapevines. There was a decanter of wine there. She poured me a glass and rang a bell, and soon servants came with trays of food. I ate my fill, for the first time since my family had died. As I ate, she asked me questions.

‘What is your name?’

‘Pascalina.’

‘How old are you, Pascalina?’

‘Seventeen,’ I lied.

‘Are you still a maiden?’

I blushed and hung my head. I have told you not everyone was kind to me when I was begging on the road. Well, that is all you need to know. I think she may have guessed what had happened, for she was quiet for a while.

‘My name is Selena Leonelli.’ She poured me more wine. ‘I am a courtesan. All you see here – my house, my garden, my dress, my jewels, my servants – I have it all because I sell my body.’

I must have flinched back. I had heard stories of women who tricked or
forced young girls into prostitution, and I was suddenly sure that was why she had enticed me into her garden.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Signorina Leonelli said. ‘I am a courtesan because my mother died when I was just a child. I was forced to take up her profession or starve to death. I would never force anyone to do the same against their will. You’re lovely – you would do well if that’s what you wanted – but I think by your face that’s not what you want.’

I shook my head.

‘What do you want, Pascalina?’

I thought of the kind young man who had given me the coin, and his house in the alleyway with the flowerpots on the sill and the carpet on the washing line, and the glimpse I had seen of a shop like a treasure trove. ‘I want a home. And a man to love me and only me.’

‘I can help you,’ Signorina Leonelli said. ‘But you must promise to pay the cost when the time comes.’

A week later, I waited on the Rialto Bridge with a bunch of meadow daisies in my hand. I had washed my face and my hair in the well in the centre of the
campo
, and it hung down my back in soft red curls. A few other men approached me, thinking I wanted to sell my body, but I spurned them angrily. I was waiting for the young man who had given me the coin.

He came at last. He was tall and handsome, with dark curls and a noble nose, dressed in a fine red doublet. I went forward shyly, holding out my flowers. ‘Buy my daisies, kind sir?’

His eyes crinkled in amusement. ‘What is your name?’ he asked me as he fished in his pocket for a coin.

‘Pascalina.’

‘An Easter child, are you?’

I nodded, though my eyes stung with sudden tears as I thought of my parents, who had loved me and named me, now gnawed bones lying tumbled in a death-pit.

‘You’re a very vision of springtime beauty,’ he said gently as he gave me the coin.

As I passed him the flowers, my fingers brushed his. I jumped, feeling a spark arc between us like the static I get when I brush my hair.

He looked at me intently. ‘Where do you live?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘But you must live somewhere.’

‘Wherever I can sleep. Inside a church, or in a doorway, or under a bridge.’

‘Have you no family?’

‘They’re all dead.’

‘You poor thing.’ He sounded genuinely sorry.

‘God must have had his reasons. I can’t think what they could be, but I have to believe this else I’d hate him. For taking them, I mean.’

He nodded, looking grave.

‘I wish I’d died too,’ I said with passion.

‘Don’t say that. It’s better to be alive, isn’t it?’

I shook my head and looked away.

‘I’m sorry. I hope … I’m sure things will get better.’

I shrugged. After a while, he walked away, leaving me clutching his coin.

A week later, I waited for him again, another bunch of daisies in my hand. This time, he came towards me eagerly, saying, ‘Pascalina, I’ve been worried about you. Is all well with you?’

My heart was warmed. I smiled at him and nodded.

‘That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile.’

‘It’s the first time I’ve felt like smiling. Will you buy my flowers?’

‘I’d love to.’

We stood talking a while, of the weather, and the flowers, and what I planned to buy with my coin, and then he said, ‘I must go, I’ll be late. Will you … will you be here again?’

I nodded. As he walked away, he glanced back over his shoulder and our eyes met. He smiled, and I smiled back.

A week later, it was Midsummer’s Eve. I went to the meadows and picked as big a bunch of daisies as I could find, then I waited for him on the bridge. He came hurrying towards me, smiling eagerly.

‘I was wondering,’ I said, after we had talked for a while, ‘if you would like to see where I live.’

He stepped back, frowning.

I drew myself up proudly. ‘I was not wanting to … to sell you my body, if that’s what you think. Would I be here on the streets, selling meadow flowers, if that was my game? I’d be living in a fine house, dressed in silk and eating larks’ tongues. I could make a fortune as a courtesan. I know, one told me so. Yet here I am, in rags, and barefoot, eating scraps from the gutter.’ My eyes full of tears, I turned to go.

He caught my arm. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.’

‘You’ve been kind,’ I said, not looking at him. ‘You didn’t need to buy my flowers. I wanted to thank you.’

He let go of my arm and bowed. ‘I’m sorry. Of course I’ll come with you.’

As we walked down the bridge, I said shyly, ‘I don’t know your name.’

He smiled at me. ‘It’s Alessandro.’

‘That’s nice. I like it.’

‘It was my father’s father’s name,’ Alessandro said. ‘And probably his father’s father’s name too.’

‘Come to the market with me. I’ll show you what I do with the coin that you give me.’

I bought fresh bread, a head of garlic, a small pat of butter in muslin and a fish from the fishmonger. He carried this for me, and I smiled to see him with a bunch of daisies in one hand and a fish dangling from the other. He smiled back, then laughed, and almost, almost, I laughed too.

I took him to the little nest I had made for myself in a disused porch of an old church. The doorway was locked, with dusty cobwebs swaddling the keyhole. I had dragged an old door to cover the entrance, and other old bits of timber and slate so it looked just like a rubbish pile. Alessandro had to crawl inside on his hands and knees. He stood up, dusting off his hose, and looked about him, a strange expression on his face.

I had done my best to clean the porch, making a broom from twigs and finding an old bucket to fill with water at the well in the square. To one
side, I had made a hearth from a circle of old stones, and there I had laid a fire. On the other side was a bed of old curtains and cushions, as clean as I could contrive. There was a bunch of flowers in an old jar on the window alcove above the bed – daisies, yarrow, fennel, lovage and wild roses – which I had gathered in the woods and meadows of the mainland. All were flowers of love and longing, the courtesan had told me. She had also given me a squat red candle, and some myrtle and rose oil to rub into it.