The Mirror Thief

by Martin Seay

  Did the boy find you?

  Yes, dottore. He did.

  And the gondolier, did you find him?

  I did. I gave him your message. Let me check the street for you. I’ll tell you when it’s safe.

  Yes. Thank you, Anzolo. Oh—my items: my box and my trunk. Do you know where they took them?

  Anzolo stops in the doorframe. Where who took them, dottore?

  The sbirri. Didn’t the sbirri seize them?

  Bafflement settles on Anzolo’s face. I thought you took them, he says. I thought you had them sent to the Contarini house.

  But I’ve just now come for them. I didn’t send for them. Who took them away?

  I—I wasn’t here at the time. I was on the Riva del Fabbriche, seeking out your gondolier. Agnesina was here. Agnesina!

  He calls the girl’s name several times, but she does not appear. They find her in a storeroom, hidden behind a stack of boxes: the one who fled when Crivano arrived.

  Agnesina! What’s the matter? What’s come over you?

  Young woman, Crivano says, what became of my trunk, and my box?

  The girl recoils into the corner, making an elaborate gesture with her hands. The gesture is familiar, though Crivano can’t place it. Her eyes are vast and terrified. Hairs bristle on Crivano’s neck.

  Agnesina! Anzolo thunders. Answer the dottore! Who took his things?

  When she finally speaks, her voice quakes as if she’s freezing. It was him, she says. He took them himself.

  Her unsteady finger is aimed at Crivano’s chest.

  Agnesina, Anzolo says, that is not possible. He is here now to collect them. The man who came earlier: what did he look like? How many were with him?

  No one was with him, she says. No one.

  Are you sure? The dottore’s trunk is far too heavy for a single man to move.

  What did he look like? Crivano says. His voice seems to come from outside himself.

  You, she says, weeping now. Like you. But also not. And with different—garments. Garments like—a doctor—like during—

  Leave her be, Crivano says. It doesn’t matter. Leave her be.

  He waits in the corridor, listening through the door as Anzolo alternately upbraids and consoles the girl. His heart thuds in his chest like a separate creature, like it knows of terrors as yet unsuspected by the rest of his body. In a moment, Anzolo emerges from the room, but he won’t meet Crivano’s eyes. You should hurry, he says. I’ll check the street.

  What was that gesture that the girl made?

  It’s nothing, dottore. She’s very excited, with all the sbirri. I’ll talk to her when she’s calm, and we’ll make arrangements for your things.

  Anzolo, Crivano says. What was the gesture?

  Nothing. As I said. Something superstitious peasants do.

  Why? Why do they do it?

  I don’t know, dottore. I’m a city man, myself.

  Anzolo attempts a smile, but can’t sustain it. Crivano fixes him with a flat stare.

  They do it to ward off evil, I suppose, Anzolo says. Evil spirits.

  Evil spirits? Crivano says. Are you sure?

  For a long time Anzolo says nothing. He stands in the corridor with one hand on the wall, facing the door to the street. He’s shivering too; Crivano can see that now.

  The plague, he answers at last. They do it to protect themselves from the plague.

  Crivano takes a deep breath, releases it slowly. His lungs fill and empty; blood thickens in his brain. He can feel parts of himself awakening that have been dormant for years, while everything within him that has been awake now seems to grow dull and indifferent: pale worms in winter mud.

  Yes, he says. I thought that might be the case. Thank you, Anzolo.

  56

  A pair of sbirri passes, Anzolo gives the signal, and Crivano steps from the White Eagle’s door. It closes behind him with a quiet brush of wood on wood: a final sound. He is alone. He has always been alone—since the Lark died, at least—but his isolation can no longer be hidden. Like a splinter of steel lodged in a muscle, he is no longer part of what he moves among.

  He turns right to return the way he came, but immediately spots two more sbirri at the casino down the street; they’ve stopped to argue with the nightwatchmen he saw earlier. Crivano detours into a dark doorway and waits for them to move on. Instead, one of them enters the casino—I’ll chase this heretic dog down with ease, I promise you, once I’ve taken a nice shit—and leaves the other behind. Crivano recognizes the remaining sbirro as the feckless youth who watched his room all afternoon. The boy puffs out his chest, fingers the pommel of his rapier like it’s a new toy. Crivano counts his pulse, giving the young sbirro’s partner time enough to reach the privy and pull down his hose. Then he hurries along the street—stepping from shadow to shadow—and clubs the boy in the face with the iron head of his walkingstick.

  The young sbirro shrieks, drops to the packed dirt. The watchmen rise in half-crouches, looking at Crivano, looking at each other. Crivano raises his stick again, and they both sink to their seats. The sbirro moans, clutching his wrecked face, retching blood and mucus. Crivano keeps steady eyes on the seated watchmen as he relieves the wounded boy of his sword and scabbard.

  They shout and scramble to fetch the second sbirro from the privy once Crivano’s out of sight, but he’s a safe distance away now, moving west, out of the Rialto. The wind has lessened, the sky is cloudless, and the air has grown dense, unseasonably cold. The warm canal waters send up tendrils of mist; he sees them as he crosses the little bridge. The moon is low, but there’s still plenty of light. Too much light.

  By now the sbirri will have rounded up all his linkboys; they will have found the recipients of his message, and all will have professed ignorance of its meaning. Those are the places the sbirri will congregate, in hopes of his reappearance. Crivano therefore opts to propel himself into quarters as yet unknown: toward San Polo and the Frari. As usual the streets conspire to steer him elsewhere: north instead, approaching the upper bend of the Grand Canal. Crivano makes no real effort to resist their redirection. At this point it doesn’t much matter where he goes.

  What is he? Whose agent? What has he become?

  Only with effort can he now recall the two boys who stood on the deck of the Gold and Black Eagle—the boys who both died there, and were there reborn. He kept himself alive for years with promises of eventual vengeance, with the dream that the Turks would one day pay in blood for what they had done to his home, to his family, to the Lark. He so cherished the dream of retribution that he concealed it in a treasure-box within himself, and locked that box inside other boxes, until finally—after the campaigns in Africa and Persia, after the camaraderie with the men who shared his cookpot, after the failures and successes along every frontier of the sultan’s empire—Narkis’s proposal arrived, and Crivano thought: this is the time, if ever the time is to come. By then, of course, the vengeful boy was nowhere within himself to be found. As he departed Constantinople he consoled himself with the thought that he’d simply mislaid whatever keys would open those old boxes, that they’d reemerge with time. Now he knows that the compartments are empty, and always were. His cold ferocious heart is no more than a corridor lined with mirrors, a procession of ghosts and absences, haunting one another and themselves.

  He’s passed the lengths of a half-dozen streets and seen no sbirri. A few watchmen make their rounds—these haven’t been relieved of their duties—and Crivano steps from view whenever they appear. Somewhere behind him the sbirri are tending to their wounded boy, widening their patrols. They’ll catch up soon enough. He’d planned to circle south, to cross the Grand Canal to the Contarini house, but he can just as easily hire a boat on the upper bend, by the Cannaregio Canal. That could be better, in fact: the sbirri won’t find him under the canopy of a sandolo. And it would be pleasant to float free through the heart of the city one last time, to watch the moonlight play on the palace façades. A good way to bid this place farew
ell. He’ll hide at the Contarini house for a few days, then find a ship to Constantinople. Or Ragusa. Or Tunis. Any port will do. Crivano is a physician, after all, and disease is everywhere.

  On the Street of the Dyers he evades two approaching watchmen, then notices that they’re inattentive, deep in discussion. He sits in a doorway to eavesdrop.

  So this all has to do with that heretic they’ve arrested? the first says. Some sort of plot, I suppose?

  Damned if I can say, comes the reply. The heretic was denounced by his patron, Zuanne Mocenigo, who’s widely known to be a fool and a two-faced coward. They say he’s mixed up with sorcerers, those who conjure demons. Earlier tonight, some villain painted a vile curse in Latin across Mocenigo’s palace gate; now a half-dozen bravi guard his doors, and every candle, lamp, and lantern he owns is ablaze. He’s terrified.

  And the two men that the sbirri hunt—

  Only one, now. The physician. They found the Turk a short while ago, afloat in the Madonnetta Canal.

  Dead?

  Of course, dead. You think he was swimming? As far as who killed him—the sbirri, or the Turk’s own accomplices, or perhaps he died by his own hand—

  Shush! Who goes there?

  They’ve seen him. The tired muscles of Crivano’s legs and back protest as he rises from his seat on the steps, ambles forward.

  Good Christ. That’s him.

  Their light falls on his face; he squints. These look like ordinary city commoners: sleepy unskilled tradesmen carrying clubs and a lantern through the streets for a few extra coins. Men with debts and families. The three of them exchange bleak looks, trapped in a moment that none has wished for. Then Crivano shifts his walkingstick to his left hand, and begins to draw the rapier.

  Run! the first watchman barks, but the other is already running: orange sparks fly from his clattering lantern as he stuffs a wooden whistle between his lips. Thin harsh notes pierce the cooling air. Crivano hears people in adjacent houses stir.

  He lets the watchmen go. By now the sbirri must be close; these two will find them soon enough. The campo of San Giacomo dall’Orio is but a short distance away, the Grand Canal not much farther on: Crivano could be safely aboard a boat within minutes. But he’s going to wait in the campo instead. He’s not quite satisfied, not quite finished. Behind him the dark streets scroll like pages in an old codex, one he’s struggled for years to parse. He feels as if he’s reached the end only to discover that he’s been misreading it all along—taking for literal truth what was meant as allegory, or vice versa. He wants to flip back to the beginning, to start over with fresh eyes. Even if doing so means he can never be free of it. Even if it’s too late now for understanding anyway.

  A few paces ahead, at the next intersection—a narrow street branching to the west—a chill settles over him, and he stops, aware that he’s being watched. For a long time he remains motionless. Knowing already. Not wanting to see it. Finally, with effort, he twists his stiff neck to the left.

  It’s perhaps a hundred feet away, down the sidestreet, backlit by a fat yellow moon. Blocking the light. Crivano can see the outlines of its wide-brimmed hat, its ash wand, its beaked mask. He can’t smell the asafetida, but he can see the smoke: little wisps adrift before its glinting glassy eyes.

  He wants to go to it. To kill it. To come to the end. But as he’s drawing his sword he hears a shout from somewhere behind him, and another answering it: the spread of the watchmen’s alarms. He looks away for an instant, and when he glances down the sidestreet again, the fiend is gone.

  He isn’t ready for this. He hurries forward on clumsy legs, tingling like he’s been still for too long, like he’s exchanged his body for another’s. In the campo torches blaze at the church’s side door; strange shadows waver under trees. The thing is everywhere now: always at the corner of his eye. He turns, turns again. Sniffing the air.

  The church door opens with the pressure of his shoulder; Crivano steps into candlelight. No priest inside. No one here at all. As if the city belongs only to him and the demons he’s conjured. He walks to the west end of the nave, dips his fingers in the font and crosses himself, feeling foolish for doing so. Along the walls, from chapel to chapel, he takes long breaths to cool his blood and brain. Looking at everything. The ship’s-keel roof. Fossil snails in the floor. A green marble column taken during the Crusades. Paintings of saints and the Virgin. One shadowy canvas—John the Baptist preaching to a rapt and reverent crowd—seizes and won’t relinquish his attention, and he steps forward to examine it.

  This is surely the hand of the mad craftsman of whom the senator spoke: the one who believed himself hounded by sbirri and magicians, the one who cast himself from a window toward his death. Crivano manages an ironic smirk, but it falters. It’s all too easy to imagine: the painter’s confident departure from Bassano del Grappa. The thrill he must have felt when the city first met his eyes. The heavy charge given by his patron: to maintain the imago urbis, to distill and sublime eight quicksilver centuries with a few daubs of pigment, a few brushstrokes. The vision of beauty and order that burned in him; the anguish he felt when, from within and without, that vision was betrayed. It’s all there on the great canvas, rendered clearly enough: in the rapturous upturned eyes of a woman in the audience, in the sourceless darkness that weights everything from above. Crivano clenches his teeth and thinks of reckless Tristão in his laboratory, of Narkis dead in the warm filthy water, of the Nolan rotting in his long-coveted cell. The pathetic example of Narcissus warns us against a direct approach to the mirror, for then our eyes meet only our own image. In such a closed circle, no good can result. The example to emulate is that of noble Actaeon, who entered the grotto of the Moon by accident, who cast his slanted gaze toward the pool’s silvered surface, and who glimpsed there, half-submerged, the goddess’s unclothed form. Fools, Crivano thinks. All of them. To want what they wanted. To seek what they sought.

  The side door opens. A man steps through it. He wears a rapier and the cloak of a sbirro. He and Crivano look at each other without expression for several long breaths. Then the man opens the door again, and steps outside.

  Crivano’s tread is well-practiced; the soles of his boots are soft. He catches the door before it has fully closed. The sbirro is a few paces ahead, beckoning to his two fellows in the campo; he turns as the door opens, and Crivano drives the ferrule of his stick into the side of the sbirro’s head, just above the ear.

  The two sbirri in the campo draw their rapiers and charge. Crivano steps over the fallen man, unsheathes his own blade, waits for them to close the distance. As he’s anticipated, they’re fierce and ruthless, but not skilled swordsmen. He stabs the first in the kidney, the second in the eye.

  The second sbirro screams, throws down his sword, hides his face in his hands, and screams again. Then he bolts, runs headlong into the trunk of an old bay laurel, and collapses in mute convulsions. The kidney-hit sbirro sinks to the packed earth—slowly, like a sick drunk—and begins to weep and moan. Crivano kicks him twice at the base of his skull to silence him.

  More shouts: someone has heard. Looking down the Street of the Dyers and the Ruga Bella, Crivano sees lanternlight in the distance, lending color to the brick walls, shaping buildings from the blackness. He falls back and rounds the church’s corner, passing the twin hemispheres of the apse, dashing through the Campiello of the Dead.

  He’s about to follow Broad Street north—the Grand Canal two hundred yards away, not yet visible—when something draws his eye. Shadows on the base of the old belltower. Two silhouettes cast by a pair of torches, identical and overlapping, as though seen through crossed eyes. The torchlight emanates from a gap between buildings, a gap he hasn’t noticed till now. Crivano stares at the oscillating shadows until he sorts out details: the curve of a beak, the ellipse of a hat-brim, a long slim wand aslant a wrist.

  He tiptoes to the gap, pressing his shoulder to the bricks, then circles wide as he turns the corner, his rapier at the ready, his stick hig
h to ward off attack. But nothing’s there—no figure to block the light, no torches to cast it—only a dark and narrow street edged by modest shops, moonlit at its midpoint by the transit of a canal. The air over the tiny bridge swirls with rising mist. Crivano moves steadily forward, his sword’s blood-streaked tip an antenna in the dark.

  On the other side of the canal, beyond the curtain of fog, the street changes. Quiet before, it’s now entirely silent: devoid of tittering rats, soft human snores, the lap of water. Here the storefronts seem implausibly perfect: no brick chipped, no wood rotten, every window tidily glazed. It seems like a backdrop for an elaborate intermedio, or some similar spectacle. As if it might topple backward at any slight touch.

  The street bends left, then right, and terminates in a cramped campiello. One end leads to a private bridge and a bolted palace gate. The other end abuts the Saint John Beheaded Canal. Crivano is trapped. He has trapped himself.

  He can hear the deliberate approach of the sbirri: they call to one another and stamp their booted feet. They must know where he is, and that he’s cornered; they hope he’ll hear them and rush forward again, racing them to the bridge. They want to catch him with the canal at his back, to overwhelm him with their superior numbers.

  Crivano opts not to disappoint them. He hides the bright blade of his sword in its scabbard and creeps through the darker shadows on the street’s right side, hunched like a subhuman, inching toward the canal. The sbirri have left their lanterns behind; he can barely see them on the opposite side: two in the vanguard, at least two more behind those. Preparing nervously to cross. When the first pair reaches the bridge—squinting through the mist, their shapes edged by moonlight—he springs.

  They fall back immediately, intent on drawing him forward—opening space to flank him, forcing him to engage three or four abreast—but Crivano keeps a foot planted at all times on the bridge’s wooden planks, and fends them off with deep lunges. He counts five here, more on the way: torches by the base of the distant belltower, sparking and guttering as their bearers charge forward. Crivano’s stick and rapier make slow theatrical sweeps, beating the blades of the sbirri, offering them a simulacrum of real battle. Then, after clumsy parries and a brief stumble, he retreats onto the bridge.