The Circe Spell

by Joe Andriano


27.







5. A Dream and a Dragon

 

Based on the journal of Paolo Culotta

Venice, 1883

 
           Well, at least I'm not a whore anymore, just a kept woman—of sorts. Paolo lay awake, dressed in a luxurious white satin negligée, next to a snoring naked Tomaso, who looked like a hillock in the dark. Paolo was glad at least that Tomaso had rolled away from him, but the snoring was so loud it made the bed shake. So Paolo was not even dozing when he heard (between the snores) a persistent scratching sound at the door. He got out of bed and stood still in front of the door to make sure that the sound was indeed coming from the other side. No question, something was scratching at the door. He opened it just as far as the chain-lock would allow, letting in a little gaslight from the hall. When he looked down he saw the shadow of her pointed ears on the floor. Her paw curled around the door.

"What are you doing here? Stop following me. Go away. Shoo." He closed the door and went back to bed, somehow managing eventually to fall into a fitful sleep. Often, the first dream he’d have in a night full of dreams would be the most vividly weird. Now he had one so strange he wrote as much of it down as he could remember the next morning, though he already knew he was filling in gaps in his memory as he wrote. But this much he did know for certain: he dreamt of his favorite American writer, Edgar Allan Poe. Nothing really strange about that; he was working on a translation of Poe’s early tales. He would recognize that great square head and lopsided mustache anywhere. They were sitting together on a night train, Paolo next to the window, which appeared to be wide open with shade drawn, undulating in the breeze.

"It's not really a window," said Poe. "It's a door. And she opens doors. That is her talent." He tugged on the shade, which furled up. Shadowy trees outside.

"Who is she? Ligeia? Berenice? Morella?"

"Good heavens no. I got them out of my system long ago. No, my dear Paolo. I am speaking of my cat." He pointed at the window. "Here she is now." A black oblong seemed to form on a tree branch and leapt in, now clearly a black cat landing on Paolo’s lap, her claws pin-pricking in. He cried out in pain, waking himself up. Tomaso snored on as Paolo lay trembling in the dark, rubbing his thighs through the negligee to make sure no wounds were there.

The next morning after they dressed (“Paolina” now Paolo again) and got ready for breakfast, Tomaso opened the door and almost tripped over the cat.



28.

"Dio mio, Paolo, your friend is back."

The cat had slept by the door all night. As soon as Paolo bent down with the intention of picking her up, she bolted into the room and hid under the desk. "I guess I'll leave her there and ask about her at the front desk. Perhaps she belongs here."

"The resident mouser now? I think not, Paolo. She's following you."

They went downstairs to the breakfast room. While Paolo picked at a roll and drank several cups of caffè latte, Tomaso vainly attempted to engage him in conversation, failing even to get him to indicate what few sights he wanted to see in Venice that he hadn't already seen. All Paolo could think about now was the dream and the cat. He was not, like the rest of his family, superstitious, but he couldn't help but suspect that something very weird was happening.

At the desk, the clerk assured them that the hotel had no resident cat, and indeed that no cats were allowed in the building. "Va bene," said Tomaso, "I will take care of it." When they went back to the room and Tomaso reached under the desk for her, the cat hissed at him and swatted his arm. "Paolo, you get her, per favore." Sure enough, she let Paolo take hold of her and pick her up. He noticed that she weighed almost nothing. All that long fur made her look heavier than she was.

"I'm terribly sorry, mia piccola," he said, "but you cannot stay here." He carried her out the door and down the stairs, then outside to the courtyard, where he gently put her down. "Now, find your way home, per favore." As he stood there she rubbed up against his legs, weaving in and out between them in an infinity figure, leaving her black fur on his pants.

Tomaso joined him in the courtyard. "Pronto?"

"She will probably follow us."

"Let's just make sure she doesn't get on the vaporetto."

          Paolo took out of his coat pocket the remains of a buttered roll he had wrapped in paper and taken from breakfast. "Here, micia, something for you." He put it on the lawn for her to eat.

Tomaso pulled at his arm. "Fa' presto, while she's distracted." They left her there licking butter and walked off toward the vaporetto stop near the Accademia bridge. Paolo finally told Tomaso where he wanted to go first. Tomaso shook his head but acquiesced. They took the water bus to San Zaccaria, and as they disembarked they actually looked behind them half-expecting their shadowy pursuer. It was only a short distance to the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, where Paolo wanted to see Carpaccio’s famous frescoes of Saint George and the dragon, even though he had seen them a year and a half ago. He loved this little place.

"What a shabby little chapel!" Tomaso whined when they were inside. "I don't know why you wanted to come back here. The lighting is so bad you can hardly see the paintings."


29.


       "I can see them well enough," said Paolo, thinking today is the day I tell him Arrivederci, addio, or better yet, vai al diavolo. He studied Carpaccio’s great picture of St. George on his horse lancing the dragon in its corpse-riddled lair. The long lance pierced the beast's saurian mouth and came out the back of its horny head. Burgundy blood dripped profusely down its mouth.

A little boy and his father were also studying the piece. Pointing at the torn bodies, scattered skulls and bones, and the gruesome torso of a half-eaten young woman under the dragon, the boy said, "Drago brutto!" Then looking at the next picture, in which St. George stands triumphant in the piazza with the captured and tamed dragon sitting beside him on a leash like a fawning dog, the boy asked, "Drago morto?" His father said no, and Paolo had to agree; the creature was defeated but alive, even with the fragment of spear sticking through his head.


The boy's father told him that the dragon is a spirit. An evil spirit.

As they turned away from the fresco, Paolo whispered to Tomaso, "I don’t think the beast is evil. He sure doesn’t look it in that picture."

"I don’t think so either, Paolo. Unless instinct is evil."

They left the Scuola and walked to Piazza San Marco, where they spent the rest of the pleasant autumn day, sitting at Florian's. Tomaso seemed relieved that no one he knew was there, although he and Paolo had often been seen together by his colleagues, who certainly had their suspicions. Even though they sat there for almost two hours, enjoying the bustle of the great piazza, Paolo never got the nerve to tell Tomaso they were finished. Mille grazie for all you've done for me, but . . . . He kept seeing Tomaso's contemptuous sneer, the way it was the last time they’d fought. He imagined the inevitable conversation.

 All I've done? I made you. Found you ready to stab yourself with that Sicilian dagger of yours I threw in the Tiber, rescued you from degenerate squalor, took you in, tutored you, got you matriculated.

I earned my Masters degree, I do have a mind.

Gave you all the money you ever needed. Bought you the finest clothes.

So I was still a whore.

After eating dinner they decided to walk all the way back to the hotel. When they went into their room, Paolo half-expected to see the cat waiting for him on the bed. She wasn't there. Now that they were in for the night, he went through the usual ritual of changing, stripping off all the men's clothes, tucking his penis out of view between his hairless thighs, and donning a brunette wig first, then soft cream-colored satin-and-lace drawers and a pink silk negligee. It was only after he sat in bed waiting for Tomaso to finish his bath that he heard a plurping sound directly under him. The plurps ran together into a trill, then a meow as she emerged from under the bed and jumped onto it. Naked bloated Tomaso opened the bathroom door, saw her and made the Sicilian gesture he’d picked up from Paolo (yes, I taught you things, didn't I?), bunching all his fingers together and shaking his upturned hand. "Someone is playing a trick on us. The maid perhaps. I may have forgotten to tip her."


30.

"I don't think so," said Paolo. "I left a tip. No, this cat wants to be with me. Who am I to deny fate?"

"Please, Paolo, put her out, at least for now."

"If she's still here in the morning, I am taking her back to Padua with me." He got up, carrying her to the door, keeping her claws out of his nightgown, her name suddenly coming to him.

"We'll discuss it in the morning," said Tomaso.

"So sorry, little Circe, Tomaso wishes me to expel you. He deems you beastly. I beg to differ."

"Circe?"

"The name just came to me." Paolo opened the door and gently put her down just outside it. "Quite the little witch, aren't you? Quite the sorceress." You don't turn men to swine, he thought. Most men already are. He closed the door.

"Va bene. Come to bed."

That night Paolo dreamt of Carpaccio's dragon. Not the drago brutto in its lair amid littered human carnage but the tamed one on the leash in the square. Saint George in his golden armor was holding the leash, bowing to the grateful multitude. "And now," he shouted, "since he cannot die, let me expel the beast." He grabbed it by its long serpentine tail and swung it above his head like a lariat. After several revolutions he let go and it went hurtling off. In the distance he could see its wings flapping and then a sleek black form soaring upward against a blue sky.

Next morning, Circe was once again waiting at the door. Paolo picked her up and vowed to let her cling to him for as long as she wished.



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