A gondola passes under the bridge, that peculiar elegance, prow and stern so high above the water. The gondolier has an internal look, as though he inhabits separately his world of green-misted waves. The archaic costume has a fittingness about it on the inward looking Italian.
Jesse has his hands on his knees, panting. This dead end was a relief. He’s been running too fast. Pulled up abruptly by the watery full stop of the alley, stopping at the top of the steps that lead only to the canal edge. To the right, the bridge, which must be down the next path, to his left the buildings curve, the perspective ends in tall walls. The gondola is following the bend, almost silent, just a creak and the drops of brackish water meeting their origins.
He watches it disappear, straightening, his breathing slows. And his heart sinks. He’d been lost in it, for a while, the run, the speed, and then the strange sight of the gondola, the gondolier utterly ignoring him, as though unaware of him. Now, though, the morning is aging and he must return. At least there’s the knowledge he’ll be lost for a while yet, confounded by the narrow traffic-less streets, the lack of a vista, the way they turn and turn again, so you lose your bearings. And no sun to navigate by. No sun and no stars.
The hotel is near St Mark’s Square, so that helps – he can follow the arrows painted on the walls: ‘Marco’. Arrows that often point in both directions. Because in Venice there is never just one way to go. Arrows that lead you to another junction where there is no way-marker. Because in Venice it’s never easy to find your way.
One last look. He stares at the water’s surface. Choppy – and yet sealed, somehow, opaque. Anything that sinks in there would stay sunk. The canal water has a weight, it seems. Chalky, blue-green and heavy. You can see nothing below the surface. It could be a metre deep or a mile. Jesse walks to the steps, looks downward, loses himself in the mystery.
It’s half past eight.
His attention flows from the water to the music. He always has music. This one goes out to the one I love…
He starts running, loving the feel of the stone under his feet. His focus seeks to remain in the soles of his feet. Thud, thud, thud, thud. He runs, naturally, with his heel striking the ground first, but has been trying to change his style, to land on the ball of his foot. He’s read the research that it’s more efficient and prevents injuries – but that’s not the reason: he is trying to change his pattern to distract his thoughts. It gives him a thrill that he might ease his emotional pain by taking his mind into his feet. Top down. Bottom up. Whatever. It’s better than the alternative.
Today, though, not even this technique has proved adequate.
‘It’s the most romantic city in the world,’ she’d said to him. ‘We must go together.’
Thud, thud, thud – yet his mind is drawn back to her.
‘I want to share it with you,’ she’d said, giving him that look, sideways, turning her head away so her narrowed eyes narrowed yet more. He felt the irksomeness of the cliché. Romance. Together. Share. It was all so… expected.
All that talk of getting old, his iPhone sings to him, it’s getting me down, my love. But still his mind is drawn back to her.
‘You’ll be blown away, my darling, you’ll be completely blown away.’
He could sense her hunger to give him this gift – a gift of an experience that she considered remarkable. What could be more generous that that?
Like a cat in a bag, waiting to drown….
He passes through a square that seems familiar. A well. A church. Christ, it could be anywhere. The city is a maze. He needs a thread laid for him… he has the thread… his Ariadne, his memories. He accelerates. The Minotaur behind him follows suit.
The canals have a cinematic look – it’s autumn, misty, the light subdued. Jesse tries to find distraction in the scenery. His father was an architect. Family holidays always involved a few impressive or intriguing buildings. But it’s not his passion and his attention drifts to other runs in other cities. He does it always. Travelling for work, trainers packed before his laptop, shorts and a few natty T-shirts, his favourite green sweatshirt, worn thin now, loose and torn at neck and wrists.
The best run is the post-red-eye run. Landing in Tokyo, say, after an overnight flight. The transfer to the hotel, lethargic and thirsty, a sort of toxic vibe in his body – as though his blood’s been poisoned by the thin, polluted air inside the aircraft and the wine he drinks to smooth the passage from west to east, from one continent to another. In the room, not giving his decision time to crumble, pulling off jeans and shirt, pulling on his running gear, the visceral pleasure of tying the laces, his feet encased, embraced by Asics, he always wears Asics, feeling the buoyancy of the thick soles, feeling life course through his veins.
He’d start by running down the stairs, moving his feet almost faster than his brain believes possible, feeling his pulse start to rise with the movement, the buzz like a shot of caffeine, adrenaline.
Then he’s out on the road, the car fumes don’t bother him unduly, or the rather muddy air, instead he feels the pavement, and as he gets into his stride, he feels the metronome of his momentum. It’s like diving into the sea of himself. He’s a head taller than all the Japanese on the streets. He runs through and past. They blur. Black hair and business suits, people walking fast, especially around the big stations, Shinjuku and Shibuya. Where the pavements get congested, he seems to find space. At crosswalks, he runs in place, breathing hard but steady. He’s not aware of anyone watching him. The polite Japanese keep to themselves, eyes turned away from the big, sweating gaijin.
He’d had a meal with an American woman once in Tokyo. They’d gone to a traditional restaurant. She was an attractive Texan, with the coiffured dark blonde hair of a C-list celebrity and more make-up than seemed necessary. They sat on cushions at a low table, navigated clumsily through the menu. The staff spoke little English and they less Japanese.
‘I find it creepy that they’re so goddam polite,’ said the woman.
Jesse frowned slightly, questioning, his mouth occupied with some unidentified morsel of something. It was tasty, he guessed, though his brain hadn’t yet acclimatised to the flavours and was struggling to put a value judgement on an experience so unfamiliar.
‘I mean,’ she continued, poking at tempura with a beautifully enamelled chopstick, ‘it’s not like they mean it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Well, it’s all about form, isn’t it? It’s tradition.’
‘And does that mean it’s not genuine?’
‘They’re doing it because they have to, because it’s what they do, not because they feel it. It’s insincere.’
‘But is something necessarily insincere just because it’s habitual?’ Jesse was finding her view, which seemed to him small-minded, strangely irritating, more irritating than it should be. He parked that realisation. He knew that an excessive emotional response signified some critical information, but he didn’t have time to address it then.
‘Yeah. If you’re doing something just because you have to, then it’s just an act.’
‘An act? How can you possibly assume that? And besides, if the behaviour occurs time and again, perhaps it becomes part of the personality – they may be shaped into more respectful people than you or I by the very act of what you describe as acting.’ He was speaking more coldly than he’d intended – but, suddenly, he didn’t care if he offended her. He was bored by her. Utterly bored. If a base level of politeness – not the Japanese level, sure, but the level of an English public school boy - weren’t habitual to him, he’d have got up and left her then and there.
She shook her hair out, a tilt to her head so that he could see the slight flare of her patrician nostrils. ‘Whatever.’
He wonders now, as he crosses a wooden bridge, feet marking a satisfying hollow beat, if he was right. About acting. He wonders when the attendant feelings come fully into play. Like the Stanislavsky Method. The actor steps on the stage – but that’s not the start of the performance: the character has a life before, a backstory, which the player has subsumed through study. The actor draws on his own emotional memories to fill out the shadowy hinterlands of the role. They merge. And so, if the actor is feeling the emotions of the character too… how does that work? How to keep a distance? There’s the person acting and the part and yet the actor experiences the feelings of both… on stage, primarily, those of the character – although his own experiences, memories, interpretations feed into that.
The mist is clearing a little. He knows he’s close to St Mark’s Square. His pace slows. A little.
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