Chapter 6

She grabbed my suitcase from me and set it at the foot of the bed, and then immediately went to the chilled champagne and popped it. The cork went up into the crystal chandelier above us and some of the fizz splattered on the parquet floor. Lara giggled and filled the flutes and handed me one.

“It’s not exactly a short train ride to Venice,” she said, “So we’ll have to at least make it enjoyable.”

The train would go to Graz first before crossing into Italy and wind its way through the gentle Alps that strung across the border of Italy and Slovenia. The next day, we would finally stop in Mestre, an industrial commune just across from the islands of Venice on the mainland side, from where, Lara explained, we would take a boat straight to her villa on the Grand Canal. The full Venice experience, she promised. I had always dreamed of visiting Venice, so the promise of such an exquisite experience excited me immensely. If this was how she planned to soften me up, it would work. Good thing that was also my plan all along.

As we drank, I went on the offensive, pelting her with probing questions. To which Lara answered enthusiastically, candidly as she swirled her champagne. I learned, for example, about her rich and diverse lineage. She was descended from a peculiar Venetian nobility.

“Spying is in my blood, you know. Rumor has it, my ancestors were spies for the Consiglio dei Dieci — the Council of Ten, and I may very well be related to Casanova himself.”

“That would explain a lot.”

The Venice villa had been in her family for centuries. For aristocratic Russians, the family tree is bent strangely by history. I could see the tinge of Italian in her face now. There was a soft elegance not a Slavic sharpness to her cheeks, romance in her eyes, not piercing toughness, and her sunglow warmed whatever room she entered.

I learned much more about Lara as we plied into our second champagne bottle. She was married briefly to a Czech poet and novelist, much against the wishes of her father. Quickly into the marriage, she begrudgingly accepted that her father’s suspicions were accurate. “I swore off love after the divorce,” she said. “It was a very depressing time for me.”

Her mother died in a car crash in 1969. She was fourteen then. That too seemed to affect her greatly, but she spoke only shortly and vaguely about the tragedy.

She was disarming with her intimacy — ready to share any private detail about her own life without asking for reciprocation. But this was, as George had warned, a common espionage tactic. Even if the things she told me were true, they may well be craftily useless information, or otherwise strategic misdirection, as a magician might use against her audience. I must be ready to accept that her divorce and her deceased mother were fabrications. In any case, I was enamored by her, still on a cresting high from our sexual encounter last week so I accepted these stories into my heart unconsciously.

By dinner, the sun had dipped far below the rugged jigsaws of the Southern Austrian alps. We ate a three-course meal in a glamorous dining car and watched glittering alpine villages pass us slowly by in the moonlit twilight as the train made its winding way through the valleys between the grand peaks. By this point, I was deeply and pleasantly buzzed not just from the champagne, but Italian white wine, a Vitovska, fresh seafood and a wonderful risotto. Lara fed me luxury like fattening feed to geese, preparing me for the slaughter. But nothing about her behavior was predatory. She was gracious, lively, and carefree. I secretly hoped that her confession of being a spy was nothing more than a playful ruse, or a quirky fantasy, that maybe she was in fact simply an upper-crust Soviet girl making the best of her youth in the hedonistic West.

After dinner, we went back to the cabin and lay in bed without getting out of our clothes, laying atop the bedsheets to continue our meandering conversations that had nothing to do with spycraft and everything to do with two young women falling in love with each other. Above us, the ceiling was glass so that we could see the countless stars and the milky way, and silver clouds that hung in whisps like glowing nebulae. Lara had turned down the cabin lights, so that only a low orange glow from a single table light illuminated the cabin. Lying next to me, she was a warm silhouette. I felt her breathing and smelled faint perfume on her neck. Like freshly cut roses. She drew into me. I drew in closer to her. We watched each other in the private dark, with silent, unremitting attention better than any conversation or lovemaking. She curled her fingers into mine and gradually, lulled by the gentle rumble of the train, we fell asleep.

We arrived at the Mestre train station in the golden hour. Morning sunlight strung through the sticky sea mist, hurrying the mist into the shadows. Two porters helped us with our luggage, to a taxi, which took us to the nearby marina. Lara walked over to a tarp covered boat on the floating pier, yanked the tarp off to reveal a sleek boat of glistening rosewood.

“Yep. Well, my father’s.”

“Well, of course. I should have guessed.”

She crumpled the tarp up into a tight ball and tossed it into the bow cabin and held her hand out to me to lead me onto the boat. The porters placed our luggage in the stern, and Lara started the engine and deftly unmoored us and drove us out into the wide Venice lagoon. She punched the throttle, and soon we were skimming effortlessly across the flat artichoke green water.

Boatmen in flat bottomed boats pulled on never-ending gillnets dotted with tiny flashing jewels of fish, piling the wet nets into their boat. Men stood waist deep in the shallow water, in black rubber aprons, collecting oysters or mussels from sunken crates. Though it was only nine in the morning, the sun was already bearing down oppressively. The thin fishermen were leathered golden brown by it. Watching their back breaking work exhausted me. But the Adriatic breeze was pleasant. My loose hair flapped wildly while we jetted towards the old city. Lara turned the helm with one hand while the other held her baseball cap securely to her head. She pointed out all the landmark features of the islands — large domed cathedrals and palazzos that stood tall among the salmon red and whitewashed buildings and the small ristorantes and cafes she most enjoyed. The terrazzas were filled with lounging people in cool colorful summer clothes and straw sun hats. On the right side was Giudecca, an island full of shipyards and dockyards and a prominent but abandoned building, the Molina Stucky – a flour mill and pasta factory. We passed into the shadows of the basilica di Santa Maria as we entered the Gran Canale, passed a dock near the basilica and near the Ponte dell’Accademia where black and white striped gondoliers sat at the backs of their boats and joked and chatted loudly with one another as they waited in the bleach bright sun for tourist clients. She turned right abruptly into a single slip in front of a beautiful rust-red building.

After tying up the boat, unlocked an iron gate, and swung it open to reveal a spacious, sunny courtyard blushing with lemon trees, gnarled olive trees and weather-smoothed marble statues. Sparrows in birth baths chirped cheerfully.

The villa itself was aesthetically a charming, chaotic mess, full of dusty and crooked artwork and vases and marble statues. The marble floor was cracked in places and worn smooth. The messiness seemed preserved as if to clean or organize any of it were to commit sacrilege. The same could be said for the rest of the city. It was all a beautiful ruin.

Lara pulled back the thick red curtains and opened the tall veranda windows. The outside salty freshness sucked the dusty air out of the spacious room.

“This is magnificent,” I remarked.

“Come, there’s not a minute to lose,” Lara said. “I have a lot to show you. Let’s put your stuff in your room, then we’ll have breakfast at San Marco. Then, the beach!”

“What about seeing the rest of the city?” I protested.

“We’ll see it after the beach. I promise, you’ll get to experience all of Venice before the weekend is over.”

Lara put on a thin cotton dress that showed through to her sharp V-shaped and neon pink bikini, a floppy wide-brimmed sun hat, and a pair of wayfarers. I tried matching her in her stylish comfort. A short flowery skirt, a white halter top. She took out her Nikon. Snapped a photo of me.

“Are you going to lug that around everywhere?”

“Of course. I want photos to remember you by.”

We went at once back to the boat. She used the mooring line against the bollard and pulled the boat out into the canal, while simultaneously spinning the helm of the boat to spin us out parallel to the flow of traffic. She tossed the line aside, then gunned the throttle and merged us into the slow line of barges and the public vaporetti taxis.

“The water is your natural habitat.”

“Yes, quite so,” Lara replied.

She continued to prove it, expertly weaving in and out between the slower moving water taxis and buses, past the wooden Ponte dell’accademia, past the pearl grey Basilica, and into a mooring near the Piazza di San Marco, near the Campanile, a tall red, white bell tower with a green patina roof.

The waiter, an old man in a white tuxedo seemed to know Lara. He came to her abruptly, gave her two kisses on the cheek and spoke a rapid, excited Italian and squeezed her cheeks.

“He’s been here as long back as I remember,” she explained. He looked at her the way a nonno his grandchild. He brought us flaky cornetti with apricot jam and cappuccino. He lingered while we ate, talking with Lara, presumably catching up with life since the last time she’s been in Venice.

When we were finished with our breakfast, we went back out on the lagoon. Lara at the helm, confidently making her way through the channel buoys towards Lido. Magnificent, gleaming sailing and motor yachts dotted the lagoon. Vaporetti and fishing boats chugged slowly along their routes.

Lido di Venezia is a long, thin island, full of grand hotels and baths built mostly in the 19th and early 20th century. It was the outermost island and acted as a protective barrier for the city against the sea. On the seaward side, a stretch of golden sand beach littered with parasols and beach chairs and where people come to sun themselves and escape the summer heat of the city.

We arrived at the Hotel Excelsior. In the marina, a well-groomed attendant in a clean white shirt and white shorts tied the boat up and helped us out and escorted us to some lounging chairs, where we were met by who I can only describe as a butler. Lara ordered an Aperol spritz for both of us and when the butler was on his way back up to the hotel bar to get our order, Lara fanned her hand and exclaimed, “Let’s cool off before we die.”

She pulled off her cotton dress. “Come to the water with me,” she beckoned as she walked towards the sea. I couldn’t help but gawk at her heart-shaped hips swaying elegantly, her butt and thighs rippling with each cat-like step she took towards the water.

I followed suit shortly, pulled my sun dress off my swimsuit, feeling rather self-conscious and inadequate compared to Lara the Coco Chanel supermodel. Though I couldn’t say I was too bad looking myself, I was a bit too pale for a sun goddess, and I’d likely end the day looking like a sun-ripened tomato.

We waded for a few minutes out in the shallow water.

“So why don’t you just live here, Lara?”

Lara shrugged. “Venice can be a bit much if you linger here. You can become quite aimless. I find that to be a dangerous lifestyle for me. Vienna is beautiful too.”

“And has plenty of targets for the KGB,” I added.

“Of course,” she replied.

“Well, I’d be tempted to stay here forever. Venice is beautiful.”

“You’re welcome to come whenever you want,” said Lara. “Be my guest.”

“Anyways, Chicago seems to be a nice city too.”

“I would love to see it,” Lara said and added, “I love jazz.”

“Have you ever been to the states?”

“What would you like to see there?”

“Well, New York City first of all.”

A dreamy smile crossed her face, and her eyes grew wistful. She sunk chin-deep into the water and her hair floated in the gentle waves.

“I want to see the Statue of Liberty. And go to the top of the Empire State building. And I would very much love to go in the fall and winter to see the Macy parade, and the Christmas tree at Rockefeller.”

She had laid out all of the typical New York tourist traps, so specifically, so intently, as if she had thought through these many times. She continued, “But of course, even more than that, I want to see the desert. The Grand Canyon. Utah. Taos, most of all.”

I snorted in laughter. “Taos? Taos, New Mexico?”

“Is that so strange?”

I shrugged. “Just very random.”

“I saw photos of it in a book once. Oh, it was wonderful. It looked like nothing I’ve ever seen. Like it was a different planet. A beautiful planet. Even through the photos I could tell there is a mystical energy there. I told myself I would see it if I ever had a chance to go to America. Maybe you can be my tour guide,” Lara replied. “Maybe we can go to Taos together.”