The Gondola Maker

by Morelli, Laura

  At a corner table, one of Trevisan’s assistants is mixing paints. Another is working on a tree in the background of an enormous religious painting propped on the other side of the studio, and wiping paint from a fistful of brushes with a dirty rag. Signora Amalia is straightening a stack of books and dusting the shelves. Out of respect for our master, all of us remain silent. As quietly as possible, Valentin makes his way to a table and begins rubbing a collection of paintbrushes with a rag soaked in oil. He places each oiled brush on top of a clean cloth spread out on the table before him. I wait by the kitchen door, observing the artist as he continues his peculiar pacing, murmuring, and beard-scratching before his easel.

  Finally, Trevisan picks up a fine brush from a nearby table, dips it into a small pot of black paint, and, tongue between his teeth, carefully signs the lower right corner of the canvas. He catches the eye of Valentin, who looks up from his work and studies his master’s face. Finally, the artist wipes a few beads of sweat from his forehead and smiles. His entire body seems to deflate as he exhales.

  Trevisan scrawls a note on a piece of parchment, then rolls it up and addresses me. “Luca, please ferry Valentin to the Scuola Grande. In my absence I need for him to make good progress on the Saint Anthony frescoes today.”

  “Of course, Master Trevisan.”

  He hands me the scroll. “Then as soon as you are finished, deliver this message to the His Most Excellent Councillor at the Ca’ Leoncino, as soon as possible please.”

  With a tinge of sarcasm, the artist murmurs to himself, “His little picture is finally done.”

  Chapter 38

  Valentin waits for me on the rear deck of the gondola while I unlock the gates and propel the new boat into the canal.

  “Is that the first time you’ve ever seen Master Trevisan do that strange dance?” Valentin asks. “I’ve seen it a thousand times. He does it every time he finishes a picture.”

  “So Master Trevisan has completed the picture of Signorina Zanchi, it seems?” I ask, hoping that I’ve succeeded in concealing my anxiety.

  “Yes,” says Valentin. “The latest of many the artist has painted for the Councillor.”

  “Is the Councillor a... collector... of some sort?”

  “Mostly he’s known for torturing criminals, at least according to what I’ve heard,” says Valentin. “Buy yes, he also has one of the finest paintings collections in the Republic of Venice. He has commissioned many of our city’s best painters, but I think he likes Master Trevisian’s work in particular. I’ve helped with some of the pictures. Recently we finished a very fine Venus and Cupid, and he also commissioned an allegory of Justice for one of the halls where The Ten hold their meetings. His private painting collection is notorious,” Valentin tells me. “Especially certain parts of it.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “He keeps one part of his paintings collection hidden away in a small room of his palace. He only shares it with a select group of his friends. I’m sure the portrait of Signorina Zanchi will end up there.”

  “And why is that?”

  Valentin snorts. “Let’s just say that they are private. His Girls.”

  “His Girls?” I feel desperation rising from somewhere deep inside. My tongue feels dry.

  I realize that we are approaching the scuola, and I turn the oar to slow the gondola so that I can pry for more information, but Valentin is already standing and waiting to disembark.

  “Yes. Trophies of his conquests.” Valentin shakes his head. “He seems to prefer the daughters of the most powerful men he can find. Usually the father receives a hefty sum in exchange for his daughter’s virginity instead of having to hand over a large dowry to marry her off instead. After that, the father can pack away his daughter to a convent along with a donation to ensure the family’s spiritual salvation, and the Councillor goes away with a memorable portrait to share with his closest friends. Usually that’s how the story ends.” Valentin places a finger to his lips, seeming momentarily confused. “In this case, though, I’m not sure. Signorina Zanchi’s father is dead.”

  I hear a throbbing sound, seemingly audible panic that stretches from my bowels and rises through my chest and finally between my ears. I feel that I can hear every ounce of blood coursing through my veins.

  Valentin does not seem to notice. He looks at me and shrugs. “To tell you the truth, I don’t understand any of it, but I suppose that Master Trevisan and I don’t need to understand the story behind everything we are paid to paint.”

  Valentin picks up his bag of horsehair brushes and exits the boat. I watch him disappear through a small door inconspicuously tucked into the bottom of a gigantic façade of colored marble patterns.

  AT THE THRESHOLD to my room, I stop and listen. The house stands dark and silent except for the regular rasp I hear coming from the bedroom door of two of Trevisan’s assistants. Surely they must all be asleep by now. I pick up the candlestick from my desk and tiptoe from the room. I make my way down the narrow stairway, keeping to one side to avoid stepping down the worn, creaky troughs in the middle of each tread.

  The kitchen is as dark as a cave except for the flicker of sparks in the hearth, but my eyes have already adjusted to the darkness. The room smells of smoke and Signora Amalia’s sweetbread piecrust. My mouth waters and I swallow hard. I creep to the door of the artist’s studio and silently lift the latch. I cross Trevisan’s studio on my toes, passing the now-familiar table crowded with plaster casts of once-important, long-forgotten men. I pass alongside a second table stacked high with books and pencil drawings. Suddenly, the floor creaks under my weight. I cringe and freeze.

  No sound from upstairs.

  More carefully, I tiptoe to Trevisan’s easel and raise my candle.

  My jaw drops.

  The painting is a portrait of Giuliana Zanchi, it is true. She reclines on a rich, emerald sofa with gold trim, similar to the one in Trevisan’s studio but more ornate. At her mistress’ feet, her little brown dog curls into a knot. A female servant in the background of the picture kneels before a large chest, the sort of cassone that rich people commission as part of their daughter’s dowries.

  I am drawn to the face again—I have been observing it for months, both in the painting and in person—the alluring gaze, the soft green eyes, the full, slightly parted lips. But now I realize that Trevisan has painted the girl fully nude, her hand resting calmly at the V-shaped spot of her groin, her breasts emerging with pink nipples from white flesh.

  This painting is clearly intended for only one pair of eyes. Is this what it’s been about all along?

  I huff loudly in disbelief. The sudden rush of my breath extinguishes my candle’s flame, and the room falls into darkness.

  Chapter 39

  “Madonna mia!”

  From a dead sleep, the Councillor shoots straight up in bed. Disoriented, he is not certain if it was a knock on the door that he heard or just the pounding of his own heart.

  There it is again—a rapping at his bedchamber door. This time he is sure of it.

  The Councillor scrambles to a standing position, now fully awake. His linen nightshirt flaps as he strides to his bedchamber door, which is, as always, locked.

  “Si?” he demands, his hand on the door latch. He does not open the door.

  “I am very sorry to disturb you, Magnificence, but your boatman has just reported to me an important incident. I thought that you should hear about it right away.” The Councillor recognizes his valet’s voice, and he opens the door a crack to a sliver of candlelight. His valet Alberto bows subserviently. Behind him the Councillor spies his private boatman, the leather-skinned Algerian the Councillor had brokered out of slavery in order to ensure his loyalty. The boatman’s real name is unpronounceable, so the Councillor calls him Gabriel.

  “Gabriel? Well?”

  The boatman, nearly invisible i
n the darkness, steps forward and begins speaking with a heavy accent. “Magnificence, the woman you have been having me follow, Signorina Zanchi...” He hesitates. Even in the pitch darkness, the Councillor notices that the man’s hands are trembling and his eyes search the floor.

  “Yes, yes, what is it?”

  “Last evening, as the sun was setting, I saw her board a boat I’ve never seen before. It was a very peculiar, old-style gondola. The boatman approached the house and called out to Signorina Zanchi. There did not appear to be anyone else in the boat except for the man rowing it.”

  “And?” The Councillor begins to breathe audibly, his chest puffing out and in.

  Alberto holds the candle before the boatman’s face. The Councillor scrutinizes his features. The whites of the man’s eyes glow like orbs in the candlelight. The boatman wrings his hands, trying to stop them from shaking. He swallows, then continues.

  “And, Sir, I watched him lure her into the gondola. But I must report, Magnificence, that it seemed that she boarded the boat willingly.”

  The valet watches a shadow cover his master’s face. His eyes resemble two coals, turning blacker by the moment.

  “What else?”

  “Magnificence, then the boatman and Signorina Zanchi disappeared inside the passenger compartment. I could not see anything else. I could not hear anything they said, but I did hear singing. And laughing. They were there for... a while. Then, after a bit she got out of the boat and ran back inside of her family’s house.”

  The boatman and valet observe the scowl on their master’s face grow deeper.

  “Who is it?” he hisses.

  The boatman swallows audibly. No one speaks.

  “Who is it?!” the Councillor demands again. The boatman flinches. Finally, Alberto answers on behalf of the quivering Algerian.

  “Your Eminence, it’s the boatman in the service of the artist Trevisan.”

  Chapter 40

  The pozzi, the prison cells that lie beneath the Doge’s palace, prove even more squalid than their notorious reputation.

  My ankles shackled, I shuffle along the stone floor, observing moss growing on the damp stones of the wall. The dank corridor is punctuated at regular intervals with wooden doors and reeks of urine and sweat. Two hulking bailiffs tighten their grip on my elbows. In the distance, I hear water dripping... tink, tink, tink.

  As I pass, eyes peer out at me from the squares covered by iron grilles that lend access to each cell. Each dank receptacle holds a handful of poor souls. In the first, behind the pair of prisoners who approach the grille to look at me, I spy a woman cowering in a fetal position in the corner of the room, her body resembling a heap of rubbish in a burlap sack. At another grille, a man with a smudged face, his clothes in tatters, seems to look at me without really seeing. He mumbles a low, disturbing, and unintelligible string of words that sound like moaning.

  I flinch as I perceive the face of another man pressed against the grille, leering as I pass. The man’s brow and cheeks are lined, and the sallow skin below his eyes hangs in bags. The old man’s eyes are strangely shiny, enormous reflective orbs. His mouth screws into an exaggerated smile, then lapses into a straight line.

  “Is that you, Grimaldi?” he screeches.

  “You’re dreaming again, Padia,” says one of the bailiffs, smirking. The bailiff unlocks the door to the cell occupied by the man with the shiny eyes. He shoves me forward, and I stumble, then catch myself from falling headlong onto the cold stone floor. The door clangs shut behind me, and I hear the footsteps of the two men recede.

  “That is no way to speak to the Duke d’Este!” the man shouts at the bailiff through the grille, his voice crackling with hysteria. “I’ll have you drawn and quartered before a cheering crowd. Ha! You think I won’t do it? Just wait till I get out of this miserable place!” The man’s mouth twitches uncontrollably. “This is my second-in-command, you know! He fought with me on the battlefield in Lepanto!”

  “At last, you’re here, Grimaldi!” the man whispers loudly at me as he turns and grasps my arm. “Grimaldi! I’ve been waiting for you! You and I together again—ha! Finally! We can devise a plan to get out of here!”

  The cell stands completely bare, except for four wooden planks along the wall. The stench that arises from a cesspool in the corner is so vile that I feel I will vomit. I swallow hard.

  “Grimaldi! I’ve been waiting so long.” My cellmate smiles raggedly at me again. He sits on one of the planks and appears to address someone I cannot see. “You see? I told you he would find me after all this time! Grimaldi, my dear Grimaldi, all the way from across the sea.” The man finally settles into mumbling, humming, and giggling to himself as he addresses the invisible person on the nearby plank. I pace the cell.

  “Grimaldi!” the crazy man’s voice scratches again, now in a loud whisper. “Now, we must make our plan. I tell you, we must go to the aid of our compatriots in Famagusta. They’ve all been taken prisoner!”

  I sink myself down on a wooden plank and put my head in my hands.

  “Grimaldi, don’t you recognize me?”

  “The name’s Luca,” I state loudly to my neighbor. Quietly to myself, I add, “Luca Vianello. Son of the gondola maker.”

  Chapter 41

  The official charge is attempted rape, but that is not what excites my prison mates the most. Soon enough they get word that I stand charged for the attempted rape of one of Our Most Serene Republic’s most inaccessible patrician women. The prison guards have done their job—chiding me, demeaning me, wearing down my resolve hour by hour. With every insult they hurl at me through the iron grate, the more titillated they become. Soon my fellow inmates in the neighboring cells have been stirred into a frenzy.

  “Out with it, sior!” One of the bailiffs demands, his sour breath reeking through the air. “We want to hear all the details.”

  I do not respond.

  “Come, now is not the time to be bashful! Tell us what magic words you used to make the lady jump into your boat!” He flashes a twisted grin, and his colleague emits an evil chuckle.

  “Tùxi, have you already forgotten about me? I am accused of rape, too!” A small man with a high-pitched voice presses his dirty face against an iron grate.

  A prisoner two cells away answers. “Bonaldo, you screwed the baker’s wife behind some straw bales in the hay market. Where is the xixolàda in that? Lieutenant Grimaldi there lured one of Our Most Serene City’s most celebrated virgins into his boat. He cannot be called a criminal, only a hero!”

  The adjoining cells erupt into cheers and howls. Two men in a cell across from me collapse from laughter, their loud cackling echoing down the dank hallway. Only my cellmate, usually talkative, abstains from commenting. Instead, Padia sits on his wooden plank and hugs his knees to his chin, rocking aggressively forward and back, seemingly oblivious to the carnival of jeers around him.

  From the relentless heckling, I learn that there will be no trial, no questioning. At any moment, I could be taken to the upper floors of the Doge’s Palace, where I will be hoisted onto a platform and hung by my wrists on the rope, writhing in pain until my hands turn purple, my breath comes in ragged bursts, and I confess. If I admit to the charges, I may be left on the rope and branded with fire, then eventually returned to my cell. If I deny it, well, surely there is something worse to come.

  That is nothing, though, compared to what they tell me will happen to my grandfather’s gondola, my gondola, the boat I returned to the water through the labor of my own heart and hands. My jailers have left nothing out of the story. It took seven servants of the state, they tell me, to build the great pyre on which the gondola will burn, and a sizable crowd has already assembled to watch the spectacle. In my mind’s eye, I see the flames lick the fresh varnish I slicked along the bottom of the gondola with my own hands.

  I struggle to imagine if Giuliana Zanc
hi is there to witness the burning. I wonder if she herself is the one who has accused me, whispering in the ear of her black-eyed patron, her future lover, the man whose money will pay for her freedom in exchange for her innocence and her likeness in paint. With some hope I cling to the idea that we are both victims of the Councillor’s passions, and that she is somewhere out there wishing for my deliverance as much as for her own.

  Then I face the truth that I do not know Giuliana Zanchi well enough to anticipate her thoughts or her actions. In fact I hardly know her at all, and I cannot begin to imagine what is coursing through her head. All I know is that I was a fool to believe that I held her heart, a fool to risk my own, a fool to imagine that I would have a sliver of a chance in this world with such a woman as she.

  Only one thing is certain. I have ruined my life completely, not only once but two times. I deserve the fate that awaits me now. Whatever my destiny, I am resigned to it.

  Chapter 42

  From the viewing platform erected across the square from the pyre, the Councillor scans the crowd. So far, so good, he thinks to himself, nothing out of the ordinary. All that matters is that this public burning proceed as smoothly and normally as any public act of justice. There must be no reason for one of his colleagues to go digging into this matter in greater detail. It would get too personal, too fast.

  In the crowd, people whisper to one another that the criminal is named Luca Fabris, gondolier de xasada to the painter Gianluca Trevisan. The impudent boatman had the gall to attempt to rob the innocence of one of the city’s most upstanding patrician women and disrupt the order of Our Most Serene Republic. Justifiably, he has been thrown into the pozzi, where he is awaiting transport to the slave galleys. The boat in which the crime was committed will burn.