The Mirror Thief

by Martin Seay

  He peruses the octavos displayed in the front room as he waits. Fifty or so titles stacked on two narrow tables: histories and biographies and volumes of verse. Most are printed in vulgar tongues, mostly local and Tuscan; a sizable minority are in Latin. The books in the tallest stack—an anthology of missionary correspondence from China and Japan—bear the shop’s own imprint. At the edge of the far table, Crivano finds two books by the Nolan. One is the octavo that Tristão showed him over supper at the White Eagle; the other is a philosophical dialogue written in Tuscan, in the style of Lucian. Its front matter states that it was published here in the city, and this amuses Crivano: it was obviously bound by an English printer, perhaps jealous of the Aldine pedigree. He wonders if this deception was made at the Nolan’s request.

  As Ciotti steps through the door, Crivano leans down to feign a close examination of the stacked books. I was just admiring the craftsmanship of this table, he says. It supports both these Jesuit letters and the works of the Nolan without tipping discernibly in the direction of either.

  Ciotti laughs. I appreciate your attentiveness, he says. It is not always easy to strike such a balance. Especially in this neighborhood, where the very ground beneath our feet fairly often seems to shift.

  Crivano rises to exchange bows and clasp hands with the Sienese. Were it not for the thick-lensed spectacles hanging by a chain around his neck, Ciotti might be mistaken for a prosperous artisan: a baker, perhaps, or a carpenter.

  I was surprised to see your own device on the frontispiece of the Jesuit anthology, Crivano says. Your friend Lord Mocenigo must be quite pleased with that undertaking.

  The bookseller’s smile cools into a perspicacious smirk. Judge not, my friend, he says. I’m sure you’ll agree that as narrators of voyages, the footsoldiers of the Pope are unsurpassed. My favored customers are always eager to learn of the customs of distant lands. Of course, all of our Republic’s citizens are interested to read news of Spanish activity at the far corners of the earth. And, naturally, those among us who hold with the Curia in matters temporal and spiritual are delighted to find printed accounts of the Society of Jesus available at this emporium. Yet you will note, Dottore Crivano—as I myself note with displeasure each time I open or close my shop’s shutters—that this stack remains quite tall, even as those around it diminish. Would you care to join me in my workroom? Dottore de Nis’s friend should be with us shortly.

  Ciotti leads Crivano to a small cluttered office near the back of the shop, then closes the heavy door behind them. Crivano takes a seat beside a table awash in loose charts and unbound proofs; Ciotti sits opposite. The brick walls are laddered with oak bookshelves, each stacked to the base of the next.

  I just crossed the stone bridge, Crivano says. Quite impressive.

  Ciotti seems pleased and proud, as if he built it himself. Yes, he says. It was completed quite recently.

  A single span, Crivano says. Surprising. Not very classical.

  Ciotti shoots him a pointed glance. Not very Roman, I believe you mean, he says.

  Who was the architect?

  Antonio da Ponte. Aptly named.

  Crivano shakes his head. I don’t know of him, he says.

  He’s an engineer. Formerly head of the Magistracy of Salt. Not until now known as a builder. That grandiloquent fool Marcantonio Barbaro did all within his power to bestow the project on Vincenzo Scamozzi, but the grace of God spared us another of that peacock’s theoretical demonstrations. He’s done enough harm in the Piazza as it is. Signore da Ponte was barely able to persuade the Senate to prevent him from adding a third floor to the Library. Can you imagine? The Lords Morosini showed me some of Scamozzi’s sketches for the Rialto project. Disgusting. Relentlessly geometrical. Absurd ornamentation. I ask you, is a bridge a temple? No. It is a bridge.

  Crivano smiles. I met Lord Barbaro just yesterday afternoon, he says, at a banquet in the house of Giacomo Contarini. He seemed eager to convey to us that the glassmakers of Murano have compromised the Republic’s future by concentrating their efforts on the manufacture of mirrors, instead of lenses, as the Florentines do.

  Yes. That’s a favorite subject of his.

  After dinner, his argument was dissolved by a famed Neapolitan scholar who inadvertently demonstrated that lenses can produce spectacles to match or exceed in frivolity any yet conjured by silvery glass.

  Well, I can only pray that our mirror-mad friend Tristão de Nis was present to see that demonstration, Ciotti says, and narrows his eyes appraisingly. If I may ask, he says, what did you make of the Nolan’s performance last night?

  Crivano shrugs. If his intent was to demonstrate his prodigious memory, he says, then I suppose he succeeded. If he sought to impart some definitive judgment on the subject at hand, then I confess I came away unenlightened.

  Ciotti leans back in his chair; his right hand comes to rest atop a shallow wooden tray on the table beside him. It is a rare rhetorical gift, he says, that permits a man to speak knowledgeably about a topic and still deliver his audience into a state of enriched confusion. At times I think this skill chiefly defines the profession of magus. The Nolan has it, I think you’ll agree. That said, I cannot dismiss him as a charlatan.

  From what Tristão had told me of the fellow, Crivano says, I expected either a trickster or a madman. As if these categories must be exclusive.

  Ciotti nods; the wooden tray clicks beneath his fingers. It’s divided by slats into square compartments, and each compartment is filled with short slender pieces of dull metal. Their sound recalls the rattle of bone dice in a cup. Tracking Crivano’s gaze, Ciotti scoops a few metal bits from the tray and offers them with a pinched, beaklike hand. Here, he says. Have you seen these before?

  Crivano takes them. They slide on the ridges of his creased and calloused palm. Each is cuboid, smaller than a newborn’s finger, cast from a lead alloy. Each has a Greek letter—Λ Η Θ Η—in low relief on one of its smallest ends. Movable type, Crivano says. I saw a printing press once in Bologna. But I’ve never seen loose pieces like these.

  We call these sorts, Ciotti says. They’re bound together into a forme, from which a page is printed. That work is not done here. I pay a printer to do it, and he generally casts his own type. He’s discreet and reliable, but he lacks facility in Greek. I recently took a commission to print the Enneads of Plotinus, so for that I had to have my own type made. When I first began, all I ever used was the Latin alphabet. But after the Brucioli had such success with their Hebrew books, such trade became difficult to ignore. Some of my guildsmen—I refrain from naming them—have even secured the privilege to print in Arabic, and now turn profits by selling Muhammadan holy books to the Turks.

  A hopeful gleam appears in Ciotti’s eye—an invitation, perhaps—and Crivano suppresses a wince. He saw Frankish Qurans from time to time in Constantinople: inert, graceless, full of shocking errors. Their shoddiness didn’t scandalize the muftis so much as the very fact of their existence: the idea of God’s final message propagated not by the living breath of the Prophet and his companions, nor by the motions of a calligrapher’s hand, but by the uncanny iteration of soulless machinery. Crivano opts not to explain this to Ciotti. He stretches forward, dumps the sorts back into the Sienese’s cupped palm.

  Ciotti looks at them himself, prodding them with his forefinger, like a farmer evaluating a handful of seed. I thought of these last night, he says. Something the Nolan said reminded me. He spoke of the world shown by the mirror, and how it differs from this world. How did he put it, exactly? Do you recall?

  Crivano does not. He’s opening his mouth to reply when a soft knock comes at the door. Ciotti rises to pull it open, and the pale boy’s face appears in the gap. A Turk is here to see you, maestro, the boy says.

  Very good. Please show Messer bin Silen in.

  Sweat beads in Crivano’s armpits when Ciotti pronounces the name, his heartbeat quickens, but his face remains placid, his posture relaxed. He’s wary, but not afraid. Some part of h
im has expected this.

  Ciotti isn’t looking at him anyway. He’s pushed the door shut, and now stands facing it, his nose a palms’-breadth from its knobby wood. The metal sorts are still trapped in his left fist; he shakes them absently. Their soft chime fills the room like the sound of a distant riqq, muffled by palace walls.

  The man who originated this way of printing, Ciotti says, was a mirrormaker first. Or so the story goes. Did you know that? This was many years ago. He was a German goldsmith, and he made small mirrors for pilgrims visiting the chapel at Aachen. It was thought by simple folk that these mirrors could catch and contain the invisible blessings that emanated from the relics there. By the standards of Murano they were unimpressive, I’m sure. Made of lead and tin. Similar to my sorts, in fact, in their composition. But they were flat, and therefore whatever images they caught would have been reversed. I like to imagine that this is what gave the German goldsmith the idea for typesetting: tiny backward letters, lined up in rows. The mirror-image of the page-to-be. The reflection never shows the world as it is, as the Nolan told us. But it does show us things about the world. In this way, too, perhaps it is not unlike a book.

  A second knock at the door. Ciotti tugs the wrought-iron handle. Messer bin Silen, he says. Thank you for the loan of your expertise. I am Giovanni Battista Ciotti. Welcome to my modest enterprise.

  50

  Entering the room, Narkis seems stiff and weightless, propelled by a force outside himself, like a straw man at a fair. He’s wearing blue trousers and an embroidered caftan the color of boiled quince. Even in his turban he’s barely taller than the boy who escorts him. His large eyes are focused on a point on the floor about six feet ahead: the signature attitude of an expatriate Turk in an unfriendly city. He speaks softly in his bestial croak. Good day to you, Messer Ciotti, he says. I thank you for your hospitality.

  Ciotti maintains his warm smile, but he seems uncomfortable, anxious to take his leave. He keeps glancing toward the shop’s front room to see who might be there, might have seen Narkis come in. Concerned, no doubt, about appearances.

  Allow me to introduce Vettor Crivano, he says, who is to be your collaborator on this morning’s errand. Dottore Crivano is from Cyprus, and lived for a number of years among your people. Dottore Crivano, this is Narkis bin Silen, who joins us today from the Turkish fondaco.

  Crivano and Narkis exchange stiff bows.

  My eminent friends, Ciotti says, I have no wish to detain you today longer than is necessary. My request is simple. A young gentleman of my acquaintance has recruited me to publish—in limited circulation—a Latin rendering of a brief practical work by the Muhammadan alchemist Geber. The work has come into this gentleman’s possession in its original Arab script, and I have retained a scholar from Padua to execute a translation. My concerns, and those of my patron, center on the accuracy of this translation. I gather that our scholar is a very learned man, but also a bit of a poet, and somewhat given to ornament at the expense of clarity. You both have the advantage of knowing the great Geber’s original tongue, and you share an understanding of the practical considerations of a working alchemist. I ask merely that you examine the Latin against the original and evaluate its suitability with these concerns in mind. I can compensate you in coin, or in merchandise. Although, he smiles, I strongly encourage you to take the merchandise.

  Ciotti chases the two proofreaders from the shop, sending them off with fistfuls of copper gazettes to a casino on the opposite side of the block, then lays the manuscripts on the thick table. The sun is high enough that it misses the window, but it bounces from the fresh-plastered wall across the alley, giving them plenty of light to work.

  Ciotti returns to his office, but leaves his door open. Crivano searches Narkis’s face for a sign of how to proceed, but the look he gets back is so bereft of recognition that he wonders for a moment, against all reason, whether this can be Narkis at all, and not some never-suspected identical twin. The little Macedonian seems to assess him with an equal measure of curiosity and revulsion, as one might inspect a strange songbird found dead beneath a newly glazed palace window.

  They seat themselves. With a flicker of his eyes, Narkis indicates that Crivano should take the original document. Crivano settles in his chair and begins to read from it aloud. It’s a brief text; he reads slowly. Narkis moves an inkwell within his reach and stares down at the Latin translation with steady half-lidded eyes.

  The text is a treatise on the transmutation of metals, fairly unremarkable in its content had it not been written by the great Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan, known to the Franks as Geber. As Ciotti no doubt knows, it’s almost certainly a fake—a latter-day imitator or, worse, a translation into Arabic of an original Latin forgery. But this is not the issue Ciotti has asked them to address.

  Crivano steals a glance at Narkis from time to time as he reads. Their encounter in the apothecary’s shop was fleeting by design; this is the first close look Crivano has managed since their appointment months ago in Ravenna. Narkis’s face is smooth, unfurrowed, almost a child’s face, fairer than Crivano’s and Ciotti’s both. Even here he retains his stork-like sense of enclosed calm. The hand which travels to and from the inkwell has a black bird emblazoned on its skin, the emblem of his orta, and Crivano considers how different his own fate would have been had Fortune seen him marked thusly, rather than on his chest and his leg, under his clothes.

  For half an hour they work through the text. Narkis sometimes interrupts with a question, sometimes makes a notation in his margins. The tension is almost unbearable. Crivano begins to wonder if Narkis is waiting for some signal from him, but can’t imagine what that might be. He becomes sloppy in his recitation, repeating some lines while skipping others, and Narkis gently corrects him.

  Then, without looking up, Narkis makes a swift gesture with his right hand and touches his fingers to his lips. This is işaret, the language of deaf-mutes, known by all who have served in the sultan’s silent inner court. Crivano never managed to learn it well; much of what he once knew he’s forgotten. But he understands well enough now. Speak, Narkis says. Tell me.

  Take any portion of the stone with its mixture, Crivano reads, and grind it with copperas and sal ammoniac and water until it becomes black. The glassmaker and the mirrormaker are both committed, and are ready to depart upon a few hours’ notice. We await your instructions. Then subject it to very slight heat until it takes on the odor of a man’s ejaculate.

  Crivano keeps his voice flat, his inflection uniform. His stomach tightens as he makes his report, though he knows no one within earshot but Narkis can understand his Arabic words; they hear only his ongoing recitation.

  Narkis’s hands speak again: What of the dead man?

  He’s in the lagoon. No one will find him. I have heard of no disturbance related to his vanishing. When it has that smell, remove it and wash it gently with pure water, then roast it with low heat until you perceive a visible vapor.

  Narkis nods. Then he speaks aloud, also in Arabic. The glassmaker’s refusal to leave Murano without his wife and sons is very bad, he says. The risk is unreasonable. Can he be dissuaded? Can you convince him that they will be delivered to him in time?

  This was the principal demand in Serena’s hidden message, the chief feature of Crivano’s encoded report. He’d hoped that it wouldn’t present any great difficulty—once Narkis has arranged an escape for three men, what trouble is the addition of two boys and a woman?—but evidently his hope was misplaced. The glassmaker is no fool, Crivano says. We have to do what he asks. Don’t worry about the family. I’ll find a way to include them without compromising our project. In this fashion the water will be driven off, and the weight of the stone will be reduced, yet without the loss of its essence.

  I have found a ship, Narkis says. It departs from Spalato in three weeks’ time.

  It’s now Crivano’s turn to be vexed. From Spalato? he says. Why not from here? Remove it and submerge it again in water, and make a powder of
it under water, and roast it again as before. Its blackness now diminishes.

  Too dangerous, Narkis says with his hands. The journey must begin by road.

  He’s worried about the uskoks, Crivano realizes. Take off the dry stone when the water has been absorbed, he says. This is certain to create difficulties. The craftsmen still believe they’re being taken to Amsterdam, not Constantinople. The mirrormaker in particular is very desperate, and will not be easy to control. I fear he’ll try to escape to the Netherlands on his own if he reaches the mainland. Grind it in pure water and roast it again. It becomes green, and the blackness vanishes.

  Persuade him to cooperate, Narkis’s hands say. Then his voice. I will take my payment today in coin, he says. You will take yours in books. I will hide the information you need inside the Latin Kitab-al-Manazir on our host’s front table. The second book in the stack. You and the craftsmen must be prepared to embark at Cannaregio for the mainland in three days.

  Narkis looks up from the manuscript to meet Crivano’s eyes. He holds them for a moment, then looks down, and does not speak again.

  Within the hour the text is finished. The two of them browse the books in the front room in silence as Ciotti fetches Narkis’s payment from his strongbox: a small stack of soldi. Crivano presents Ciotti with his selections—a new translation of Galen, one of the Nolan’s works, the Kitab-al-Manazir—and by the time Ciotti has deducted them from his inventory, Narkis has gone.

  The midmorning light casts strange shadows down the Mercerie as the textiles billow in the late-spring breeze. Underfoot are traces of last night’s revels: spilled wine, soiled ribbon, fragments of eggshell. Looking south toward the Piazza, Crivano thinks he can make out Narkis’s turban, slipping in and out of sight like a moon among clouds, but he can’t be sure. A couple of laborers from a coal ship pass by, laughing boisterously, their eyes clamshell-white in their blackened faces. A group of bravi loiters at the corner of a sidestreet, watching the workmen, watching Crivano too. One of the ruffians, probably late of the wars in France, has a face so mutilated it hardly can be called a face: a slash of a mouth and one glaring eye emerge from a welter of scars. Crivano shudders, walks the other way.