The Lost Book of Wonders

by Chad Brecher

  Dr. Gozzi had heard about the murder of Girolamo Paolo in the local newspapers. He was found floating in the canal, his throat slit. The preliminary stages of investigation by the carabinieri revealed that Paolo had strong ties to the black market trade in antiquities and interacted with many unscrupulous individuals. The general feeling was that Paolo was a victim of his work.

  “Signori, I am afraid that whoever killed Paolo is now after me. I went back to my apartment and found it turned upside down. Now every street I walk down, I sense that I am being watched and followed.”

  Dr. Gozzi frowned. “You must go to the carabinieri.”

  “What will the carabinieri do? They will find out that I found the chest in the canal. It will be taken away from me. You know how the government is about protecting antiquities. They will call me a grave robber, a looter stealing items of Italian cultural heritage. This is my ticket to a better life. Day in and day out I have slaved to protect this city. I was meant to find this chest. It is my reward.”

  The director squeezed his chin. “What can I do?”

  “The library has money. Buy it from me. You are a good man. I trust you to do the right thing.”

  Dr. Gozzi thought about it. He looked over at the table. He would have to convince the Board of Directors as the merits of such a purchase. This should not be too difficult. After all, prior exhibits on Marco Polo were always anticlimactic because so few artifacts could be shown that were connected to the man. Indeed, in 1954 for the 700th jubilee of Marco Polo’s birth, the celebration displayed only several of Marco Polo’s books in French and Italian and maps of the world that were made long after his death. This was one of the most incredible findings during Dr. Gozzi’s career. It belonged in the library right beside Marco Polo’s last will and testament. There was no way the Board would say no to his request. He just needed proof that these items were authentic.

  “I will see what I can do. In the meantime, I would like very much to study these artifacts further to ensure that they are what I think they are. This takes time. I promise to keep them safe,” Dr. Gozzi replied.

  “Yes, Signori. It is safer here with you. I will be leaving Venice for the time being. I will return in a week. Hopefully, by then we will have an answer.”

  Pietro walked to the door and waited as Dr. Gozzi unlocked it. Turning back, Pietro smiled. “Life is strange, how things turn out. This canal wasn’t even scheduled to be drained originally. It’s fate.”

  Dr. Gozzi returned the smile. “Pietro, be careful.”

  Pietro looked out the door, the smile disappearing. “You too.”

  12

  NYC

  The knock at the door startled Alex, stirring him from sleep. He raised his head off his workbench and groggily stretched his neck so he could peer over the top of two stacks of books piled high beside him. He could see the doorknob slowly turn. The dilapidated door responded with a rattle and finally opened with a sudden pop. He could see Ellie’s head poke through the opening with a smile. She scanned the narrow confines of the office.

  “Anyone home?”

  Alex gripped each of the piles of books and spread them apart so she could see him.

  “There you are. Hiding?” Ellie bounced into the room with a bag slung over her left shoulder. In her right hand, she held a stuffed white plastic bag. She raised the bag higher in the air so Alex could see it. “I brought some Chinese food…a little tribute to Marco Polo. By the way, Cyrus says hello.”

  “Some security he is. He’ll let anybody in,” Alex smiled and stretched his hands above his head.

  “And to think all it took was two fortune cookies and a spring roll.” Ellie cleared off a space on top of a file cabinet and began to remove the white paper cartons. She glanced over her shoulder at the pile of books on his workbench.

  “What are those for?” she asked as she ripped open the red chopstick wrapper and broke apart the wooden chopsticks.

  “The books?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s Graham,” Alex replied and rolled his eyes. “He needs a canned lecture on the Black Death for when he comes back.”

  Ellie handed Alex the chopsticks and returned to looking through the plastic bag. “Damn it. They forgot plates. I hope you don’t mind just eating from the cartons. I got Chicken Lo Mein, spring rolls, and beef with broccoli.”

  “I don’t mind. I was inoculated for cooties when I was five,” Alex said with a smirk as he accepted the distinctive paper carton from Ellie. “This is a great surprise.”

  Ellie drove her chopsticks into the carton of Chicken Lo Mein and tweezed out a bundle of noodles.

  “I have some news,” Ellie announced mid-chew. Alex’s eyes peered up from the carton of beef with broccoli.

  “Hum,” he responded.

  “I got in touch with Bernardo. He only wanted to see an image of the box so I took some photos and emailed them to him. Let’s just say that he was very excited by the box. He said that he had recently come in possession of other articles that may be connected to Marco Polo and was eager to examine the box.”

  “That’s great…except for the distance of course.”

  Ellie pulled aside a chair, sat cross-legged on it, and balanced the carton of Lo Mein on her lap. “That’s the crazy part. He wants us to come to Venice with the box. And he wants us to come as soon as possible.”

  Alex shot her a skeptical glance. “Us? Go to Venice?” Ellie nodded her head. He looked at the two towers of books on his workbench and a paper with notes jotted down on the Black Death.

  “Ellie, I have all this work to do. There’s the Cross exhibition coming up, Graham’s going to be back soon and will want this lecture completed, and not to mention the biggest issue, I’m broke.” Alex lowered his shoulders with disappointment.

  Ellie grabbed Alex’s knees and swiveled his chair until he was fully facing her.

  “Do you really want to be Graham’s lackey?”

  “I could lose my fellowship,” Alex answered and placed the Chinese carton on his workbench.

  “Maybe. Heh, you’re the one that sucked me into this mystery. I was perfectly happy to wallow in my own misery. Besides, we could try and get back before Graham returns. It might be a nice distraction. When’s he due back?”

  “A couple of weeks…I’m not exactly sure.”

  “That’s plenty of time,” Ellie pouted.

  Alex squeezed his chin and shook his head. There is something special about the box. I need to know what.

  “Even if I could sneak out of here, I couldn’t even scrape up enough to buy a ticket. They’re so much when you buy them just before you leave.”

  “I’ll take that as a conditional yes,” Ellie responded with a devilish smile. She leaned back, twisted her hand into her bag, and removed an envelope. Ellie handed it to Alex and resumed eating her noodles.

  “What’s this?” Alex asked as he flipped the tab of the envelope open and peered inside.

  “I forgot to tell you the best part. Bernardo was so excited by our finding, he sent us two plane tickets to Venice.”

  “When?” Alex raised his eyebrows.

  “Tomorrow. Better get packing,” Ellie replied with a devilish smile before popping a piece of broccoli into her mouth.

  13

  Venice, Italy

  Dr. Gozzi felt like he hadn’t slept for days. His office was quickly becoming a disaster zone with books piled high, threatening to teeter over and collapse in a heap onto the floor. The items from the chest were splayed out on a large canvas stretched across the floor of his office. He scratched nervously at the stubble on his face and stood with his arms folded, looking down at the canvas.

  Venice was on edge. Two high-profile murders within one week of each other had the carabinieri working overtime. First, there was the antiquity dealer, Girolamo Paolo, found floating with his neck slit in a canal, and last night, to Dr. Gozzi’s dismay, the civil engineer, Pietro Zeno. He could remember the uncertainty and fear
in Pietro’s eyes as he departed the library that eventful night last week. A store clerk had found Pietro’s body slumped over in an alleyway, his carotid artery severed. Pietro’s paranoia proved to be well-deserved, which meant that Dr. Gozzi was likely next. He didn’t have much time: not much time at all.

  The last week was a blur. He felt closer than ever to unwrapping the mystery of the chest. A clue came from an unlikely and unexpected source, a figure from his past. Pietro had earlier questioned if it was fate that he discovered the chest after all these centuries buried under water. Dr. Gozzi was not a superstitious soul but if the return of Harold Griffin’s daughter into his life after all these years was not enough, her apparent discovery of a box related to Marco Polo was well…miraculous to say the least. He was not a religious man, but this past week was almost enough to send him back to the folds of the Church. He glanced across the room and caught the image of the box Eleanor discovered still displayed on his computer screen and grimaced.

  When she had contacted him about the box several days ago, he could barely contain his excitement. And when he saw the symbols on the box, he was captivated by it. He urged Eleanor and her colleague to visit him as soon as possible so he could examine the box in person. Now they were on their way to Venice and he had unwittingly exposed them to danger. Pietro was now dead. Whoever had killed him most certainly now knew that he possessed the chest’s contents. Dr. Gozzi peered down at the items on the canvas again and allowed his lips to curl into a smile. Not all the contents, he thought to himself. He had made sure that the mystery would not die with him. He looked down at the ducal crest and felt a kinship to Falier that spanned the centuries. What were the words Lord Byron placed in Falier’s mouth as the axe was falling? Dr. Gozzi asked himself.

  Strike as I struck the foe! Strike as I would

  Have struck those tyrants! Strike deep as my curse!

  Strike — and but once!

  Dr. Gozzi could hear footsteps against the marble floor outside his office. They are here already! He quickly made his way to the chair behind his desk, sat down, and moved the mouse across the computer. He typed in the email address, skipped the subject, and quickly typed in a message. The footsteps grew louder. He wished he could write more. He hoped she would understand. After he had sent the email, he brought up his recent correspondences one by one and sent them to the trash bin. With a click of the button, the virtual trash bin was emptied.

  He swiveled his chair around and stared at the door. The doorknob silently turned. With a creak, the door swung open.

  Dr. Gozzi brought his hands together and rested them on his lap. He looked at the figures standing in the doorway.

  “What took you so long?” he asked with the faintest smile.

  14

  Ellie couldn’t help but grin as she emerged from the Stazione Ferroviaria Santa Lucia, the main train station in Venice. She slipped on a pair of sunglasses and watched as Alex dragged two small suitcases behind him towards the vaporetto. To her left she could see the exquisite columns of the Scalzi Church on the bank of the canal, providing a stark contrast to the modern exterior of the neighboring train station.

  She felt at home.

  Some of her earliest and fondest memories were of Venice and of ‘Uncle Bernardo.’ One of her father’s oldest and dearest friends, Bernardo Gozzi, would host her family for weeks during the summertime after the university had let out. They would wander through the narrow alleyways and along the canals for hours with Bernardo acting as an impromptu tour guide. He would point out some of the lesser-known facts about the ancient city one would not find in a guidebook. Each decaying palace, archway, and church had a story, and Bernardo reveled in telling these tales with a bravado that enraptured Ellie when she was a young girl.

  Several years after her parents died, she spent the summer in Venice at Bernardo’s flat. She had yet to go to college and was a fairly typical teenager filled with angst and uncertainty about her future. It was a pivotal summer for her as she fought the demons from her past and emerged at the end a stronger and more focused woman. She spent hours exploring the city on her own, creating charcoal sketches of the wonderful architecture, and staring silently at the gondolas bobbing up and down in the Grand Canal. Bernardo seemed to recognize that Ellie needed something that only she could provide herself and gave her the space to do so. By the end of that summer, the timelessness of Venice had seeped into her soul and had helped heal her. And like a chick hatching, she left broken pieces of shell behind.

  Ellie had not seen Bernardo since that summer. She had been consumed by her dedication to the field of antiquities and found her interest stretch away from the European continent to the Middle East. Bernardo always remembered her birthday and never forgot an important event such as a graduation, but he, too, had gotten wrapped up in his work. It will be good to see Bernardo again, Ellie thought as she took the stairs two steps at a time.

  Alex waved to her as the water taxi neared the pier. Once the flat-bottomed boat was moored, they boarded and made their way to the railing. They waited as a throng of tourists lugging oversized suitcases crammed onto the boat. The motor began to croak, sending reverberations through the vessel. Alex and Ellie leaned over the railing as the boat pulled away and made its way towards the next stop.

  “It’s amazing that you know Bernardo Gozzi,” Alex said as he looked sideways at Ellie. Her hair was golden in the brilliant sunlight, her eyes a turquoise blue. “His book on Marco Polo is a classic. If anyone can help us out, it is him.”

  Ellie nodded. Her eyes followed a small, motorized pleasure boat as it traveled rapidly down the canal, sending a small wake towards their boat. The water taxi rocked back and forth in response. “I can’t wait to see those items in the chest. Between those items and this box, Bernardo is on his way to arranging a phenomenal exhibition for the library. You know, it’s a little embarrassing to admit it but I never read Marco Polo’s Description of the World before this trip. After reading through it on the flight and the train ride from Milan, I have to admit, Alex, that it is not all that good of a read.”

  Alex stared down at the water. “I know what you are saying. It’s a criticism that has been leveled at the book ever since it was published. It can be dry and boring. Sometimes it seems like just a catalogue of different cities and local customs. But you have to put it into the context of the times. When Marco Polo set out for the East in search of fortune with his uncle, Maffeo, and his father, Nicoló, in 1271, he was fifteen. He had spent his entire life in Venice. Although there had been trade with the East for some time, the East remained alien to most Europeans.

  “The Europeans considered themselves heirs to the great empires of the past like the Romans and Greeks. And Venice considered itself at the time to be the rising superpower of Europe. It had gotten rich providing maritime travel during the Crusades and controlled a large share of the wealth of Constantinople. The Venetians felt that their world had to be the most advanced and enlightened civilization. Imagine what it must have felt like when Marco Polo traveled across the East into the Mongol empire and to China only to discover the varied cultures out there. These cultures were not only wondrous and exotic but had even greater wealth, scientific achievements, and social order than anything in Europe at the time. It must have been a real eye opener.

  “What is even more extraordinary is that Marco Polo, after spending the next seventeen years in the East at the service of the great Mongol ruler, Kublai Khan, survived the trip back to Venice to tell his tale. Imagine the perspective he had on the world. He was not a writer and probably never had a formal education. In fact, as you know, the legend is that the book was written by the ghostwriter, Rustichello of Pisa, while the two of them were imprisoned in a Genoan jail in 1298. In the end though, there is nothing magical about The Description of the World. It is not a fantasy story like The Arabian Nights. There are no genies in bottles or flying carpets. Marco Polo was a merchant who traveled East and simply lived to tell of what
he saw. He was merely helping to define the world.”

  Ellie was quiet. She folded her hands on the railing and rested her chin on it. She tilted her head towards Alex. “Maybe I’m a romantic, but I’d like to think there is more to the story of Marco Polo — that maybe there is a little magic. There seems to be so little known about the man, after all. It’s almost like he disappeared for seventeen years in the service of the Khan, returned to Venice to write the tale, and promptly fell off the face of the earth until he died. There’s just so little known about him.”

  Alex smiled and patted his satchel. “Maybe this box might just help clear up some of the mysteries. I can’t wait to see what Dr. Gozzi thinks of it.” The water taxi slowly zigzagged across the canal. Along the horizon, the sun was beginning to set, creating mesmerizing silhouettes. The buildings of Venice stood like darkened facades against a backdrop of oranges and reds.

  15

  Alex folded the wooden shutters back and stared out the window of the hotel at the street below. Ellie sat on the edge of the bed and tried to flatten a piece of paper, which repeatedly curled itself again on the bedside table. She retrieved a pen provided by the hotel, recopied the phone number on a new piece of paper, and lifted the phone to her ear.

  Alex looked around the room. It was nearly identical to his room several doors away, even down to the small bed in the center of the room and a painting of a gondola passing beneath the Ponte di Rialto. He felt a sense of impatience welling up inside his body. It was a feeling he commonly got when traveling — an immediate desire to drop off his bags at the hotel or hostel and begin to explore the city. He pushed his head out of the window. Warm air blew against his face. He could hear the laughter of a couple strolling arm-in-arm below.