A Carnival Night in Venice

A cold February night in the 1750s, at the height of Carnival, when the whole of Venice went masked for weeks and a servant could pass for a count. Lucia steps from a gondola onto the wet marble steps of a palazzo on the Grand Canal, wearing a moretta: a small oval of black velvet held in place by a button between the teeth, so that while she wears it she cannot say a word. The two people are imagined. The city, and the masks, are real.

Along the way, a great hall of candles and gilded mirrors, a stranger in the white bauta that half of Venice wore, a slow dance with his hand at the small of her back, a corridor of mirrors, and a balcony high over the dark canal where the masks finally come off and a gondolier begins to sing below.

The ending, given away now: she says yes, they cross the canal to his rooms, he blows out the candle, and the story turns away to the lanterns on the water and two masks left side by side on a balcony in the cold.

The first minute

Let the day come to an end now. Whatever is left can wait until morning. Let your shoulders settle. Let your hands lie still, and warm. Let your breathing slow. Tonight we are going to Venice, in the seventeen fifties, on a night in the middle of Carnival. Two people are about to meet behind their masks. They are imagined. The city, and the masks, are real. If your attention drifts, let it drift. So breathe in, slowly. And let it go. And let us begin. It is a cold night in February. The canals are black and still. Lanterns…

Why this one works at night

It is all slow: a dance at half speed, a mask lowered, a name said for the first time and repeated. There is no rival, no danger, no secret to uncover, only two people who have already decided and are in no hurry to say so. The water does most of the work, lapping, rippling, carrying a song away, and it is still moving quietly when the story is over.

A pilot, and where to hear it

This is one of Lullable's "Late" shorts: fifteen-minute slow romances, an experiment told in the same voice as the true stories. It is not in the Lullable app; it is on our YouTube channel. Arthur from Ludlow is a synthetic voice, made with Google's Gemini text-to-speech. The story is for adults; it is romantic and warm, and it fades to black.

“…And he is smiling at her as if she has just given him something very rare—”

The kind of sentence people fall asleep during