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Overview
As alluring as The Love-Artist, a contemporary tale of love and ambition, betrayal and revenge, set in two gloriously watery cities
In a damp Venetian palace, Oswaldo contemplates the ravages of time to his body and his beloved city, and dreams up a way to hold mortality at bay. In New York, Lach steps out into the crisp, clear night to savor his new freedom, having just dropped Vera to join his new love, Francesca, in Venice. In rainy London, Max packs for a precipitous move to New Orleans, in pursuit of Lucinde, a woman he barely knows. From New Orleans, Lucinde flies to the aid and comfort of Vera, who, betrayal or no, has accepted a grant to go paint in . . . Venice. And elsewhere in the Crescent City, Anton, leaving to seek his big break in that other renowned city of water—Venice, of course—sketches a good-bye upon the slumbering body of his wife, Josephine.
With wit, sympathy, and surpassing deftness, Jane Alison choreographs an intricate minuet among these characters, whom love and loneliness, aspiration and desperation, have drawn to two famously romantic, venal, and elusive cities of water.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429930376 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2004 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Sales rank: | 728,312 |
| File size: | 346 KB |
About the Author
Jane Alison is the author of The Love-Artist. She lives in Germany.
Jane Alison is the author of The Love-Artist and The Marriage of the Sea. She lives in Germany.
Read an Excerpt
The Marriage of the Sea
By Jane Alison
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2003 Jane AlisonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-3037-6
CHAPTER 1
Max landed in New Orleans like a sprinter. His cab barreled over the toxic empty highway into town, the battered streets and battered sidewalks and battered, crooked houses. He'd chosen the most romantic hotel, just beyond the Garden District, lopsided and seedy. Once he'd checked in he ran up the staircase, noting with delight the stained glass promise in the window: Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits! Then he had barely put down his bag, barely phoned Sea & Air to provide a temporary number (should his fur teacup and cookbooks and secondhand Paul Smiths be lost at sea in their nailed, stamped crates), before he washed his hands, looked at his teeth, tried to order his fly-away ringlets, paced once up and down the room, lifted the receiver, and dialed. He did it standing, bursting from his body, his mouth stretched in the same wide smile that had stretched it inanely that whole wondrous week. And there, miraculously, she was.
"Well!" she said, slowly but with an unmistakable exclamation mark. Which meant —? "So, Maximilian, you're actually here."
Yes, yes, he tried not to babble, here I am, here I am, for you! He sat down on the bed, but one leg continued to jog and bounce so he clapped a hand heavily upon it.
"We'll have to see each other, then, won't we?" she said.
Which meant —? Max stood up again. His mouth was open in a half-smile, poised to say the next giddy thing, but it went dry that way as, at her end, there was a sudden noise and her voice changed.
"Oh dear, I've got to run. Money's calling, can't be resisted. Call me back in a couple of hours."
Max hung up, suddenly vague, and lay down, or rather unfolded, on the bed. He could hear people out on the porch downstairs. With one eye he studied the floor, which sloped. Perhaps he could smell margaritas from here. Suddenly he sneezed the way he always did, as if the sneeze had erupted from deep in the ground and shaken his whole body with force; he blew his nose noisily and shut his eyes, recovering.
Thick air, very thick air you could almost see hanging — but better than London, certainly. Max looked at his watch and noticed that he had not yet adjusted it. This took some seconds. He got up and lifted the rotting window higher and looked out. The place seemed lazy, all those things it was famed for: Spanish moss, crumbling columns. A hum of voices, a certain smell — electricity, he realized, from the streetcar rattling by. Unknown plants all over. Reluctantly he went out for a walk.
When he came back, he paced around the room a few minutes, whistling between his teeth, then arched, touched his toes, and called her again. No answer. He felt sick and lay down once more on the bed. He opened the Times Literary Supplement, which, folded, he'd banged upon his knee almost the entire Virgin Air flight, and now managed with it to consume more than an hour, until at last it was again time to call.
She had changed her recording, just for him, which had a mixed effect. He was to call tomorrow, her voice said, so sorry she didn't have his number, so rude to make him keep calling.
Now Max had an entire night. He drank two exceptionally salty margaritas on the porch downstairs, and thought of that island somewhere nearby that was supposed to be made of salt, and watched the news, which seemed very American. He ate not the best sample of red beans and rice. For a time he studied the different bottles of hot sauce, comparing ingredients and quantities of sugar and making a few notes about peppers; briefly but vividly he thought about how the heat trickled from the pepper's veins to its seeds, and how when people said pepper, most often they confused the capsicum with Piper nigrum itself, and how for true pepper (by which he meant Piper nigrum) men had once sailed all the seas, and how, in contrast, the flavor of paprika disappeared so quickly, poor little fugitive spice. Finally he trudged upstairs, fell asleep, and, without knowing it, snored violently.
The next morning Max was all fresh and shaven at seven o'clock, ready to grapple bulls, all bright smile. And when he dialed her number, there it was, her live voice!
"I'm so sorry, darling," she said. "I'm afraid we've missed. I'm leaving this afternoon for a meeting in New York, and then I'm on to Venice."
"Ahh." A single note was breathed from him, an involuntary expiration, and without wishing it at all, he felt his mouth fall into that sad shape, that ghost from the old flat upstairs.
But very well. He was here. She'd be back. Patience he'd always had.
A few blocks away from Max's hotel, across Saint Charles and down toward the river, Josephine slipped on a paper robe and stood in the curtained dressing room, wondering about her socks. She decided to keep them on.
"What a shame about your husband," said Doctor Gare as she climbed onto the table. He rolled toward her on a stool, pulled on his gloves, and smiled with his very red lips and walleyes.
"Yes," she agreed. "Still, Venice."
Doctor Gare's nurse looked up from over her tubes.
"How true," said Doctor Gare. "Who could resist Venice?"
He switched on the lamp and pulled a prophylactic over the device with a taut little snap. "Lie back, please," he said cheerily, so Josephine lay back on the table and opened her legs with the usual dismay, staring up at the poster of Hawaii on the ceiling.
Today, after a year of failure, she was entering what Doctor Gare liked to call the artificial domain, and she couldn't help but picture him as its keeper, holding a ring of gold keys. She and Anton had decided only last month, and since then she had taken pills every morning, and they'd waited and watched until the moment was ripe. But the timing of everything went off, and Anton needed to fly to Venice before they'd actually done it. No matter! Doctor Gare had cried; that's what makes this domain so marvelous. You simply leave us your sample, and then you're free to go and join a crusade if you like. We've got everything we need right here, he said as he waved the specimen jar.
The whole thing embarrassed both Anton and Josephine. Not only the humiliating fact itself, but the language, the devices, the money. Yet after the first dull surprise of failure, and all the bloodlettings and probings that had turned up nothing, and then the months of plotting Josephine's temperature upon chart after chart taped to the bedroom walls, the relentless red line wavering around them, it seemed like the thing to do, and a thing to do fast before the insurance policy changed in the spring. Doctor Gare had been pleased with their decision. He didn't smile exactly, but the way the sun came in behind him, lighting his fine, floating hair, lent him a contented divinity. He rubbed his fingers together and leaned forward, his hands white, hair white, smock white, Josephine's own face reflected thin and pale amid her flaming hair in his glasses. But you know, he'd said brightly, of course this still may not solve the problem. There is always the ten to fifteen percent of those for whom we never know what's wrong!
Well, at any rate, wrong with her.
Josephine studied the tropical waterfall overhead and dug her fingertip into her left temple as Doctor Gare slid the device inside her; she glanced down to see him staring at the screen as obscure constellations appeared. He'd had his first look for follicles last July. What we are looking for, he'd said, is black holes. Not actual black holes of course, just what they remind me of, a certain empty density, if you know what I mean ... A follicle, where an egg is maturing. Might be maturing, anyway, we don't know, there might of course be nothing inside. Wonderful! he'd said then, spinning back on his stool. You've got seven! She'd felt rich, laden, like a real woman, but even with seven eggs it still hadn't worked. Then, the next time, in September, there had been only four.
He rolled back now and blinked brightly. "Two."
Josephine leaned up on her elbows. "Two?"
"Not quite a quorum, it's true, but enough."
"Really?"
"Of course! Of course."
"All right," she said, and lay back down, digging her fingertip now into her right temple.
Seven, four, two.
"Two?" she said again, lifting her head. "Is that really enough?"
His walleyes peered up through her bare legs. "For this? Oh yes," he said, "oh yes. As you know, we need only one." And at that he pried her open with his clamp.
She put two cold fingertips on each of her eyelids. After a few minutes she felt a little stab, and Doctor Gare cried to his nurse, "I'm in!" She handed him a glass and a slender long tube.
"Off we go," he said. "Let's wish our crusader the best!"
Then he fed the stuff in, the sacred moment came, Josephine felt nothing, the moment passed.
Doctor Gare looked at her beneficently a few seconds before rolling away on his stool. "Positive thoughts!" he said, peeling the gloves from his hands. "Just lie there for a while. Relax."
Then he patted her hot head and left the room, and the nurse switched off the light and followed him. Josephine lay perfectly still, not breathing, as the sound of traffic drifted in from the street.
The apartment Anton had arranged to sublet belonged to an art historian on leave. It was on the second floor of a building at the bottommost tip of Venice and had a rounded terrace, from which Anton could look through the pines and cypresses of the park out to the lagoon and all the way to the Lido, and he could not believe his luck to be in such a building, a building so much like a ship.
He had been there with his students for just eight days and had already marched them not only to the more obvious places but to Scarpa's museum and the new housing projects on Cannareggio and the Giudecca; he'd taken them to Vicenza on Wednesday and to Verona on Friday, and today they were going to Padova. As he walked through the cool, hazy morning air, Anton imagined his route from above as on an antique map (tinted olive, aqua, and red, with tiny rippling waves of the lagoon drawn in) and actually allowed himself to see himself striding across the fabulous city as architects had done for centuries: the top of his dark head; his long legs moving purposefully in their trousers; black drawing book clamped under his arm; pavement rocking and water slapping in his wake.
Anton walked a deliberately circuitous route, pleased to know his way so well, never to pause baffled at a corner, to look asthough he might actually belong here. From the bottom of the island he headed through the straight zones of new housing and up to Via Garibaldi, to real life, the paper. He stopped for a coffee where he always stopped, put one polished shoe on the brass rail, and produced the formula — Buon giorno, buon giorno,macchiato, si! — all of it gliding convincingly along. Then, with the coffee shot back, the lire slapped down, up familiar Garibaldi he strode until he reached ... the milky jade water, the light! Anton's heart nearly flew from his chest, again, as it nearly flew each morning. San Giorgio, the marina, and the Dogana — Salute!
Was that his boat already? Coming or going? His throat constricted, and he hurried over the pavement, clattered along the ramp, but before reaching the boat he saw with horror the young man undo the rope and the water begin to churn, and he sprang and leapt over the growing green gap, feeling himself now a flapping black scarecrow, bones in an old man's coat, big shoes, but miraculously he landed on deck. The iron gate slid shut behind him, and the vaporetto shuddered and barged into the lagoon.
Three of his students were huddled by the cabin. They mouthed wry congratulations at his leap; he nodded, still rattled, and went inside the cabin. He took a seat and busily opened his black book, whose pages were plastered with the sheets of a calendar, letters, cards, train and museum tickets, all intervening spaces covered with diagrams and drawings and notes; in his trembling hand were sketches of tiny façades and plans, sections of palazzi from mud to golden crowns, as well as Minoletti's pool and villa on the lake, the stilted town in Key Biscayne, the steamboat houses below the levee. Water architecture: why he was here. It was a one-year post, the first half last spring in New Orleans and the rest of it, the dessert, here; he'd begun making excited notes the moment they offered the job, because imagine the possibilities: Le Flottant and Venice itself! Normally he'd need a grant to be here, but now he was official, moving about authoritatively within the mantle of a position. He'd already taken dozens of rolls of film and blocked out, at night, a first drawing. It would all become at least one article and, he hoped, an exhibit, plus catalogue, which would surely — added to his other articles and his published, if not built, designs — help him finally get somewhere.
At any rate, something must happen. Anton had exactly two months to find himself something else, something solid. A permanent position or else a project, something conspicuous, concrete. He was nearly forty, and he just could not keep floating like this. Especially now, with Josephine.
He looked down at his book. If his students were all at the station in time, they'd be in Padova by nine-twenty. First the Arena Chapel, next the Eremitani, then a straight march to Sant' Antonio, over to the Basilica and the Salone, a stop at the Caffè Pedrocchi, finishing up at the anatomical theater, by which point they'd be exhausted.
The vaporetto chugged along, banging at the docks; he wiped the window and gazed out, then looked back at his book, his calendar, to a few days before. At the moment when Josephine was to be lying on Doctor Gare's table (her appointment was at ten in the morning so five in the afternoon for him), Anton had made a point of being back in the apartment at the bottom of Venice and sitting still, penitent, alone. He had stared down at the cold tiled floor and, feeling lonely and strange and far away, found himself looking in the mirror for company. His long legs were crossed, his hands latched around the knee, his shoes gleaming in the dimness, the bluish shadow from his fine nose falling off-kilter and somewhat severe — all of it, he realized with wonder, elegant. Uncrossing his legs, he turned away from the mirror and concentrated on Josephine, far away. He did not like to think about Doctor Gare busy between her legs but took comfort from the thought of the rubber gloves and thick glasses. He imagined those tiny parts of his own self at that moment in a tube, in a pipe, but this made his cheeks burn, so he shut his eyes and with an effort transformed the whole scenario: the fine pipe became the beam of light falling in the window, and Doctor Gare's face became the face watching benignly from luminous clouds. At five-thirty Anton decided it was probably all over, so he got up, took his black book from his satchel, and on that day on the calendar drew a little star. On each of the days since, he had drawn a small open circle in the morning, and if the day ended without bad news, he'd carefully colored in the little circle; this seemed somehow to reinforce the days, to reinforce the prospects. He was not quite consciously glad he didn't have an answering machine, glad his mobile didn't work, glad there was the problem with time zones. Because at any moment the phone could ring, and there she'd be with that terrible low laugh, standing (he knew) with her pants kicked off, squeezing her eyes shut, in tears.
Yet he could actually cup his hands and feel the baby now!
Anton shifted in his seat and fixed his eyes on the passing façades of rose marble and Istrian stone, the edge of green water moving sinuously along the side of the embankment. A plastic bottle floated from a canal, slowly making its way from the shadows out to the lagoon, nudging against a stray leaf of lettuce. He watched the bottle bob and turn gently, rolling in the water. Then, with no warning, it transformed. Turning in the light, it became again that old, old image. The sodden white shirt, the floating tie, the drowned hand still holding a cigarette.
Anton's eyes were dry; he blinked. The plastic bottle became itself. He stared a moment longer, until he was gazing at his own reflection in the window: the nervous cobalt eyes, the excitablemouth, the fine gray coat, the gold watch. He trembled with a sudden gust of defiance and ran a hand through his hair.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Marriage of the Sea by Jane Alison. Copyright © 2003 Jane Alison. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,PROLOGUE,
Begin reading,
ALSO BY JANE ALISON,
CARNIVAL,
Copyright Page,
Reading Group Guide
Reading Group Guide Questions
1. How does opening scene with Oswaldo set up the novel's main themes concerning time and place?
How important is location and atmosphere to the story? Why? Which descriptive passages about location did you find the most affecting and evocative?
2. "If you want nothing," Oswaldo observes on page 134. "You do not want to live." Discuss the thematic connection between life and "wanting" as represented by the characters of Max, Lach,
Anton, Lucinde and Josephine.
3. Would you describe Marriage of the Sea as a realistic novel? How does Alison use magical and fantastical elements throughout the story?
4. Which character in the novel did you have the most sympathy for? Which the least? Explain.
5. Do you see any connection between some of the characters professions and their personalities?
Explain.
6. Did the course of the relationships in the novel turn out as you anticipated? Were you surprised by any of characters' decisions? Explain.
7. What past events haunt Lucinde, Anton and Max? How do those events respectively affect their present? Discuss Alison's allusive writing style in evoking these characters' histories.
8. Discuss the significance of the title Marriage of the Sea. How does water figure into the story, both literarily and metaphorically?
9. On page 249, Oswaldo thinks, "All the busyness and vainglorious fuss that we make, all for nothing. A day will come when nothing is left and no one will see. Why bother?" What answer does the novel pose to this question?
10. What do you make of the story's ending? Were you overcome by a sense of despair or hope?
Explain.
11. If you could write another chapter for each of the characters, what would you envision happening?