In the Company of the Courtesan (27 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

He is right. I am not well. It is not far from his house to ours, but the clogged-up feeling in my head affects my balance now, so that it seems as if I am walking on the deck of a moving ship. Still, I will not go by boat. Not for all the gems in the mountains of Asia. Instead we walk: step by slow step. At any other time it would be a fine evening. The light is honeyed as we cross the Rialto, and Tiziano's luscious nudes glow off the side wall of the German Fondaco. He told me once that, until he could afford the company of courtesans, most of what he knew about women's bodies came from the work of his master, Giorgione, whose own fiery, fleshy figures light up the front façade. I daresay it's true enough, for he was much younger then. Though not as young as our damned pup. The evening is warm enough for the Turk to be without an overgarment, but even huddled in a cloak I am shivering, though the worst is my ears, which are humming like the high note of a tuning fork. And every now and then there comes a stab of pain.

I growl it away. I am alive, and I refuse to be felled by something as ordinary as earache, though even as I think it I am terrified of what it might become. I swallow and yawn and use my fingers to massage the flesh under my lobe. In the past these things have sometimes helped. They will again today.

When we reach the door of our casa, he is hesitant to leave me. “You are sure you are all right?”

I nod.

“I can come in with you?”

“No. If you come, people will fuss, and it will disturb the house, and we are busy tonight. I will go to bed. If I sleep, it will be better. Trust me—I know what to do.”

He turns to leave.

“Abdullah Pashna. Thank you. I think you may have saved my life.”

He nods his head. “Of course I did. I wanted you to be beholden to me. Remember my offer. Look after yourself, my fat little juggler.”

I open the door gently. The inner hall is empty, though through the back window of the ground floor I see the water moorings are full, and there is a loud chorus of voices coming from above, with the smell of roasting venison and spices seeping out from the kitchen. I move quietly up the main stairs toward my room. To reach it, while I do not have to brave the
portego,
I must move along the corridor close to it.

The doors are open, and the room is alive with light and sound. The table is filled with seven or eight people, all busy with plates and chatter, so no one notices a small, squat man hovering in the gathering gloom outside. My mistress has her back to me, but in the mirror on the wall opposite, I catch a reflection of her laughing and talking to our client, an elderly man, on her left. I had forgotten that tonight our work started early, at the end of a lecture he was giving to visiting naval luminaries. But the menu is long planned with the wines already chosen, and I would not be worth even my small weight as a majordomo if such a simple entertainment couldn't run without me.

Tonight's company is brought together by our scholar client and best designer, Vettor Fausto, another wrinkled prune of a man whose body is collapsing faster than his desire. Whether he will stay tonight depends on how much he drinks and how lusty he can feel with half a haunch of venison in his gut. Whatever he decides, he doesn't need my help to fail at it. The evening will run itself. I can sleep. And in the morning, when I am recovered, she and I will talk again.

I lock my door after me and crawl onto my bed, too cold and too tired to remove my borrowed clothes. I pull the blanket over me. My head is full and buzzing, and I feel earache, like a stalking cat, at the edge of my consciousness. If I can sleep before it gets me in its grip, the rest may help.

 

I cannot tell if it is the chill or the pain that wakes me. All I know is that my clothes are soaking as if I have a fever, but the sweat is cold, and though I pull the blanket around me closer, I feel my teeth start to chatter. Inside my head there is a pulse of pain, as if a cord is stretched tight between my ears with someone plucking at it every second, a drumbeat on an open nerve. I try to swallow, but that only makes it come in stronger waves. I try to yawn, but it hurts so much I cannot open my mouth properly. God damn it, the filthy water of Venice has seeped in through my ears and poisoned me.

I am a veteran of head pain. When I was young, it tormented me so frequently that my father told me I must make it my friend. “Welcome it, Bucino, talk to it. Make it your own, for if you fight it you will lose.” But though I talked, it would not listen to me, pleasuring itself instead by spiking me so badly that sometimes all I could do was lie and sob. I think he wanted me to have courage so I would prove to him that though my shape was deformed, my spirit at least was unharmed. But you can be only as brave as your body lets you. “It is the way your head grows,” he said. “The fault of your deformity. You will not die of it.” But I did not believe that then. Now, when I watch the men being pulled through the streets to the gallows howling as their tormentors nip bits out of their flesh with hot tongs, I wonder if their agony is worse than mine, because that is what it felt like to me, that skewering and squeezing of soft pulp with hot pincers. Except that my pain left no marks anyone else could see. Eventually, after hours, sometimes after days, it would lessen and in the end fade away. Each time I would be left dazed and flattened, like a new blossom after a rainstorm. And each time, when I felt it coming again, I would resolve to be braver than before, but by then I was afraid of the idea of the pain as much as the pain itself, and each time I failed. My father and myself.

But he was right. It was about my growing. For years I have not suffered it like this. If I am to cope, I must find some way to dull the horror. We keep a sleeping draft locked in the pantry, one of La Draga's concoctions disguised within the taste of grappa, our secret weapon against the more rowdy customers, for the right dose can turn a bull into a baby softly enough that he never knows he has been felled. What would I give for that oblivion now?

I force myself to sit up and try to imagine that this in itself makes me feel better. I dig out my keys and get as far as the door. But the pain skewers my balance so badly now that the ship is listing dangerously and I have to hold the wall as I move. My lady's door is closed with no telltale snoring, though Fausto is quieter than most, for his aging frame is as thin and frayed as a piece of weathered rope from one of his beloved galleys.

Elsewhere the house is silent. The evening is long finished.

Mauro is asleep in a room off the kitchen, but nothing short of the Second Coming will disturb him. I fumble with the lock and retrieve the jar containing the draft. I have no time to measure but gulp it straight from the bottle, too much rather than too little; no one has died on us yet, and the longer I am unconscious the less I will feel. I am locking the door again when I hear the noise. It comes from the entrance. Near the water doors.

Our scholar leaving? When he could be curled around soft flesh dreaming of potency? I do not think so. If I looked from a window, I doubt I would see any boat arriving now, for it would have dropped its cargo farther along the
fondamenta
and be keeping to the shadows away from our mooring. Our door, of course, would have been locked when the last guest left. Until someone opened it from the inside. Though my brain is singing with pain, I am not stupid with it yet.

I slide a carving knife out from its holding place on the wall and reach the stairs before him. I blow out the candle so that by the time he reaches the bottom I am halfway up, clothed in darkness. My head is in a vise grip now. I want to howl, but it is easier to whimper.

As he puts his foot on the first step, he must hear me, for his breath sucks in quickly. “Who is it? Is someone there? Fiammetta?”

Sweet voice. Sweet boy. I open my mouth and let out a long growl, and it must sound like the dog at the gates of Hell, for he yelps in fear.

“Ah—who is there?”

“Who are
you
? The house is closed.”

“Oh! Signor Teodoldi? It is me, Vittorio Foscari. You scared me.”

I would scare him more if he saw me, for my face is going crooked with the pain. As for him, I can almost smell the lust and the longing, like soft sweat on his skin. Well, not tonight, pup. Tonight you pay or pleasure yourself.

“You are trespassing, sir. The house is closed.”

“No, no. It is all right. Your lady knows. I am invited.”

“Ah. You are invited?” I say. “Then I'll just take your purse for what you owe us and you can go on up.”

“I, er…”

“What—no money?”

“No. I mean—Fiammetta said—”

“It doesn't matter what she said. I am the gatekeeper. And I say, No money, no entrance.”

“Look. I don't think—” He takes a step up.

“Haaaaah!” And the sound that breaks from me now is one that is soaked in pain, though it seems only to add to his terror. He is twice my size, and he could take me down easily enough if he wanted, for I am broken already, but it seems my wildness and the darkness have him by the balls. A boy with his head in his books and his tongue now in secret places. He may be a lion in bed, but he is still a lamb at the slaughterhouse. The only fights he has been in are in his imagination, and it is easy to be brave there.

“Vittorio?” Above us, I catch the erratic swoop of candlelight. God damn it, she has heard us. “Where are you?”

He lets out a squeaking noise, and the light appears at the top of the stairs, its glow falling onto me and bouncing off the steel of the knife.

“My God, Bucino! What is happening? What are you doing?”

“What indeed,” I say. “I caught this young puppy trying to swill at your trough without paying.” And I may be shouting now, for it is hard to judge my voice over the pounding in my ears.

“How dare you be so vulgar?” she says imperiously, as much for his benefit as for mine, for she is not the only one behaving unprofessionally now. But I hold my ground. She takes a step nearer, and her voice falls. “Bucino, don't do this. You know I asked him to come.”

“Ah, well then, so he can….” Below me he makes a move upward, and I yank the knife up sharply. “It's just he'll have to leave his balls with me on the stairs for safekeeping.”

“Ah!”

“Oh, God.”

And I am not sure who shouts now, he or she, but it is loud enough to wake the household.

“Put down the knife, Bucino. Put it down. Don't worry, Vittorio. He won't hurt you.”

“Won't I? He's very pretty, I'll give you that. But it would keep his chin smoother if I took them off him.”

She is halfway down to me now. “Why are you doing this?” she whispers fiercely. I shake my head. She must smell me now, for my sweat is like stale fish.

She straightens up. “Vittorio? You had better go. I will see to this.”

“Go? But I—I can't leave you with him. He's—he's a madman!”

Ah! That I am. “Ma-a-a-a-ad.” For the word is like a howl anyway. My God, but my deformity is on my side now: a midget reeking of sulfur coming out of the darkness to pull sinners down into Hell. You men, beware.

Not her, though. She is not scared. And she does not like his fear either. I can tell. Who wants a lover who doesn't have the courage to risk himself for love?

There are voices downstairs, and more light. There will be scandal abroad soon enough. Gabriella appears in the hall, wild-eyed and tousled; behind her Marcello; and then Mauro, fists up, ready to pummel some meat, for he enjoys a ruckus more than anyone I know.

“Go, Vittorio,” she says again. “I will handle him.
Go!…
”

And go he does.

“Be careful, Vittorio,” I call after him. “That churning in your stomach isn't fear, you know. She's poisoning you. Feeding you witchy stuff to make your prick so hard that one day it'll fall off and smash into stone pieces.”

But he is gone already. Good riddance. Triumph in the shape of another wave of pain sweeps over me. I feel my balance tilting.

“The rest of you, go back to bed.”

“Do you need any help, my lady?” Mauro's voice. Good old ham fist. Loyal to the end.

“No, Mauro. We will be fine. Go to bed. Just leave us alone.”

He gives a last growl and then turns and fades away.

She lifts the candle above her. Heaven only knows what she sees in its light.

“In God's name, what is wrong with you, Bucino? Are you ill or just drunk?”

If only she would come nearer now, she would know. She would understand. I open my mouth, but I cannot speak. It takes all my energy to keep the knife in my hand. If there were more light, she could see the damage. Or feel the fever, for where I was an ice block before, now I am a human torch.

Her voice is shaky. “Drunk. And what? Jealous? Is that it? Of what? Him? Me? Our pleasure? Is that what this is about, Bucino? You are jealous because I am happy while you are not?”

And I think for that moment that I am going to pass out, for the world is spinning.

“Oh, my God…I am right, yes. This is about you, not me. You are the one who is mad with it. Look at you. When did you last have pleasure, eh, Bucino? When did you last play, or laugh until your sides hurt? When did you last have a woman, for that matter? Success has turned you sour. You live in that room bent over your abacus and your account books like some spider over her filthy eggs. Where is the life in that? My God, La Draga is right. It's you who are the one in need of love potions, not me.”

She shakes her head and takes a step upward.

“You think I am the one who is threatening our livelihood, but I tell you, Bucino, you are as changed as I am. You have become an old man. And believe me, that is worse for business than any courtesan becoming a whore.”

“It's not me—” I start to speak, but the sound is almost too loud to bear inside my head.