A Masked Man

Spring 2009

 

A Masked Man (extended excerpt)

By Megan Sotak

Traveling outside of the United States was my escape plan. No, I was not running because I committed murder; I did not take a life, but I may as well have for all the pain I caused my fiancé. Before stepping onto the aircraft that would carry my destructive behavior and me across the Atlantic Ocean, I sent one final text message: ‘I’m going to Venice, Italy for three weeks. If you want to reach me, email me. But I understand if you don’t. I’m so sorry.’ With the click of a button, my fiancé would know that if he chose not to, he would never have to see me again. He could pack his belongings, clear out of the apartment, and forget me. The thought depressed me, and yet it encouraged me to board the plane.

Eight hours passed when I flew from Chicago O’Hare to Munich, Germany where I had a short layover. Leaving a snowy and chilly Chicago behind made me feel an inkling of happiness. I could only hope that Venice would not have such horrible weather in January. During the flight, I slept between meals and watched the showing of Hairspray without ever putting my headphones in to hear the movie. I avoided small talk with the passenger sitting next to me by flipping mindlessly through a Lufthansa Airline magazine, and when the flight attendants came around offering drinks, I gladly requested a glass of red wine. The attendant, whose nametag read Liesl, also handed an alcoholic beverage to a young girl that could not possibly be of legal drinking age in America. The girl looked as though she was handed a block of solid gold. I secretly wished I were flying to Italy a little over two years earlier when I could have experienced the lower legal drinking age in Europe. At twenty-three, there was no novelty in being able to drink on a plane to Europe.

In Munich, I had only enough time to struggle to order a pretzel from a café before walking through security. Security lines always bother my comfort level and the German guards were particularly intimidating. Their faces were chiseled out of stone and their deep voices spat out harsh words when they asked me to remove my electronics and small liquids from my carry-on bag. From the looks the guards threw at me, I nearly came to believe that I carried some forbidden object even though I knew I was innocent. The flight to Rome took a fast hour and a half. I remembered on the way that my journey would not come to an end when I landed in the Eternal City. I meant to fly directly to Venice, but a few hasty clicks on the Internet skewed my idea of a direct escape when I purchased my tickets.

At Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, I discovered that, oddly enough, no planes departed for Venice until the next day. I could not wait; my three-week landlord expected me that night. My only option was a train, unless, of course, my legs grew to like the idea of walking nearly two-hundred-and-fifty miles.

~~~

About six hours later, my eyelids slid open to a blurry figure sitting across from me with a book in his hands. As my eyes adjusted to the dim yellow lights of the train, I recognized the gentleman as the kind German from Rome’s Termini train station, who had helped me buy the one-way ticket to Venice. I had spent a god-awful amount of money on a cab ride, over forty Euros, just to get to the train station from the airport. And the train ticket itself was about sixty. That was not a great start to my short-term life in Italy. I thought I would be broke before I even had the chance to pay for my apartment.

I smiled at the man across from me, wondering if he remembered me as the clueless American who could not figure out how to simply buy a train ticket. The computers that issued tickets even offered English as a choice language, but I was still hopeless.

“American?” he had guessed, as his face asked whether or not I needed help with the ticket dispenser. I had nodded and supposed that my grungy hooded sweatshirt peeking out from underneath my jacket tipped him off. He, on the other hand, was well dressed in a sleek gray vest suit with a white long-sleeved shirt underneath, unbothered by the brisk weather. A black coat rested on his left arm as he used his right hand to work the machine. He was tall, slim, and fair-skinned. A small brim fedora covered his blonde hair and he wore thick black glasses that contrasted with his light skin and blue eyes. I guessed that he was in his early thirties.

“Yes. Thank you so much for helping me,” I had said while he pressed a button or two on the computer screen. I had wanted to thank him in German using ‘Danke,’ but, at the time, I was still not certain where he came from and I did not want to make myself look worse if I mispronounced the word.

“Where are you headed?” he asked.

“Venice. I need a ticket for today.”

“Departure time?”

“As soon as possible, please.” He told me the cost and told me to put the money in the slot and I would get my ticket. I did as he said, and then turned to thank him again, but he was already gone.

When I saw him sitting across from me on the train, I found it curious that he did not tell me he was also traveling to Venice. I figured that he must not have had any other thought about me except that I was someone in need of help; he had simply performed a good deed and went on his way. Unfortunately, I would never know if he had any recognition of me on the train because his eyes were glued to the red bound book that he held in his large hands. His hands had nice structure and would have been lovely to draw if I had my sketchbook handy; his skin was tightly wound around sturdy bones of strong, thick fingers that looked oddly gentle while holding the book. I longed for his hands to hold mine if only to pretend that someone wanted to be near me and in contact with me. My gaze shifted from the robust hands to the hazy blue-gray outside the window.

Water, water, everywhere.

My mind dumbly came to realize that the bluish tones outside were of the cloudy dusk sky merging with the ocean water bordering the train on both sides and stretching into the distance as far as I could see. I leaned closer to the window to see the train still chugging along a slab of land only a foot or so wider than the train itself rather than seeing powerful sea creatures carrying the train across the water. Small rippling waves nudged up against the bit of land, but did not crash harshly against the earthly bridge as if the water knew not to beat up on what was carrying a train of precious people. The water moved almost in slow motion like a cradle rocking calmly. I stared, watching with wonder filling my wide eyes. Not many people in America traveled by train anymore and I was positive that many would not get to ride a train surrounded by water. If the entrance to Venice could bewitch me like this, would I survive in the city walls?

As the train came near the only train station in the city, the pale blue water became spotted with the pure white of sails. Some sailboats gliding across the water a great distance away from the train looked like white ribbons dancing in the wind. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, fully allowing my lungs to absorb every bit of oxygen that they could. Breathing out, the corners of my mouth turned slightly up and I felt a sense of relaxation that I had needed. My arrival in Venice, the chosen city where I planned to refresh myself, had come. Three weeks would be a short time, but I was determined to enjoy every hour.

I only had to find my way to my new apartment and I would be set. The train left the ocean, pulled into the train station, and came to a slow, gentle stop. I lifted my body off the seat, stretching my legs and my arms. I swung the massive backpack over my shoulders and raised the handle of my suitcase, ready to leave the train. The German man continued to read his book as if Venice was not the last stop the train would make today. He still did not acknowledge me. Must be a good book, I mused.

The train station bustled with people speed walking in all directions, nearly bumping into each other, but avoiding collision at the last second like a choreographed, careful dance. One man in a business suit slanted his upper body to avoid brushing another man walking briskly in the other direction. A group of tourists carrying large backpacks stepped ever so slowly to avoid getting separated or lost in the foreign mess of people. Tiny children complained in English that they were hungry and a fashionable woman shouted into her phone in another language as she walked with determination in her step. As for me, a newcomer and a three-week permanent tourist, I stood in the middle of it all like an overlord standing still as a statue, watching the less important people flit around; in reality, I was a young unconfident woman standing at five feet and five inches tall with medium dark, golden blonde hair that loosely waved over my shoulders. I thought I blended in with the crowd, but my shade of blonde, though not strikingly light, had the opposite effect.

I pulled out a map of the city from my purse. My apartment was supposed to be a short walk away from the train station in an area with fewer tourists. People generally hopped off a train and flocked towards Saint Mark’s Basilica, a bit more south than the train station. I pulled my red suitcase behind me and walked out with the rest of the city’s visitors and returnees. Scarlet Johansson’s face plastered on a huge advertisement, hanging across the Grand Canal on an old building with a large pale green dome, was the first piece of Venice that my eyes rested on. I had to admit, the advertisement was eye-catching. The white marble bridge crossing the canal drew my eye’s attention away from Miss Johansson. It appeared to be the only bridge present in either direction. Nearby, people crowded around a row of booths selling tickets for the waterbuses. Waterbuses! Gondoliers chatted amongst themselves while waiting for tourists to hand over the pricey colored paper. Their black gondolas bounced in the water between upright logs and the red tassels draped along the edges swayed in the wind. A couple was peering at the Venetian rowing boats, deciding whether or not they wanted to spend eighty Euros. Already, I felt like I was in a dream world, but I wished I had someone with me to ride in a gondola.

I wanted to jump in the canal and let the refreshing water chill my body, but I was not going to be that crazy American. Instead, I started toward my new apartment. The street that I followed was rather wide, which surprised me since I always thought Venetian streets were few and narrow. Cafés lined the road and their delicious odors enticed me. I had only eaten a McDonald’s hamburger at the train station in Rome and my stomach faintly hurt from being famished as it was. Still walking on, I resisted the smells of pizza that wafted out from restaurants into the road where they banned together and assaulted my nose. Amazingly, the odors lost the battle. I wanted to eat, to bite into my first authentic Italian pizza or to lick my first scoop of real gelato, but I had to get to the apartment. I wanted to sleep more than anything and I could not keep the landlord waiting.

As I walked, the stores overflowing with masks of all shapes, sizes, colors, and materials captivated me. Masks with long noses, short noses, and no noses. Masks with full faces in all colors of the spectrum. Masks with feathers and bells, with crystals and ribbons. Papier-mâché masks and others made of metal, though especially delicate-looking. There were even masks of animals—elephants, pigs, giraffes, lions, camels, frogs, hippos, rams, unicorns. I had never seen such enchanting stores, never even imagined them. Some stores sold glass made on Murano Island that came in bizarre shapes, mostly wavy cones with brilliant blues and oranges, branching out from a spherical base. Figurines of animals, French cartoon characters Asterix and Obelix, holiday decorations, and flowers all made of glass were also available at the stores. The mask and glass stores made up Venice; one store with material to hide you and one with material to expose you.

The apartment was not difficult to find after escaping the mesmerizing street into an open piazza. It was only a short distance down a narrow road on the other side of the piazza, wedged between two other apartments. It had a pale orange façade, three stories, and a small brown door on which I knocked. A few moments later, the door opened and the short landlord greeted me in English, asking about my travels and offering a drink in his apartment to discuss my stay. He lived on the second floor. The first floor was abandoned because of the chance of high floodwaters and the third story was mine. He apologized for the stairs being my only option up, but I figured I could use the workout of lugging my suitcase up behind me. Before going to my floor, he let me know, while sitting in his apartment with a coffee in hand, what hours he would be available if there were any problems and I gave him my information and rent money.

My apartment was beautiful, much more than I had expected. White walls with hand painted decorations of flowers, large windows with blue curtains, a Murano glass chandelier, and a golden-orange tiled floor. It was pleasant, if a bit narrow and small. There was a bedroom, a bathroom, and an everything-else room, plus a tiny outdoor terrace on the backside of the apartment that looked out at the surrounding tiled rooftops. I took out a granola bar from my purse and munched on it as I looked around, getting a feeling for the place. The back of the apartment faced another row of homes wedged together, but a small canal lay between my apartment and the others across the way. The kitchen was stocked with pots and pans, plates, bowls, and silverware. I even found a candy bar hiding on a top shelf in the cupboards above the counter. The chocolate tempted me, but the paranoid American within me warned that it could be a poisonous trap, and despite the appealing milk chocolate wrapped around coconut, the candy’s name, Bounty, made me think of laundry. Poison and laundry worked together to dissuade me.

I felt the mattress of my bed and decided it was comfortable enough. I sprawled out on the queen-size bed and thought, Venice. I’m here and I’m free, and now I’m going to sleep forever. A tear slid down my face despite my wishes to have restful eyes. The apartment was too quiet. Neither television commercials nor any metal spoons colliding with cereal bowls interrupted the silence because there was no one present but me. Since leaving the States, I did not have a minute to realize the shock of being so lonely; strangers had been around me all day. I shivered and missed the warmth of a body lying next to me in my bed.

My eyelids drooped heavily once the tears stopped and I fell into a deep sleep without an idea of when to wake up. I was graced with a dreamless sleep.

I may have slept away my whole second day and night in Venice. My first breakfast was at a café in the piazza nearby. I ordered the obligatory cappuccino and a cornetto, Italian for ‘croissant.’ They were simply delicious. The cappuccino warmed my soul and tasted much better than anything I ever drank from Starbucks. The cornetto was served warm and filled with Nutella. Chocolate for breakfast. During this morning breakfast, I was quite pleased with life.

I sat at a small table just outside the café and watched people passing through the piazza heading in the direction of the train station. There were some tourists, but not many, as promised by my landlord over our Internet communications and reaffirmed at our meeting. Other people, who I assumed were Italian or European in general, passed by wearing fashionable clothing that made me reconsider my decision to wear a hoodie underneath my coat with blue jeans and Sketchers tennis shoes. I simply found it easier to put together the grunge look in the morning. Luckily, my shoes were not blatant gym shoes or else I would have felt the need to return to my apartment to change. I made a mental note to buy some Pashmina scarves since almost every woman and some men I saw had one. Trying to fit in could not hurt.

I was considering the activities of my day when one of the café waiters unexpectedly sat down in the steel chair across from me. I blinked at him and waited for him to say something. His eyes rolled over my body from my wavy golden hair to my light blue eyes under thin brown eyebrows, to my black jacket, and down my arms to my hands that held the cappuccino between them. I wanted to hide my hands with the half picked purple nail polish, but I did not move.

“Parla italiano?” he asked. I knew some Italian, but only the basics.

“Si, un po’. Parla inglese?”

“Yes, yes, of course! Eh, you come to Venice, why?” He certainly got to the point. I was not about to explain to a stranger just what made me pack up and move here, though.

“I cheated on my fiancé. Twice.” Well, maybe it was easier to say it to a foreign stranger who is not likely to understand anyway.

“Ah, I see,” he said, throwing his open hands up in the air. “You cheated him and came to Venice to be with me!” Both of his hands pointed now to his chest. His eyes glinted and he flashed a smile full of slightly crooked teeth. Europe does not have the same obsession with teeth as America has, apparently.

I half smiled in return and said, “No, I came here to get everything washed out of my system, you know? Figure out the point of my life? Figure out what is wrong with me?”

“Si, si, si, bella! Let me take you out tonight. I will show you what is right about us.”

I thought what I said was lost on him. I had sat down to simply enjoy breakfast and an Italian man was already making a move on me. I shook my head ‘no’ and took the last sip of my cappuccino. I stood up and dropped a few euro cents on the table, turning to leave. The Italian threw his hands up yet again, but this time they seemed to be pleading. “Aspetta, aspetta!” Wait, wait! Sorry, sir, not today.

Today, I would get lost in the city on purpose. No need to rush off and be a tourist. I just needed to get acquainted.

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