Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

Venice
1899
Very thin, a mere line floating between the sky and the sea, the Lido appeared in the
early morning light. Billowing clouds towered in the north over the Upper Veneto, a
thunderstorm of the past night. The sea a pastel blue, cold pink, green, a tinge of yellow in the
sky. A thin, ethereal mist softened the horizon.
Slowly, before Alexandra’s eyes, this whimsical trace of God’s crayon grew more
distinct. First it was just a fleeting yellow and green, then she could distinguish the two
lighthouses at the entry to the Lagoon, a few buildings, the beaches to the north a white streak.
The islands of San Erasmo and Murano lay directly before her and in the mist,
suspended over the water like a mirage, the transparent blue towers and churches of Venice.
How long this city had lingered in her dreams. How well she remembered its many
spires from the etchings Aunt Sophia had brought back from her travels, which had left
indelible images in her young mind.
They had spent a day in Constantinople—sagging, heavy and debauched, drained of its
beauty, ravished by uncounted conquerors. Venice floated in her imagination, a piece of art,
elegant, refined, fluid—un mirage.
A rowboat took them and their luggage to a modest hotel at the confluence of two
canals behind the Piazza di San Marco, which Aunt Sophia had recommended. The mustysmelling
room, its walls covered with half a dozen mirrors, was crowded with ornate furniture
and an old-fashioned four-poster bed. Konrad pulled the heavy, silver-blue damask curtains to
let in the sun and the bustling noises from the canal.
The porter had barely closed the door, when Alexandra threw off her clothes, and
endlessly reflected between two mirrors, leaving all caution aside they made love on the
creaking bed.
Alexandra saw her love and Venice in a myriad of reflections. A peeling palazzo
dissected into uncounted images. Slowly drifting puddles of color on the surface of a canal, the
serrated black prow of a gondola waving distorted by its own wake in the multi-hued images of
the Doge’s palace. And in the evening the copula of San Giorgio Maggiore floated on a surface
of gold, pinks, and powder blues into the sunset.
Aimlessly following the unreliable, winding vicolos, they ventured into the labyrinth of the
city, got lost, walked in circles unable to recognize the place they had come from. At the dead
end of one narrow lane they found an altar leaf by Bellini hidden in the murky darkness of a
church, or they suddenly stood before the house of Marco Polo—which they could never find
again.
A labyrinth, which seemed made for them and uncounted hours of happy discoveries.
They dawdled away one afternoon in a Café watching the children, who had drawn their
own maze on the flagstones of the piazza through which they skipped on one foot.
In the evening they would find a trattoria in a working neighborhood and eat the simple
fare at the same table as the locals.
Alexandra’s love became boundless, overflowing. In the past she had imagined that she
would dance at fabulous balls, see herself, a mysterious masked lady, being rowed by a lover
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