Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice by Erica Jong

have gone from the twentieth-century wings onto the Elizabethan stage and begun speaking Shakespearean English), I answer, “And who, pray, is your friend, Sirrah?”
    â€œWhy, Master Shake-scene, the upstart crow, the great—or soon to be great—Will Shakespeare. A wanton lad who prizes wenches but slights not lads. Like many a player, he hath the morals of a monkey, the lust of a lion, and the appetite of a tiger…”
    â€œDoth he not have the heart of a lion as well?” I ask, astonished not to be more astonished.
    â€œAh, Milady, that remains to be seen. Come, will you meet my friend? He would fain meet you.”
    â€œI have met your friend,” I say.
    â€œIn word but not in flesh,” says the young man. “’Tis very like reading about this watery city of sin and sensuality, yet never having been here. We, too, dreamed of Venice. But now that we are here, we find it quite familiar yet altogether strange—like unto the unicorn, which is almost a horse, almost a goat, and yet is compact’d of magic and of poetry in a strange, new way no mere mortal could guess at. For it is touched with the breath—and the brush—of the Muses. Do you not agree?”
    I nod my head and stare into the young man’s eyes, not quite sure whether in a moment he will not turn into a mere bit player in my life—a tourist disguised for a Regatta Day party, or the son of an old friend playing dress-up and picking me out of the crowd to tease me (for in Venice, on Regatta Day, one meets everyone!). But no, he seems quite the real thing—though who can tell in this city of mirrors and reflections, this city where past and present mingle most incredibly, where even our best contemporary chronicler of the place—I mean, of course, Jan Morris—has changed not only names but genders like some astounding present-day Orlando. Ah, Venice has that effect upon all sensitive souls: we change shapes, epochs, even sexes—bewitched by that fata (or is it strega? ) manifest within the labyrinthine ways and byways of the city.
    â€œJessichka! Jessichka!” comes the echo down the calle . I whirl around to see Grisha Krylov waving furiously at me above the crowd, and then I whirl around again to find my fine Elizabethan dandy gone. Vanished into thick air. And I alone again, with Krylov in pursuit.
    I am determined to flee him, determined to find my Elizabethan friend again—but it is no easy task negotiating the streets of Venice on Regatta Day. Every calle is packed with people, and it requires great agility, and no small amount of pushing and shoving, to elude a great, thundering, would-be rapist of a Soviet poet who is waving his arms madly and blowing consolatory kisses. But elude him I do, for Venice belongs to the Venetians on Regatta Day, to the working people of the city, and one can get lost in their ample collective bosom. The Beautiful People on the balconies are just so much window-dressing—the glitterati irrelevantly glittering—but it is the common people of Venice who love the regatta most, who know the names of all the regatanti and regatante , who cheer for the Regata delle donne (their mothers and sisters), the Regati degli Alberoni, the Regata di Pellestrina, the Regata dei Traghetti, the Regata dei S.S. Giovanni e Paolo, the Regata di Mestre, di Burano, di Murano, and so on. This is their festa , a day on which even Grisha Krylov might be swallowed up by a crowd, a day on which all Venice belongs to the beautiful, muscular gondoliers (and even their ugly brothers).
    As the boats begin to race on the Grand Canal, it becomes apparent that Venice is not at all the city of glittering, famous foreigners it often seems to be (at least in the summer season) but a city of cheering shopkeepers, boatmen, cooks, waiters, dustmen, fishermen, maids. This Venice—the Venice that belongs to the Venetians, the Venice that belongs to the flourishing