“…there’s no one knows me.
An honest simpleton still be my guise—
Who does not seem a fool cannot be wise.”
The theater blacked out and I made my way to the staccato roll of applause. The first act was over.
I sat down on a stool just offstage and watched the second act begin. Caropia stood before the bed. She was dressed in red, a muted crimson with gold thread in it. In the sharp white-yellow light it seemed the same color as her hair, and her mouth.
Sanguinetto entered from above. He stepped down soundlessly, choosing the stairs to the right. His black doublet complemented black hair and beard; his face was powder-white. He greeted her and told her of the arrival of the seer. “Does he read dreams?” she asked, and looked pleased when Sanguinetto answered that he did.
Sanguinetto reached the stage and crossed in front of Caropia. When he came between her and the audience it was like an eclipse; the light shifted to blue, and when she reappeared it seemed she was dressed in grey. Offstage in the wings opposite me, Velasquo leaned against a wall and watched.
With contemptuous amusement, Sanguinetto was blackmailing her. His references were vague to me; apparently he referred to something I had missed in the first act. Something that Caropia had done or was doing, had been discovered by Sanguinetto. Now he was using the information as a lever to extract sexual favors. “Thy painted visage will be naught but candied flesh,” he told her, “if you lie not with me.” He circled her briskly and balked her attempts to turn her back on him. She tried to forestall him by denying his accusation, but he ran his hand over her hair and mocked her; and slowly, bitterly, she acquiesced.
As they moved back to the bed, continuing the macabre dance of thrust and parry, I marveled at their skill, at the absolute verisimilitude of their every movement and intonation. This was acting of the highest order; it was impossible for me to imagine them as anyone but Caropia and Sanguinetto.
Velasquo watched the scene without expression.
With Sunguinetto’s hand at her throat. Caropia sank back on the bed. The lights dimmed with her descent and the theater was black before Sanguinetto joined her.
I sat in the dark, and considered tests.
* * *
I was startled to attention by my cue lines. The next scene had already begun. I strode on stage and spoke to the audience:
“O excellent! By that he’ll conquer Rome!”
The audience roared. I had no idea what I had referred to, having forgotten the cue. I retreated to the left staircase, in my confusion aware only of my blocking.
More characters arrived and the scene became complex. Everyone was involved in the central event (which I had not yet deciphered), but many were making covert conversation, or uttering malicious asides. The Cardinal spoke, and suddenly I understood the import of the scene: he was asking Caropia to take holy orders, to become a nun. He persisted with an icy calm that I couldn’t interpret, and her refusals became increasingly strident. Sanguinetto, Hamond and Orcanes, Ferrando and Ursini, all publicly encouraged her while privately vilifying her. Only Velasquo actually meant his praise. I could see the dim white faces of the audience breaking into laughter, and I felt Caropia’s humiliation keenly. We could make her comic for the rest of the play, if we wanted to (I recalled once playing in a Revenger’s Tragedy in which the cast had nearly killed themselves with mirth). Finally my cue lines arrived and it was easy for me to feign Pallio’s anger:
“They that mock her soon will lie in heaps
Of rotting flesh, all broken open to
The sun and flies and maggots.
And their half-empty eye sockets will stare
At naught but Pallio, astonish’d still by his
Abrupt revenge…“
The scene continued, but the laughter was greatly diminished, Velasquo grasped me by the arm. “Brother, I must speak to you anon,” he said, staring at me curiously. I agreed, averting my gaze, and he slipped offstage behind me, leaving me with my heart knocking. He would have to be tested…
Now Caropia approached me, ostensibly to consult in private about the question of holy orders. She drew me out on the apron just above the audience, and in a voice tight with rage demanded that I kill Sanguinetto. I asked why, and she told me a near-truth, the best sort of lie; Sanguinetto was blackmailing her, demanding sexual favors in exchange for silence concerning my guilt in the old Duke’s death. I reacted with a lover’s anger, and as I railed against Sanguinetto she stroked my arm, the softness of her hands belying the absolute implacability of her intentions.
She left with a last velvet command, and I found myself alone—the rest had exited during our dialogue. Blue light surrounded me, as tangible as if the gel covering the bulb had poured down into the cone of light. I collected myself and tried to project an assured, amused control:
“The brother that I hate, and the sister
That I hate and love (for there’s
Two feelings closer to each other than
The minds of any pair of us) both press
Me now like halves of a garotte,
Yet I’ll slip out and let them gnash together:
I have a plot—yet soft—Velasquo—”
He entered. My back to him, and face to the audience, I let my features slacken into those of the Pallio he knew. There was laughter, and with a sudden leer I encouraged it, for it was directed at Velasquo. I turned and greeted him. He began by complaining that he had found no clue to the murderer’s identity. I informed him that I had some news that might help him, then answered his questions so foolishly that it took him some time to deduce that if Sanguinetto kept spiders, and was blackmailing Caropia, he must indeed be the villain we were searching for. I expressed amazement at his intelligence.
While the audience laughed at my duplicity, Velasquo’s face darkened, his jaw muscles bunched. The laughter died away completely before he spoke: “I’d have this be vengeance all will remember,” he said, in a voice so harsh that it enforced belief, made one wonder, with squeamish anticipation, what forms revenge might take… He spoke no more of it, however, which made me suspect he was omitting lines; he sent me on my way, then stalked aimlessly around the stage. Suddenly he slopped and laughed, first quietly, then in a sharp howl. In the midst of this nerve-shattering mirth the blackout snapped down and terminated both light and sound.
I was conscious of a plan that had formulated itself sometime during Velasquo’s ominous drunkard’s walk. I had a test, one that would leave me concealed; he would know he had been tested, of course—it was an unusual test that did not reveal that—but he would not know by whom.
In the prop room Ferrando and Ursini were running over an exchange of dialogue in double-time. A prompter at the rear entrance raised a hand; they filed on, allowing two brief bursts of yellow into the dark, grainy green of the room. I went to the prop table and casually scanned the small pile of stage-notes.
The top one was the one that would betray Pallio. I picked it up, and, holding it against me, went into the lavatory. Inside a stall I took a pencil stub from my vest pocket (my ribs were sticky with sweat), and flattened the vellum against the wall with my other hand. In a clumsy, rounded imitation of Bloomsman’s Italianate lettering, I listed all the plays I had ever heard connected with the Hieronomo:
The Spanish Tragedie
Hamlet
Hamlet, Act Four
Antonio’s Revenge
Women Beware Women
The Atheist’s Tragedy
I couldn’t think of a fully appropriate tag, and so finally added manet alta mente repostum; it remains deep in my mind. That would do.
I had just quietly replaced the note, and was turning from the prop table, when Sanguinetto appeared from the left hallway. He watched me as he picked up the sheet of vellum and put it inside his black doublet; I couldn’t tell if he had seen me return it or not. His beard, rising almost to his eyes, hid all expression, and his steady stare revealed nothing but interes
t. He went to the curtained opening and paused for a moment. He pushed the curtain aside, allowing blue light to wash over him, and made his final entrance.
From the rear I could see only a portion of center stage, and I feared Velasquo would be out of my sight at the crucial moment, aborting the test and leaving me with my uncertainties. Hastily I made my way through the dark to stage right, to the vantage point where I had observed most of the play.
Caropia was there; noticing my appearance, she gestured me to her and with a lift of her head directed my attention to the stage. I stood beside her and looked out. feeling her hand’s pressure against my arm.
Velasquo was in disguise, wearing a black hooded cape. He was establishing his credentials—he was, he said to Sanguinetto, Pinon d’Alsquove, a fellow Sicilian, who had been forced to flee their native island because he had unfortunately murdered a gentleman of importance. Sanguinetto accepted this, exhibiting the usual Jacobean inability to see through even the simplest of disguises. They seated themselves at a dining table set out on the apron, and proceeded to drink and regale each other with tales. Strange revelers they were, both dressed in black, presented in a brilliant white-violet light that illuminated every face in the audience. They traded bloody stories, and it became clear that Pinon d’Alsquove had much in common with his fellow countryman. (There was a certain logic to this Jacobean thinking: since all italians were depraved, it made sense that the farther south one went, the worse they became.) The crime that caused Pinon’s exile had been the last in a long and gruesome series, Sanguinetto became unnaturally gay as Pinon described the various methods he had used to dispatch his enemies back in Sicily, and they quickly finished a tall, slim bottle of wine. As Sanguinetto uncorked another one Pinon spoke to the audience, in Velasquo’s high voice: “In midst of all his mirth he will meet death.” Then they were roaring with laughter again, at the champagne cascading from the bottle Sanguinetto held in his lap. As he drank and bit huge chunks from a turkey leg, Pinon described one of his weapons:
“…a most ingenious toy.
A tiny spring with rapier-pointed ends,
Held tight by threads of lightest leather, which
Then hidden in the victim’s food, and ate,
The threads are quick digested, and the spring
Jumps to its fullest length, ripping great holes
Within thy rival’s guts. Thus do Moors
Kill dogs…“
Sanguinetto chewed on obliviously, and everyone in the theater watched him eat. “Aye,” Pinon concluded,
“Methinks I know all of the finest ways
To end th’ existence of a foe—”
Sanguinetto swallowed and struggled to his feet. He leaned over Pinon:
“Thou missed a way that should be known
To all Sicilians—I will show thee.”
He hurried to the rear exit in long strides, knocked the curtain aside and disappeared. Pinon spoke in Velasquo’s voice:
“Now I suspect I’ve drawn him out like snail
From shell, into the light where I may crush him.”
Sanguinetto reappeared, holding at arm’s length a tall glass box, like a candle lantern. Within it a thick-bodied, long-legged spider—a cane spider, I guessed—scrabbled up the walls and slid down again. Pinon leaped up, knocking his chair over. Sanguinetto pointed at the spider and leered proudly.
“This spider’s of a kind known but in Sicily.
‘Tis said they come out of the sides
Of fiery Aetna, as if escaped from hell.
They live in fumes, feed on the fruit that’s killed
By ash, and are most poisonous.”
“Tell me,” Pinon said, his voice rising uncontrollably up to Velasquo’s high tenor,
“…might I buy that beauty
From thee? I have a murder would be done
Most fitting thus, most artful…”
Sanguinetto considered it, cocking his head drunkenly to one side.
“I’ve more of these, they breed by hundreds—aye.
Done, if you pay me well enough.”
Pinon: “I’ll pay you”
They made the exchange, Sanguinetto accepting a small pouch. He looked in it and grinned. Pinon was staring with an intense frown at the spider within the glass. Sanguinetto returned to the table and sat down, his back to Velasquo.
Sanguin: “We’ll celebrate this sale with more revelry.”
Pinon: “Indeed it is a glad occasion.”
Sanguin: “I give you my assurance, who
You set that tiny demon on will die
Most painful—”
Pinon: “You’d know best, I’m certain …”
Now Pinon was standing right behind Sanguinetto, caped arms high so that he appeared a huge shadow, holding the glass box directly over the seated man’s head. (Caropia’s fingers were digging into my arm.) The spider’s legs struck at the glass soundlessly. Sanguinetto reached forward and grabbed the foam-streaked bottle, raised it to his ups, tilted his head back; they froze:
Pinon pulled the floor of the box away and the spider dropped onto Sanguinetto’s face. He struck at it with his free hand and it jumped to the table. As it skittered across, he smashed the bottle on it, scattering green glass everywhere. He staggered to his feet and arched back; his scream and Velasquo’s high staccato laugh began simultaneously. The laughter continued longer.
On the table three or four spindly legs flailed at the air, their fine articulation destroyed. With stiff, awkward movements, Sanguinetto pulled his dagger from his belt and stabbed at the legs of the beast until they were still. He left the dagger in the table and collapsed over his chair. His voice, guttural as rasp over metal, rose from near the floor.
“Stranger, I would thy heart were that black corse
Upon the table: surely it resembles nothing closer.
You had no cause to murder me…“
Velasquo pushed the hood from his head, and his face, gleaming with sweat, suffused with exhilaration, shifted as he looked about the room. He circled the table, leaning over Sanguinetto to shout at him, interspersing his lines with bursts of strained laughter:
“I did have cause; I am Velasquo, see?
My father’s murder made me seek revenge!
You murdered him, ‘gainst you I had revenge!
Now all that’s sweet is nothing to revenge!”
“Wrong,” croaked Sanguinetto.
“…As well might I commend myself
For vengeance gainsl you, having killed that spider,
As you to gloat o’er me, who was no more
Than insect used to slay your father—”
Vel: “What’s this?”
Sanguin: “I was hired, hired by Paulo—here’s my commission—”
He pulled the note from his doublet and tossed it on the floor, then twisted as spasms racked him.
“A cauldron churns and bubbles within my skull—
I see hell waiting; Death will have its fill—”
After a while be moved no more.
Velasquo kneeled at the sheet of vellum, smoothed it on his leg, read. I could feel my heart knocking at the back of my throat—
His head snapped up, his eyes, ablaze with a vicious, yellow intensity, searched from exit to exit, looking as actors: his expression was absolutely murderous. I wanted to flatten myself against the wall, to hide; it was difficult indeed to stand beside Caropia and feign unconcerned interest. For his was no acting, he had understood, he was the Hieronomo! I felt a surge of relief at the certainty of it, replaced by fear when I recalled what I was certain of. I was in mortal danger. But I knew.
Finally he broke the silence, in a voice that filled the room like cold air.
“Pallio. Pallio, the simpleton, the fool.
That mask conceal’d a parricide most cruel.
Though first deceiv’d by his quick cloak of lies—”
He paused then, so that the next line would contain his private reference, unaware h
ow accurate it already was:
“I’ll use his blood to wash away his guise.”
The blackout allowed me to flee to my cubicle.
Act four began, and with it the gradual acceleration and disintegration typical of revenge tragedy. Plots skipped and jumped and ran afoul of each other, twisting without evident logic to their conclusion; characters died… From my cubicle I listened to the first scenes emerging tinnily from a speaker placed in the partition. Leontia, the Cardinal’s wife, whom I hadn’t seen since before the play began, was being strangled by the Cardinal’s men. The Cardinal entreated Caropia to leave Naples, and, perfectly aware of the danger at the court, she agreed. I felt pained at that; foolishly, I had hoped we would remain lovers until the end, Caropia was then confronted by Carmen, her maid, who had been eavesdropping. Carmen demanded payment to keep her from informing me of the Cardinal’s plan—l laughed at that—it was a strange world we existed in! where some plotted against others, who listened as they did it. Caropia agreed, and then promptly poisoned her. The maid’s screams brought guards, and the doctor Elazar, who declared it a natural death. He too had blackmail in mind, and after the guards left, Caropia was forced to stab him and hide his body under the bed.
I stopped listening, and attempted to decide what I should do next. Nothing occurred to me. Nothing, I thought, remembering with disgust the century or two of experience I had to draw on: I recalled canoeing down the Amazon, lighting in the streets of New York, a thousand other like events…
But what I actually had done was difficult to distinguish from all the things I remembered doing. All I was sure of was that I had spent a lot of time in a chair, living in words; and on stages. It was as if I were driving a vehicle, and the rearview mirror had expanded to fill the windshield. Or as if I were the Angel of Time, flying backward into the future! Metaphors came up to me like bowling balls out of an automatic return; but no plans, nothing like a decision. Who was I to decide? Who was I?
The Planet on the Table Page 11