The Floating Book

by Michelle Lovric

  ‘And there’s more. A nun has sent me a letter to tell me that you expressed yourself uncleanly before her. A nun from Sant’ Angelo, it is true, but a nun all the same.’

  Ianno was groaning, holding himself in his own arms, whispering to himself.

  ‘You must desist.’

  ‘But how? When my mission is to find out the whore of the printers, how am I to find her without consorting with whores? You get the freshest information in …’

  ‘You must take the advice of Gregory the Great and Isidore of Seville. If you feel desire for a woman, you must conjure in your mind a picture of how her body will look laid out in death.’

  Ianno moaned softly. Fra Filippo realised to his horror that his assistant was yet more stimulated by that idea. Hastily he added: ‘You must think about the miry fluid in her nostrils and the phlegm in her throat.’

  Ianno grew silent, considering this in the light of mental images that were hideously transparent to his superior. Sitting at his desk, Fra Filippo looked up at him with loathing, noting the stalactites of dried mucus in Ianno’s own nostrils and the stains on his hose.

  ‘Then you must also think of your own pure guardian angel, watching you at your lewdness, disgusted and laid low at the sights and sounds and smells even, of you at such horrid play. Imagine him forced to watch your virile member in a shameful state, see exposed the dishonest part of a woman, see the Act of Venus in all its horrifying bestiality.’

  Ianno challenged him: ‘But what am I to do when I’m forced, in your service, to listen to endless libidinous confessions? I grow humid and taut … and when I hear those of women I cannot bear it. After this, no matter how heavily I eat and drink, I wake from my stupor to find that I have committed nocturnal pollution!’

  His voice rose to a whine. It was more than Fra Filippo could bear.

  ‘Leave me,’ he ordered. ‘I do not need so much information. I shall think on your fate. In the meantime you are dismissed from my service.’

  ‘How am I to eat then? It’s bitter cold …’

  ‘Do you think I care?’

  Ianno flushed red and bowed. He said in a low voice, ‘I have lately committed many acts in your name that I would not have done in the name of our Lord.’

  ‘Is that a threat? Do you think to blackmail me?’

  ‘That’s not my way of doing things,’ replied Ianno.

  The balance of power in the room had suddenly shifted. Fra Filippo grimaced with the realisation of what damage might be done by such a masterless beast of burden. Ianno bowed low and strutted out, his narrow buttocks stiff with dignity.

  Chapter Six

  I’ll have you upstairs and downstairs

  Aurelius and Furius, you infamous sluts,

  who deduce from my verses,

  because they are a little filthy

  that I am filthy too.

  A true poet must be pure

  but his works have no need to be so.

  On the contrary,

  the very thing which gives them wit and zest

  is that little spark of filth …

  Sosia lay on her bed at San Trovaso, unaware of her surroundings. She moaned as Rabino raised the damp coverlet gingerly. Sosia suffered not from plague, Damascus or any other kind. He had treated the symptoms of advanced venereal disease too many times not to know what he would find. He saw her fingernails orange as a pigeon’s eye; her skin flushed red.

  When he moved her arms away from her chest, he found a book in the crook of her left elbow, wedged so tightly that its corners had gouged deep grooves in her skin.

  His first thought was: She has started another diary of her sordid life.

  He lifted it up and opened the cover grimly, holding it away from him. But instead of Sosia’s records he found a printed book, the production of the German printer Wendelin von Speyer, whose wife he tended. He was astonished to discover it was the Catullus book, the love poems, which were so convulsing Venice.

  What could Sosia be doing with such a book? A bitter voice inside him asked too, If they are, as it’s said, true poems about deep love, then what use would they be to her?

  He laid the book at the side of the bed, and listened to her heart, noting the familiar irregular beat. Her heart had always beaten sluggishly, in tugging rhythms, like a reptiles. No change there, then.

  He noticed a row of pink pearls hanging off her neck, the clasp wrenched apart. He had never seen them before. A gift, no doubt, from one of her lovers, he thought with disgust. The pearls were irregular and slightly pocked, like a row of nipples.

  He forced himself to examine her, to begin the normal repertoire of responses of a doctor to illness. Venice had no pity for foreigners with the pox. The fate that awaited Sosia, without his attention, was to be thrown in a cart and paraded through the city as an unchaste wife and whore. If the city cared to make an example of her, she might be crowned in infamy at San Marco (with a painted wooden ring rudely made for the occasion) before being dumped at the Hospital of the Incurables, to die slowly in her own filth.

  He bathed her with warmed plantain water, removing her chemise at the last moment and trying to avert his eyes. When the front part of her body was clean, he made to turn her over. Then he saw the dark blood on the mattress underneath her. It’s not her time of the month, he thought. The relevant days were still imprinted on his memory.

  She has miscarried an ill-gotten child, he shuddered. It cannot be mine.

  He turned away for a moment, in pain and disgust. This was somehow a more brutal proof of her infidelities than even the venereal disease had been. He stared at the wall, not wishing to look at Sosia again, but knowing that his calling required him to calculate the age of the foetus and find whether it had been expelled from her womb by illegal means; whether infection had set in which might yet be stopped to save her reproductive parts from a painful gangrene.

  He took up a fresh rag and dipped it in the basin of warm water and went to put it at the mouth of what he told himself to call, for comfort, the birth canal. He had not approached that part of Sosia as a husband does for so many years that it seemed more natural to touch it as a doctor. She is one of God’s creatures, he told himself; my vocation is to ameliorate her suffering, no more and no less. The rag came back to the basin untinted with blood. He jumped to his feet and stood over her again, paler even than before. No, it cannot be true. I deserve to be branded for such obscene thoughts.

  He took her shoulders and gently twisted first the top half and then the lower half of her body around.

  It was true.

  He dropped her and she rolled on to her back, moaning slightly.

  Sosia then whispered. It broke from a bubble at the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Malipiero,’ she said. ‘The boys,’ and one hand stole backwards to cup where she was hurt.

  * * *

  Gentilia signed the last letter with a clumsy flourish. It was her masterpiece, she thought, for in it she had combined all the elements most likely to bring down the forces of the state upon the she-dog from Dalmatia.

  The hair she had snatched from Sosia’s head was already wrapped around a living scorpion she’d buried in a pot of sand. As the insect slowly died, so would Sosia meet her fate.

  Having posted her letter through the mouth of the lion at the Doges’ Palace, she made her way to the quay to find a boat that would take her to Murano. Letters were all very well, but she wanted personal congratulations too.

  All the way there she hugged her pleasure to herself.

  On arriving at Murano she walked quickly past the church and to the door of Fra Filippo’s cell.

  This time, she knew, her entrance would not be barred. She had made sure that the repulsive little assistant would no longer get in her way. She’d already had the satisfaction of seeing him in his new employment as a porter on the Riva degli Schiavoni. She had made certain he saw her too: her gloating smile had informed him that she was the author of his humiliation. He had shaken his
scarred fist at her, his birthmark glowing vermilion and white.

  Now she rapped firmly on Fra Filippo’s door and raised an expectant face.

  Fra Filippo started up eagerly at the knock. He had laid down his pen already, and was about to finish his work for the day. The distracting aroma of fried fish was wafting from the kitchens and into his thoughts; he hoped that the knock was that of the servant coming to announce dinner. So he walked quickly to the door, and opened it without enquiring as to the identity of his visitor. When he saw the piglet nun in front of him, he stopped short, suddenly alert.

  Before she could say anything, he had bustled past her,

  ‘It’s good of you to come to see me, sister,’ he announced over his shoulder, ‘but I am urgently called to administer the last rites to one of our brethren.’

  God forgive me for the lie, he whispered under his breath. Indeed perhaps I spare her the greater sin of speaking ill and unjustly about a fellow nun.

  But Gentilia could move surprisingly fast. Fra Filippo was mystified to see his feet made no progress though he moved his legs vigorously. The heavy little nun had stepped deliberately on the hem of his robe and held him tethered to the ground.

  ‘I have great news for you, father,’ she said, smirking behind a modest hand. ‘I have ruined the printer’s whore. Ruined her. Driven her down to hell. Made sure she’ll burn.’

  ‘What are you talking about, my child?’

  ‘The Jewess. I have purged her, as you said to.’

  Fra Filippo smiled nervously. ‘I myself did not ask any of God’s servants to commit evil acts such as harming another person. That would be a sin.’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ said Gentilia. ‘Anyway, I wanted you to know.’

  ‘When you say “purged” do you mean that she is actually dead?’

  ‘She will shortly be removed from this earth.’

  ‘At your instigation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And yours alone?’

  ‘Except in that you always

  ‘Ah yes, I see.’ Fra Filippo looked down on her craftily. ‘Does anyone else know of this, my dear?’

  ‘Well, soon all Venice shall know.’

  ‘But not yet?’

  ‘Not quite yet.’

  ‘Then go in peace to your convent, my child, and await my further instructions.’

  She did not move. He realised that she was waiting for something.

  ‘Ah yes, you have done well my child. You are a good girl. An exceptionally good girl. God will reward you.’

  Gentilia nodded serenely, and shuffled away.

  Fra Filippo hurried back into his cell and pulled a new sheet of paper towards him. In minutes he had filled it with words. He called his new assistant, a colourless little boy.

  ‘Deliver this to the Mother Superior at Sant’ Angelo. Immediately. Allow no one else to see it. You may take our own boat and two strong rowers. It is imperative that you arrive there before the ferryboat from San Marco.’

  * * *

  Murano glass is supposed to shiver when poison is put into it.

  Rabino poured the deadly green herb tisana from the crucible to the goblet and looked at it dully, waiting for the rim to tremble or the stem to sway, just a little. He normally disliked the idle mischief of Venetian proverbs, but on this occasion, it would provide a moment’s comfort or distraction to see the picturesque adage proved right.

  Nothing happened. The green liquid rested still as an emerald inside the goblet.

  He had poured it almost without thinking.

  Now he must decide if the poison was for himself or for Sosia or for both of them. In his mind it was clear: someone must be sacrificed to his sordid discovery this night. It was not possible that he and Sosia could continue to live now as they’d done for these past years. It was a relief, in a way, time to throw aside the suffocating curtain of dishonesty and confront the truth. Of course, it was a far worse truth than he had imagined.

  He sat heavily on a chair, and raked through his mind for all the legal information at his disposal. As a doctor, and leader of the itinerant Jewish community, he had been brought to tribunal after tribunal to give characters for Jews on trial and even Christians with medical disorders of a sexual nature.

  He knew that in 1425 a parte had been passed by the Council of Forty forbidding Jews from having intercourse with Christian women, but there was no law stopping Christian men from copulating with Jewesses. The fate for a nobleman accused of indulging in intercourse with a lowborn Jewess would not be so devastating. The Malipieros were powerful. Whichever one of the clan had committed this indiscretion would know and be warned exactly what moment would be judicious to leave the city for a while; perhaps he’d departed already. Maybe he was already at Mestre, thinking of Sosia and cupping his own hands over the soreness between his legs.

  ‘Was it worth it, my Lord?’ Rabino asked aloud, bitterly.

  I must not think that way.

  Rabino returned to other considerations. It was not for moral reasons that the nobles were discouraged from intercourse with their inferiors or servants; it was for practical ones. The Signori di Notte were obliged to investigate such matters actively because women favoured that way too often became arrogant, inefficient or pregnant, and being the mother of a nobleman’s bastard rendered them disagreeably ambiguous in social position. But women slaves were sold at a premium for their beauty, so it was obvious what was going on. It was well known, for example, that the forthcoming Doge Mocenigo, though seventy years old, kept two young Turkish slaves as concubines in his house.

  Rabino recalled that, under Venetian law, men were considered responsible for the purity of their wives. Even Jews would be bound to this convention, in the eyes of the Council of Forty. The chastity of wives, the virginity of daughters reflected on the men who kept them. A woman’s sexual honour did not belong to herself. It belonged to her family, and a lack of it could put the whole family in danger of prosecution.

  Rabino’s thoughts hurtled on. The problem was Sosia’s injury. The penalty for sodomy or unnatural congress, for noble or commoner, was to be burnt alive. This punishment was carried out between the pillars in the Piazzetta.

  The rulers of Venice suffered paranoia about sodomy. This was not just moral, but political, he knew. Venetians feared secret societies. The crime of sodomy seemed to unite so many in secrecy for the sake of their perverse pleasures. There was a horror of any secret cabal, but one based on illicit physical passion was more to be feared than anything else.

  Only five years ago, Rabino had shaken his head over a new law requiring surgeons to report evidence of sodomy to the authorities. He remembered more: the penalty for sodomy with your wife was to have your head cut off and your remains burned.

  I could be accused of this, he realised. If Sosia dies and is examined, I could be accused. Who is to know it was not I myself who inflicted this upon her?

  He thought of the noblemen to whom he might turn for help. So many children saved; so many wives safely brought to bed of heirs. But his friendships with the noblemen were necessarily discreet. He knew of no one who would advertise his or her debt to him. There were still too many influential men whose hatred of the Jews overcame even their desire for life. No, Rabino would not find any help for himself or for Sosia among the patricians.

  The glass started to chatter fretfully on the tray, like women waiting in a surgery.

  Poison! thought Rabino. Then he realised that the tray was shaking in sympathy with the door, which vibrated as if assailed by the beating of a dozen brutal hands. It took Rabino a moment to realise that the noise was in fact just that. He leapt to his feet as the hinges gave way and the street door crashed to the floor.

  Three officers of the Signori di Notte ran up the stairs and swept into the room, looking down on Sosia and her grey-haired husband.

  ‘We’ve come for Sosia Simeon. She’s to be tried for witchcraft.’

  ‘She’s ill, possibly dying.’

/>   ‘Then she can die in prison, cuckold.’

  ‘Let me prepare her. Please leave me alone with her for a moment.’

  The soldiers looked at the livid body of Sosia, one breast exposed above the coverlet, her hair wild against the sheet.

  ‘Let the old boy say his goodbyes.’

  They marched outside, slamming the door. Rabino thought: Witchcraft? Three officers? Sodomy must be the least of her crimes.

  Rabino rushed to her body and cleaned it as best he could.

  Sosia opened one eye, and said in the clearest of voices: ‘So the poison – was it for you or for me?’ As Rabino’s face drained of colour she added, ‘I despise you, Mister Doctor. Pas ti majku jebao, a dog fucked your mother.’

  And she shouted over his shoulder, ‘I’m ready!’ She reached down and grabbed for the book.

  It was still in her hands when the soldiers, tying her arms with rope, carried her from the room.

  Part Seven

  Prologue

  Why, Catullus, are you delaying to die … ?

  December 54 BC

  I think, sometimes, about the future, Lucius-who-has-none, alas.

  For whom, after all, do I continue to spew out these poems? Not for Clodia: she can barely be bothered to read what I write about her, unless she sees it scrawled on the wall of a bathhouse somewhere, as she passes on her way to another assignation. Then she’s forced to look, though she doesn’t know how to blush.

  I’m sure she thinks to herself, ‘Catullus? Oh yes, the young writer-fellow from Verona, what’s he good at? Haven’t seen much of him lately.’

  And she will cast her mind back to me through that pile of autumn leaves in her head – for so I see her historical love affairs, dry, rotting, withered, wispy, interminable, uncountable – and then I think of all the leaves still to come, still to fall fresh and sappy on the soft pile … and perhaps she will send her servant round to me again. But perhaps she won’t. Perhaps she’ll leave me hanging as usual, one of those bats in her cave, archived for possible use later.