In the Company of the Courtesan (14 page)

He laughs. “Oh, you don't still hold a few lines of poetry against me?”

“Not the poetry. Only the lies. You were never in my bed, Pietro, and it was sly of you to pretend that you were.”

He glances at me and for the first time seems to notice La Draga, who is curled rock still and silent.

“Well…” He is, I think, just a little embarrassed. “I daresay my recommendation did you no harm. But,
cara,
I have not come to open old wounds. God knows I have enough of those. No. I am here to offer you my services.”

She says nothing. I need her to look at me now, for there is a conversation to be had between us, but her eyes stay fixed on him.

“I am a fortunate visitor in Venice. I have the use of a house. On the Grand Canal. And it is my way to entertain sometimes: the literati, a few of the great merchants, some of the more artistic nobility of this extraordinary city. In this endeavor I am joined by a number of charming women….”

I see her eyes spark with fury.

“Of course, no one of your caliber, but successful enough in their way. Ifyou would like to join us all one evening…I am sure…”

He leaves it hanging in the air. Ah, the precise art of insult. Even though our very future is at stake, I cannot help but enjoy myself, for it has been a long time since I have watched my lady with so worthy an opponent.

The room has grown cold under her stare. She gives a small laugh and moves her new hair prettily around her shoulders. Thank God for greedy nuns.

“Tell me, do I look in need of charity, Pietro?”

And the risk takes my breath away. “Ah, no. Well, not in person, never. But…” And he waves his good arm around the room.

“Oh!” And my lady's laugh is like the sound of silver tapped against glass. “Oh, of course. You were following Bucino, and so you think…Oh, I am so sorry. This is not our home.”

And as my eyes grow wide at the audacity of the lie, she turns to La Draga. “May I present to you Elena Crusichi. A gentlewoman of this parish and a kind and good soul to whom, as you can see, God has given a different kind of sight so that she may be blind to the ills of the world and closer to his truths. Bucino and I visit her often, for she is in need of comfort and conversation as well as clothes and vitals. Elena?”

As smooth as the pile on the richest of velvets, La Draga lifts herself up and turns to him with a dreamy smile on her lips and her eyes more open than I have ever seen them, so that a man could not help but fall into the depths of their milk blindness.

“Have no fear, my lord.” My lady's voice is soft as silk. “Her grace is not contagious.”

But though her blindness has taken him aback, he is not afraid. Instead he too starts to laugh. “Oh, madam. How could a man have made such an elementary mistake? To follow a dwarf bringing secondhand clothes to a secondhand house and think it could be connected with your good self.” He pauses while he studies, rather obviously, her not quite new enough dress. “And to you, Madam Crusichi, I can only say I am honored to be in your sightless presence. It will be my pleasure to have a basket of food delivered to you later so that you might intercede with the Lord on my worthless behalf also.”

He turns to my lady. “So,
carissima.
Is the charade between us complete now?”

She does not reply, and for the first time I fear for her. The silence grows. We have almost no money, and no way of getting more. And the man who might help us at the price of our pride is about to walk out the door.

But it is now, as he turns to go, that something truly marvelous happens. From the bed a voice sings out clear and deep, like the bell that calls nuns to prayer in the middle of the still night. “Signor Aretino.”

He turns.

She is smiling in his direction, her lips slightly open as if they were already in conversation, and the smile is so sweet, so pure under the fathomless cloud of her eyes, and it lights up her face with such joy, that for that moment it is as if the grace of God himself is shining through her skin. Though whether or not I believe it…“Please. Come to me. Here.”

He looks confused, as do we all. But he does as he is asked. As he reaches the edge of the bed, she draws herself up on her knees and puts her hands onto his upper chest, moving her fingers to his neck, to where his scarf has slipped a little so that the top of the scar is visible. She finds it with her finger. I glance at my lady, but her eyes are fixed on them.

“This wound has healed better than your hand,” La Draga says quietly. “You were lucky. But”—her fingers slide down across the doublet—“there is something not right here, a weakness within.” And she puts her palm close to the place where his heart is. “You must be careful of this. For it will fell you someday if you do not take notice.”

It is so serious, the way she says it, that while he laughs, he also glances nervously away from her. For my part, I cannot take my eyes off either of them: for if this is neither God nor witchcraft, then all I can say is she is the best trickster I have ever come across in my life.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

For the first few days, we mask our despair with bickering. We, who have faced Spanish pikes and Lutheran furies, have been tricked by a fat, old slut who even now is pushing silver across a table in payment for roasted boar and good wine. The pain of her triumph turns us as sour on the inside as the world now feels bitter around us, so that we disagree not only about the past but also the future.

“I've told you, I won't do it.”

“Let's talk about it at least. We cannot just sit here and do nothing. You say yourself you can match any woman in the city. The fact is that whatever the humiliation of Aretino's house, we know the rewards will be big enough.”

“Not necessarily. It will be a catfight. You know his taste. It is the ink in which he dips his pen. He revels in watching women purr and scratch for men's attentions. I have never performed for him, and I won't start now.”

“You have never been this unemployed, Fiammetta. If we don't start somewhere, we are doomed.”

“I would rather be on the streets.”

“If you stay this stubborn, that's where we will end up.”

“Oh, really? It seems this loss is down to both of us, but only I am called upon to right it.”

“And what would you have me do? Become a juggler while you become a street whore? Together we'd make barely enough to buy the bread we need to keep on opening our legs and lifting our hands. I didn't steal from you and you didn't steal from me, Fiammetta. But unless we are going to face this together, we might as well give up now.”

“Together? You think we should face it together. As partners. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes, partners. For good and bad. Wasn't that what we agreed?”

“Which means what? Two people who tell each other the truth, however difficult it is.”

“Yes.”

But she keeps on looking at me.

“So why don't we talk about Meragosa, Bucino? The woman who cheated us out of a small fortune. Except it wasn't just us, was it? Because she cut her thieving teeth on someone else. Before us she cheated my mother, too. Didn't she?” And her voice is steady and cool.

“I…What do you mean?”

“I mean you told me that Meragosa looked after her. That she cared for her in her last illness. And because I believed you, I believed her when she told me the same thing. But it wasn't true, was it? She didn't help her. She just watched her die and bled her dry. La Draga told me yesterday before she left. She said the rumor on the streets was that my mother died of the pox. And that she had never once been called to visit her. Yet she is the best healer there is. Maybe she couldn't have cured her, but she would have helped. But Meragosa didn't ask her. She left my mother to rot.” She holds my gaze. “Are you telling me you didn't know that, Bucino? Was I really the only one who was so fooled?”

I open my mouth to let out the lie, but it gets caught in my teeth. She is right. If we cannot tell the truth to each other, we are lost, and, my God, we need each other now.

“Look…I…at the time I didn't think it would help you to know.”

“No? You don't think if you had told me that I might have suspected her more, watched her more closely? And in that way we might not be here today.”

Ah, but this is a swamp in which we will both drown. I take a breath. “Actually, you know what I think, Fiammetta? I think you did know. Somewhere. Only you preferred to believe what she told you because it hurt less.”

“In which case you have nothing to blame yourself for. Do you?” And the words come out roasted in scorn as she turns away.

 

If I am the more guilty, then my penance takes a cruel form: thrumming legs and howling backache as I cross the length and breadth of the city trying to find her. Day after day I trudge the markets to see if I might spot her lumpen figure gloating over new fabrics or fingering cakes of sweet scented soaps with which to clean her foul crevices. But if she is buying, it isn't in any shop or stall I ever find. I try to see the world through her eyes. Where would I go now, what riches would I covet or what rock would I find to crawl under? Three hundred ducats. You could live like a noble for months or a rat for years. For all her greed, I think she is too shrewd to squander it all.

After the markets I go to the rat runs, places near the Arsenale where the ship workers live, where strangers can disappear into streets of one-room slums and a woman can spend a lifetime sewing sails or braiding strands of ropes together in a hall so big that those who have seen it say you could launch a ship in it. A person who wanted to could get lost easily enough here. Once I think I see her crossing a wooden bridge near the walls of the shipyard itself, and I run till my thighs are singing to catch up with her, but when I reach her, she turns into another ugly, old crone wearing a cloak that is too rich for her, and her screams send me reeling. I walk slum streets and knock on doors, but I have no money to loosen tongues, and while the abuse I take suits my mood, even humiliation becomes tedious after a while.

Eventually, I end up in some foul part of town where my nose is assaulted by the stink coming from a drained canal, now a quicksand of mud into which a dwarf would sink as fast as a fat pebble. Running from its stench, I find a drinking hole where I spend the night turning my stomach on
teriaca,
a tipple that would be poison in any state except one where the government earns revenue from brewing it. That doesn't keep me from drinking more of it. For a man scared of drowning, I am lost in liquid now, but then punishment can be a sweet pain sometimes. I forfeit another day and night throwing my guts up and finally wake on the edge of a canal with the stark comfort that there is no farther to fall.

It is three days since I left the house. I have never been away without my lady's knowledge for so long. It is time to leave Meragosa to her devils and come home to face our own.

 

By the time I drag myself back, it is early afternoon. I arrive at the house by way of the bridge, where the sun plays so bright on the water that it hurts my eyes to look. My God, one day Venice will be beautiful and I will be ready to appreciate it. But not today. I see her before she sees me. She is standing at the window staring out through half-open shutters, a robe pulled around her, her hair crumpled over her shoulders, as if she is waiting for someone. I am about to call to her, for I know she will be worried, when something in her gaze stops me. On the other side, the leathery old bat is at her station, mouth silently muttering into the empty air. They seem to be staring at each other. What do they see? The journey from the dream to the nightmare? For when it comes down to it, what is it that separates the two of them but a slice of water and a fat span of years?

When I study women on the street (for it is my business, remember, as well as my pleasure), I think sometimes of how their bodies remind me of fruit: budding, firming, ripening, and softening, before they fall into blowsiness and decay. It is the decay that scares most, tending as it does to either the wet or the dry: flesh blowing up like a pig's bladder, fat, pasty, as if it might split open—pulp for worms—or the slow attrition of desiccation and shriveling. Is that how it will be for my lady? Will there come a time when those pillow cheeks are loose parchment and those lips, so full that men's tongues itch to press inside, wither to the thinness of a closed mussel? Is that what she is thinking now? Staring across at her own decay? With fewer than forty ducats in our purse and the rent due within the week, it is time for both of us to stop crying and start working. I climb the stairs with renewed determination.

She turns as I open the door, and for that split second I don't know what to look at first: the way her arm is cradled to her side or the body on the bed. The flash in her eyes decides me. He is half dressed, his shirt open on a thick barrel chest, his naked legs sticking out from under the sheet, long and hairy like a spider's. His breath is so heavy and snorting that it is hard to tell if this is the stupor of sexual satisfaction or the sledgehammer of booze, since the smell coming off him is easily rivaled by my own.

I look at her again. He has done something to her arm. God damn it. What is the first rule of good whoring? Never be alone with a man without backup behind the door.

“What—”

“It's all right. I'm not hurt.” And she is firm and focused now: whatever reverie she had fallen into is fast dissolved. “I didn't realize he was so drunk till I got him up here. He was sober enough on the piazza.”

“How long has he been out?”

“Not long.”

“You got his purse?”

She nods.

“Anything else?”

“He had a medallion, but it's not worth much.”

“What about the ring?” I say, both of us staring at the thick band of gold embedded in a sausage finger.

“Too tight.”

“Well, we had better get him out of here.” I glance around the room, thinking as fast as my gut will let me. The lute, with its fat wooden base, sits by the door.

“No,” she says quickly. “Not that. We need it. He has a dagger. We can use that instead.”

I find it as she pulls the shutters closed. The sound of their clacking rouses him a little, and he heaves and flops over on one side. So now his face is at the edge of the bed. I give her the knife, throw his clothes near the door, and position myself in front of him so that my face is staring straight into his. I am in good shape for this: my breath is fouler than his and I warrant I have the look of a man for whom Hell holds no horrors anymore. I glance at her, and she nods. My God, I swear it is almost excitement I feel as I yell into his face, my mouth stretched open wide to show my fangs.

He is so befuddled and so shaken by the roar and the sight of me that he is half out of the bed before it occurs to him to question my size. And when he does, he is greeted by the glint of the blade held low—and not without intention—in her hands. In my experience, it is always harder for men to be brave with their balls flapping between their legs. He yells a bit as he moves toward the door, but it is more for the sake of his vanity. By the time he finds his manhood again, he will probably be halfway home and worrying about the pox. In this way does our chastisement bring sinners a little closer to God. Until the next erection undermines all our good work.

Our reward, which is the exhilaration that comes from action, fades faster.

“I tell you, I could have dealt with him. I was on my way to reintroduce myself to the Turk when I met him in the piazza. His cloak was new, and while I could barely understand his accent, he had the look of a successful merchant, and he said he was leaving in two days' time. I thought he was richer than he was.”

“I don't care if his prick was gold plated. The rule is you don't bring them home alone. What if he had turned on you?”

“He didn't.”

“So what is wrong with your arm?”

“Just a bruise. He was too drunk to notice what he was doing.”

“Hmm. Your choice was never so flawed before.”

“My choice was never so limited before. Sweet Jesus, Bucino, you were the one who wanted me working again.”

“Not like this.”

“Well, it wouldn't have been like this if you'd been here, would it?”

She looks away from me, and I see her at the window again, staring at an empty future.

“You should have waited,” I say quietly.

“So where were you?”

“You know where I was. Looking for Meragosa.”

“For three days and two nights? It must have been an absorbing search, Bucino.”

“Well…I—I fell into some hole and started drinking.”

“Good. Because for a moment I thought the stink on you might have come from finding her. That she'd made you a better offer and you had taken it.”

“Oh, don't be ridiculous. You know I would never leave you.”

“Do I? Do I really?” She stops herself angrily, then shakes her head. “Three days, Bucino. With no word. This city throws up corpses with every tide. How did I know where you were?”

There is a silence as the flame of our newfound energy fades. If she were not so angry, I think there might be tears.

Through the slit of the shutters, the old woman is shouting out loud now, a stream of abuse about our nosiness and our dubious morals. I go to the window and throw the broken shutters open. I swear, if I had an arquebus, I would let off a shot now and blow her to kingdom come, for I am sick of her beady eyes and muttering drivel. I look down at the water with its flashes of sunlight, and suddenly I am back in a wood outside Rome, with a river in front of me, the sparkle of a newly washed ruby in my palm, and the promise of a future planned between us. God damn this poxy city. I never wanted to come here anyway. She is right. It swallows paupers faster than a carp swallows minnows. It would not take much for us both to die here, facedown in a sewer canal.

“I am sorry,” I say. “I didn't mean to frighten you.”

She shakes her head. “Or I to send you away.” She stops, and her fingers play with the mark on her arm. “It does not do for us to argue.”

How scared was she of his violence? I wonder. She would not admit it if she was, even, I doubt, to herself. Of all the courtesans I have met—and I brushed against the skirts of a fair many in Rome—she has always resisted the vulnerability that comes with feeling with the most vibrancy.

“I—I have been thinking about what you said. About Aretino's offer. I should have listened to you.”

I let out a breath, for now it feels less a victory than a further hurdle.

“Look, I would not suggest it if I didn't think he still held some feeling for you. I know he crossed you in Rome and you are angry with him for it. But his job was to offend people then, yet there were still those who spoke of him as having a generous heart, and I think he has mellowed here.”