Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [120]
He guides her by one bony elbow, a stalwart tugboat pushing the QE II (although he is more cigarette speedboat than tug). His eyelids flicker like lizards’ tails when he sees me. Apri, they say.
Julian and I float up to greet the principessa and my “gondolier.”
She assesses my dress, a sea-blue Emanuel of London, with big sleeves and a boned bodice that pushes up my breasts for Renzo’s delectation. Julian is in his Hong Kong tux, made by a twenty-four-hour tailor specifically for this fete. It has a scarlet lining, a scarlet cummerbund, and matching bow tie.
Julian bows to Renzo, Rumpelstiltskin bowing to Cinderella’s prince. He has no idea that this slithery, small-hipped apparition with the tousled ebony curls is my “gondolier,” who flicks his eyelids, saying, Dai, dai, dai.
“Piacere,” says the principessa, holding out a manicured hand, ablaze with jewels.
And then we’re swept away on the crest of the crowd, sweating in their finery beneath a thousand dripping candles.
The heat of all these bodies is amazing! I think of un-deodorized sixteenth-century Venice, when this palazzo was new, and I am not so sure I’d take a ticket in a time machine and go back to that epoch, if invited.
And here is André McCrae, swept up on the tide, wearing a wonderful pair of tails and still calling me “Tsatskeleh!”
“This is Julian Silver, the composer,” I say to André, “my dearest friend.”
“What are you doin’ here, Silver?” asks André. “You’re supposed to be on Mars!”
“Leila’s saving Venice, and I’m saving Leila,” says Julian.
And our laughter sweeps us up the red-carpeted stairs.
Candles blaze, people sweat, ten-thousand-dollar dresses are trampled and torn beneath feet caressed in custom-made shoes. I think of how much better all this will sound in the society pages than it is in life. In newsprint, there will be no sweat, no small talk—just glittering names and glittering places to provoke the envy of those lucky ones who stayed home.
But that is why they’re here, isn’t it? To provoke the envy of those who stayed home.
A world of winners provoking the envy of the losers (who are really the winners in some sense, because they get to stay home). Oh, how complex it all is—and how simple!
Up the stairs we go, slowly, slowly, piano, piano, waiting on line to be photographed so that the losers can envy us when those photographs appear.
Thank heavens you can’t photograph sweat!
And who is that before me on the stair? A jaunty man in a little tux, with a resplendent wife in cherry-pink chiffon.
Can it be Lionel Schaeffer? And how will I ever greet him after the night of the black candle?
He turns suddenly and peers down the stairs as if he has caught my thought.
“Leila!” he calls gaily, as if Mistress Ada did not exist.
“Lionel!” I call gaily, as if Mistress Ada did not exist.
Is this what we call Western civilization—to pretend not to acknowledge our secret lives?
In a room ablaze with candles, people turn and group and talk and turn away—like figures on a music box, doing their stilted and repetitive dance.
Oh, how boring it all is!
At least I am with Julian, so I can say, “Oh, how boring it all is!” He laughs, assenting, then fetches me a Bellini from the bar. I put it down without taking a sip. I know that if I sip, my head will only start to pound and before long my sane mind will desert me.
“I can’t drink anymore,” I tell Julian.
“Then don’t,” he says. “In the Trobriands, we’ll chew betel.”
“I can’t wait,” I say.
And Lionel Schaeffer and his lovely wife, Lindsay, are suddenly before us in the crowd.
Lionel opens the jacket of his tux and points. “Turnbull and Chung,” he says.
Lindsay makes a hideous face.
“Can’t take him anyplace,” she says.
I wonder if she has a clue about Mistress Ada, his visit to Litchfield County, any secret place in Lionel’s soul. Apparently not. But she is wearing the Paloma Picasso necklace of peridot and diamonds, and I am not, so apparently that is the price of her not knowing—and for all my knowing, my throat is bare. Women are paid to