The Floating Book

by Michelle Lovric

  Between the columns in the Piazzetta books and bookmakers were alike consigned to the flames. Sometimes the books themselves were used to make the pyre. Other books were carried away to serve the jakes, to scour candlesticks, to rub boots. Some were sold by the looters to grocers and soap-sellers or put on ships to foreign nations, for God alone knew what use. Righteous hands rifled illuminated pages and cut out the pictures, or tore off the bindings for their gold clasps.

  Then one of the foreign printers was condemned, a Syrian, a man well known at the fondaco for he bought his typefaces from the stamperia von Speyer. His works were esoteric, no competition for their own, and Wendelin had come to regard the unfortunate victim, Johannes Sicculus, as a friend.

  The news came to Wendelin and his men as they stood by the press, at work on another edition of Saint Augustine. His friend Morto came lurching into the stamperia, his howls echoing through the arcades of the fondaco.

  ‘They have Johannes Sicculus. There’s a charge. He’s guilty. They’ve said that he’s to be beheaded and burned.’

  ‘Porca Madonna!’ whispered one of the compositori.

  Wendelin muttered to himself, ‘Why Johannes Sicculus, why not Nicolas Jenson?’ Immediately he blushed, deeply ashamed to have wished such an ugly death on anyone. ‘Save his soul,’ he said quietly. ‘Save all our souls.’

  He was not heard. As one man, the printers were already surging to the door, running down the stairs, sprinting to San Marco, all the while fighting conflicting passions: horror at the prospect of witnessing the brutal death of their colleague, mixed with a need to see it done in order to believe such a thing could happen.

  News of the impending execution had spread throughout the town, travelling in gondola, work barge and shopping basket from quick mouth to sorrowing ear, from whisper to shout. The printers joined throngs heading in the direction of the Piazzetta.

  San Marco was porous; so many entrances and exits. In happier times Wendelin had thought these many doors just another aspect of the marvellous democracy of Venice. Now it seemed sinister. There was nothing to separate the streams of noblemen from the fishwives in this rush of humanity, and nothing to nobilitate one man’s desire to see the death done above another’s. All pressed together in the narrow alleys, stinks and fragrances compressed in a solid fume of human scent above the unwashed or coiffed heads.

  * * *

  This is not what I intended at all! Dear God, what have I done?

  I dare not utter a word to tell my part in this. I never thought my rumours at Rialto would have such a murderous effect.

  It is so unfair. I meant only to put the finger on Jenson. He’s the only printer who knows how to make coins. But now all the printers are in trouble, and it seems he alone floats above it all, serenely, protected by his noble clients. He has greased all the right people in the fist and none will stand bad witness to him.

  I would give the price of a city not to have started that rumour that has grown so badly mangled.

  My man does not know it but I went today to see the death done. Our son, I left to his milk nurse. ‘Fai il bravo,’ I said. ‘Be good, go to sleep.’ The baby wept some, but soon grew still. The milk of the nurse was rich as mine, and more so, I think. There was no room in my heart for any more guilt – it was full of my man’s pain and my sorrow at what I have done.

  My gossip has in the end condemned not Jenson but poor old Johannes Sicculus, who never printed an interesting book and never hurt a fly. My eyes turn to puddles at the memory of that scene in the Piazzetta, crowded as the roots of my hair with my townsmen wide-eyed to see a foreign printer done to death.

  First they brought him out in his chains and put him on his feet upon the dais. He stood, all blink and stare, with his eyes on the sea, full of hope, as if a great fish like Jonah’s whale might jump out of the water and save him. A small dark man, he is, Johannes Sicculus, no taller than me, but with yellow skin, purplish lips, black eyes, a good nose with tall nostrils. I saw no marks on him, so I think they knew he did not do it. There’d been no lash nor beating of him in the gaol. My man has always said this Sicculus is good and I know in my marrow that he did not make the confect coins he was accused of. No one did, among the printers. It was all of my invention.

  The guards were grim in the face – yet one more thing to tell me that the charge was false. The guards love to kill the bad ones: it gives their work some dignity. But when it’s a good one they kill, then they hang their eyes in shame for they know that they’re no better than the ones who murdered Jesus.

  First they lashed Johannes to a corn cage; then they cut off his hands with pincers, the same way poor Saint Agnes lost her breasts. I can still hear the snap of steel and hot piss of blood on the stones. When I looked up (for I could not bear to see it done) I saw that they had snipped his hands at the wrists and sealed the stump with hot coal on sticks.

  Over Johannes’ screams I heard whispered around me all the things a Venetian will say at the extreme moments:

  ‘Dio cane!’

  ‘Dio boia!’

  Then they threaded the severed hands through a chain and hung them round his neck, put him on the block, his rear end to the sea; his head to us, for more of a view. His neck proved a tough scrag, as it did not cut clean away. It was only after three chops that his head snapped off and rolled into the basket. And in a scant second an enterprise of flies had clustered on the meat of his neck.

  At that moment I saw my man’s face in the crowd, far away from me, with his men around him. I saw what he thought: This town kills printers. I ducked my head. I did not want him to see me there.

  When the head hit the basket, all of us screamed or cried, ‘Gesù’ in one breath as is our tradition at these times, the men more loud than maids. The children there, and they were great in number, did not cry. A child is sometimes more brave than his father. I think this is because they hear in so many tales on the knee, dreadful tales where death comes in awful ways – and so, for them, all is as it should be when death comes. By the time I myself had ten years I’d heard of deaths by wolf and lion, of babes who starved in the woods, or were eaten by witches, and the real death in front of me did not make me retch, as it would my sweet gentle man, so strong in the soul but so weak in the stomach, because he has not absorbed sufficient tales to protect him.

  It was a tragical and doleful spectacle, less than terrifying. ‘Not a great death,’ adjudged all the folk near me, ‘nor a poor one either.’

  There were no ‘not-me-please-don’t-do-this-to-me’ pleadings and no noble speech to twist our hearts and make us weep. Johannes just looked as though he could not see the truth in it, why fate should fall on him so hard. Even when he held out his hands for the tool which cut them, he had looked as if to say, ‘I came to this town in good faith. Surely you will not do this to me?’

  But they did.

  And it happened because of me.

  * * *

  The smell of burning, sweet and sour, floated over the water all the way to Murano, where Fra Filippo sat, composing his sermons late into the night. He sniffed the air appreciatively, and allowed himself the occasional smile. Stretching his limbs, he decided to take a walk through the cool depths of the church. He paused at the door, finding it open.

  Inside he witnessed the unattractive sight of Ianno, naked, standing, with his back to the door, in the pulpit, his arms stretched up. Candles surrounded him, and their pointed light revealed every one of the ribs that punctuated his pale skin. Motionless and colourless, he looked like an anatomical drawing of a corpse.

  From behind, Fra Filippo could see the cleft in Ianno’s scrawny buttocks and a tuft of hair sprouting between them. The little brain glowed brilliantly on the left side of his head.

  Suddenly Ianno relaxed his taut pose. He reached between his legs and pulled out a large birch of tattered branches. With one hand still raised to heaven he commenced to flagellate himself with the other, groaning loudly. Fra Filippo watched as Ianno be
at till the blood came, and then pulped the blood against the untorn flesh until his back oozed like a rotting fig torn by birds.

  ‘Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!’ chanted Ianno to himself. ‘Take this for your pains! And this! There’s no one in the whole world as guilty as you!’

  Shaking his head, the priest stole away. He would have liked to find another assistant, but he knew that there was no one but Ianno equipped for the most particular tasks required to serve him.

  * * *

  Each day the reek of charred books floated over the rooftops to the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. As yet, Wendelin and his men had been spared. Their religious works were taken into consideration and as Christian foreigners they were not to be judged like the Venetians and those from the pagan East who must be exampled. The noblemen’s protection stretched thin, but continued to hold. As yet, Wendelin felt he was safe from prosecution, but not from the odium of the public, fanned to fury by the ever more piquant sermons of Fra Filippo de Strata, who, strangely, never mentioned Jenson in his rants.

  At the fondaco, groups of printers and sympathetic merchants stood around speaking in hushed tones about the priest.

  ‘But the man is a cretin,’ was the general consensus.

  ‘A cretin with a dream is the worst kind,’ was the reply and everyone looked at the flagstones, unable to meet each other’s eyes. Fra Filippo’s dream of a printless world was bearing down on them with the steely edge of reality, A printless world would also be a hungry one for those who sold paper vellum, metal clasps and bindings.

  Upstairs, the stamperia von Speyer continued with its printing of classical and legal texts. In panic, they had produced too many of both. Bruno knew, with sickening sureness, that his padron himself thus contributed to the overproduction of books, which seemed to be forcing his downfall.

  He sat in the office surrounded by unsold quires. The public was afraid to buy books. Fra Filippo’s spies were everywhere, monitoring the bookshelves of their parishioners. Women and old men streamed out of church bent on avoiding, for the sake of their life hereafter, the soul-staling, loin-rotting poetry of those pagan priapi.

  Bruno, once it became known that he had edited such works, was pursued through the streets by women who spat and screamed at him. At Rialto there were market men he had known since childhood who would not serve him, and crossed themselves as he passed.

  One Tuesday, two days after Fra Filippo’s latest sermon, Bruno walked through the market, his head downcast, where once it had swung happily back and forth, saluting dozens of friendly merchants. Now he could only take comfort from the physicality of the place, like a foreign pilgrim sniffing the air of a new town for something to remind him of home. The air was warm around him, sanguineous and feathery, as though the plump pimpled breasts of the chickens and geese hanging outside the butchers were still breathing in and out. Pigeons were sitting on sliced-open watermelons, as if being born from them. The fruit men were singing their guttural cries, in chorus.

  The air outside the wine shops was heavy with the mingled scents of muscatel, Greek and Malmsey wine; outside the olive-sellers it was sharp and fragrant with oil concentrated in the effort of absorbing black vinegar. Bruno was thirsty but he knew better than to enter the wine shop these days and the olive-seller’s daughter turned away from him and hid her face in her apron as he walked by: she who used to smile at him and hand him olives on her fingers to taste. Now, when her mother saw him, she hustled the child into the back of the shop with a slap.

  He took a ferryboat to Sant’ Angelo di Contorta, feeling the need of Gentilia’s or at least familial company He stood on the deck of the boat winding up the Grand Canal and let the town perform her usual seductions upon him. His mind emptied of thoughts as he gazed on the palazzi, each with its little mirror of water in front of it in which to admire itself. Swallows scissored through the blue sky hanging gauzily over the canal. The seagulls flew among them, avidly, as if savouring air somehow enriched by the intense blueness of the smaller birds.

  Passing the Locanda Sturion, he found himself searching the windows in case Caterina di Colonna appeared, to make the day more lovely. The apparition did not come, and he found himself unreasonably disappointed. He’d never met her, but Felice had many times spoken of her beauty.

  At Sant’ Angelo di Contorta he hurried through the courtyard. Recognising him, a sordidly pretty little nun blew a kiss over her shoulder, saying, ‘I’ll fetch her for you, carissimo. And what will you do for me in return?’

  Bruno blushed and looked at the ground until the echoes of her light footsteps had been absorbed into the stones.

  He paced the courtyard, aware of eyes upon him, and disturbed by soft giggles and sighs from behind blinds in the rooms above him and annoyed by the chatter of praying parrots.

  Presently Gentilia appeared with her lace in her hands. She drew him into an unseen corner to wrap her arms around him. After too long, he pulled her hands from the small of his back, where they were kneading furiously, and held her away from him so he could look down on her. She craned her neck up to kiss his lips, but he flinched away. It was only hours since Sosia’s mouth had skimmed his, and he could not bear to think of the mingling of her imprint with that of his little sister.

  Gentilia, who had seemed transported into a kind of trance, became herself again. She seemed to realise suddenly the indiscretion of their hidden position and led her brother to a sunny corner of the cloister. She bent her head over her work for a moment, inserted the needle, and then gazed up at her brother, the lace forgotten in her hands.

  Bruno told her about his wretched walk through the market that morning. His eyes swept over her as he spoke. Why did Gentilia wear such unbecoming colours, he wondered. And why was her skin was so liverishly coloured and textured, so moist and hot, that he could not bear the idea of touching it, much as he loved her? Sosia, invece, had fly-alluring red lips and soft skin on her arms, and there was a tempting glitter even to her toenails. Caterina di Colonna, at the Sturion, was said to have a radiance to her skin, as if something were gently aflame inside her. Wendelin’s little wife had the complexion of an apricot …

  While he was distracted by these thoughts Gentilia seized his hand and began pressing his fingers. She tilted her face up to him and said: ‘I hear that Venice does not love the printers any more.’

  ‘Not everyone hates us! We’ve roused the ire of one lunatic priest on Murano by reviving some pagan texts. He tries to rouse the mob against us in all kinds of ways.’

  ‘You say “we”. Are you really so much involved, Bruno?’

  ‘Yes, I am. I’m part of this now. And in spite of what everyone says I still think we should publish Catullus, and his friends.’

  ‘Catullus?’

  ‘A Roman poet; he writes of love, and of – of – physical matters.’

  ‘May I see him please? Bring me some poems, Bruno.’

  He snapped, ‘That I shall not do! It would be most unsuitable for a nun!’

  She looked at him curiously. ‘You seem more angry than afraid, Bruno? Perhaps you should put a curse on that priest.’

  ‘What are you saying, Gentilia!’

  ‘Go to a witch, and get a spell.’

  ‘Are you not well? Should I call someone, a sister?’

  ‘An eating spell, to eat him away.’

  ‘Gentilia!’

  ‘And while you are at it, to eat away her who is eating you.’

  Bruno backed away, his eyes fixed on his sister. She had started to stab at her lace with her needle, chanting ‘Eat! Eat! Eat!’ with each thrust. Blood seeped up through the fabric. She threw her work down and held her wounded finger up to Bruno, as she’d done when they were children.

  ‘Take away the hurt,’ she commanded, in a high childish voice.

  A sharp looking nun, blonde and thin, hurried up and put her arm around Gentilia.

  ‘She’s been working rather hard,’ she said to Bruno, and hustled his sister away.

  Chapte
r Eight

  Now do I grieve, now do I repent

  what I have done.

  We cling together from fear as much as love these days. That priest on Murano would have my man harmed if he could. The word is out that the priest has hired ruffians to menace the printers and booksellers. But these threats are as yet invisible so we may not go to the Signori to report them. We know there’s not one thing we can do.

  My deft little rumours that were meant only to hurt Jenson have been doubled and trebled in the strength of their poison, I know not how. Now there is an added rumour that the ink in books gives cancer to the skin. Of course, not one case can be shown, but the fear flourishes anyway, perhaps the stronger for a lack of evidence, for the canker in the imagination is ever deadlier than a true tumour.

  Now whole days go past without my man selling a single book where once he would do the rounds of the booksellers and hear tales of a dozen snapped up here, two score there. On such days he used to come home full of pride.

  Last night he came home and asked me if it might not be time to give up the baby’s nurse.

  ‘Is he not grown enough now to do without her?’ he asked. He was too proud to say to me that the expense of the nurse, and of feeding her, must now be laid aside. I knew how small an amount is concerned, and by this he let me know what dire straits we are in. And he still does not know it’s all my fault!

  ‘Of course!’ I lied sweetly. ‘He refuses her half the time anyway. I shall tell her tomorrow.’

  From this day on I look for cheaper cuts at the butchers and I do not any longer buy pieces of glass to decorate the house, nor any good foods if they are to be got only at grimacing prices. I have taken a vow of humbleness.

  And these days too I think fewer bad thoughts about the quick books. I am most grievously sorry for what I have done. I would like to help them succeed again. Another idea has come to me, and I have not yet learned to distrust my ideas. I put it to my man.