The blood was pouring out of the wound and dyeing the cloak of the surrounding sea scarlet. His eyes were open, expressive, like those of a man deep in thought, mulling over his future and the decisions that awaited him.
When she noticed Edgardo, Kallis turned and looked at him as if he were a ghost. Segrado was still clutching the parchment in his hand. The ink was dissolving, producing light swirls in the water, like the squirts of small cuttlefish.
The formula was now illegible.
The master seemed to recognize Edgardo. His lips parted in a thin breath, like a wind instrument. His limbs suddenly shuddered, stirring the water, like the last flap of a fish’s fin, and his life force exited his body.
The master closed his eyes and, just then, a bolt of lightning flashed low across the horizon, illuminating the surface of the lagoon with a white, moonlike light. Segrado seemed to lift himself, as though pushed by a subterranean glow. Then the gloomy darkness of the storm returned. Horrendous lightning and deep thunderclaps tore through the sky, and the body fell back down, enveloped by the waves. Edgardo made the sign of the cross.
Kallis got up. She was unrecognizable. Her face was deeply lined, her eyes empty, glassy, as though in just a few moments she had aged many years. A thread of wool that had been twisted and broken. She reached out to Edgardo and touched his wound, as though she wished she could heal it with a miraculous gesture.
God almighty, how could he love her so much . . . He loved her even though she was a murderess, a slave, and a traitor. She had killed her own father. She had tricked Edgardo, lied to him. And yet he loved her above everything else, above any right, any reason, any divine laws.
She gently touched his eyelids with her finger.
“Forgive me, I’m just a slave,” she whispered. “I thought I could redeem myself, be born again. I defied God and lost the light of reason. Slaves have no right to another destiny except being slaves forever. Forgive me, I didn’t want to hurt you . . . ”
Edgardo held her in a desperate embrace. “Kill me too,” he whispered. “I beg you, kill me. My life has no more meaning. I’ve lost everything and now I’ve also lost you. Kill me and make me happy. Set my soul free . . . ”
A light flutter of the eyelids and the vanishing memory of a happy moment flashed across Kallis’s face.
“It will be a release for me. Kill me,” Edgardo repeated. “I’m a danger to you. I know the formula. Kill me and you’ll be the only one who knows the secret.”
Kallis pressed her lips to his face, covering him with kisses. “No, my love. I’m in no danger with you because I know you will never reveal the secret. You’ve sworn. You’re a knight, and a knight never goes back on his word.”
She cast a final glance at her father and walked away, toward the canal where the scaula was tied.
“Kill me, please!” Edgardo shouted again. “I’m already dead, so free me from this useless body.”
His cry was swept away by a gust of wind that suddenly came from the north, upsetting the waters.
Kallis ran to the boat and, with a few strokes, rowed away from the shore, southward toward Metamauco.
The world had turned over again. The sky stood still and the waves in the lagoon had risen, tall and raging. Edgardo collapsed in the water, which was still rising. For a while, he managed to follow the course of the boat shaken by the waves, and watched it being lifted on the crests of the breakers before tumbling down into the eddies. Then he saw Kallis disappear in a mass of foam and vapor. A thread of wool swallowed by the muddy sea.
The rain fell abundantly and produced tiny sparks as it hit the water. The line of the horizon, torn by flashes of fire that lit up the vault of the sky like the northern lights, turned blood-red. The sea roared and a hollow rumble shook houses, land, and the water all around.
Suddenly, shaken from its depths, as though by magic, the lagoon drew back and vanished, leaving rios, canals, basins, and even the Rivus Altus, dry.
Seeing the wonder, the citizens of Venetia thought the end of days had come, and knelt down to pray.
Then an almighty rumble, like an army of a thousand men galloping across a plain, shook the earth, and a wall of water as tall as two towers, and as imposing as a mountain, came crashing angrily down on the city, penetrating all the harbors, passing the beaches, flooding everything with its might, leaving in its wake smashed galleys, collapsed houses, demolished banks, uprooted bridges. Even the new bridge was swept away, stone walls and dams ripped open and pulled off, the vineyards and vegetable gardens destroyed.
All the lands of the lagoon were flooded and an entire island, Metamauco, vanished, swallowed by the billow, totally razed to the ground by the gigantic wave. The harbor, the palaces, the fishermen’s houses . . . Everything was erased by the power of nature, sunk to the bottom of the muddy sea. Nothing remained of that wonderful, blooming island.
I have seen thick, black rivers rise from the ruins of derelict churches and stifle the city in a deadly embrace. I have seen broken slabs of marble, uprooted bridges, collapsed towers, and galleys, scaulas, gondolas, and chelandions all piled up in a heap in a mountain of sails, timber, and stays, in the dock before the basilica of San Marco. I have seen corpses floating all over the lagoon still tinged with blood. And fishermen’s huts razed to the ground, and fishing boats hurled into the branches of oak trees, like birds waiting to take flight. And herds of cows and horses roaming around the shoals in search of grass to nibble, where everything was water and destruction. And the people, bewildered and terrified, wandering in what was once the city of Venetia, searching for the bodies of missing relatives. I have seen death and destruction, but also strong minds already working to rebuild bridges and houses. I have seen the skies open, the clouds turn pink, and the lagoon become clear like springwater.
And I have seen a knight, dressed in rags, his body deformed, his eyes wild as a madman’s, roaming on a scaula in the lagoon, near the vanished island once called Metamauco, peering into the depths of the water, amid the ruins, in search of an illusion, a dream, a ghost named Kallis.
GLOSSARY
Ca’: Short for “Casa” (house). In Venetian, it stands before the name of the house.
calle: Venetian word for a narrow street.
campo: Venetian word for a city square, which in the early days often had vegetation on it.
fondamenta: In Venice, a stretch of road along a canal or rio.
garzone (plural garzoni): Shop boy.
junctorio: A stretch of land outside houses that allowed passengers to disembark.
Luprio: In 1106 Venice was divided into districts that corresponded to groups of islands. For example, Rivoalto was the current Rialto, Luprio is now Santa Croce and San Polo, the island of Scopula is now Dorsoduro, the island of Canaleclo (where reeds grow) is now Cannareggio, Gemini is now San Marco, while Castello di Olivolo, with the Island of San Pietro, is now Castello.
patera: Circular ornamental bas-relief inserted into the façades of Venetian buildings.
Popilia: Known nowadays as Poveglia.
quartarolo: Ancient Venetian currency of little value.
rio: Internal canal in the city.
Rivoalto: Ancient name for the modern Rialto.
Rivus Altus: The ancient name for Canal Grande.
sandolo: A light, flat-bottomed fishing boat widely used in the Venice Lagoon.
scaula: A light boat, like a gondola, used internally in Venice.
Schiavonia: Friuli valleys, in Northwest Italy, inhabited by Slavs.
zoto: in Venetian dialect, a man with a limp.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roberto Tiraboschi was born in Bergamo (Italy) and lives between Rome and Venice. A screenwriter and playwright, he has worked with Nobel laureate Dario Fo and written screenplays for Italian directors, including Marco Pontecorvo, Silvio Soldini, and Liliana Cavani, among others
. His novels, Sonno and Sguardo 11, have enjoyed critical and commercial success in Italy. The Eye Stone is the first of his novels to be published in English.
The Eye Stone Page 26