The scene, to his eyes, was more like a scene at the beginning of the fourth act.
The apartment was not that big: two rooms sparsely furnished. The ceiling, though, was extraordinarily high, and the windows were correspondingly tall. There were six or seven of them as the apartment was a corner one.
Snow was on the ground outside and the canals they said were going to freeze up. For this reason, among others that vaguely assailed him that evening, the Count de Farassi[1] was no longer feeling favourable towards his companion.
“I am not suggesting we draw lots,” the Count said, “merely appealing to your sense of fair play.”
“Are you English? You want to put me up against that nasty cold wall.”
“My dear,” said the Count. “My neck is stiff from three nights sleeping this way.”
“Count, you have mislaid your gallantry tonight.”
“It is not a question of gallantry but ill health. Come,” he said, “we will turn all this to our advantage.”
But his heart chilled when he saw his companion pulling on her long socks and wrapping her neck in a scarf. She looks, he thought, not unlike an abominable snowman.
Having counted uno, due, tre, she jumped into bed. “Cazzo! Mi congelo. Shit, it’s freezing!”
“Come, my dear,” said the Count, climbing into bed beside her, “if it is freezing, I will draw you into the circle of my fire.”
“That’s the only thing I disagree with in Dante,” she said, pushing her bottom into his circle, “is the way he describes Hell. To me Hell is cold, very cold.”
“If I were Dante, which I am not,” she went on, “I’d make every circle drip with icicles. Hell is the Arctic.”
“Well,” said the Count, who had a soft spot for poetry. “I’m no Dante. Allow me to be his Creator and turn your hell into our heaven.”
Pushing aside her scarf, he bit into her neck.
She gasped. “Count, is that a stake coming between us?”
*
“I can never think of Venice in winter,” said George. “To me with any good affair it should be hot and sultry.”
“For me Venice is never hot,” said Giorgio. “It is always autumn. With autumn comes a sense of death and defeat.”
“I wonder which side of the bed the Count ended up on.”
“I think I can guess,” said Giorgio, “and he’s definitely not English.”
[1]Another of Casanova’s pseudonyms.