“People come from all over the world to see Venice-people who refuse to die before they are blessed by this beauty.” “Yes, that’s right-look about you, you fool!” Breuer said to himself. Other gondolas still slept, moored to twisted poles which lay askew in the canal, like spears flung down haphazardly by some giant hand. The still waters of the Grand Canal, shimmering with the reflections of the great palaces lining its banks, were disturbed only by the undulating wake of a coasting gondola.
Beyond the tables, steel-blue clouds of pigeons hovered and swooped. Several held newspapers in one hand and coffee cups in the other. The other tables of the Café Sorrento were filled with breakfasting men and women-mostly tourists and mostly elderly. He berated himself: “For God’s sake, stop! Stop thinking! Open your eyes! Look! Let the world in!”īreuer lifted his cup, inhaling the aroma of rich coffee along with deep breaths of cold Venetian October air. You will always be the only man in my life.” He had been recalling her teasing voice: “Doctor Breuer, why are you so afraid of me?” He had been remembering her words when he told her that he would no longer be her doctor: “I will wait. And squandered on what? As usual he had been daydreaming about Bertha, beautiful Bertha, his patient for the past two years.
How long had he been daydreaming? He looked again at his watch. Yet here he was, at the Café Sorrento, at nine o’clock, scanning the faces around him, wondering which one might be the impertinent Lou Salomé.īreuer nodded to the waiter, a lad of thirteen or fourteen with wet black hair brushed sleekly back. Breuer had come to Venice precisely to get away from matters of urgency. Breuer was on vacation, and that “matters of urgency” had no interest for him-indeed, that Dr. No way to tell this person that nine o’clock was not convenient, that Frau Breuer would not be pleased to breakfast alone, that Dr. An impertinent note! No one had addressed him so brashly in years.
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