What Casanova Told Me by Susan Swan Page A

when I say this, Luce, but your mother’s New Age thinking was never something I was very comfortable with.
    Luce noted the time of her appointment with Goldoni at the Sansovinian and logged off. She closed her iBook and turned to look for Asked For Adams’ journal. It was right where she’d left it, in its box on the bedside table. She lifted it out, and this time she also took out the Arabic manuscript. She peered at it curiously. Inside its tea-brown leather cover, dense flawless symbols spilled across its margin-free pages. She would look at it more carefully later. She opened the journal to the next entry.
    April 18, 1797
    The day is dank and cool and the lagoon tide has overflowed, wetting the feet of peevish Venetians obliged to cross the Piazza San Marco on raised planking.
    Early this morning, I went to the Florian to meet Monsieur Casanova and give him back his journal. Father had taken Francis and me to dinner yesterday evening after his meeting with Monsieur Pozzo so I had no time to read it. Using hand gestures, I conveyed to the proprietor of the café that I wanted a fried doughnut. I seated myself, and without the slightest hesitation began to read the diary he had loaned me. On the first page, in large, sprawling handwriting, its author began by claiming that he was the cause of all his own misfortunes, as well as his fortunes. I was so taken by his candour that I conveyed his words immediately to my own journal.
    “My vices never burdened anyone but me, and seduction was never characteristic of my behaviour because I never seduced anyone except unconsciously, always being seduced myself first.”
    No American man would make such a boast, I thought, although I myself know nothing of seduction. On the next page, I found the author’s philosophy of travel under “Casanova’s Advice to Travellers”:
    “The traveller must start his journey with the same fervour he feels when choosing a lover, knowing that a world of possibilities awaits him. And if his choice goes awry, he must quickly select a fresh destination. Just as the best remedy for heartbreak is a new lover, so it is with travel.”
    I grew aware of someone watching me. The journal’s owner stood beside my table in his thin jacket of corn-coloured satin, though the dampness that spring morning was extreme. I noticed a fresh patch on his sleeve and wondered what industrious female hands had worked to make his careworn suit last out another season.
    “I believe you have something of mine.” His voice was deep and lively, and I felt a stir of excitement although he is too old to be a suitor for someone like myself. “May I join you?” he asked. “The rains are inescapable.” He lifted his foot so I could see the mud encrusted on its buckle, and smiled. “Please excuse my shoes, Miss Adams.”
    “Think nothing of it, monsieur,” I said. They were the same shoes he had worn as “Aunt Flora” on the public boat, an old square-toed pair with clogs fastened to their soles so that the wearer’s feet could rest evenly on the cobbles.
    “Did you read it?” he asked, pointing at the journal.
    “Sir, I read only the opening page with your comparison of travel to lovemaking.”
    “Do you think my comparison is a mistake, Puritan girl?”
    I knew he used the word Puritan to tease me. “Please do not address me so. I am no more a Puritan than yourself.” He widened his eyes, but I resolved not to falter. “I was raised on the writings of the Roman stoics. Cicero was my uncle’s favourite and Seneca is the philosopher whose ethics I learned from my aunt. Perhaps you know him?”
    He shrugged. “I find Seneca’s philosophy too severe, Miss Adams. Why should I maintain a contrived indifference to pain, or for that matter—pleasure?”
    “The virtuous man should be indifferent to both and so learn to master suffering.” I had a copy of Seneca’s
De Beneficiis
in my travelling satchel. I pulled it out and placed it on the table. “This is