Secrets of an Odalisque

Chapter I

1985

It was by no means his first trip to Venice, but in a sense, in a very important way, it really was. Arthur Hartmann knew his entry into Venice would be spectacular, the fabled city rising, like Venus, from ancient waters, and yet, nothing had prepared him for this total astonishment when the gondola arrived at the Grand Canal.

The pellucid light falling on the grandiose architecture of ten centuries, evoking a voluptuous, tragic past of romance and intrigue, captured his imagination and confirmed that his entire life had been building to this very moment. Soon he would become a part of something greater than he ever dreamed possible.

As the gondola traced the inverted S of the waterway, past the sights so familiar to visitors and extolled by guidebooks -- the Madonna degli Scalzi, the Fondaco dei Turchi, the Ca'd'Oro -- his buoyancy enlarged, from the sheer rapture of being here at last. Lights, color, the sounds of motoscaffi, vaporetti and traghetti, the chug chug of outboard motors, the Veneto gondoliers singing Neapolitan songs, the piercing shouts, all the noise and confusion, sirens and klaxons, added to the compelling enchantment.

The great palazzi of the maritime city rose, almost lifted themselves out of the deep -- hundreds of them, their reflections creating variegated patterns in the rippling, greenish waters. The liquid fairyland demanded permanent recording, but in such a multifusion of sensual barrage, Arthur scarcely knew which piece of his equipment to reach for -- the Hasselblat or the Nikon around his neck, the video camera by his side, the spare lenses in his camera case.

His artist's eye alternated between peering upward at the flower-decked balconies, arches, domes, minarets, and slender spires, to gazing downward at the patches of algae and moss clinging to stone, and the rusting bell-pulls, weathered by ancient tides.

As the gondola slid under the humpbacked Rialto Bridge, then into side canals with warrens of bridges, market stalls and sweeps of arches and buildings, Arthur clicked away -- he was using the Nikon – and it was as though he were going straight through the backlot of a movie set. There were more bends and bridges, windows and balconies festooned with flowers, further sweeps of arches and palazzi and clusters of domes in the dramatic meeting of theatrical architectural styles, and then they were gliding past the 18th century La Fenice, reflecting the grandeur of the Age of Goldoni.

At length, they emerged opposite the incredible gleaming white marble of Santa Maria della Salute, and directly out into the sultry air of the lagoon, to better view both St. Mark's Square and Palladio's San Giorgio Maggiore, in what had to be the singlemost breathtaking sight in the world. Once again, Arthur reminded himself he was no ordinary tourist, and that for him, all this had a meaning that was beyond what anyone could ever conceive.

"Dov'è il Palazzo Pazzi?" Arthur tried out his Italian on the gondolier.

"Eh?"

"The Palazzo Pazzi, the museum -- of la Signora Blumenthal -- l'americana --"

"Ah, si -- si, fra poco."

Here in the two mile long stretch of canal, in the 200 palaces dating from the 12th to the 18th centuries, had lived those patricians whose names were inscribed in the Golden Book, when Venice, crown jewel and dominant power of the Adriatic, had been known as La Serenissima, the most serene. Six centuries of palazzi, ten centuries of diverse architecture -- yet the mysterious, secret order of the Odalisques had been in existence far longer!

"Ecco! Ecco il Palazzo Pazzi -- ma non si può entrare oggi --"

One could not enter today; Arthur already knew that. The Palazzo-museum was open to the public only two days a week, and today, unfortunately, was not one of them. Arthur raised his camera to bring the palace into focus and snapped, his excitement mounting as he confronted the dwelling of the redoubtable Mrs. Gaia Blumenthal. He would have recognized it himself, from media photographs and from his research in the New York Public Library. He thought of the significance of that which lay ahead for him.

He thought of Mrs. Blumenthal. Gaia, primeval prophetess, first among goddesses and gods ... mother, the source, born of Chaos. God laughs six times bringing the cosmic elements into being; when he laughs a seventh time, his mirth is interrupted by weeping ...thus did the soul come into being, through God's laughter and tears, as God bent down to earth and whistled to the earth goddess Gaia, who accepted the soul into herself, opened her legs, and brought forth, out of Chaos, the first human beings ...

Gaia ... Mrs. Gaia Blumenthal ... this was the formidable woman he had come here to meet. Arthur was sure the Gaia creation legend had meaning. He believed implicitly in the significance of names. When he saw Mrs. Blumenthal, he would say everything he could not write in the letter he’d ultimately mailed. His first two missives, unsent, had sounded too foolishly adolescent and romantic, so he had decided to delay revealing the real reason he had come to Venice.

Everywhere he looked was gleaming gold and oriental opulence, the sunlight igniting the mosaics of the byzantine basilica of St. Mark's; he was surrounded by near-surreal activity, as the gondola swept its way through waterways, dodging traffic -- all seemed a mirage in this glorious September morning.

At the top of the clock tower, the pair of giant bronze jacks struck the hour, just as they had done for 500 years. A delicate pink patina glazed over the entire area that was Venice.

It could not have been a more appropriate moment for an apparition to appear: approaching from the opposite direction, draped languidly across the seat of a gondola, wearing a diaphanous gauze cotton dress, was a beautiful young woman just coming into her ripeness – dewy, fresh. She reminded him of a tender, graceful Botticelli, something out of the Ufizzi, part fantasmagoria, part embodiment of a vanished ideal of womanhood – elusive, captivating, her wispy golden hair as if stroked by the sirocco.

In a tribute to her very existence, Arthur raised his camera and snapped her picture, then reached for his camcorder, did some quick maneuvering with the zoom lens, and filmed the sensuous turn of the young woman's head toward the lagoon.

The gondola arrived at its embarkation point, the barber pole mooring of the Royal Danieli Excelsior Hotel, from where he would inaugurate his new life.

After years of searching -- of blood, sweat, toil and longing, he was ready, absolutely on the threshold at last. He was a 20th century Grail Knight with the chalice in sight.

Arthur put the lovely lady in the gondola out of mind, and thought now only of his upcoming meeting with Madame Gaia Blumenthal, the larger than life woman who held the key to the Odalisques, and the very answer to his existence.