by Mavis Cheek
‘Both,’ he said. ‘To denounce and to declare truth. It was mostly used for people to put notes into about women – or those were the notes that counted with the Council of Ten. Come over here and I will show you.’
Some boys cycled past the bench laughing and lurching around, their loudness and their antics breaking the tension of the moment. I stood up.
‘Come on then.’ I pulled Brando to his feet. He gave a complaining grunt. ‘Ah yes, my friend,’ he said, half laughing, ‘but is it really chilling? And grisly? And deeply unpleasant? I like the ones that have some savage political past, the ones that led the denounced to the garrotte. We’ve got to get the readers’ spines tingling. I want something to make people cower in their bed, goose-bump begetting.’
‘Mine already are begotten,’ I said.
The Italian said, ‘If the women who were denounced were proved to have committed the crime of adultery – which is the only truth this box was devised for, as the Jewish box was devised for denunciations of blasphemy and the drinking of human blood – then it was at the very least the wronged husband’s or, in Caterina’s case, affianced’s right to throw the wicked wife or beloved betrothed into the canal. Usually with stones attached …’
‘You enjoyed saying that.’ I shivered.
‘Yes,’ he said, and laughed. ‘Sensible Englishwomen seldom let their passions rule their heads. Weaker, more passionate southern vessels need the reminder of retribution to keep them in check. I like the thought of making a sensible Englishwoman shiver.’
He knew how to make the words ‘sensible’ and ‘Englishwoman’ sound highly pejorative. ‘Thank you. Well, I suppose it would concentrate the mind somewhat. You’d have to be mad, or madly in love, to risk it. It gives me the creeps.’
‘And makes you shiver?’
‘And makes me shiver.’
Brando moved to stand between us. ‘The only warming-up you need,’ he said, ‘is from a glass of grappa. This woman, I can tell you, has never strayed from the path of marital virtue in her whole life.’
‘Indeed?’ said the Italian, smiling his white smile. Volpone had mutated into Casanova.
‘Now,’ said Brando, ‘come on. Show us and tell us and do your worst.’
The square, like the rest of the places we came through, was only slightly lit and even up close the carved frontage set into the wall was shadowy – but it was, very definitely, a Venetian lion. One of the more curly-haired, less aggressive lions of Venice. ‘It looks as if it’s kindly and smiling,’ I said. And it did. Its mouth being deeply curved and only open a little and hardly anything to be seen of the teeth. I thought it looked positively sweet.
‘Yes,’ said the Italian. ‘Quite as deceptive as the women it worked against.’
He enjoyed saying that, too. I realised, just in time, that I was being played with. Goaded, even. I set my mouth against replying and put out my hand towards the lion.
The Italian grabbed at my wrist. ‘Careful,’ he said – and seemed to mean it. ‘Don’t put your hand inside. You might never get it out again. That is the trick of the lion’s mouth. Many, many did not. And suffered the consequences.’
I laughed but he didn’t.
‘Do not mock history,’ he said.
I shivered again. ‘What happened to them?’ I asked, compelled, and yet wishing that I hadn’t put the question. Another thought came to mind, which was that I would quite like to go home and have a hot shower and get into my little bed and be that person again, the one who sometimes liked to be in bed by ten with a good book.
Just then the boys came whooping by again, seeming louder and more aggressive, and their ill-lit faces suddenly ugly, like masks of hate, threatening us as they slewed their bicycles around us. Imagination. Venice offers food for it. They were only boys on bicycles after all. A shutter opened and a voice called out something harsh. The boys rode away, laughing, turned the corner and vanished from sight. I reached out and ran my hand over the carved curls and outlines of the head. It was quite small, women’s size maybe, and to me still looked most sweet.
‘It was the Jews’ box for blasphemy that gave them the idea.’
‘Them?’
‘The state. Of Venice. If you can have one Bocca del Leone for a religious transgression, why not for a sexual transgression? By the seventeenth century Venice’s licentiousness was well known – something had to be done – and what better way to begin than to make those roving well-bred wives and unvirtuous women come to heel?’
I kept my gaze on the small light above the doorway as he spoke, rather than look him in the eye. I had a strange – if irrational – feeling that he could read my thoughts. And what I was thinking was that it wasn’t just the seventeenth-century wives who contemplated leaving the path of marital propriety. When Brando said all that about my never straying from the path of virtue, I felt something of a failure, something of a boring fool. He was right. I never had. Not once. And now I had put my shoes back on and stopped even attempting to be like someone out of La Dolce Vita.
‘At least they left the likes of me alone,’ said Brando, with something between amusement and sourness. ‘That’s a rare event. Shows they were not all bad. It was usually us deviants as well who captured the imaginations of the hierarchy.’ His voice was not entirely flippant. We both turned to look at him. I leaned over and squeezed his hand. Sometimes I forgot the years he had lived through. His nicely Roman broken nose was a result of someone taking a dislike to his holding hands with a lover. Long ago and far away it might have been but I guessed that the memory never quite fades. He once said to me that straight people had no idea how lucky they were to be able to do the normal things in life, like link arms with their husbands/wives/lovers without someone, somewhere, spitting on them.
‘No, dear Brando,’ I said. ‘Just for tonight we shall concentrate on the iniquities of women.’
‘The box for secrets was not only, as I said, for denouncing women. It was also for women to tell truths about themselves. To perhaps request mercy, or release from a vile marriage or some unwonted contract of betrothal. And occasionally these secret requests were taken note of and fulfilled. But not always.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me? Keep the women on their toes. One day it’s OK to be naughty, the next it’s off with her head.’
‘Let’s hear the story,’ said Brando, and tapped my arm warningly.
The Italian laughed. ‘Certainly. It is what we are here for. So then, Caterina, daughter of a humble gondolier, certainly not of high-born stock, which is unusual, in 1622 was seventeen – and beautiful. She was said to be more beautiful than the Doge Priuli’s mistress, which did not please either the mistress or the Doge. Caterina was seen – I would guess not without some bribery – by Francisco da Lometti as he passed by her father’s house. The da Lomettis were one of the wealthiest families at the time and he was their eldest son. Most eligible. She came, he saw, she conquered. The state of Venice was furious. Certainly the mothers were. The daughter of a gondolier? It could not be. And soon after the betrothal the letters of denunciation began. Accusations that Caterina was still having an affair with her erstwhile lover, a young metalworker. That she was an insatiable whore – the Venetians liked the mythology of the insatiable whore – what men would not? That she entrapped Francisco only for his money and was making a fool of him all over the place. It is quite true that he was older and not handsome and that she – being young and beautiful – very probably had many admirers around her after her betrothal, it was the courtly way, but apart from these letters and the testimonial from one tortured youth – the metalworker’s brother – nothing points to her being anything but proper in her behaviour.
He paused. I felt tears welling up. Beauty was never easy on the owner.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘What happened? Was she saved? Did she become a nun?’
‘Well, the deed was done – the spirit of Othello was invoked – and Francisco da Lometti was brought to the Bocca del Leone by members of th
e Venetian oligarchy – no doubt encouraged by their wives – and so was Caterina. She was asked to place her hand in the lion’s mouth and swear that she had done nothing wrong. The story goes that if someone tells an untruth while their hand is in the mouth one of several things will happen: it will be bitten off, or it will be hurt in some way, or it will become caught there with its owner trapped by the lie. Or – unlikely – the hand can slide out again quite unharmed. So then Caterina cannot escape this test. In she puts her dainty little hand, and swears her sexual fidelity to green-eyed Francisco – and immediately she screams in pain. Everyone jumps back – except our poor lady who is trapped, held there. They pull her; still she remains trapped. She weeps, she swoons, she swears, all to no avail – they will have their justice. Or Francisco will. Her hand is greased with pig fat until, eventually, the poor little damaged hand is released. And then she is marched to her death. Not drowning with stones, either. Not for a Venetian aristocrat’s affianced. No, something altogether more picturesque. Strangulation. A favourite way to dispatch the grander sinners of Venice. Francisco got a dispensation from the courts and watched her die. There is a painting of the event by Scagolino buried somewhere in the stores of the Accademia.’
Both Brando and I moved closer to each other – nearer the dim pool of yellow light from above the doorway. ‘By garrotte?’ whispered Brando. ‘Not with the hands?’
The Italian nodded. ‘Too cruel,’ he said, with feeling. ‘Cruel times,’ he added. ‘In the days before the new Doge Priuli arrived, just to give a flavour and to set the scene, scaffolds appeared each morning with bodies hanging by one leg. No one was told why. No edicts appeared, no proclamations. Just the bodies. And soon enough they stopped appearing, again without word. It was the Venetian way of reminding its people that life could be shortened for no good reason. That the state did not have to explain its executions and that its executions could be as cruel as they chose. Caterina would know that message as everyone else did.
‘Poor little Caterina,’ I said, and I tucked my arm into Brando’s. He, rallying, gave it an excited squeeze and said, ‘Good stuff. We must get a reproduction of the painting. Thank you for a marvellous story.’ He slapped the Italian on the back. ‘My skilful assistant here will work it up nicely. And now – a grappa for us all.’
I wiped my eyes, not that either of them had noticed, and asked, ‘Do you think they really believed it or do you think it was just expediency?’
Brando rolled his eyes, as if to say, who cares after all these years …
But I really wanted to know. ‘They didn’t like Caterina’s humble origins – and expediency is another word for lying, isn’t it? What Voltaire meant by things being for the best in the best of all possible worlds?’ I looked up at the Italian. ‘Or Machiavelli?’
‘Didn’t anyone defend her?’ asked Brando.
‘Who can defend one human being against the might of the state? And only a woman.’ The Italian smiled with unconvincing apology. ‘Maybe money changed hands. Something helped it, for the state of Venice was not always dishonest even to save its own face. In the very next year they publicly pardoned the Doge Foscarini. He had been set up in a political lie and executed for treason. They very publically pardoned him and very publically announced that they had made a terrible mistake – they had been hoodwinked by treachery.’
‘But he was already dead.’
‘They could have kept silent. But no – they declared his innocence to the world. And their culpability. This was honourable, I think.’
‘But he was dead.’
‘Indeed, Signora Nina. But nevertheless – they confessed. They dug him up and buried him with full honours. And it was your ambassador to the Venetian court – your Henry Wootton – who wrote at the time that it would have been much better for the state if the Venetians had kept the truth to themselves. An English politician. Not a Venetian politician.’
I stared at the lion which continued to smile its sweet smile. ‘A few years ago a highly respected English politician opined, when some wrongly accused Irish terrorists were released from prison, that it was better that the truth should not be made public rather than the judicial system be seen as flawed. And that was only thirty or so years ago. The more you look at the world the more you see lies.’
‘Well, well,’ said Brando quickly, ‘the Doge was exonerated, Caterina was topped in a most gruesome way, and now for a grappa.’
‘Caterina’s story, of course, is the story of very many such incidents through the years. That little opening will have accounted for many lives …’
The Italian leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms as if waiting for our comments. The boys cycled back, whipping past us, whooping and hollering, staring over their shoulders before they turned the corner again, leaving behind them a deafening silence as only the sudden loss of noise in a deserted place at night can do. Another pair of shutters slammed ill-temperedly. And Brando yawned. But I – I suddenly felt a touch of real fear in that dark silence, real fear balanced by the daredevil edge that the tail end of too many Camparis can bring – and it seemed to me that the only way to overcome the shivers – and the power of the thing – was to put my hand into the wall and break the myth. After all, I was no Caterina, he was neither Volpone nor Casanova and this was the twenty-first century.
I stepped forward, released my arm from Brando’s, and pushed my hand towards the gap. Both men moved quickly to stop me with gratifyingly worried looks – and I laughed at them. Here I was in Venice at this hour of the night with a tantalising stranger. All that talk about infidelity was exciting. Prove it, I thought, prove it. I wanted to show that Italian something of my dangerous side. I might be an identifiable Englishwoman Abroad sitting alone in the piazza, but he had laughed, oh delicately enough, but I’d show him. Oh yes I would. I was as capable of being as daring as any woman, and it was not fear that made me resist him, it was my wish. Why, my hand would slide in and slide out without so much as a scratch. Thus spake Campari. So I laughed at them both and pushed my hand further towards the gap that lay between those harmless-looking jaws. I ran my fingers around its lips.
Somewhere in the dark close by, two of those ubiquitous night-time Venetian cats decided to have a loud spitting and howling spat – right behind the doorway – so close that it seemed to echo out of the lion. I jumped, stumbled – and my hand was suddenly in there – right up to its wrist – without my consciously trying. Both men leapt forward, but it was too late – and as my hand went down into the depths behind what would, normally, be Leo’s little uvula, something grabbed at my hand and held it fast, squeezing until I cried with pain. At which point – cats still yowling – I fainted clean away.
Twelve
Pelch: faint; indisposed; exhausted.
John Brockett’s Glossary of North Country Words, 1825
IT WAS JUST more comfortable to keep my eyes closed and stay in the dark space chosen for me. I knew that all around me were forces who would have me leave it but I would not, I would not. I also knew very well that I was dreaming and in a completely different place from the kindly dark one. I told myself very sternly to wake up, that I was not in my bed in London, or at La Calcina, that my mother, my daughter, my husband, my best friend and the couple at the doctor’s and the person in the shape of a nun with the car, were not all grouped around my bed with grievance and disapproval etched into their watchful faces. I was ten years old again and had committed a silly misdemeanour that meant I needed a good telling off. Which I was about to get once I opened my eyes. So I lay there quite resigned and waited for someone to start.
Robert, dear Robert, stepped forward first. He did not, I was surprised to see, look very suntanned considering he had just flown in from Florida. But he looked as young as he had when we first met. Perhaps that was what a holiday away from me did for him? I did not like this dream. He gripped the edge of the bed rail, looked down pityingly, shook his head and opened his mouth to speak. Instead, out cam
e a loud and quite unacceptable gout of laughter, followed by another. I was being ridiculed. I was bloody well being torn a strip off for trying to do something decent in this world. I struggled to sit up and pull his ears – an odd aspect of violence hitherto untried – but then he moved away. Clever. He knew he had gone too far. Like the Cheshire cat he seemed, with all the others, to begin to fade away. Cats, I thought, hmmm, what was it about cats? And were they all going to step forward and laugh at me for upsetting them? If only I could move I would run. And then another laugh broke up the thought, I lost the thread, tried to regain it, couldn’t, felt very cross – and slowly, slowly, I felt myself being forced to wake up. One more laugh and my eyes were open into slits, with a light shining into them that really was offensive. ‘Turn it off,’ I said. ‘Or I’m not coming.’
A hand moved under my head. ‘Come on,’ said Brando’s voice, strangely tender. ‘Wakey-wakey.’
My eyes closed. I was quite comfortable and the laughter, which I now knew to be Brando’s, was galling. ‘Why are you laughing at me?’ I asked. The hand moved in a comforting gesture. ‘Not at you. Not even with you. I was just thinking that those boys deserved a damn good fright themselves. They certainly gave you one.’
‘Boys? What are you talking about?’
‘The boys on bikes.’
I was very irritated by now. Everything was nice and foggy and Brando was making it all clear away, which I didn’t want. But eventually I opened my eyes wide.
I was in the square. Lying down on the bench. The light in my eyes was the moon which shone very brightly, straight ahead in the dark blue sky. There was a pain in my hand. Somewhere around the marriage finger. Strange. I moved my eyes. There was Brando, looking down a bit like a moon himself and smiling at me. I was stretched out and he sat sideways next to me with his hand beneath my head. I seemed to be wearing a shroud which was a very jolly thought. This, on closer inspection, was Brando’s ochre jacket. God, I thought, I must be dying.