Venera Dreams Read online

  Under the glare of the harsh early afternoon sun, I felt exposed, shamed, ridiculed.

  In London, atop the Serpentine Bridge in Hyde Park, under the damp cover of a light, misty rain, I pretended to stare at the water below. The woman I had been shadowing for the past three weeks stood only a few feet to my left. She appeared deeply lost in thought. I should have talked to her last month, when I first spotted her coming out of the Metropolis Now offices, but the merciless cut of her severe Slavic features and the determined, military stride of her long legs had shattered whatever courage I could muster.

  I turned to look at her now. The rain had flattened her hair, accentuating the aristocratic beauty of her cheekbones. She turned her head and locked her eyes with mine. Her stare paralysed me as she walked up to me. She leaned in, brushed her lips against my ear, and said in an icy, commanding voice: “It’s time you told me why you’ve been following me.”

  Without planning to, I grabbed hold of her and kissed her — hard, pushing my tongue deep into her mouth. She tasted like vermilion. Her fingernails dug into my cheeks, tethering her, as her knees buckled. She kissed me back, drawing blood as she bit my lips. Eventually, we gasped for air and laughed. She whispered obscenities in my ear, then took my hand and led me to her apartment, a luxurious flat only a few minutes’ walk from the park.

  I never answered her question, and she never asked again. Without even discussing it, I moved in with this woman: Petra Maxim, author of 1001 Days and Nights in Venera; a Russian expat who had abandoned her real name along with her past. She was currently a photojournalist for Metropolis Now magazine, but, to be able to afford to live in such luxury in this city, she clearly had other sources of income — I never inquired into her affairs, and she never volunteered anything. Petra was not one for conversation, and we were never close emotionally. Often, I felt like nothing more than a sex toy, a prop in her vermilion-enhanced debauched fantasies. Nevertheless, she was kind to me in many ways: besides making available all the vermilion I could crave; besides her casual, animalistic eroticism; besides allowing me free entry into the elite world of London chic; more practically, she also helped me get a gig at the magazine, copyediting and occasionally interviewing emerging artists for a series of sidebar profiles. It was an easy life, too easy. Too comfortable to shatter with the truth. Instead, I avoided dealing with my cowardice by wallowing in self-loathing, absenting myself with increased frequency from Petra’s bed, losing myself in vermilion binges and anonymous sex with the all-male clientele of The Adonis Baths.

  The next spring, Petra was granted a two-month visa for a return trip to Venera, in order to complete an architectural photo-essay for Metropolis Now. She refused to even try to see if she could bring me along. I finally told her about Vittorio, showed her the picture in her book, and asked if she knew him. She looked straight into my eyes for a few seconds, weighing or judging … something, but I wasn’t sure what. Then, abruptly, she laughed at me and told me that she would not be sleeping at home that night. I had until morning to clear out and get out of her life. “And you will be quitting your job at the magazine tomorrow. Or should I have them fire you?” She turned away from me and left before I could respond.

  Everywhere in that apartment her cold stare mocked me. I didn’t wait till morning. I packed my bag and took the next Eurostar train to the continent.

  Tito Bronze’s Roman extravaganza, the Festival dei Sensi, provided a glimpse of Venera for the pleasure of the outside world. The festival snaked its way into and infested all of Rome, tapping into the simmering paganism that growled beneath the city’s twin veneers of tourism and Catholicism.

  Desperate for any clue to Vittorio, I took in as much of the festival as I could: films, gallery hangings of paintings and photographs, theatre, performance art — all the works of Bronze and his Velvet Bronzemine entourage. But neither Vittorio nor his image were anywhere to be found.

  If only I could go backstage, speak to someone, perhaps even to the imposing Bronze himself — he had, after all, at least one time danced with my Vittorio. But then I realized that it might be possible: I still held my press ID from Metropolis Now. I hurried to the festival’s publicity office. After examining my card and passport carefully, the festival’s press coordinator asked me to wait a moment and excused herself. She came back within a few minutes, and to my surprise informed me that I would be allowed a fifteen-minute breakfast interview with Bronze, at his hotel room at 6 a.m. Coffee and croissants would be served.

  A feeling of accomplishment surged within me. It was an unusual sensation. I savoured it, treasured it. I could almost feel Vittorio’s skin on my fingertips, hear his laughter tickle my ears. Vittorio. Venera. Bronze was the key. I knew it for certain. Under no circumstance would I allow that key to slip from my grasp.

  I showed Tito Bronze the photograph in Petra’s book. The snapshot of him dancing with Vittorio.

  “Yes, I remember that boy. Tragic.”

  Tragic. The word hit me like a punch in the solar plexus.

  “You’re not really here to interview me for Metropolis Now, are you, young man?”

  I stammered: “N-n-no.”

  His face betrayed not the slightest hint of disapproval. Instead, he spoke to me slowly, empathically: “You knew this boy, this Vittorio?”

  Knew. Nononono. Bronze could not be telling me this.

  “I think I shall spare you the details. I, certainly, am in no mood to dredge up the past. Perhaps we should end this conversation now. I’m sorry.” He snapped his fingers, and a naked girl — that lithe gymnast’s body told me she was, at the very most, twenty years old — slithered into the room with inhuman grace. “But it may be that our acquaintance is only beginning. Sherry — would you …?”

  She circled behind me and blew into my ear. Far from aroused, I was frozen with fear and dread. Something sharp stung the side of my neck.

  I awoke on a park bench, under the glare of a bright, hot mid-afternoon sun. A half-dozen large dogs — obviously strays, or even feral, judging from their gauntness and the state of their fur — lazed about not far from me. Some children were playing a little farther off, totally unconcerned by the presence of the animals.

  I took stock of myself. I was wearing clothes I did not recognize, but they fit me well enough; in my pocket was a wad of bills (several hundred euros!), a new passport with a new identity but my own photo (I was now an Austrian citizen), and a small plastic bag of vermilion snuff. My skin felt raw, and when I ran my hand under my shirt I discovered fresh scars, welts, and bruises. My arms had been shaved and were covered with bright, erotic tattoos.

  What had happened to me? Where was I? How much time had elapsed since my meeting with Tito Bronze? I was not so concerned with the abuse I had no doubt suffered under the notorious Bronze’s direction. I was much more intrigued, and even moved, by Bronze’s gesture — that he had granted me the opportunity to start my life anew. I was reborn, and, if I wanted, I could be free of my past desires. I laughed at the naivety of such a romantic notion, so at odds with Bronze’s reputed elitist egotism and chic hedonistic nihilism.

  Disoriented and wobbly, I wandered out of the park and noticed that all the street names were spelled in both Roman and Cyrillic characters. I was in Greece. Athens. Farther from Venera than Rome had been, but what did it matter? There was no longer any reason for me to seek access to the debauched city-state.

  Using up almost all the money Bronze had left me with, I booked passage on a boat that was to circle around the south of Greece and then eventually travel across the sea all the way to Barcelona. But I had no intention of reaching Spain.

  A little more than two full days after we left Greece, as the sun set among the clouds gathering from the west, I finally caught sight of Venera, far in the distance. Save for the lights from the city-state, once the sun was completely swallowed up, darkness enveloped us like a cloak. The first hints of rain brought with them a chill that cut me to the bone.

  Rain w
as good. It hid tears so well.

  From my jacket’s inside pocket, I drew the last of my vermilion snuff. Up my nose it went. The euphoria was instantaneous. So why was I crying even harder?

  The rain had driven the other passengers inside. I was alone on the deck. I climbed over the rail and without hesitation jumped into the Mediterranean. I was so deeply under the spell of vermilion that I didn’t even notice the impact; but, completely submerged, I choked on the cold briny seawater. I had never been a good swimmer. This would be over quickly.

  Nevertheless, I was buoyed back to the surface. In the distance, I glimpsed the lights from Venera — the lights of unrequited dreams. I let myself sink. Deeper and deeper. The underbelly of the great Venera revealed itself: glowing with colours I could never have imagined, shimmering, pulsating, undulating — as if it were alive and in constant metamorphosis. A glorious, farewell hallucination, courtesy of the vermilion tingling through me? Or was I being allowed to perceive an aspect of the true, perhaps unfathomable, nature of this strange metropolis?

  My lungs clamoured for air. I almost opened my mouth and swallowed; almost let water fill my lungs. Ignoring the pull of both life and death, I closed my eyes — and the afterimage of Venera lingered, its intensity growing instead of fading.

  Again I surfaced, gasping and shivering. Once my breathing settled back to normal, my gaze locked on the distant Venera.

  I possessed neither the strength nor the skill to undertake such a long swim, but the city-state’s tendrils had by now snaked deeply within me and I could not ignore the eerie beckoning.

  XANDRA’S BRINE

  The smell of brine wafted inland from the Mediterranean; Camille breathed it in, its pungent saltiness making her feel as if her bones had lost their solidity, adopting a malleability that held the promise of profound transformation. She welcomed the spongy sensation and the potential of change. Ten years spent in the north, in Rouen, and nothing to show for it. No friends worthy of the name; a string of humiliating service-industry jobs that had led nowhere; and, worst of all, Armand. She didn’t despise him, nor did she blame him for leeching off her while he pretended to work on his music; she wouldn’t even have resented it if he’d been fucking other girls — not if he’d also paid attention to her. But he had done neither. Inhaling the burnt-orange smoke of vermilion from his hookah, he masturbated off internet porn while she was at work, and recently even when she was at home, barely registering her presence. He never looked at her with lust anymore, let alone touched her, and had long ago stopped writing the songs that had made her fall in love with him.

  She’d left Armand behind in Rouen, hoping to shed her own apathy, but with no idea of what she wanted anymore. All she knew was that the south beckoned: the view of the horizon from the Riviera, the brine of the Mediterranean, the comfort of the heat.

  Showers had hit Nice throughout the afternoon, and now, even though dusk was descending, in the summerlike heat of the Riviera spring the evaporated rainwater lingered heavily in the air.

  That morning, she’d tried to enjoy the beach, but she’d forgotten how painful it could be to walk barefoot on the pebbles. All around her, others had seemed untroubled by the discomfort. Now, from the rampart above the beach, Camille saw only one person down there: a naked woman with a long, elegant back and meaty, round hips that swayed alluringly with every step toward the sea. Her ethereally pale skin almost glowed in the near dark.

  Obeying an impulse she felt no need to question, Camille hooked the straps of her heeled sandals through the fingers of her right hand and made her way down to the beach, toward the woman. The hard, smooth pebbles still hurt her feet but not as much as they had earlier. For a few steps she even thought she’d gotten the hang of it — felt as though the pebbles were massaging the soles of her feet rather than digging into them — but then a misstep caused her to yelp at the sharp pain, and the other woman turned to look at her.

  The nude woman had uncommonly large eyes, their irises as black as the pupils. Camille gasped as she felt herself fall into the dark, moist, comforting embrace of the stranger’s gaze. Camille hurried to breach the distance between them, overcome with the desire to talk to this woman. The stranger turned back toward the sea. Her hair was oddly braided, like seaweed, in strands of blue, purple, pink, brown, and green. The tide nipped their ankles. Camille introduced herself. The woman shifted subtly to catch Camille’s eye but remained silent, waiting for Camille to continue. Camille surprised herself by starting to talk about her childhood on the Riviera, in Menton.

  Camille was shocked into silence when the stranger reached out and clasped her hand. The stranger’s grip had a spongy quality that was oddly reassuring. Together, they stood there as the sun set and darkness settled in. At one point, perhaps hours later, the stranger disentangled herself and left Camille alone on the beach.

  When the sun rose, revealing the stark blue of the Mediterranean sky, Camille brought her hands to her face to rub the tiredness from her eyes. She sniffed the hand that the stranger had held and was astonished at how strongly it smelled of brine.

  Camille slept through the day at the hostel, occasionally and dimly aware of the noise and bustle around her. When she woke, she felt different, as if the previous night truly had had a transformative effect. She was skeptical, however, as she could not articulate what might have changed in her, and simply dismissed the sensation as elation at the previous night’s odd encounter and as disorientation at rising at dusk rather than dawn.

  She bought coffee and a croissant from the boulangerie across the street and once again made her way down to the seashore.

  This cloud-free evening, unlike the day before, the crowds gathered on the beach to enjoy the glorious sunset. Still, she spotted the strange woman easily. Camille hadn’t been aware that she’d been scanning for her until her gaze settled on her. The stranger wore a dark orange, almost burgundy summer dress, the hem kissing the curve of her buttocks, the back in a deep V that highlighted her graceful shape.

  Camille spied at the woman for a few minutes, with the growing realization that she was moved by the stranger’s unusual beauty. Camille walked toward her and, when she reached her, brushed her fingers against hers. The woman glanced shyly at Camille but reached out to her and clutched her hand tightly. Once again, they stood together as they watched the sun set.

  The stranger’s name was Xandra, and she knew no French. Camille’s nearly nonexistent Italian was only good enough to recognize that Xandra spoke nothing but that peculiar dialect in use only in Venera, that archipelagic city-state known primarily as the world’s only supplier of vermilion. It was notoriously difficult to obtain a visa to Venera, but every European dreamed of exploring its decadent vias and waterways. For Continental Europeans, Venera was in such tantalizing proximity, but the city-state remained as aloof from their attentions as it did from anyone else’s.

  In her late teens and early twenties, Camille, like almost every girl she knew, had covered her body with tattoos made from vermilion henna. It was said to heighten the sensitivity of the skin and, thus, make sex more intense. But, as Armand’s interest in her body had faded, she had gradually stopped adorning herself with the tincture. Had it ever really made a difference? She could scarcely remember what sex felt like, with or without the vermilion enhancement.

  Xandra shared Camille’s bed at the hostel. Although she allowed Camille to kiss and lick her slippery body, she never gave Camille her mouth, nor did she open her legs for her. Camille was intoxicated by her companion’s pungent briny aroma; she constantly craved the taste of her skin on her tongue.

  Together, the two women walked through Nice hand in hand, rarely exchanging a word but somehow sharing an unarticulated complicity that filled a gulf in Camille’s life. Occasionally, Camille would get a glimpse of Xandra’s teeth; the sight was always a bit unnerving. They were sharp and pointy, as if they’d been filed to look like the teeth of a shark.

  Xandra’s skin exuded a briny moist
ness that always left a damp area in the bed. Every day, just before the break of dawn, when Xandra disappeared for a few hours, Camille rolled in that damp spot, luxuriating in her lover’s fragrance.

  After a few days, Camille realized that she had never seen Xandra eat. She accepted that as easily as her unexplained absences, lest this delicious spell be broken.

  As hot spring turned into blistering summer, Camille had to face reality: she was running out of money, with no plan as to what she would do once her funds were entirely spent. One afternoon, she tried to describe her situation to her Veneran companion, but Camille broke into tears mid-explanation, convinced that the impassive Xandra hadn’t understood a word.

  That night, Camille, anxious and uncertain, did not kiss Xandra’s body. The two women lay next to each other, their hands awkwardly clasped. Xandra let go of Camille’s hand and propped herself on an elbow to stare at Camille’s face. She ran her fingers through Camille’s hair and bent down to give a light peck on her cheek. Camille breathed in the brine of Xandra’s breath and instantly fell asleep.

  Just before the break of dawn, like every morning since they’d been sharing a bed, Camille felt Xandra slip out. By noon, Xandra had still not returned, and Camille, finally deciding to force herself to get out of bed, was certain that the other woman had left her for good.

  Camille was completely at a loss. She felt not at all transformed by the surreal intimacy of the past several weeks but rather utterly emptied, a hollow vessel with no life of her own. She sat on a bench for the remainder of the day, staring out at the sea, ignoring thirst and hunger, defeated. As dusk began to temper the blue of the sky, someone sat close enough to Camille that their hips touched. She immediately recognized Xandra’s briny aroma, and she sighed in desperate relief.