The Floating Book

by Michelle Lovric

  He recited from his own calligraphic manuals: ‘To form the letter S make two circles, one above the other, and practise drawing them so that you make them one tenth thicker above and below. And draw the lower extremity further out than the upper and make it thicker, and it will look well.’

  Felice had spent years of his life scraping moss off tombstones in the ruins around Verona. With his measuring tools, he’d recorded every spatial relationship between serif and descender. On each page of his famous alphabet book was a single letter in shades of sepia, encased in a pale tracery of geometry, like scaffolding, by which Felice had proved conclusively the mathematical purity of each Roman letter and established the incontrovertible formula to recreate it in modern times.

  In the swells of the ‘S’, upper and lower, he now painted two ‘O’s.

  Sosia’s buttocks looked well, adorned with many practice circles in green ink, like the eyes of so many serpents. Still she slept, her breath rasping occasionally.

  She does nothing gently, even sleeping, thought Felice. He frowned. What were women good for, if not for delicacy? For more robust pleasures, there were men.

  Felice continued: ‘To write in green, first seek in the months of March and April the blooms of the Iris and pound the three pendant leaves well and draw off the juice. Add alum. Soak a strip of linen in this liquid and leave to dry. When you wish to draw off the green colour, take a cockleshell, together with some lye and the frothy white of an egg, and press the said cloth well until the green colour comes out. Then write with it, and it will look well.’

  Sosia’s circles looked well, drying to tiny flakes on her skin. Now she stirred and arched, expanding and puckering the green lettering. Her eyes were still shut and her tongue lay loose on her upper lip. Then she rolled to her stomach, opened her eyes and looked over her back to her painted buttocks. She laughed; too many teeth for perfect beauty, thought Felice. She reached out to Felice, trying to kiss his hand, but he batted her away with his brush.

  For he’d seen that in stretching she had broken his circles.

  The mirror witnessed a transformation in his features; the pleasantness with which he’d previously regarded Sosia had disappeared.

  ‘Sosia,’ said Felice/the letters are broken.’ His tone was bantering, but cold. ‘The devil Tutivillus will be calling on me. You’ve made a casino of my script! He tapped the striated colour with his quill, not gently. ‘That vowel is flattened; that consonant is sucked off.’

  Sosia, feeling her nakedness and the sting of his quill, looked up at him with an expression none of her other lovers had ever seen. She could not bear to feel Felice’s displeasure. She tried to coddle his good humour with a joke. She could reach him that way, sometimes, if she concentrated on her breathing. Otherwise, she found that she was always swallowing the air in her throat when she was with him, gasping like a landed fish.

  ‘Felice, I think it’s a fine thing. Now I can see with my arse. With all these eyes, I can see who is coming behind me, in case I have, in the heat of the moment, forgotten. Bruno says that he wishes he could be the sky, with all those star-eyes to gaze at me. He should see this.’

  She giggled and reached out to stroke Felice’s ear.

  He batted her hand away, saying, ‘Plato wished to be the sky, some years before Bruno, in order to look on a woman he loved.’

  Sosia scowled. ‘That’s what editors do, isn’t it? Steal from the past. Because they cannot create anything themselves.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be so hard on Bruno. You see, now that we spend all our time in these manuscripts of the ancients, our perceptions have become unclear. We do not know when we create, or when we pay tribute or when we baldly imitate. Because of this, every perfect epigram seems stolen from the past, though it may be fresh as the morning. And conversely words that seem still hot from the foundry of the brain are often those merely translated from a fleeting memory that conveniently forgets to attach the correct attribution. I’ve come to the conclusion that every word we read sticks to our mind like specks of oat in a pot, whether we like it or not.’

  Sosia opened her mouth to reply, but Felice held up his hand for silence.

  It always astonished Felice that one might talk to Sosia as one talked to oneself or to male friends – her vocabulary was extraordinary. It was easy to forget that she was a foreigner. The edges of her accent merely sharpened her words. If Sosia had been a man, and a Venetian, how far she might have gone! But she was a woman and a foreigner, and, he reminded himself, moreover a person who hurt others as effortlessly as most people breathe. This meant, in the inevitable course of things, that when she lost her ability to attract, she would lose her power, and someone would be waiting, ready to take revenge. It was merely a matter of time. But until that happened, she was worth arguing with. It stretched his imagination.

  He yawned and rose, draping a curtain around his shoulders. He sat with his back to Sosia, his eyes meandering around the studio, studying Bellini’s work. Over his shoulder he said, ‘Sosia, you must get up and go home, or to Bruno, or wherever you’re going next.’

  Sosia turned on her side and raised her head on her elbow. She looked up at Felice’s shoulders. ‘How about you – tell me how it feels for you to fuck the woman your dear friend loves?’

  Felice turned to her. His smile did not falter. ‘It feels regrettable. The path to pleasure is ever disagreeably bestrewn with small moments of ugliness.’

  ‘A little, tiny feeling.’ She pinched her forefinger and thumb together to show how small. ‘But I thought that men hate to lie to each other; it makes them feel dishonoured and cheap. Lying to a woman is nothing; a slight necessity. But to deceive a male friend, well, there you are breaking the taboos of your kind. So in fact I imagine you really might suffer for what this would do to Bruno, if he knew.’

  ‘Very deft, Sosia.’

  ‘What do you feel for Bruno, then?’

  ‘Why should I tell you? Do you care? Or are you merely curious, or filling up the time before I become capable of giving you physical pleasure again?’

  ‘Will that be long?’

  Everyone has a different heaven. For Sosia, it was desire in Felice’s eyes.

  ‘So what do you feel for Rabino?’ Felice asked, ignoring her question. ‘If anything? Not too much detail, please.’

  He rose and began to stroll around the room.

  So he’s ready for me to leave, thought Sosia. How can I make him allow me to stay?

  ‘I hate him. I hate his smile. It’s weak. I hate what he accepts in me. I hate his little boy’s thighs. Shall I go on?’

  ‘No, enough. That’s a fairly conventional wife’s list.’

  She did not look at his face; she watched his legs. Every time they shifted she hoped it was the discomfort entailed by desire for her. She’d always thought she preferred larger men, but she didn’t know the truth of her desires until she was inside Felice’s arms that joined his shoulders in just the right place, on his breast, which pillowed her head at just the right angle. Once this had been made clear to her, other men now seemed put together in the wrong way.

  He did not see her face tighten to a grimace. He did not see how her eyes followed him around the room.

  Bellini’s studio was sultry. His latest Madonna glittered wetly on its easel. It would not dry for days in this humidity. Felice stood in front of it, naked, stroking his chin, leaning closer to inspect the detail.

  ‘I love this painting,’ he said simply. ‘It’s better than a real woman.’

  Sosia asked if he would come to the tavern near the Dogana and drink red wine with her among the vines and stars.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  Part Four

  Prologue

  For nothing, I called you my friend, for nothing.

  No, you have pillaged and broken me …

  You have poisoned my life!

  Now I moan because

  you have beslavered my lover’s sweet lips

  with t
he filth of your kisses.

  You will not escape your fate.

  The future will know you, as you are.

  December 59 BC

  Dear Brother,

  Everything is gone between me and Clodia except base sexual passion. Yesterday, when I learned she’d taken up with my old friend Caelius, I made a certain vow to Cybele. I’ll not be tamely butchered, me, or destitute of vigour when it comes to taking revenge. Nor shall I do Clodia the honour of renouncing her. No – I shall curse her with my love poems now; they will be the most brutal love poems in the world.

  Come to me, you bitch, they’ll sneer; I’ll take what you’ve got anyway.

  Caelius has moved into one of Clodius’ luxurious apartments up on the Clivus Victoriae. At first we all wondered how Caelius could cover the rent – then we realised that Clodius is probably keeping him close and convenient for trysts with his sister. Maybe Clodius gives a rent discount for threesomes. Do I shock you, brother? It’s only what all Rome is whispering about that smatterer of poemlets, that perambulator in the soul-shallows, that scum-fluff on the surface of all things, that floating bubble, that bantam-strutting disease of friendship, Caelius. Gods, I deserve to be cuckolded by better than that!

  I’ve been faithful as a dog until now, but in the shock of this twin-headed betrayal, I’ve tried the solace of other women; men, too, as it happens. I’ve lacquered my eyes with wine, so painting my conquests more desirable than they were. I went as far as embracing them. Their lips tasted sweeter for the wine I’d drunk. But when the moment came I could never perform. In the end I have therefore desisted from casual gallantries. I don’t want a reputation for impotence in this town. Someone might write a poem about me! And Clodia, who despite everything still summons me to her rumpled divan, would laugh about me with Caelius.

  Back to work now. Glyconics, asclepiadeans and priapeans, and above all hendecasyllables for my mistress, who so richly deserves them.

  * * *

  September 58 BC

  You tease me about the indigestion of personal pronouns in my letters. Yet is it not the work of a poet to be self-obsessed?

  But brother, why do you yourself not write more often? It’s months since I heard from you and there are rumours of a fever razing the legions in Asia. It would be a kindness to let us know that all is well with you, and if you cannot find time to write to your wastrelly poet of a brother, at least send word to our father, who fears to be orphaned of a fine son.

  Or two.

  Death is on my mind.

  My chest … if I should die before you, Lucius, I would like you to have my blue faience inkpot and my chalcedony seal ring. I would not mind at all if you were to place a little bronze chest, representing mine, at your nearest shrine. I have coughed blood this morning, and though I balled up my napkin to hide the red watermarks the sight of them is imprinted on my memory.

  Death is on my mind, for other reasons.

  Clodia is a widow! Her husband, briefly returned to Rome from his provincial duties, was suddenly struck down by an eviscerating illness no one could name. Emptied of every drop of fluid in his body, he shrivelled to a corpse in an hour.

  You can imagine what is being said in malice. Caelius struts about the Forum, not meeting anyone’s eyes, but accepting craven compliments for his risible talent.

  I blocked my ears and hastened up the Palatine to pour what loving comfort I could force on her. I found her dry-eyed, composed, and vigorously directing the packing for imminent decampment to her holiday retreat at Baiae.

  ‘You’re not still going?’ I gasped. A vision invaded my brain: of the widowed Clodia merrily husking her tender green boys in her bean-pod pleasure-boat. I heard the creak of wood, the groans, and the squack and skitter of starstruck waters in that melon-cut bay.

  ‘Why not? You’re still coming?’ She smiled lusciously, as if she shared the image I’d conjured.

  Of course I was.

  If only I could say that I was her only attendant in that idyllic place.

  At Baiae at the end of this summer, she’d gathered an unkindness of young men – how else am I to term it? – and she walked us through her gardens, like dogs, in the cool of each meteor-strewn evening, the sparrow circling her at a more intimate proximity than any one of us was allowed. Even Caelius, I was pleased to see.

  The strangest fate befell that sparrow, and this is a secret you must not share, Lucius, never mind that the fame of that bird has spread to Asia on the wings of my poems.

  At a certain point one such evening Clodia noticed that the sparrow had ceased to swoop about her, and she snapped her fingers, ordering her young men to scamper around and find her pet. The dying sun still dangled like heavy lemon in the branches of sky and the flit of birds was everywhere. It seemed an easy way to win her favour that night, to find her sparrow.

  I admit that like all the others I dropped my dignity (yes, Lucius, you may well add ‘what’s left of it’) behind a bush and threw myself into the search like a child at a serious game with worthwhile prizes. Some of the men whistled up at leafy branches; others scanned the sky. But I knew the spoilt sparrow better than that. He was a plump creature of low altitudes, so I began straight away to crawl on my belly among the caper-berry bushes. I was presently rewarded with a familiar throaty chirp, from just a few yards away and only slightly muffled by the foliage. I knelt by a melodious bush and parted the leaves like the drapes of a window.

  Expecting to see the little bird, my shock was then as when a sudden sensation of falling sends you plummeting in your dreams. For what I beheld was another pair of brown human eyes, those of my rival Caelius. For months I’d avoided meeting them, but now they were just a foot away, and fastened on mine.

  He too registered surprise and pain – for we loved one another once – but his eyes soon fluttered downwards and I saw what had drawn them. There was Clodia’s sparrow, our mutual quarry, and the beast himself was also sportively engaged in the business of hunting. A green mantis, its arms raised in the usual prayer, was laying its eggs on a leaf. The sparrow was scooping them up in his beak as fast as the mantis could deposit them. While we looked on, the bird’s beak nipped closer and closer to the insect’s tail and finally grasped it. The mantis shuddered, tried to pull away, but the sparrow was greedily drinking its sap while it yet lived.

  We owed this horror, I recalled, to Clodia, who fed the beast with bloody delicacies from her table. I’d seen that sparrow supping on cream and gargling undiluted wine while he mashed strips of roasted boar in his beak.

  Caelius, for he’s a poet too, after all, moaned softly. Suddenly his disembodied hand shot through the leaves, seized the sparrow and snapped its neck. It dangled in his hand, the head on one side, its left eye open and the right eye closed. It looked quite roguish, as if prepared to tease its mistress with one last game.

  Caelius and I stared at one another, each face framed by its wreath of leaves.

  Eventually I nodded at him, as if to say well done!

  ‘What shall I do?’ he whispered.

  I answered briskly: ‘Best close the matter. Crueller for her to keep wondering what’s happened to the thing. Don’t worry. I won’t give you away.’

  Together, our faces tight with simulated grief, we went to present the dead bird to its mistress, who was just a few yards away, fanning herself on a rock. As we walked towards her the sun suddenly dropped into the sea as if someone had snipped its stalk. Clodia’s servant held up a lantern, enveloping his mistress in a churning veil of grey moths.

  When she saw us she immediately grew pink and somewhat out of breath, as if aroused by the sight of the two of us together. She barely glanced at the bird.

  ‘Take it to my room,’ she said, and Caelius moved off in a trance, whereupon the bile rose up in my belly and, so help me Gods, I longed to denounce him. I pictured just how she would mourn the bird and how he would console her.

  ‘No, both of you,’ she said.

  Chapter One

/>   Was it for this … that you ruined the world?

  Unfortunately for Wendelin von Speyer, someone else had come over the Alps with typefaces in his trunk: the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson.

  ‘We keep our heads down,’ Wendelin said, when asked by Felice about the new arrival. ‘We do good work. The other printers, they cannot touch us. We are Germans! The fathers of printing!’

  But then Jenson printed his first book, a Cicero, Epistolae ad Brutum and Venice went mad, not for the well-known words, but for the extraordinary letters which spelled them.

  * * *

  Wendelin wrote to Padre Pio in September of 1470.

  My dearest Padre Pio,

  It goes badly for us. The wretched Frenchman has arrived here. I have seen his typefaces with my own eyes; I cut tears upon them. They whisper that this man learned his trade as a cutter of coin dies, that he was sent by the French king to spy on the printers in Mainz and that there he befriended Gutenberg him-self! The rumour persistently attaches itself to him that he actually learned his trade from the master of its invention. In my nightmares I see that he will be the subject of a cult.

  He took no hostages … began to set himself up, insultingly nearby in San Salvador! – even before I had buried my dear brother, assuming that our precious monopoly was forfeit at Johann’s death – and I fear the spineless Collegio looks to uphold this robbery from us.

  This is typical of Venice. No one gives us Germans credit for our investment: they see something good has been done and they run away with it like a child with his sister’s toy. We ‘von Speyers’, as they persistently call us (never once using our Venetian name ‘da Spira’, and this is by way of a taunt, of course) – have made the town a handsome gift of our innovation, trained her young men in new and valuable skills. We did this in good faith, thinking ourselves protected. But Venice is a fat baby accustomed to be dandled and coddled by all, a little princess, who expects everyone to adore her and bring her presents. So at the last minute, the Venetians have opened for everyone the field we alone prepared.