Vampiro Di Venezia

He was late, although how she knew this was beyond her.  They had not arranged to meet; had never met.  The only things she knew beyond doubt about the elusive stranger were that he had followed her every night for the past two weeks of her travels and that he would make himself known to her tonight.

In Paris he had been on the steps of the Sacre Couer, studying her as she let herself be lulled by the melodic acoustics of the buskers in the gardens.  In Barcelona, he had stood at the side of a wooden dance floor as she moved in time to the pumping sounds accompanied by flashes of neon and pulsating, blinding strobes.  As she admired the ancient stones of the Parthenon in Athens, his shadow, long and obtrusive, had criss-crossed with her own as she paced from one corner of the ruin to the other, waiting until she had left before making his own, customarily swift, departure.  In Rome he had been on the Spanish steps, studying her as she skipped from the top to the bottom and back up again.  And now in Venice, on the last evening of her long-deserved trip, she knew he would finally show himself.  She could feel the now-familiar beat of his presence as he drew closer, perhaps later than he had intended to be. his footsteps had echoed her own as she strolled idly through the Ludouissi quarter of the Borghesse.

She would finally know the man; know his secret.

How wonderful that it would be in the most romantic city in the world, a place she never wanted to leave.

Sarah sat alone in the small, dim church of San Moise, lit only by a few sparse candles at the alter.  They surrounded a life-size plaster model of the Madonna, dressed in pastel-blue robe and opaque, yellow veil, arms outstretched in supplication.  She had never seen a face emote such sadness, yet so full of compassion.  So lifeless yet brimming with knowledge.

The church was empty save for a frail, grey haired old woman who knelt at the front pew with her head bowed and her hands clasped in front of her as she murmured her old, Latin prayers.  Every now and again she would stand, her eyes fixing beseechingly on the Madonna, and make the sign of the cross.  A plain, wooden rosary swayed wildly from her hand as she touched both shoulders.

Outside, the waters of the Grand Canal lapped lazily at the base of the buildings, knocking empty Gondolas against their moorings.  The reflections of the stars in the night sky fell upon the water’s surface like so many sequins, separating in a flurry whenever a water-bus or taxi ploughed through the murky water.  In Piazza San Marco, the paving slabs were wet and glistening still from the light drizzle that had fallen earlier in the evening.  The stone embodiment of Saints, painted in bold, lustrous colours stared down from their posts atop the Chiese San Marco.  They watched over the locals and tourists as they made their way with frivolity to parties in costumes of Harlequin and medieval gentry.  Elaborate face-masks concealed their drunken expressions as they prepared to send out the carnival season with a bang.

A thick, bluish mist had drifted in after the rain of a few hours previous and all that could be seen of the Issola della Giudecca was the impressive, illuminated tips of the Chiesa delle Zitelle.

Sarah sat pondering, her forehead lined and her eyes saddened.  How could she leave this city, or be so far away from it that the memory of it would be simply that?  No longer able to simply hop on a train and visit the Moulin Rouge in Paris, or the grand squares of Prague?  How could she return to a dead, grey city of granite which she hated, and a tight-fisted, free-fisted husband she despised even more?  What a beating he would give her if she returned and he found out that she had not been staying with her Mother, had instead inherited a small fortune from an aunt he knew nothing about and had spent every penny on a dream so old that she could not recall when it began.  What would he do when he found out that she had actually meant to escape him forever?

He might carry out his threat of the past eight years and crack her skull open with the marble ash-tray from the mantel.  He could very easily kill her, or worse still, leave her to live out the rest of her days as a drooling vegetable in a wheelchair, completely at his mercy.

If she returned, she may never have the courage or the opportunity to get away again, except only in dreams where she could still be slapped awake if she disturbed his slumber by accident.

This was her one and only chance of a happy and normal life.

Sarah had married Gary, against her parent’s wishes, a little over ten years ago; a June wedding that had been blessed with a soon-to-be-pregnant bride, a drunken groom and glorious sunshine.  She had known exactly what she was letting herself in for when she uttered the immortal words ‘I do’, but her naiveté had negated any common sense she may have had in her younger years.

He had promised her he would change when they were married.  He would change when she had the baby.  He would change when they had their own home instead of one room at her parent’s cottage.

Now they were the proverbial ‘old married couple’, and he still slapped her around if she spoke out of turn on a Saturday night when he came home from the pub, reeking of beer and smoke.  The baby had come and gone, its short life span of only eight months terminated by meningitis, and when their infant son had cried himself blue in the face Gary would still bellow at the top of his voice and give the pram a good, hard kick, as though that were the best way to silence a sick baby.  Their home had been theirs for the past nine years, but he treated it like a squat, refusing to pick up after himself or lift a duster.  She doubted very much if he even knew where she kept the vacuum-cleaner.

Her parents had been right.  The sorry excuse for a man who was now her husband had been a complete waste of space, and she could never forgive herself for remaining with him for so long.  He drank incessantly, and was high on cannabis more often than not.  The day Gary Rogers stayed sober and straight would be a fine one indeed, but she could not foresee ever witnessing that divine miracle.  She had accepted the slaps, the kicks to the thighs, or the blows to the kidneys whenever he was feeling particularly brutal, for long enough.  She could not imagine returning home and pretending she enjoyed his feeble attempts at love-making two or three times a week.  She would never again believe it when he whispered drunkenly in her ear ‘love ya, babes’ at the height of his own, brief orgasm.  There was as much emotion in his voice when he whispered those three, short words as there were when he demanded that his dinner be ready at a certain time.

But that was her old life, she had only now decided; ugly and mundane, with no chance of ever finding happiness if she returned to it.

She stared heavenwards, seeing not the beauty of the murals painted on the ceiling by a long-forgotten artist, but the deterioration; her life, the life of those she shared her misery with, the pointlessness of fighting those inevitable circles of fire which were her rights of passage.  She searched for answers to her turmoil in the depiction of angels and celestial images, but found none.  She knew deep down that she had her own decisions to make, and live by the choices whether they were right or wrong.  Her future, as her Mother had often told her, lay in her own hands.

Sarah felt the cold winds that blew in from the Adriatic chill the back of her neck before she realised the doors to the church had been opened and closed.  The candles at the alter flickered, sending shadows dancing a crazy jig across the floors and walls.  The crimson drapes which hung down both sides of the alter flapped and billowed slightly, and the old woman in the front pew turned around and stared intently at Sarah, her face gnarled with age and her eyes wide and fearful.  She made the sign of the cross again and went back to her mumbled prayers, more fervent than before.

Suddenly, he was there, in the pew beside her, so close she could smell the scent of winter on the wool of his coat and scarf.  There had been no footsteps to herald his arrival, which should have echoed loudly within such an enclosed and hollow place.  The wood of the pew had not groaned under the pressure of the added weight, and none of his garments had rustled as he seated himself at her side.  He smiled tenderly at her, and suddenly she realised why all this seemed so surreal; so beyond the realms of what she knew.  She had always known, since that first night in Paris and he had smiled that same smile as she danced to the music of the guitars playing long-forgotten gypsy melodies, flashing the two, ivory-white canines at her as t