8
IT is remarkable how physical injury always seemed to put me in good with the Priulis. If I’d lost a limb, I think they’d have adopted me, and I’m not sure that death wouldn’t have got me their nomination for the Senate!
I was found unconscious in the Priuli gondola, drifting helplessly down the Grand Canal. Taken back to the palace, I was bathed, bandaged, poulticed, bled, dosed, and nursed, while Benetto, who only a few hours earlier had been regarding me as the foulest blot on his family’s honour, now used me as its fairest symbol. There’s nothing like overkill for alienating public sympathy, particularly in these aristocratic societies which pride themselves on self-control and restraint. If the Molinis had just had me thrown into the canal and then handed me over to the authorities, my attempt to abduct Felicia would have merely set the seal on Lazzaro’s indignation.
But the girl had been in no danger, for Lazzaro had taken her off to a nunnery that very night and, whatever I deserved, it was not the murderous ambush they had laid for me.
In fact my injuries, though painful, were (thanks be to God) all mendable. And my mind was taken off my bodily soreness by the agony of spirit I endured when I learned of Felicia’s fate.
‘A nunnery!’ I cried. ‘Dear God, then I have lost her forever!’
‘Say not so,’ Godfrey attempted to comfort me. ‘She is still within the city, and as fine ladies have been rescued from nunneries as ever went into them!’
‘Nay,’ I wept. ‘God is no corsair who keeps his captives chained to a galley oar as you were, dear friend. How may a true child of Holy Mother Church even think of such a theft?’
I meant it. There’s nothing like a brush with death for adding colour to a man’s religion!
Giacomo Basadonna now became officially affianced to Margharita who, so scurrilous rumour put it about, had suffered no more injury in her fall than that inflicted by the eager hands of the men-at-arms testing her bones for breakage and her flesh for bruising. This meant that the Molini dowry was now definitely accounted for and that Felicia’s stay in the convent was to be permanent.
I had something of a relapse after hearing that Felicia was now removed completely from my reach but, although in my mind I was much taken with the idea of romantically dying of a broken heart, a young body will repair itself whatever romance may say and though my heart was broken, my ribs began to heal, my cuts closed up, my bruises faded and I ceased to notice the gaps where my lost teeth had been. Benetto and Zanetta showed me great kindness and I began to feel how ungrateful and ungracious much of my recent behaviour had been, particularly when, in contradiction of all his previous proscriptions, Benetto permitted Quevedo to visit me. He cheered me up more than all the doctor’s herb-lore with his witty gossip of who was up, who down, who poxed, who bankrupt, who cuckolded in this most civilized of states.
Godfrey was a frequent visitor, too, usually coming in the mid-morning or late afternoon when Benetto, who popped in to see me every day, was like to be involved with some meeting of the Senate. I took this for simple kindness on Godfrey’s part, till one afternoon after I had lain in bed for nearly three weeks, observing with envy the sprightly athleticism of his gait as he left the room, I decided the time had come for me to take exercise more than kneeling to my pisspot.
So pushing back the sheets, I lifted my feet from the bed and set them on the floor.
God, what a weakener this long lying abed is, whatever keeps you there! I who had been so fit and vigorous felt like a new-born foal as it struggles upright for the very first time.
By clutching at pieces of furniture or sliding along the wall I made my way round the room, then collapsed on my bed exhausted. But a few minutes later I felt ready to try again and this time felt much stronger, as though the blood flowed more freely through my veins, and when I reached the door I went out into the corridor, childishly hoping to meet and impress some member of the household.
There was no one in sight, but somewhere close I could hear a sound, as though a piece of wood were being banged rhythmically against the marble floor. Curiosity as well as a desire for company took me towards the noise and when I realized it was coming from Zanetta’s room, I approached with a quietness born not altogether of fatigue.
The door was not quite fastened and I pushed it quietly open just far enough to be able to see within.
What I saw made me realize how right had been my instinct for stealth.
The source of the rapping noise was Zanetta’s choppines. The reason why they were banging against the floor was that she was wearing them and doing little jumps. And the reason why she was doing little jumps was that she was standing stark-naked, legs astride, arms clasped tight around Godfrey’s neck, while he thrust up and up like a spear-man at a treed bear. I saw his face over her shoulder and it was aflame with lust and effort, his eyes closed tight as he sought the killing blow. Then I was seized from behind and as I fell backwards his eyes opened, and for a split-second our gazes locked.
My assailant was Maria. This did not surprise me. She had all the qualities of a procuress and was well fitted to keep watch at her wanton mistress’s door.
I was too weak to resist as she pushed and prodded me back to my bed, scolding me constantly.
‘One minute, I turn my back for one minute, and there he is, young Master Lechery, peering and spying! What’s he want to see then, how a real man with real meat does it? Is that it then? God help us, look at it, such a weak, skinny, wizened, dangling little thing, and does it have ambition, then?’
So she rattled on and, even had I not been ill, I know not if I would have had the strength of will to resist her. My mind was full of horror at this treachery of Zanetta and Godfrey towards Benetto. In addition (I see now) there was the less noble feeling that if discovered, this affair would so shatter the tranquillity of this household that my new-found security might vanish with it. But principally (what a strange thing this youth is!) my concern was for Godfrey’s safety. Yes, it’s true. I was concerned for Benetto since he was my benefactor and I’d grown fond of him; and I was concerned for myself also; but, knowing how these clarissimi fear above all things to be capricornified, I was filled with terror of what might happen to my friend if his lechery were discovered.
So it was the indignation of love rather than outraged morality that made me scream abuse at him when he appeared in my room a few minutes later.
He listened, dark-browed, for a few moments then came close, seized my wrist and squeezed till the hand went numb, and my tongue with it, put his face close to mine and said, ‘Beware, Carlo. You are still far from recovered, and too early exertion is like to set you back further than you began.’
He was so close to me that I could feel the heat of his breath. Suddenly I burst into tears.
‘Oh Godfrey, Godfrey,’ I sobbed. ‘You are my friend above all others. More than my own, I fear for your life.’
‘What?’ he said. ‘Is this why you call me lecher and villain?’
‘I spoke in haste and for your well-being,’ I explained. ‘You might have the fairest of women if you wished. Zanetta is fair but the city holds fairer and this cuckolding of the Doge’s nephew is too dangerous a sport! You have tasted her once. Promise me for the love I bear you that you will let this once pay for all!’
Now his brow cleared entirely and he settled back in a chair and roared with laughter. Delighted to see him in such good spirits I joined in, though what I was laughing at, I scarcely knew.
When he told me, I stopped laughing.
‘Once?’ he said. ‘Once! Oh, Carlo, it is too late for once! On the first day I met this lady, we danced a captain’s hornpipe together, and since then scarce a day has passed when we have not encountered in a merry jig or a gay gaillarde. Faith, I know not which of us has taught the other most new steps!’
His image amused him so that he started to laugh again, but this time I did not join in.
‘What do you tell me?’ I demanded. ‘Is it for this t
hen that you have been so active to befriend these Priulis? Just for the fretting of your flesh?’
He glared at me and for a moment I thought he was about to grow angry again. Then his expression softened and his voice was gentle as he said, ‘How may you believe that, Carlo, when your heart tells you how much your own presence here has drawn me to the house? And, in addition, think you that you would still be enjoying your ease in this house if I had not moved the lady Zanetta to look favourably upon you? She was set to have you back in the pozzi till I assailed her with hard and lengthy argument which she at last bowed down before and freely admitted.’
He grinned and winked as he spoke. Another thought occurred to me.
‘And Maria? She too changed her opposition.’
Now he looked a trifle shamefaced.
‘Aye. Well, she is a bold and eager dame and it seemed a merry jest. Besides, I did not think you would be averse to some gentle schooling.’
‘Gentle!’ I cried.
And now we both laughed together, loud and long.
He took my hand again before he left, but now his grasp was kind.
‘Get well quickly, Carlo,’ he said. ‘This Venice has enjoyed us long enough I think. ’Tis fast approaching the time to take our wages and depart.’
Nothing could have done more to salve the pain caused by my loss of Felicia than this assumption of Godfrey’s that our future lay together. And from that day on my health recovered by leaps and bounds so that within a week I had abandoned my sick-bed completely and within a fortnight I was beginning to feel myself once more to be immortal.
But it was not just the assurance of Godfrey’s love that inspired my desire for recovery – it was the much more child-like fear that I might miss a treat. Venice is a city which has many festivals, for they know well there how to match holiness and hedonism, and on their saints’ days most of the nobles are quick to cast off those frugal ways enjoined by the laws of the state and family economy.
But above all they have two great festivals in the year. One of these is on the day set aside to celebrate the Ascension of our Lord into heaven and on this day the Doge and all his nobles sail out into the lagoon where he casts a gold ring into the waters in token of the close and necessary union between the city and the sea.
This festival of the gold rings is the most important to the State, I believe, but the most exciting to the people is their Shrovetide carnival when, in anticipation of Lenten deprivation, the Venetians, high and low, feast all their senses most wantonly for a week or more. I was sufficiently recovered both from my physical ailments and my soul’s anguish to anticipate these delights eagerly. Do not think that so quickly I had forgotten my Felicia. No, her name was cut deep into my heart as though a Spanish duelling master had guided the steel, and I knew I would love her for ever. No other woman could ever take her place in my thoughts and still, when the memory of her innocent loveliness broke suddenly in upon me at moments of mirth, I would feel the tears of loss start at my eyes. I had lit candles to the Holy Mother in a dozen churches and made a solemn vow never to marry. But I had not vowed to be chaste, for a young man’s weapon burns like new-forged steel and even plunging it in cold water, though it takes off the heat, in the long run only improves the temper. My Felicia had been forced to a life of holy chastity. I would enjoy the flesh for both of us and thus we two, she in her abstinence, me in my excesses, would preserve the balance of nature threatened by our separation, and so in a way be eternally married.
Such is the lewd logic of a young man in Venice! I was helped to these specious conclusions by the company and conversation of Quevedo who, as I have said, could play with words as the mountebanks play with our senses!
These mountebanks are itinerant salesmen who from time to time, but most numerously at Shrove fair, set up their banks or stages in the squares of the city, then mount them to sell their wares. But in order to sell, they must first attract an audience and this they do in a variety of ways, some by juggling, some by singing, some by speechifying and playacting filled by filthy and most scurrilous jests which, I must confess, often came close to making me sick for laughing.
Quevedo loved them too and one evening of carnival I contracted to meet him in St Mark’s Square to see the fun. I had a dangerous adventure on my way there for as I passed along a narrow calle close to the Piazza, I heard a deal of noise and, shouting behind, and turning, saw that a huge and angry bull was galloping towards me! It is a wild custom of the young men at this carnival to hunt these creatures around the streets of the city and many are injured through it, yet the authorities offer no remedy. The calle was crowded and the only refuge was in the shallow doorways of the houses on either side, but there were not enough of these for the crowd and I leapt high onto a window-sill as the maddened creature galloped past. In its wake it left several people lying on the pavement, mainly women whose choppines made such evasion as mine difficult. I felt the tip of one of its horns catch at my hose and pressed so close to the window-pane that I was like to have caused myself greater damage by breaking the glass.
The pane was filthy and, even so close as I was, scarcely permitted my gaze to pass. Dimly I could see a room with three or four men sitting close round a table, and on the wall facing the window an icon of a saint with a single candle lit before it. I noticed this in particular for, dim though my view was, the figure in the portrait had a quality which compelled my gaze. Long, attenuated, with his eyes piously contemplating the sacred monogram, IHS, which floated in the air above his head, the saint seemed to glow on the canvas (perhaps because of the candle) and was the only thing clearly visible in that room. Until my own face was spotted, that was, for suddenly one of the men at the table rose, came to the window and slammed close the shutters most violently, but not before we had mutually recognized each other, and been mutually surprised.
It was Quevedo, and a few moments later as I hung uncertainly around the end of the calle he emerged and joined me with a smile.
‘What, are you so impatient for my company that you seek me out and climb up walls to summon me?’ he said.
I explained what had happened and pointed to the overturned ladies who were still receiving first aid after the passage of the bull.
He regarded them unsympathetically and said, ‘I doubt if it will be the last bull to put them on their backs tonight.’
Then, passing his arm through mine, he drew me swiftly away towards the Piazza.
Here the crowds were thicker than I had ever known and I was glad I had tied my purse, light though it was, to my belly, for pickpockets would be attracted here like lice to a lazar-house. The first mountebank we observed held his audience by permitting a pair of vipers to crawl about his naked arms and torso, stinging him where they would. And when this seemed to be sating the onlookers’ interest he passed one of them under the skirts of his female accomplice who wriggled and screamed most lasciviously, which occasioned great mirth.
His immunity to the poison was caused, he claimed, by taking a rare apothecary’s draught, brought out of China.
‘’Tis an unparalle’d febrifuge and an excellent specific against colds, coughs, rheums, runs, piles, pox, and the rising and falling diseases, while it guarantees protection from the bites of snakes, insects, mad dogs and Cretan whores. Two drops will protect a man for a month, one drop will protect a woman for a year, and a short, sharp sniff will protect an androgyne for eternity. It comprises seventy-four ingredients, seventy-one of which are rare, two of which are unique, and one of which is now unobtainable. It cost five hundred ducats a pint to make. I cannot sell it at less than twenty crowns a vial and live. Now who will be the first to strike a bargain with me for twenty crowns?’
Naturally there were no takers.
‘’Twill be down to a pair of gazets before he is done,’ laughed Quevedo. ‘Come, Carlo, let us wander afield.’
We made our way round the square, watching tumblers and jugglers, singers and musicians; pausing before a man who ha
cked great bloody holes in his arm with a knife, then healed the wound instantly with some ointment, and laughing at another who dissolved pearls in wine and sold the liquor as a love-potion after having tested it on an accomplice who made as if to take him in plain view of everyone. Finally we ended up before St Geminian’s Church at the west end of the Piazza where a little man whose face, beneath a shady bonnet of peacock feathers, looked something familiar, was busy selling bales of cloth, each different bale (he claimed) having special and extraordinary properties. One of shot silk showed off a woman’s figure, he said, and as he draped it round the form of a skinny girl who stood with him on the bank, her bubbs seemed to swell up enormously beneath it, which set the onlookers clapping and cheering. Another taffeta had the property of enormous strength which was demonstrated by his other assistant, a giant of a man wearing a headsman’s mask, who laid the cloth across a billet of wood which he then split asunder with an axe and lo! when monkey-face held the cloth aloft, it was uncut and unmarked.
Other demonstrations followed, but I found my attention riveted on the headsman, who tossed the bales around as though they were fire logs. For some reason he fascinated me, and from time to time his eyes glinted in my direction from the deep shadows of his leather mask and I felt that I held his attention also.
Soon afterwards darkness began to fall and the mounte-banks began to pack up. Unlike most deceits, theirs flourish best in daylight. But the crowds did not depart. If anything they grew denser, for at carnival time the pleasures of the day are merely preparation for the ecstasies of the night.
Soon gay lanthorns of all sizes and colours dimmed the stars, some borne by groups of merrymakers on foot, some hung from casements as though shadows were preferred within, and the most (which was the fairest sight I ever saw) strung along the gunwales and at the curved prows of gondolas, so that the canals were like streams of richly glowing jewels poured out into the great treasure-bowl of the lagoon. Music, mad and mirthful, filled the air. Later would be time enough for melancholy strains, but at the night’s beginning none thought of prospects other than pleasure or of any future beyond delight. The people, commons and nobles alike, spilled out into the streets without distinction of person. True, many of the clarissimi and their ladies wore masks, but as much from a delight in wantonness as out of a concern for reputation. Goats, rams, bulls, serpents, sparrows and cats – all the beasts of lasciviousness – figured most largely in their disguises, and dames who in their salons would be too aloof to notice the corpse of anyone whose name was not in the libro d’oro, now rubbed shoulders with the commonalty, or leaned out over balconies and pelted passers-by with flowers and eggs filled with perfumed water, or (when these were all used up) just ordinary eggs!
The Forging of Fantom Page 12