Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice by Erica Jong Read Free Book Online

assent when Gloria Steinem said she had never married because she “couldn’t mate in captivity.” Marriage seemed to be like castling in chess—a useless move that saved neither the king’s life nor the game.
    â€œMay I?” came a voice.
    I looked up to see a young man with brown and luminous spaniel eyes, shaggy brown hair, an aggressively badly cut tweed jacket such as German intellectuals wear in München or Berlin (to show their contempt for frippery), and a pleading mouth. I recognized him as one of the German delegation, a young man who wrote films for—or coproduced with, or fetched schnapps for—one of the great German directors here to receive a prize, but whether this young man was called Rainer or Karl or Wolfgang, I swear I could not remember.
    â€œWolfgang Schnabel,” he offered, refreshing my recollection. “May I?”
    â€œOf course,” I said, sighing.
    â€œBut, I interrupt your thoughts?”
    â€œNo, no,” I said. (What woman has thoughts that cannot be interrupted by a man?)
    â€œSo,” he said. “Your first film festival?”
    â€œAnd last,” said I. “It’s too much work, and the films aren’t good enough to merit all this time—except, of course, the ones out of competition, like your director’s.”
    â€œOf course,” said he. “But we come for other reasons. To meet our Kollegen— colleagues—to raise money for future films, to be inspired by beauty…”
    Here he looked deep into my eyes.
    â€œAnd I do not mean—how say you—celluloid beauty but the real beauty, the Modell for beauty, Venus herself or Aphrodite…”
    (He pronounced it “Afro-ditty.”)
    â€œIch meine—Dich . I mean you…”
    I grew embarrassed by this German blarney. Was it just a pass, or was it the real German schmaltz, a yearning, young Goethe besotted with poetry and art? For Wolfgang looked to be about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, the prime age for hungering young men who fall in love with cinema queens. Don’t be a cynical pill, Jessica, I said to myself. Maybe this young Werther is really aching for you— Schatzi. They do that aching thing so well in Germany. But I also wanted to giggle. Love, Liebe , amour , amore— it was all a trap to make you crazy, to make you obsessed. I knew where it led: cock above art. Yearning for that special, sweet rod that would make the world go away. Well, I liked the world—with its cappuccino, its candy-chandeliered hotel suites, its motoscafi , its screening rooms, its temporal amusements while we waited for eternity to begin. Down with love if it meant annihilating all of that.
    While I mused, Wolfgang burned his eyes into my own.
    â€œI have no words,” he said. “You are the wonder of this festival.”
    â€œNo,” I said. “You are too kind.”
    â€œNot kind at all,” he said, “or, as your poet says, ‘a little more than kin and less than kind.’”
    Shakespeare again. Why did Shakespeare seem to be everywhere in the air? Was I drawing him to me with my thoughts of him? For I believed in such magic. I knew an artist was a sort of witch and I had had other proofs of my witchiness in the past. Well, if I were a witch, I was a good witch, una fata— not una strega , or bad witch, as the Italians say. What a civilized language Italian is to have such distinctions!
    Wolfgang persisted: “Your eyes are astounding—never from your photographs could I have guessed. Not even your films do them justice…”
    â€œThank you,” I said, blazing my eyes at him the harder, trying to make time melt and Wolfgang become my Shakespeare, if only for a moment. For it is part of my craft to make every swain fall in love with me. I do it for sport, for craftsmanship, on a bet, on a dare. My heart fills, my thighs ache; my silk panties moisten; the sense memories of love