This fiction lasts about 6 minutes. Enjoy the pictures.

Let me paint you a picture.

Or better yet …

Let Francesco Guardi paint you a picture.

It is the twilight of the eighteenth century and the wheels of revolution are turning across the world.

Venice will be no exception:

The republic that has lasted a millennium will soon be transformed by a conquering French army …

Transformed into a monarchy.

But for now La Serenissima appears … very much herself.

You are looking at Il Ridotto - Europe’s first public casino -

Now…

Look at the woman with the blue ruff.

Perhaps you barely noticed her at first, but now you cannot take your eyes off her.

She is a mistress of the erotic art.

The truest art.

And her skin…

… is translucent.

She is wearing a
green dress with a
blue ruff around her
white throat.

Her naturally
red hair is hidden by a
white wig which in turn is covered by a
black cloak
according to the fashion of the day.

She has just been introduced to an Englishman who is visiting the city on his tour of Italy.

He is having a great time.

The Englishman has instinctively gone to kiss the Venetian on the lips in the friendly English manner but -

She has no face.

O

I’m sorry -

He says.

I wanted to kiss your lips but I can’t -
I can’t find them -
I’m so sorry, it’s just -
It’s hard -

to -

He flusters.
He catches her eye.

Harder than I expected - I - !

Does he see her eyebrow lift behind the darkness of the black velvet?

But she is gone…

Leaving him with cheeks burning as red as her hidden hair…

She spins through the doors and out onto the piazza which at aqua alta is a lake with multiple bridges.

She becomes for a moment a Chinese courtesan trotting through the water gardens of Xanadu.
In the dreams of Marco Polo.

Her path meanders through the makeshift labyrinth.
Her platformed wooden shoes clump like horses’ feet.
Her mask blinds her vision.

The pathway spins under the submerged arches of the galleria and at first, she does not notice the body at her feet.
A Dutchman.
He is face down on the wood gripping to the damp scaffold and vomiting Valpolicella into the water below.
A heavy night at the tables.

She tumbles onto him and they become one beast for a moment with her skirts all over his sickened face and her ankle caught under his gut.
She pushes up off his back, stepping hard on his fingers, until finally she restores a precarious equilibrium.
As she turns to wrench the last bit of her skirt, he clambers up her body and kisses her full on the lips in the friendly manner of his countrymen…

But she has no lips.

Oeps!

He exclaims.

. ik?

He smiles in bleary confusion at the fuzz of her facelessness. But as she pulls away to her full height, he slips from her like a bag of dead fish onto the narrow walkway and from there he begins a further descent into the dark water.

Blop.

Blop.

Blop.

But she is gone.

She has brushed his vomit off her skirts and pottered onto a waiting gondola. The boatman greets her silently and pushes off over the water.

Taking her further into her night…

The gondola turns from the Grand Canal into the narrow Passage San Moise where the still water sees no sun. The nose of the boat cracks through paper thin sheets of floating ice.

It is winter.

Before long, they see dots of red lights appearing on the gondolas of the Sestiere San Polo, in the vicinity of the Carampagne di Rialto, where women are permitted to display their skin on the bridges and at the high windows of the state brothel, though it is hard to enjoy the sight it is so dark and so cold.

It is hard to see
what is wall
and what is water.

The boat knocks to stillness in the shadow of a palazzo gently bobbing.
There seems to be no door.
Maybe they will make love the gondolier and she - maybe they have found a dark corner for illicit love but that is not the story.
For suddenly the stone seems to swallow her whole, leaving the boatman to travel on alone.

Into his night…

And she.
Where is she?

Let me paint you a picture.

Or better yet -

let Gervaise De La Touche paint you a picture.

She has entered a casino - one of many such clubs dotted around the city - private rooms with only a handful of members. It is the kind of establishment that might house a secret library of the forbidden works of Johannes Meursius, Thomas Rowlandson and De Sade. But the room we are in is silent and still. The obscene engravings I have shown you are safely locked away.

The screams of Justine are silent.

The paintings on the walls, too, are silent - here is Pietro Bianchi’s THISBE DISCOVERING PYRAMUS and here, an exquisite forgery of Bronzino’s SAN SEBASTIAN.

They have spy holes but tonight they offer no delights.

And now you see her :

The red-head in the
white wig wearing the
green dress with a
blue ruff and a
black mask on her
white face at the card table.

She is locked into a game of Faro with other masked players.
They play with the commitment of addicts.

Their masks are superficial disguises. They all know each other. And anyway, you can read who they are from their hands: ink stains, calloused fingertips, a syphilitic rash. A couple of accountants, a musician and a monk. And her.

It is now the thick of her night …

Her night and silence.

There is only one figure disturbing the stillness of the room. Over in the corner, by the shuttered windows, is knot of fidgety anxiety in the form of an unmasked Frenchman.

He is toying with a borrowed white Larva mask which hangs awkwardly in his hand. His eyes restlessly scan the room - the hidden spy holes, the locked cabinets and the card players, who are losing and winning and losing again.

The drowning ennui gives his mind too much freedom and his thoughts wander to Paris. He remembers politicians losing and winning and losing their heads in the newly created Place de la Révolution. He thinks of recently fallen Bastille and its famous prisoner, the man with his face locked in iron - le masque de fer. And he thinks of how he hates everyone in this room, and in this whole narrow world and he pulls at the collar of his shirt, too tight around his throat and suddenly he cries out:

C’est un ENFER VIVANT!

A living hell.

At his words, the players’ fingers freeze and the table is still as a waxwork.
No one looks up.
Then the monk sharply knocks the table - tap tap.
And so the play continues...

But the Frenchman runs to them - he waves his borrowed white face over the card table and the cards fly but the players refuse to hear him -

Ne voulez-vous pas vous LIBÉRER de cette MASQUE?
Ce MASQUE de FER?

At this she turns her head slightly - to hear his voice perhaps?
Her French is so-so.
She can’t speak it.
She cannot speak at all - she has a button in her mouth.
It holds her Venetian mask in place.
But the Frenchman grasps at her tiny gesture and begs her - he begs her -

Ne voulez-vous pas QUITTER ce masque INFERNALE?

He waves wildly at the room.

Ce PURGATOIRE en papier-mâché?

He waves wildly at her mask.

Vers l’air doux du PARADIS? 

He begs her -

Ce monde vieux se DÉCOMPOSE -

On peut RÊVER d'un NOUVEAU MONDE !

Ne voulez-vous pas sentir la PLUIE sur vos JOUES?
La CARESSE DU SOLEIL sur votre VISAGE?
Des LÈVRES sur vos LÈVRES?
La NATURE sur votre NATURE? 
Ne voulez-vous pas RIRE?
EMBRASSER?

No?

Avec un joie ANIMALE?
Un joie SANS HONTE?

She turns her eyes to his.
He smiles.
He is drawn to touch the curve of her exposed neck but he cannot touch her.
He speaks softly now -

Madame, ne veux-tu pas VIVRE?

In the still of the night, a curl of red hair escapes from under her wig.
He sees it.
His mouth moves towards it.
It dances under his breath.
Now his lips are by her ear and he begs her -

Madame…
Dîtes-moi…
Qu'est-ce que tu veux?

She can hear the liquid of his mouth moving.

She turns her face full towards him now.

She opens her mouth - her masks falls - and -

FIN

HISTORICAL NOTE

In 1797, The Venetian Republic fell to the new French Republic. However, the French Republic turned out to be a mirage. Napoleon declared himself Emperor in 1804, and he was crowned King of Italy in 1805, with an Iron Crown.

His reign was not destined to last.

when you have travelled through a hole don’t forget to return

* The music for the page is made with three separate tracks kindly given to me by Lewis Gibson.

Images
La Ridotto - Francesco Guardi
Albert Dieudonné in Abel Gance’ Napoleon
Santa Maria della Salute (The Church of St Maria of Health) - William Turner