by Martin Seay
San Aponal’s last daylight bells are dying away as the shop comes into view. Through its lowered shutters Crivano sees the apothecary tidying his boxes and jars and posies, preparing to close up. He stops across the street to wait, examining the tongs and pliers in an ironworker’s bins as the craftsman hauls his wares indoors. There’s no sign of Narkis yet, but of course there wouldn’t be.
A footman from a nearby palace ducks into the apothecary’s shop, and Crivano follows him inside, then browses heaped bouquets and bundled roots as the apothecary fills the footman’s order for vervain. As the servant departs Crivano steps to the counter, leaving his stoppered jar behind, nestled amid the herbs. Good day to you, maestro, he says. Have you any biennial henbane of quality?
Before the words have left his mouth Crivano feels a slight contraction of the air, a dimming of the light, and he knows that Narkis has entered the shop behind him, though he dares not turn to look.
The apothecary is a compact and fastidious Slovene wearing thick spectacles of Flemish glass; he speaks with urgency as he unlocks one of his many strongboxes. This very power, what I give you, he says. Must not use in tight-closed room. Must not open jar, even. You feel sleepy? You see strange sights, like dreaming? You must cover up, you must open window, you must go outside. Very very very caution. Yes?
Of course, maestro, of course, Crivano says.
The apothecary draws a wide glass cylinder from his box, lifts its tight-fitting lid—he and Crivano both grimace at the cloying stench—and reaches under the counter for an empty container. Oh, I brought my own jar, maestro, Crivano says, then tenses in feigned surprise, patting his belt and his purse, looking up and down the counter.
A voice from behind him: Forgive me, dottore, but is this what you seek?
In thirteen years, this is the first time Crivano has heard his own native language issue from Narkis’s tongue. Narkis pronounces the words roughly, with effort, and the sound is eerie and grotesque, like hearing an animal speak.
Crivano turns—allowing himself only the briefest glance at the hairless face, the white turban—and plucks the empty jar from Narkis’s fingers. Yes, he snaps. It is. My thanks to you.
The apothecary shakes a pile of leaves onto his scale, scrapes a few back into the cylinder to reach the proper weight, and quotes Crivano an astronomical price, which he pays without protest. The leaves fall into the jar; the cork is replaced and hammered tight. Very great power, the apothecary says, waggling a finger. Not for play.
With no second glance at Narkis, Crivano quits the shop and hastens toward the White Eagle again, eager to put distance between them. He reckons his report will be read within the hour—the wooden grilles decode more swiftly than they encode—but he can’t begin to guess how long Narkis will take to formulate a response. In the meantime, the thousand surrogate eyes of the Council of Ten watch from every balcony and every window. Somewhere in the lagoon, Verzelin’s gassy corpse strains surfaceward against its decaying fetters.
As he walks, Crivano is attentive to faces, alert for any he recognizes. He’s fairly certain that sbirri followed him during his first days in the city—an understandable precaution, given what the authorities know of him—but he doesn’t think he’s being shadowed any longer. No doubt informants still track his movements, but they won’t have noticed anything suspicious today. Crivano is a physician; physicians frequent apothecaries. Nothing unusual in that.
He’s nearly back to his locanda when a figure catches his eye: a rustic girl of perhaps twenty years, leaning against the cracked stucco of a joiner’s shop. She bends forward to study her black-soled foot, her right leg folded at the knee; a boot sags empty on the pavement below. The girl’s hands are stained brown to their wrists from some recent labor: tanning, dyeing, packing fabrics. Her drooping headscarf reveals cropped russet hair, shaved and partly grown back, as if she’s lately been treated for ringworm, or run afoul of the Inquisitor. She prods the filthy ball of her foot with brown thumbs, heedless of passersby, appearing and disappearing as they cross before her.
Something about her is familiar, though Crivano doesn’t think he’s seen her before. He watches for a moment, then draws closer and watches for a moment more. Well-muscled arms extend from her sleeveless blouse, sun-cooked nearly to match the stains. The angles of her face are boyish and hard. The small toes of her bare foot curl inward, the large one tips back, and Crivano discerns the irregular ellipse of a verruca in the pad beneath it. Does that give you pain? he asks.
For a long moment she doesn’t look up. It feels strange to walk, she says.
There’s physic for it. You should seek it out before you ask a barber to cut.
Her eyes are angry, but the anger doesn’t seem to be for him. And what does a girl pay for that? she asks.
Crivano gives her a warm smile, and opens his palms.
She stares at him. Then her face sags, and she looks back to her foot. The hour grows late, dottore, she says. You name a price for your physic, and I’ll name a price for my cunt. And then perhaps we’ll make a bargain.
Crivano’s mouth drops open. He closes it, and grinds his teeth. The girl brings her fingers to her lips, spits on them, and wipes them across the wart. It clarifies against the damp whorls of her calloused skin.
So, wench, Crivano says, his voice ugly in his own ears, does the entire city take to whoring for the Sensa? Or do all you slatterns come here from abroad? Good christ, every brothel from here to Munich must be shuttered.
I guess someone can answer that for you, dottore, she says. But not I. Ask a Bavarian pimp if you meet one. Will you lend an arm?
She’s looking up again. For an instant he’s inclined to strike her, to break her lean mannish jaw with the knob of his stick. But he gives her his arm, and she pulls her boot on. Thanks, she says. And a good day to you.
He stands by the wall to watch her limp away, her kerchiefed head bobbing among the crowds bound for the Mercerie. He half-expects to see her stop—to pitch a lewd proposition to a pack of merchants or pilgrims or sailors, to detour with one or several of them to a sidestreet or sottoportego or darkened doorway, to offer up her lean flesh for their abuse—but the girl moves ahead steadily until she’s gone from sight.
And then, at the White Eagle, on his way upstairs to his room and his books, he remembers a long-ago morning out riding with his brothers south of Nicosia on the Larnaca Road. Their party came upon a procession of Cypriot girls with an ass-drawn cart, bringing baled henna to market. The girls were all bent double under their heavy packs, even the youngest; all stared fiercely at the pitted surface of the old Roman road. Maffeo spat at them as they passed, and Dolfin stood in his saddle to display his cock. Those girls are probably all dead now, Crivano figures: killed during the invasion by the troops of Lala Mustafa. Or they’re in harems, or they’re rearing Turkish bastards, or they’re living now just as they were living then. The distant cedars of the Troödos formed a green shadow in the west that morning; he recalls watching them with unblinking attention after he turned his head away.
The girls’ strong arms were dyed brown to the elbows, their legs dyed brown to the knees. Every nail on every finger was a ghostly pink oval, edged by a sepia ring, and that, Crivano thinks, must be why the insolent slut seemed so familiar.
28
The late morning arrives harsh and white: a veil of smoke traps light in the thick air above the tiled rooftops, and the Grand Canal is a listless river of quicksilver. The sun presses gently on Crivano’s black robes, warming him from the core, and he feels himself grow weightless, on the verge of being borne aloft, like a Chinese sky-lantern. The thousandth year of the Hijra is only months away, and it’s suddenly easy to imagine the Prophet stirring in his tomb. This is a day to herald the end of the world.
He shades his eyes to find an idle traghetto. A grizzled boatman beckons with a brusque wave, and Crivano steps aboard his tidy black-hulled sandolo. The Contarini house, he says. In San Samuele.
In r
eply he gets only a flash of raised fingers and a bestial bleat: the boatman has no tongue. Crivano counts him out a palmful of gazettes, then sits in the shade of the canopy. Looking over his shoulder as the long oar chews the water, he can make out the hazy shape of the new bridge, its single span arching like the brow of a submerged leviathan eye. It slips from sight as the sandolo’s bow swings west.
The broad highway of the canal is paved with broken bits of sun, reflections that outshine the sky itself. The windowsills and balustrades that edge the water are draped with bright patterned carpets from Cairo and Herat and Kashan, but the rows of windows behind them are impenetrable voids. The shouts of the Riva del Vin are fading, and from time to time Crivano can hear the laughter and soft voices of unseen daughters of the Republic, bleaching their frizzed coiffures on hidden terraces somewhere high above.
Heavy-lidded from the rolling boat, he keeps himself awake by pondering what blasphemy a gondolier might pronounce, or to whom he might pronounce it, that would oblige him to forfeit his tongue. In this city blasphemy is the gondolier’s cant and his lingua franca, as indispensable as his oar; it seems more likely that this rough fellow is a slanderer, or was. This comforts Crivano: the reminder that denunciation can also impose a cost on its utterer. He smiles to himself, tilts his face to catch the sun.
He’s not certain Narkis would endorse his expenditure of the better part of a day in Senator Contarini’s court—this excursion will do nothing to advance their plot—but Crivano feels justified nonetheless in making the visit. The Senator is his sole legitimate connection here, the authority that has established him as a person of substance and introduced him to the circles in which Narkis requires him to move; the association must therefore be cultivated. If Crivano displays something beyond dutiful resignation at the prospect of acquainting himself over extravagant meals with the most distinguished minds in Christendom, well, Narkis can hardly object, can he? Besides, how otherwise might Crivano spend the afternoon? Sequestered in his rented room, awaiting a response from Narkis that might not materialize for weeks?
The Contarini palace rises on the intrados of the Grand Canal’s southward bend, its imposing façade flush with those of its neighbors. As they approach, a sleek gondola rowed by a tall Ethiope in rich livery pulls away from the water-gate, and Crivano wonders how many others have been invited to dine.
Marco, the senator’s youngest son, greets him with an embrace beneath the gate’s broad tympanum. We’re honored that you’ve come, dottore, the young man says, guiding him to the stairs. We’re blessed with fine weather today, so my father has chosen to hold the banquet in the garden.
One of Marco’s nephews, a chubby boy of around seven, takes Crivano’s hand and leads him up two flights to the great hall on the piano nobile. The furnishings he knows from previous visits—suits of armor, shields and bucklers, sunbursts of swords and spears, all framed by tattered banners bearing emblems and devices he recalls from his childhood—are now clustered at the hall’s far end, and the nearby walls are lined with folded wooden screens, rolled black curtains, and partly assembled scaffolding. Before he can make a closer inspection, the boy tugs him into the blazing atrium.
A long table shaded with parasols stretches between two neat rows of almond trees, their branches already sagging with green fruit. A dozen or so servants—twice the usual retinue, temporary help hired for the Sensa—set places across its oaken expanse with goblets and flatware. Crivano recognizes a few of the milling guests from state banquets and earlier introductions, but most faces are strange to him.
The senator himself stands at the edge of the grass, looking well-rested and magnificent in a lynx-trimmed velvet robe. He claps his big hands warmly on Crivano’s shoulders. I am gratified to find you well, senator, Crivano says.
Contarini’s response is spoken in the language of court, not that of the Republic; foreign visitors must be present. I give credit to you and to your physic, dottore, he says. It has restored me so completely that I am scarcely able to recognize myself.
The senator turns to the man on his right, a gaunt and balding Neapolitan of sallow complexion. This is the heroic personage of whom I spoke, my friend, he says. Dottore Vettor Crivano, a child of Cyprus like myself, who suffered years in infidel bondage, who made a daring escape from Constantinople and helped restore the remains of the valiant Marcantonio Bragadin to the hands of the Republic. Devoted in equal measure to wisdom and to brave deeds, he graduated from Bologna with distinction, and has come our city to commence his career as a physician. Dottore Crivano, I don’t believe you’ve met Signore della Porta.
Crivano and the Neapolitan exchange polite bows.
Dottore Crivano’s father, Contarini continues, was chief secretary to my kinsman Lord Pietro Glissenti, the last chamberlain of Cyprus, and served him faithfully until they were both massacred at Famagusta. Were that sacrifice insufficient to place the Contarini family in his debt, Dottore Crivano has recently cured me of a sleeplessness that has troubled me since well before Lent. You really should seek his council about your own ailments, Giovan. He is the best man to help you.
You are unwell, signore? Crivano asks.
The Neapolitan’s voice is quiet and crisp, like a shuffle of documents. It’s nothing at all, he says. I’m fine.
Contarini leans toward Crivano, lowers his voice. He coughs, he says. At times I imagine his heart will leap from his jaws like a toad, he coughs so much. It’s worse after he eats, which is why he refuses to dine with us. One hesitates to believe, dottore, that such terrible noises can come from the lungs of such a small man.
I pray you will forgive my discourtesy, senator, the Neapolitan says, but as you have no doubt noticed, the sun nears its zenith. With your permission, I will see to the children.
Della Porta takes his leave across the peristyle, entering the great hall. Contarini claps Crivano on the arm with a conspiratorial wink and turns to greet another guest. Momentarily at a loss, Crivano fades into the crowd, seeking faces he knows, pondering the Neapolitan. Della Porta, he thinks. From Naples. Why is this familiar?
The servants have begun to seat the guests. Crivano winds up between a sullen and heavily veiled maiden and an elderly gentleman called Barbaro—a procurator of San Marco, quite deaf—who loudly denigrates the glassmakers’ guild until the first course arrives. The glassworks of the Medici, old Barbaro shouts, makes lenses of quality, but it has no prayer of competing with the factories of Holland. And where do their finest craftsmen come from? They come from here! We treat our guildsmen like merchant princes, and they conduct themselves like roundheeled whores!
Crivano wants to raise a polite dissent—a pointless impulse, since the procurator is certain not to hear him—and he’s sifting his brain for what little he knows of optics when recollection comes. I beg your pardon, lady, he whispers to the veiled girl. The Neapolitan gentleman who was here a short time ago, the one called della Porta—is he not Giambattista della Porta, the author of Magiae Naturalis, and the famous book on physiognomy?
Beneath clouds of gray lace the girl’s eyes are riveted to his own, but she makes no reply.
Or perhaps, Crivano says, you know him as a playwright, and not as an eminent scholar? As the author of the popular comedies Penelope, and The Maid, and Olympia?
The girl’s voice is a contralto murmur, each word precisely formed. I grant that Signore della Porta is eminent, she says. And he is certainly a scholar. I suppose we may therefore speak of him with justification as an eminent scholar.
You question Signore della Porta’s scholarship, lady?
Oh, no, dottore. As one who read Magiae Naturalis with great zeal in both its editions, I dare not raise any such protest. Besides, the little instruction I receive in the convent school hardly qualifies me to speak on this matter. I can only parrot what I have gleaned from overhearing the discussions of my erudite cousins.
And what is that, if I may ask?
She looks at the tabletop, and her voice sinks
further toward silence. If the great community of scholars can be likened to the family of musical instruments, she says, then Giambattista della Porta can be likened to a churchbell. His work is distinguished by its enviable clarity, but not by its subtlety or its scope.
Crivano laughs, drawing an irritated glare from the old procurator. As he gropes for a clever rejoinder—a pun, perhaps, about how her observation has the ring of truth—servants arrive with enormous platters: cured ham simmered with capers in wine, pork tongue and fresh grapes, marzipan and spicecake. Crivano is rubbing his palms together, turning to the girl with some comment about the feast, when she lifts her veils.
It is as if he has been plunging like Icarus toward the sea—falling for such a long time and from such a terrible height that he has forgotten himself to be falling—and now has struck the water at last. His lungs refuse air; his jellied limbs seem to fly from him. He feels himself rise for the prayer and for Contarini’s toast, raise his goblet of Moselle wine, but his ears perceive nothing but the interior churn of his own humors.
He cannot imagine why this ictus has come upon him. He has never met this girl before; he has no notion of who she is. Cream-skinned and sharp-faced, with obstinate eyes, she is not beautiful except in the ways that youth and vivacity are always beautiful. There is, perhaps, a scent. He is less entranced than terrified. He cannot bear to look upon her face. His eyes fix instead upon the grain of the tabletop, their focus as hot and relentless as Archimedes’ terrible glass. Yet the only clear image in his head is that of the Lark’s demolished body, its pink meat cannonball-scattered across the quarterdeck of the Gold and Black Eagle. Why this memory now?
The old procurator has resumed his ranting; a line of brown sauce bisects his chin. Our glassmakers lack loyalty and direction! he thunders. They could crush Florence and Amsterdam with ease, but they won’t learn, they won’t change, they lack science. Look here: why is the city of Saint Mark superior to the city of Saint Peter? Because it has no pagan past! This is why glassmaking is our great art: in no discipline but this do modern artisans surpass their pagan predecessors. The shops of Murano should be crowded with painters and engineers and architects, learned men seeking to emulate their example. But what do they sell instead? Mirrors! Nice flat mirrors for ladies and sodomites!