The Serpent of Venice

by Christopher Moore

  “Boy’s happy to see his father,” I explained to the guard.

  “Pocket! My friend! My friend!” The enormous oaf swept me up in his arms and squeezed the breath out of me, while inflicting me with most slobbery affection.

  “Stop licking, Drool. Put me down and go hug your son.”

  “Huh?”

  I heard the coins clink into the hands of the guard and Jessica say, “Well, we’ll be off then. Cheers!”

  I took Drool’s hand and led him quickly down the wall of the fortress and around the corner.

  “You might have warned me,” said Jessica.

  “I told you he was large.”

  “I told you he was large,” said Drool in my voice, mimicked note for note, exactly.

  Jessica spun around. “What was that? What was that?”

  “He does that, too,” said I. “It’s his gift, nature’s way of compensating him for being an enormous, beef-brained child. He can remember whole conversations, hours long, and recite them back, word for word, in the voice from which they sprouted, and not have a fluttering notion of what he’s been saying.”

  “Sounds bloody spooky to me,” said Jessica, putting a bit more distance between herself and Drool.

  “They took Jeff, Pocket,” said Drool.

  “I know, lad, we’re getting him. Jess, you go to the piazza and buy Jeff from the wine merchant. I’ll take Drool and the gold back to the boat to wait.”

  “The gold? You’re not taking my father’s treasure.”

  “Can’t have a girl running about a strange city by herself with a bag full of gold and jewels, can we? Unless you’d rather stay with Drool while I go.”

  She looked the grand buffoon up and down and handed me the heavy leather bag. “You might pull the boat out a bit if the patrol comes by. I’ll wave from the breakwater for you to come in and get me.”

  “The lad are a lass, then?” said Drool.

  “Jess is Jessica, Drool,” said I. “Bow proper to the lady.”

  “Milady,” he said, bowing. “Not my son, then?”

  “No, seeing as she’s a bloody girl and not ten years your junior, she’s not your bloody son.” I forget at times just how impenetrably dense Drool can be. But I had missed shouting at him.

  “Can I have a wee peek at your knockers then?” Drool asked the girl.

  “Drool!” I scolded.

  “Sor-ry,” he sang. “May I have a wee peek at your knockers?”

  “No, I don’t have to prove anything to you.”

  “Oh, he’s not asking for proof, he asks that of all the girls.”

  “Give me ten ducats from the bag,” said Jessica. “I’ll go buy your monkey back.”

  “Jeff likes to bite a lady on her bosoms,” said Drool. “Sometimes the bottom.”

  I nodded as I handed her the coins. “Do be careful. Leash him, and don’t let him at your hat. He has a weakness. We’ll meet you at the boat, then Drool can row us up the coast and we’ll sleep rough on a beach or something until tomorrow night. I don’t think we’ll stay safely hidden in Genoa with a monkey and this great drooling draft horse.”

  “I can’t wait until Lorenzo comes and rescues me from you scurvy rascals,” said Jessica. Then she turned on her heel and walked off to the city.

  “Who are Lorenzo?” asked Drool.

  CHORUS: On the isle of Corsica, the port town of Bastia, the once captain, Michael Cassio, stripped of his rank, position, and favor of his general, did mourn his fate, and was sulking at a table in his quarters, when Iago visited him under pretense of offering comfort.

  “I’ve brought wine!” said Iago, coming through the door without so much as a knock.

  Cassio moaned. “No, the devil drunkenness hast lost me my reputation, and in the doing made me despise myself. Never! I shall never drink again. I have lost that part of myself that is immortal, my reputation.”

  “I know,” said Iago. “I was just fucking with you. I don’t have wine. Ha, bruised reputation is a false and trifling injury, and one easily mended. The way you wail I would have thought you’d received a real, bleeding wound in the melee. You didn’t, did you?”

  “No, no injury. Truth be told, I remember a mass of things but nothing distinctly. I am aggrieved that your second, good Rodrigo, was slain, but it was not I that did the deed. Of that, I am sure. But even that I do not remember is an affront to my good commander, Othello, whose trust I have broken with a single drunken debacle, the damage of which I cannot repair.”

  “Good Cassio, as your friend, I wish that such misfortune had not befallen you, but it is not so dire that it cannot be forgiven, your honor and position restored. You did not kill Rodrigo, so what is your offense, a single drunken night? One night of riotous drinking and memory-clouded barking at the moon? Go to the Moor. Ask him, and he will restore you.”

  “I have gone, begged, but he denied me.”

  “Go to him again. Surely when the heat of anger has cooled and Rodrigo’s true killer is found, Othello will restore you. Who is to say that you were not defending Rodrigo when he was attacked? In fact, say that. The Moor is a soldier, he knows that victory is not always the reward for valiance. Go to him.”

  “He will not see me.”

  “I see.” Iago scratched his beard, and paced as if pondering, then snapped to, as if hit by the full impact of a weighty solution. “Othello has presented you with his hardened side, that part of him that is forged by war and by necessity, ruthless, turning away that side which we know to be just and compassionate. But of that side, he is not the commander, but has ceded that position to his lady. She knows you, has shown deference and respect to you.”

  “She knows me and has always been kind.”

  “Then go to her. Confess yourself freely to her, and ask that she appeal to that part of her lord who would forgive you, restore you, and lay faith once again in your abilities. Surely the loving kindness she holds for the world will mend the rift between you and the Moor. Go to her, in private, out of sight of Othello, so your case would appear pled by her unbidden. Be honest and true, forthright and contrite, yet stealthy and discreet, and surely the Moor will invite you back again into the fold.”

  Cassio had been nodding as Iago spoke. “I think you advise me well. A true kindness that you would counsel me so, when you have only just lost your friend. Thank you, good Iago.”

  “I do only what would any man for a good commander, what you would do for Othello. But I must be off to pay the carpenter to build the box for Rodrigo’s burial. Adieu!”

  “Adieu, Iago.”

  CHORUS: Into the night went Iago, the gears of treachery grinding between his ears, works of an infernal machine, its brake broken, a runaway scheme engine gone awry . . .

  “Ha, who can say I am evil, when I have given such good advice? For what I told Cassio is true; the best way to win back Othello is through Desdemona, who has a sweet and forgiving nature and has precious influence over the Moor. Even now, I go to see my own wife, to assure the success of Cassio’s suit. You call me villain? I, who have only just lost my dearest friend to some demon of the night? Poor, grieving Iago, a villain?”

  CHORUS: You said villain, not I. I merely wipe the mist from the mind’s eye with simple descriptive strokes, no more.

  “If you think me villain, follow me into the dark, glib Chorus. Listen to my bones tremble as we are pursued by the dark nature I have conjured with my sins. Oh, it has taken form, and it turns on me, even as it took Rodrigo and nearly shredded an oaken door to get at me. If you would call me villain, face the dark thing that pursues me, that is born of my hate, my ambition.”

  CHORUS: You think the creature in the dark is born of your ambition? After I’ve just constructed a perfectly lovely metaphor about your mind being a gristmill of bloody evil? A villain you may be, but a lunatic you are most assuredly.

  “Come with me, into the night, Chorus. Stay close. Comfort me.”

  CHORUS: And thus the knave did think a humble narrator dim
-witted enough to serve as decoy for the creature. Alas, as was most often the case, Iago was in thought, intention, and execution deeply fucking wrong, and off he went to find the fair Emilia.

  The rowboat that had seemed absolutely spacious when Jessica and I were rowing it in suddenly seemed small and inadequate with Drool’s hulking form at the oars. It did not help that the lummox could not swim and so flinched at every wave. I’d had him row several hundred yards out from the breakwater to avoid the attention of the patrol, so we sat, pretending to be fishermen, I suppose, that is, sitting in a boat looking at the water, waiting for something to break the bloody boredom.

  “Jessica are a fit bit of stuff, yeah?” said Drool.

  “A half hour ago you thought she was a boy, now she’s fit?”

  “You have a go at her, Pocket?”

  “No, I am still bereft from the loss of Cordelia, and Jessica is engaged, although that may be a bit of a false promise, but I have not had a go at her.”

  “ ’Cause Lorenzo would be cross with you?”

  “No, because I have promised the ghost of Cordelia.”

  “I shagged a ghost once. It were all right, until I got scared. You have a go at her?”

  “No, I didn’t have a go at her. I’ve been dead. Not really dead, but unwell. Injured. Betrayed, disparaged, much abused, and somewhat plagued by a sable-colored melancholy.”

  “Aye, she sounds fit. You have a go at Sable’s Melon Jolly?”

  “No, you nitwit, I’ve not had a go—” And so I spun out my story, from when I’d first gone to Brabantio’s, to being walled up in the dungeon, of his confession to killing my Cordelia, of the fear and submission to Vivian, of my time in the dark, kept alive by the will to revenge and my worry over the dim giant’s welfare. And though I know he did not follow it all, he would remember it, as was his way, and I needed to tell it, so I told him of my escape from the dungeon, my rescue by Jessica and her nursing me back to health. I told him of the plot to revenge those wrongs, my disguise as a Jew (although the only Jew Drool had ever known was Phyllis Stein, who ran the pawnshop in London and used to let him blow the candles out on the menorah every Christmas to celebrate the baby Jesus’ birthday), so I explained that they were the people in the yellow hats. I told him of the attack by Lorenzo and Salanio and how Viv had saved me, followed me, and had no doubt slain Rodrigo.

  And when I had talked for an hour, and brought us round to a rowboat outside the harbor at Genoa, Drool said, “Smashing, Pocket! You shagged a mermaid.”

  Which made me wish that I hadn’t left the puppet Jones sans stick, in a box at Belmont, so I could pummel the enormous fool about the head and shoulders with it for missing the bloody point. I thought perhaps to press Jessica’s bag of treasure into action in the puppet’s stead, when the black shade moved under the boat.

  “Oh no,” said I.

  Drool followed my gaze over the side, then followed the movement of the mermaid from one side of the boat to the other, causing the boat to rock precipitously.

  “Pocket . . . ?” said Drool.

  I leaned over the side, trying to follow her movement, as she swam out, perhaps fifty yards, then turned and came back toward the boat. “No,” said I, to the water, trying to send the command to her with a picture in my mind’s eye. “Not this one. Do not hurt him,” I said.

  “Pocket,” said Drool, his voice rising in tremolo terror. He started to stand and I grabbed his shirt and pulled him down. “Pocket . . . ?”

  “No, not this one. No!” I barked at the water, straining to send my thoughts at the creature. “He is a friend. A friend.” Did this venomous creature of the deep even understand the concept? But I felt a response of sorts, a blankness, confusion, a question maybe, an image in the lightning blue I had seen in the dark.

  Whatever she had received, the creature stopped, about five yards from the boat, then surfaced and stood out of the water half again as tall as a tall man, so black that she nearly soaked up the light. A thick, serpentine body, for she was a serpent, her head—jaws—wide and square, with long whiskers at either side, nostrils that snapped open and took breath, audibly, but gills down her neck. She had short arms, front legs, with web talons, and from the tip of each heavy black claw, each as long as the blades of my daggers, emerged a fine, translucent, needlelike claw that dripped a milky venom. She hovered there, held aloft by her rear legs paddling and a great tail swishing below the surface, looking at us, emerald eyes set back on the sides of her head glistening in the sun, set in the unscaled skin like the small whales the Venetians call the blackfish. She turned her head to the side so she might get a better look at us, then slid back into the sea and dove down until we could see her no more.

  “Pocket?” said Drool, some of the alarm gone from his voice now.

  “Aye, lad. Don’t be afraid. She won’t hurt you.”

  “Pocket, that weren’t no mermaid.”

  “No, lad, I don’t know what that was.” Of course I knew what it was. I am English, am I not? I was raised in the bosom of the church, was I not? You couldn’t count a half dozen church windows, tapestries, or altarpieces in all of Blighty that weren’t emblazoned with St. George and his bloody dragon.

  Then Drool spoke in a voice that I did not recognize. “The Khan told me, on pain of death, I was never to speak to outsiders of the black dragons, who were gods to his people, and whose venom could be distilled into a black tar that made men’s heads swim as if in the most pleasant of dreams. Yet as our caravan left the Khan’s kingdom, I paid a village fisherman to catch me a very small, perhaps newly hatched serpent, which I was able to smuggle back to Venice in my rucksack, keeping it damp in a bundle of wet cloth even while crossing the wide desert.”

  “What is that, Drool? Whose story is that?”

  “Bloke what was in my cell with me. He was on the ship when they sunk it. He were the dog’s bollocks, Pocket, told stories near good as you.”

  “Row, Drool. For the lighthouse.”

  “We gettin’ Jeff and that girl what looks like a lad?”

  “No, foolish fool, we are going to get your cellmate out of prison.”

  “Smashing! You can tell me mate the story of how you shagged a dragon.”

  ACT IV

  The Green-eyed Monster

  If any wretch hath put this in your head,

  Let heaven requite it with the serpent’s curse.

  —Emilia, Othello, Act IV, Scene 2

  EIGHTEEN

  Cloak, Dagger, Wimple, and Veil

  Antonio Donnola, the merchant of Venice, looked out from his balcony, over the Venetian harbor, and wondered for a moment if the four-story fall to the pavers below would kill him instantly or if he might linger, bleeding and broken for a time, before he expired. He was not considering suicide, but considering how Iago might react upon his return from Corsica to find that his part of the plot to take Brabantio’s council seat had gone horribly awry. There would be questions before the violence, and although he was not a man of great courage, he would allow Iago’s wrath to fall upon him before sacrificing his beautiful boy, Bassanio.

  “A fool’s head, you say?”

  “Aye,” said Bassanio. “Like one would find atop a harlequin’s scepter at Carnival, except there was no stick. I beg your forgiveness, Antonio. I was assured that it was the right casket. Salanio had found out and sent word through a gondolier.”

  “A gondolier?”

  “He showed me Sal’s dagger as proof the message was authentic. They must have changed the caskets after Sal and Lorenzo left for Cyprus.” Bassanio joined Antonio on the balcony and squeezed his shoulder. “I will pay you back, I promise. I will pay you back.”

  He wouldn’t, of course. Three thousand ducats? Bassanio would never see such a sum unless he married into it. He was a strong, handsome young man, and not entirely dim-witted, but he was a shit merchant. If not for Antonio’s patronage, the boy would have been begging in the street years ago. Perhaps Iago had been right—he sh
ould have paid suit to Portia himself, taken the senate seat himself, not utterly bollixed up the whole process—threatened a lawyer or two, as the soldier had suggested. It was too late now. He no longer had funds to make suit himself. Oh, he still had weeks before his bond was due to Shylock, and at least one of his ships would return by then with the profits to cover the debt, but he couldn’t secure another three thousand ducats plus the money to intimidate the lawyers. Iago would counsel for that, he was sure. Should he send word to Corsica? Declare their Crusade defeated before it started, take his three-thousand-ducat loss, and stop Iago’s plot before it went too far?

  He looked at the pavers below again. Perhaps it would be quick and painless. Perhaps he should go to mass, to get his soul in order, because if Iago returned to find the calamity that had befallen them, someone was going to die.

  “The gondolier, do you think you would recognize him?”

  “I would know him in a second,” said Bassanio. “I thought him to be the messenger of my most happy future and so committed his face to my memory.”

  “Find him, then. Find out his name, and where he lives. Bring him here. Offer him a bribe if you must.”

  “Oh I will, good Antonio. I will.”

  Would Iago accept a gondolier as sacrifice?

  “A fool’s head, you say? Did you keep it?”

  “No, I was so distraught and overcome with heartache that I threw it over the railing into the garden.”

  “Do you remember anything else about it?”

  “It was a fool’s head made of painted wood, like any other. Except instead of bright colors, it wore a black hat with silver bells at the tips.”

  “Go, find the gondolier. Take Gratiano or Salarino with you.”

  “I will, Antonio. Thank you. I will make this right, I promise.”

  “Of course you will,” said the merchant.

  He looked to the pavers below and imagined a sunburst of blood spread across the stones.