Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice Read Online Free PDF Page A

seems to be Shakespeare in Russian—a mellifluous sound that quite undoes me, though I know no Russian but da and nyet.
    â€œDid you send the roses, Grigory?” I ask.
    â€œCall me Grisha,” he says. “No—but I shall do it at once if I may lie at your breast with them…But watch out—I have thorns. Big thorns!”
    Has nobody told the Russians that this style of male braggadocio has been out of fashion for twenty years? Apparently not. This is no postfeminist machismo—this is just plain old male-chauvinist pigism of the old days. I find it almost endearingly quaint.
    We parade the short distance from the Excelsior to the Palazzo del Cinema, followed by the press. Besides Grigory—or Grisha—Krylov, who has staked me out as his prey, and Carlos Armada, whose dishy Italian girlfriend is along for the walk, there are Walter Wildhonig, the bristling German playwright; Benjamin Gabriel Gimpel, the pale, shrunken Nobel laureate; Pierre de Houbigant, the vague aristocratic painter; Leonardo da Leone, the twitching intellectual film director who is the chairman of the giuria; and Gaetano Manuzio, the anti-intellectual film director who has no tic and is accompanied by his actress-wife Elisabetta Grillo and his actress-mistress Barbara da Ponte. Also, there is Per Erlanger, the Swedish actor who is set to play Shylock in Serenissima . Like his character, he is a lugubrious and bittersweet Jew.
    The Lido sun is very bright as we march to the theater, trailed by paparazzi , attracting swarms of bambini seeking autographs.
    Motorcycles roar by. Taxis barely miss us—for the Lido is not truly Venice, that city without wheels, but a spiritual (if not physical) extension of the mainland. At the Palazzo del Cinema, we are brought upstairs to an office and photographed yet again, this time for our badges. Each of us is given a little golden tag with L A B IENNALE and M OSTRA I NTERNAZIONALE DEL C INEMA printed on the back and our names and G IURIA printed on the front beneath our pictures. These badges will be our tickets of entry into the films, the prize ceremonies, and all the major events of the next several days.
    When our photos have been taken, we are ushered down to the stage.
    â€œLadies accompanying, please within,” says a functionary, assuming I am just a chickie, because of my gender.
    â€œShe’s a member of the jury,” says Grigory, taking a proprietary interest in me. “See, Jessichka, the smiling American needs the non-smiling Russian.”
    Grigory is famous for being a survivor, an artful dodger, and (some say) KGB man. The only Soviet poet—except, of course, for Yevtushenko—who has managed to stay in the Soviet Union while still writing anti-Soviet poems, he is the Kremlin’s token rebel, the writer they send out into the world to demonstrate Soviet freedom of speech. Consequently, he is suspected of hypocrisy by everyone. Dissident Russians detest him, American writers suspect him despite his charm, and the PEN club welcomes him but not without a subtext of whispers. It is said that he lives in a glorious dacha outside Moscow; is attended by students, servants, and mistresses; drives in a chauffeured car; and shops in those special stores reserved for the Soviet elite. That he travels all over the world I surely know, because I have met him several times at gigs like these—that eternal round of prize-givings, festivals, free cruises, and rubber chicken dinners that are the price, and the dubious booty, of fame.
    I keep walking away from Grigory, but he keeps catching up with me. When we are led to our seats on the stage, Grigory takes the one next to me. Resigned to him as my shadow, I decide to make conversation.
    â€œDo you like Venice?” I ask.
    â€œDon’t ask empty questions,” he snaps.
    (But for me it is not an empty question, since Venice is the city of my heart.)
    â€œHow Russian and judgmental you are,”