The Floating Book

by Michelle Lovric

  ‘So they’re not all whores then?’ asked Fra Filippo.

  ‘It would seem not,’ Ianno replied. ‘This one’s pure as the snow, I’ll warrant.’

  ‘And likely to stay that way.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind—’ Ianno began, with a slap-beseeching smirk, but quailed, as his capo loomed over him, hand raised. Stunted little Ianno was strong as three normal men, but he would not dare retaliate against Fra Filippo de Strata.

  * * *

  Fra Filippo penned some experimental sermons. He was trying out a pungent distillation of mockery and threats. The new formula, ironic and scathing, brought people crawling back to his sermons and saw them leaving the church, fired with just the passions Fra Filippo most wished to rouse. The ferryboats to Murano were full again despite the dramatic break in the warm weather. Fra Filippos congregation huddled in the pews, welcoming each arriving member for his animal warmth.

  Fra Filippo started gently, his breath frosting the air.

  Let us picture the world the way these so-called ‘scholars’, these lovers of antiquity, want it.

  When these oh-so-refined nobles are lying in their fake antique bowers, reclining on their replica Roman divans, writing poems to grapes of the past while turning like spoilt children from the real grapes of the present – what will happen!

  They will come to despise the honest trade and hardworking commerce that has made Venice great. Their morale and their morals will decline at the same time, together, dying the same death as their dignity.

  Look at these pathetic creatures! Talking to themselves in their affected accents! Unable to fulfil their real-life roles as husbands and fathers.

  Then Fra Filippo’s voice changed. He lowered his head and seemed to whisper to himself.

  This clutch of the past on our throats is fatal as the grip of an evil giant round the fragile stem of a daisy. For even in the flower of our success we Venetians are the most pluckable, we droop imperceptibly with the heavy opulence of our petals, we are too vain to see the moment of perfection is already past, and we are heading down a steep incline straight into the rapacious mouth of Lucifer himself.

  And who is behind us, pushing with all their might? The printers. These men, love-slaves of prostitutes and equally slaves of the bottle. Now if printing were controlled by the Church, instead of perverted by this conspiracy of the so-called scholars and the Germans, what an organ of rectitude it could be …

  Take these instruments from the hands of the barbarians and give them to God, and if you cannot do that, then destroy them in his name. Burn the printing presses! Burn the heretics who turn them! Burn! Burn!

  The enemy of our State is no longer the Ottoman. We’ve made monsters of them – but the Turks are mere flesh and blood. The real monster lives among us and it cranks out every day more pages that eat our souls, that murder our innocence in our beds, that soak up our consciences like blood in winding cloths on a battlefield.

  You see how books are destroying this city. It’s now impossible to find a groom or a cook because everyone is infected with the vile and arrogant ambition to read books. Then they get above themselves and want to teach others to read, to glorify their own achievement. This is the printers’ work, the reason why the horses go unshod and the tavern kitchens are empty.

  Venetians, I tell you, go to the printers and destroy them! Destroy those muses of the printers: the whores and editors! Arise; the day of salvation is at hand!

  Then Fra Filippo rolled up the text of his sermon and brandished it at his people like a torch.

  They raised their arms in echoing motions. Except one pale horse-faced woman, impeccably dressed, who sat in the third row. She rose from her pew and turned to face the congregation, gesturing back at Fra Filippo.

  ‘The man’s a lunatic,’ she said in a firm clear voice. ‘Printer’s whore! There’s no such woman. He invented her from his own rabid imaginings. I’ll admit he gives the best entertainment in Venice on a Sunday morning, but I hope none of you takes this ordure seriously.’

  She pointed to the plump nun in the front row: ‘Unless you’re patently mad, like that one.’

  Silence fell in the church as Paola di Colonia, formerly Paola von Speyer, née Paola di Messina, gathered her elegant furs and strode belligerently from the church into the cold white air.

  A dozen people rose and followed her, their heads held high.

  Fra Filippo, stunned to muteness, quickly recovered himself. When Paola was safely out of the church, he pointed a finger at where she had gone.

  ‘And that, my children, is how the printers like their women. Would you like to be married to one such as her? Viragos and whores and editors and printers …’

  He was annoyed to see that the ugly nun from Sant’ Angelo was still among the worshippers, mouthing something to herself. He leaned over the pulpit to see if he could catch her words. But they were only his own, repeated under her breath like a chant.

  The ugly nun whispered, ‘Whores and editors, whores and editors.’

  * * *

  By day, Ianno was kept busy running around under stacks of pamphlets against Catullus and the printers. He bore bruises from scuffles with men selling barrow-loads of books, men with baskets thrusting books into the faces of passers-by.

  ‘You drive yourself hard, my son,’ said Fra Filippo, trying not to look at the little brain throbbing in different shades of pink and grey. Ianno was not well; his exertions had taken too much out of him. His muscles were hardening; his wrists were knotted.

  ‘It’s not the pamphlets. It’s the cursed book itself. Somehow the verses have imprinted themselves on my memory and I keep hearing them. Oh please hear my confession, Father! I am bursting with vice. I take the pamphlets hither and thither to try to exhaust myself and to punish myself for what I’ve done and thought.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me … really, your own confessor is more appropriate to this …’

  ‘Ah, but he would not understand as you do, for you’ve read this Catullus and you know it in the heart of your loins as well as I do.’

  ‘But, please don’t …’

  ‘You see, I have palpated my organ with unnecessary tenderness this morning, and thereafter, when scourging myself, I found that the effect was pleasing, and I’ve committed …’

  ‘Ianno! Do not pollute this chamber with a narration of this kind. You scaly scab-witted …’

  ‘Why are you so full of spleen? You would have me abandoned in my sin?’

  ‘I would have you leave me.’

  Ianno swept a low bow and departed.

  Over his shoulder he said, defiantly, ‘The nun from Sant’ Angelo agrees with me.’

  * * *

  Now he had won back his audience, Fra Filippo allowed himself the luxury of a little more brimstone. His sermons took a darker turn. He was gratified to see the red robes and sable furs of senators in the crowded pews, and for them he fashioned the words of warning that were most likely to strike fear into their ambitious hearts. One morning he noted that both Domenico Zorzi and Nicolò Malipiero, known patrons of both the printers and the whores of Venice, had made the journey to Murano to hear him. He dismissed from his mind any thought that they might have come to laugh at him, these sophisticated aristocrats, who thought nothing of buying whole libraries of printed books.

  He also tried not to think of the piglet nun who sat below him. He spoke faster than normal in an attempt to lose her shadowing whispers.

  Mark you how this work of the Devil, printing, has coincided with the destruction of the Venetian empire? When did this Gutenberg commence his vile trade? 1453, need I remind you? – the year we lost Constantinople to the Turk! When did the barbarian von Speyers start printing in Venice? 1470! The year we lost Negroponte! And now we’ve the heathen invading our very churches … that so-called architect Codussi is building a baptistry on San Michele, which looks ungodly as a harem of the infidel … Even our own painter, Giovanni Bellini, is stooping to disgust
ing allegories, using foreign women as his models, polluting his studio with visitations from his friends who are, of course, printers.

  Gentilia, sitting in the front row, mouthed each of his words a second after he said them, her teeth chattering with the cold.

  Behind her sat a woman of exceptional beauty, whose blonde hair caught the cool stream of daylight and converted it to fire. Caterina di Colonna gazed coolly at Fra Filippo and appeared to manage without blinking at all. Next to her sat a tall, handsome man, equally fair. Fra Filippo felt vaguely enhanced by the presence of two such beauteous Venetians in his church. But the blue eyes of the woman were fixed on him with an unmistakable frank hostility.

  ‘What graceless lies you speak,’ said her gaze, clear as sunlight. ‘Why do you not simply desist?’

  For the first time, he faltered and began to stammer, hypnotised by the disdainful lapis of the blonde woman’s eyes. He tottered lamely to a finish without the usual flourish.

  When he looked up from his text, he saw, with nightmare clarity, the piglet nun staring at Caterina’s luminous beauty as if at a comet, and at her good-looking companion with unmistakable cupidity.

  Instead of accepting the usual congratulations on the doorstep of the church, Fra Filippo scuttled back to his cell as soon as he could, where he sat for many minutes breathing fast and shallowly, unable to lift a pen.

  * * *

  ‘Ianno!’ called Fra Filippo, ‘Where are you?’

  Ianno appeared, brandishing a large bone.

  ‘I’ve been reading about the English Saint Alphege. He was beaten to death by the Danes. They used ox bones. Or a stone … like Saint Jerome. He beat himself with a stone. I could not find a good stone, there’re just miserable little ones in this town, not even sharp enough for Attis, so then I thought about an ox bone again and the butcher at Santa Maria del Giglio gave me …’

  ‘Enough, enough of that, I have work for you.’

  Ianno drew near, which made Fra Filippo draw back. He had caught a whiff of his assistant’s hair pomade.

  Ianno’s hair was strangely curly on one side and not on the other … whole hanks hung languidly over his right ear, while the one with the deformity was bare: the hair around it curled up frizzily, as if recoiling from the ugly little brain.

  ‘Go to Rialto. I want to know about that blonde woman who was here this morning. Is she a courtesan? Was that her husband or her pimp with her? You know which one. And tell me what they’re saying about the Dalmatian Jewess. It seems she really is mixed up with the printers, somehow. I received a letter …’

  Fra Filippo leant forward a little with each word, arching his neck and snapping his jaws as if spitting out stones.

  Ianno met Gentilia coming in as he left. He did not meet her eyes and she averted hers. He could not tell how long she’d been waiting at the door, but it seemed likely she had heard their entire conversation.

  ‘There’s someone to see you,’ he called back, maliciously, to his capo as he left.

  ‘No, I’m not receiving today,’ Fra Filippo called through the door, ‘I have urgent correspondence.’

  Gentilia stopped, uncertain, on the threshold. The shadow of her profile fell across his desk, and a hazy recognition of it stopped the priest from looking up. He continued to scribble, pretending to be unaware of her.

  Eventually she sighed and moved off towards the jetty where the boats left for the other islands. Fra Filippo leapt up to bolt the door. As he did so, he noticed a small figure following the nun: Ianno. He shook his head. Ianno caught up with her, and placed his hand on her elbow. Instead of jumping away in alarm, she slowly turned to gaze at him. Even from a distance Fra Filippo could see that she was looking intently at the little brain above Ianno’s ear as he capered in front of her. The faint buzz of Ianno’s words floated over the path back to Fra Filippo, but he could not make out a word of it.

  He wondered what this nun might have wished to tell him, but it was not worth the trouble of making her acquaintance. Ugly women always had a grievance of some kind or another, usually against their prettier sisters. If she knew anything worthwhile to denounce then she was probably thrilling Ianno with her tale right now. And then, he reflected, she should go to the stone lions and deliver the requisite letters into their mouths, and save him the trouble. He, Fra Filippo, was destined for greater things than malicious female tittle-tattle.

  It occurred to him that the system of anonymous letters and spies worked most effectively for the state of Venice. There were always means at her disposal to rid herself of unwanted men and women. If letters failed to arrive in the mouths of the lions spontaneously, then such letters could be written. Or paid for. Who was to know the difference?

  * * *

  Wendelin wrote again to Padre Pio:

  My dearest Padre,

  Yes, Catullus is at last a success, but he has not saved us. It’s probably too late. Fra Filippo has not wasted his breath. My spirit has broken, along with the weather.

  I took it upon myself to attend one of his dogfights, his sermons. (My poor wife is not well enough to accompany me so I went with her friend Caterina di Colonna of the Sturion.) I wanted to see my enemy in his lair. I was not disappointed. I got the show I went to see.

  He ends each of his sermons with a chant, ‘Save our souls, burn the books, save our souls, burn the books.’ Instead of Our Lord’s Prayer, the parishioners stream out of the churches, chanting ‘Save our souls, burn the books,’ and my blood runs cold. How long before they change it to ‘Save our souls, burn the printers’? They’ve already had a taste of our blood.

  * * *

  Gentilia went to San Trovaso to await her quarry. She’d already been to the butchers in San Vio to choose a pork fillet three days off the bone. Blood and fat were swarming at its surface.

  She knew, from Bruno, that Sosia left the house early in the morning for her marketing and sometimes less respectable activities.

  Gentilia waited, hunched in her cloak. The damp cold soon penetrated the wool, but she would not relinquish her post.

  Still, it was not until the eleventh hour that she saw the low door swing open and a woman lope out. It must be Sosia, that is without doubt the house, and she walks impudently, like a whore, Gentilia thought.

  Is this what all the fuss is about, she wondered briefly, this woman who swings her hips like a monkey and dresses like a mouse? She has a cheap way of wearing her clothes. Her hair is thin and straight, swarthy as a dirty shoe: I thought it would hang down in those follow-me kind of curls. She moves a lot, a sack of small shifts with each big move. I suppose this means the smells rise from her. From one quick look at her I can tell this: she has too much brain. She reads too much. She has the look that Bruno gets after hours at his desk. Ah, now she passes a group of gondoliers and we see her true profession. She moves through the men like a snake through grass. Each one turns to look at her, rubbing his thigh. How does she do that?

  And Bruno thought her worst crime was to destroy a painting of Bellini’s. Some Madonna or other! My poor innocent brother, he has not the smallest idea, she thought tenderly.

  Gentilia started forward, manoeuvring to the left so that she would pass Sosia on her right-hand side. As she did so, she pulled her little pork fillet out of her pocket.

  It was done in an instant. As Sosia walked past, Gentilia smeared her arm and dress with the moist meat and quickly pushed it back in her pocket. At the same moment she nipped a single strand of Sosia’s hair and wrapped it round her finger.

  Then she brushed past Sosia’s door, reaching out a deft hand to throw the contents of a vial against the aged wood. It splashed against the handle, running down in rivulets. No one saw a thing, but everyone, for the rest of the day, hurried past, grimacing.

  For Gentilia had anointed the entrance to Sosia’s home with the most powerful magical solution she knew: wolf fat, the jaeces of dogs, powder from the bones of the dead taken from San Giovan di Furlani, stinking fennel root, the water of Sa
n Alberto, and a handful of dust taken from the ground between the columns in San Marco where all public executions and tortures took place. She mouthed the necessary incantation under her breath and hurried away.

  * * *

  Sosia felt a moist coolness on her wrist, and turning around, noted an ungainly nun waddling fast away from her, muttering. She seemed to be carrying something, no doubt some holy relic. The city had a passion for them. Sosia often mocked the Venetian craving for toes and elbows of saints, which they loved as if these scrags and bones marked the city out in the eyes of God for his particular joy.

  Sosia’s wrist was sticky. She wiped the slime against her dress, noting the greasy stain. Never mind. Where she was going that dress would soon be discarded. She continued on her way to San Giobbe, where Nicolò Malipiero would be waiting. The distant doorstep, she could see, was already blackening with the shadows of the young men she’d commissioned for the afternoon.

  She had known all along what Nicolò really wanted, and today he would have it.

  ‘Jede govna kao Grk alvu, he’ll enjoy eating shit, like a Greek eating halva,’ she smiled.

  She did not notice the dwarf loping unevenly from doorway to archway behind her, or see when he followed her into the church and disposed himself behind a column. She did not hear him gasp as she commenced her work.

  * * *

  ‘But I am pure,’ protested Ianno.

  ‘You are not.’

  ‘I have not indulged in any of the seven mortal sins. No one can say so.’

  ‘But you’ve been seen indulging – in very disgusting peccadilloes.’

  ‘Of what sort? I deny it!’

  Fra Filippo waved a sheaf of beer-stained notes, the reports of his informers, who had drunk their wages while earning them.

  ‘It says here that you’ve been seen in The Three Stars, The Four Dragons, respectively, looking at lewd pictures, talking dishonestly with women, fondling and kissing commercial women, singing unspeakable songs.