In the Company of the Courtesan (29 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The tang of Mauro's spiced sauce over boiled eels. How the room stays still when I stand up in it. The way my ear can distinguish birdsong from the crunch and slap of the water through the thick-eyed glass of my study window. These are the joys of a world where I am no longer in pain. And, most of all, the fact that the household has fallen into palpable disarray in my absence.

Alas, there is no time to celebrate, for my recovery coincides with the busiest of times. This week sees the climax of the Ascension Festival: the ceremony of the Sensa, when the whole government of Venice rides out in a great golden galley into the middle of the lagoon, from where the doge, himself arrayed in gold cloth, hurls a wedding ring into the depths, thus marrying the city to the sea (guess which is the bridegroom and which the obedient bride?) and securing Venice's dominion over the waters for another year. Who could ever believe that Constantinople holds more wonders than Venice?

This ceremonial madness and the great trade fair that accompanies it have the city bursting at the seams, but this year,
this year,
we are doubly blessed. For our black Crow, Loredan, has done penance for his endless pomposity by securing my lady a place on one of the barges that follow the procession, a privilege of such magnitude that the whole house is now awash in dresses and dressmakers, shoes and shoemakers, perfumes and perfumers, and all the paraphernalia of beauty that it takes to put our own small, golden ship to sea.

Marcello and Gabriella are at my constant beck and call, Mauro is so long over a stove that I fear his sweat has become one of his spices (though I do not complain, for since my illness I am fed better than the clients), and as for my lady, well, I do not know if my breathing convinced her of my sleeping or my wakefulness, but there has been no further discussion between us, no baring of souls or asking for forgiveness. Instead we are partners again and are healing ourselves with what we do best, working together and making the house sing with its sense of community.

This is not to say she is without sorrow: her melancholy is evident to anyone who knows her well. The latest news on the pup is that he is due to leave in a few weeks. His visits are less frequent (I do not know about the nights, for since my illness I sleep like the dead), and where possible when he is due I give the servants time off so he and my lady might have a kind of privacy together. We both know that when he leaves, she—and I suspect he too, for such fevers seldom burn so hot without both partners sharing the disease—will feel the separation acutely. But we will deal with that pain when it comes; for now we are reconciled, she and I, with our minds set on her journey to sea and all that it entails.

From all of this creative mayhem, there is only one person missing: La Draga. Since that night when I woke to her presence in the room, she has not visited. When it was clear that I was on my way to recovery, she left a series of oils and drafts with Gabriella for my continued welfare and disappeared into the dawn, and no one has heard from her since. Despite our busyness, the house is not the same without her. At night sometimes when I close my eyes, I can hear her voice as if it were still inside me, and the memory of her care makes me shaky with its intensity. Though my lady would profit from her presence and potions now, I daresay she is too occupied to visit, for when people in this city stop working, they start mating, and those whom she is not helping to marry she may soon be helping to abort. But I know only too well that it is she who saved my life, and wherever she is I have no intention of forgetting my debt to her.

It is the morning of the Sensa, and the whole house and a fair slice of the neighborhood gather to see my lady and me step into our boat, duly decorated for the occasion. Marcello cuts a sleek and clever line through the massing traffic on the Grand Canal to drop us near the edge of the southern docks, from where we must walk to the main landing dock near San Marco.

It is a journey I have done often enough before, when the sun is not yet fully risen and the city is still asleep, and there is always a sense of awe in it. After you have made the long turn out of the Grand Canal and draw parallel with the Doge's Palace, among the first things that you see from the water are the great Pillars of Justice, standing out like high masts through the early mist. And more often than not, as you get closer there is the broken corpse of some offender between them, left hanging as an example to the city. Such is the aching bleakness of this scene that I have come to believe the entrance to Hell will be through those pillars, with us all marching in silent, serried ranks into the steaming mist beyond.

Only now, today, Hell has been turned to Heaven. The Mass is over, and the fleet is boarding. Those same pillars are festooned with streamers, and the scene all around them is like the Second Coming, with the righteous leading the way clothed in God's glory and—more important—Venice's best cloth. There is more gold here than in any altarpiece I have ever seen. Even women are allowed to join this show, and modesty is replaced by fabulous ostentation. The ground around them is a sea of silk and velvet so the sun barely knows where to shine first, caught on miles of golden thread and a thousand necklaces, rings, chains, and jeweled hair clips.

The golden galley is anchored in the middle of the water, already loaded with its cargo of black and ermine-trimmed Crows and foreign dignitaries, and the spectator barges are filling up fast. To reach the special landing docks, each and every guest must have his or her name on a list. My journey stops here.

My lady turns to me as she moves into the throng. “What shall I bring you back, Bucino? A mermaid, or another great Crow to boost our account books?”

I shrug. “Maybe you might find something to ease the gap that will be left by your fledgling?”

“Aaah.” And I hear the catch in her throat, as if the pain is still lodged somewhere, too raw to digest. “Alas, for that I would need very rich food.” She stops and tilts her head away. The noise is rising around us. Soon it will be too late for speech. She turns back to me. “Bucino? The things I said…about you that night. I want—”

“No. No, you don't,” I say. “We were both demented, and your words were nothing to the cruelty of mine. But it's over now. Lost on the wind. Look at you. I am so proud of you. The most spectacular bird in the flock. Don't let the others peck at you out of envy.”

She smiles. “And you—what will you do with the day?”

“Me?” I say. “Oh, I will—” But the push of bodies is already drawing her away, and my reply gets lost in the crowd. I watch as best I can as she moves toward the boats. The women eye each other as they head for their places—they always behave the worst when they are dressed the best—and while there are those intent on cold-shouldering her, it is more because my lady is a stranger than because she looks like a whore. Indeed, if they were all lined up in our
portego
now, there are at least a dozen who would be propositioned before she would, so much have they piled on the white powder and the flouncing style. In contrast, she looks like a noblewoman. The smile that she gives as she turns and waves to me from the loading plank tells me that she knows it too.

I close my eyes so that can I etch the scene on the backs of my lids, and for that second I wish more than anything that I had been born Tiziano Vecellio so I might run home now and re-create it, for the details are already fading. The image of my lady, though, stays clear enough. I wave until I am pushed out of the way, and then I scamper through the crowd out of the madness of the piazza toward San Lorenzo and the north shore.

In my pocket I have directions to the
campo
where La Draga lives, or at least the place where Marcello leaves messages for her when she is needed. For that is my day: I am going to find her. After all these years, it is time we made our peace.

 

It is my first time on the streets since my illness, and despite my high spirits, my limbs tremble faster, so that I have to rest more often. Still, I am not worried. I am alive and with luck will soon be fitter than I was before, for the fever has stripped away a layer of fat that good living had added to my stomach; every dwarf I have ever known has the appetite of a full-sized man, so that as we grow older, even those without greed are prone to corpulence.

Anyway, what need is there to rush on this of all days? The city is on holiday, and so am I. The streets are quiet here, since the crowds have all drained south to watch the fleet embark, and the scent of garden blossoms is in the air. For a few weeks now, Venice will be glorious, before the summer sun burns everything crisp and putrid again, and I, perhaps, will find time to enjoy it.

“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?”

I have thought about her words many times since that night. How could I not? When a man thinks he going to die, there is always room to regret the mistakes he has made, the things he has not done. She is right. While my clothes may be as rich as they were in Rome, our success has also been my failure. It is partly that the novelty is gone. She has little need of me to entertain her guests now, and I, in turn, have grown weary of being treated like an imbecile or an exotic by men, most of whom, if their purses were the same size as their brains, would not be eligible for either of our company. Even our cleverest clients do not excite me in the way our salon in Rome once did. In this respect I turned against Venice early. While Rome stewed in her own corruption, she was at least honest enough to enjoy herself openly. Yet here they are so concerned with making the surface shine that all transgression must be tucked away, the sins not even fully enjoyed before they are repented or suppressed. In my experience, such hypocrisy is a breeding ground as much for prurience as for pleasure.

Or perhaps I am fooling myself, plucking reasons from the air to excuse my own misanthropy. For it is true that I am duller than I was. And, yes, more celibate; and while a man does not die of such neglect, neither does he flourish. What can I do? Aretino may envy me my skills, but they are less effective here than they were in Rome. There are, alas, no mischievous matrons with an appetite for novelty in these markets, and the streets are too near the canals for me to stomach the smell of most of the women who work them: relief and pleasure may be the same for most men, but I am a dwarf and too attuned to nuances of humiliation for it to work that way for me. There was a time when my enjoyment of Anfrosina's curves and her capacity for giggling could pull her out of the kitchen and into the bedroom. But the satisfaction gained there seldom lasted beyond the moment, and while there have been a few others along the way, these last years I have grown proud (or maybe shamed) enough to think I could do better. Perhaps the truth is I have become cynical. When one is in the business of slaking male desire, it is hard not to develop a certain contempt for the very appetite one is manipulating.

Whatever the reasons, my loins have grown cold on me. Instead I have lavished my attention on my abacus beads and the richness of Mauro's sauces and have chosen not to think about the warmth of a woman's body. Until, that is, I feel my mother's arms around me again, and find myself crying as much at the comfort as at the pain.

My God, to be beholden to a sightless cripple. Did I come this far for that?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

As I make my way across town, I consider what I know of her, this woman who has been in my life for almost a decade yet whom I have chosen to ignore. I know that she came to Venice first as a child, and that her parents died when she was still young. My lady told me once that she had been married, but her husband died early, and since then she has lived alone, which in itself is a thing of some wonder in Venice, for single women of her age are fodder for convents or the casual violence of men. In this her deformity might well have been her aid; that, along with her reputation as a witch, would have most men holding on to their balls rather than flaunting them. There is no doubt she runs a healthy enough business now. I know that ours is not the only casa she visits (a few years ago she disappeared for months on end, returning as quietly as she had gone, with no explanation), but whoever else she tends, like a priest, she keeps other people's confessions to herself. Of course, what she cannot see she cannot tell. Though I have underestimated her talents to my cost in the past. Most recently, it has to be said, to my own shame. I will not do so again.

The place where she lives is to the northeast of the city, between the Rio di Santa Giustina and the convent of La Celestia, an area I know hardly at all. I orient myself by the convent's bell tower, which rises from the rooftops and looks out over the sea (my God, how cold and damp their cells must be in winter). I cross a canal toward it and move into a mass of alleys and huddled houses. Somewhere in here, there will be a
campo
with a baker's oven and a church and a stone well, an ancient small island joined to all the others, like the one where we first lived and where the old man kept vigil over the water level so long ago.

In the end it is my nose that takes me there, for the smell of roasting pig is always a good compass. The spit is in the middle of the square, the carcass skewered and stuffed, its juices spitting fireworks into the fire beneath. Nearby three men are setting up two barrels of
teriaca.
Like everyone else, they are celebrating, and if I want to find La Draga, I should do so before they start drinking. There are maybe two dozen men and women and a handful of children already gathered, and I am enough of a freak visitor to become instant entertainment, for even a city like Venice has backwaters. I brave a few quips about the roasting of the well-dressed duck that just waddled in and how the perfumes of its beard will do instead of spices before finding myself the most presentable young woman available and bowing low to her in a way that can be seen as cute if I get the flourish right.

The laughter around me is so raucous that I know it has worked, and I have a free bowl of gut rot in my hand before I have time to introduce myself. Why not? We are all guests at the wedding feast of our state, and it is incumbent on us to enjoy ourselves liberally. I gulp it down, and my coughing fit causes another explosion of mirth, so that the girl I have picked has to thump me on the back, egged on by the rest of them. When I come up for air, I note that she is still young enough to be a little shy, and that her lips are reddish and full like the inside flesh of a ripe pomegranate. I smile at her (more beguiling than my weapon grin) and join in with their mockery, taking another, smaller swig and making theater out of the thick burn that it carves down the back of my throat. The girl is staring, wide-eyed, and the woman behind her shoves her sharply in my direction so that she half trips onto me and I have to use all my strength to stop her from falling. As she straightens up, laughing indignantly, I get a glimpse into her mouth and see a run of half-rotted teeth and catch a whiff of decay. And to my shame, my growing excitement drains away.

Maybe Aretino is right and I am more woman than man now, God help me.

The
campo
is filling up fast, and I use the liquor's tongue-loosening capacities to talk to a few others and ask the whereabouts of the healer called La Draga. Everyone knows her, it seems, though there is some disagreement over exactly which house is hers. A woman with a fat scar on her face spits over my shoes at the sound of her name, calling her a whore who heals the rich but lets the poor die. A younger woman disagrees; then a man wades in, and within seconds people are shoving at one another. If I were a general, I'd breakfast my army on
teriaca
before any battle. Just so long as they didn't turn on one another before they reached the enemy. As I make my way out of the square in the direction of her street, I notice that the girl is watching me from the edge of the crowd, though as soon as I catch her eye, she looks hastily away. I move over to her and bow again, and this time I ask her directly for her hand. She is unsure now, like a young colt presented with its first bridle, but in the end she offers it. I turn it over, kiss the palm, and then press a silver ducat into it before folding her fingers back over it gently. I blow her a kiss as I leave, and as I go I see her unfurling her fingers, a look of wonder on her face, and then she smiles and waves to me, and for some reason the sight of her joy makes me want to cry.

La Draga's street is off the
campo
on the edge of a small canal. I approach it from the land. The houses are cramped and half bent over the cobbles, their stonework broken and peeling. In summer you would be able to smell your neighbors' farts, assuming the other rot hadn't stripped your nostrils first. The smell is bad enough as it is.

Her house, it is generally agreed, is next to the last before the corner. I have lived in places like this, when I first arrived in Rome. I know the gloom that I will find inside. And possibly the squalor. If she is lucky, she will have a room to herself. If she is successful—and I cannot see how she would not be—she may have two. Unless, of course, there is a husband. My God. I have never given it a thought, that she might have married again. She has always been alone in my mind, a woman living off her wits. As I do too.

I knock. And get no answer. Then again, louder. I try the door, but it is locked.

A few seconds later, I hear someone moving behind it.

“Who is it?” Her voice, but rough, suspicious.

“It is Bucino.” I pause. “Bucino Teodoldi.”

“Bucino?” I hear her surprise. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes. But…I…I need to speak with you.”

“Er…I can't see you now.”

But I have decided. This is the purpose of my day. “It is important,” I hear myself say. “I can wait or come back later.”

“Er…no…no. I—I can come in a little while. Do you know the
campo
nearby?”

“Yes. But it is mad with people.”

“Go to the steps by the door of the church. I will meet you there.”

I move back to the square. It is fuller already, and the girl has disappeared. I climb the few steps to the wooden door of the church and wait. What is she doing now? Was there someone in there with her? A client perhaps? She must keep all her medicaments somewhere. I imagine a chest full of jars and potions, pestles and mortars for crushing, scales for weighing. It makes me think of that little back room where my solemn Jew measured and bought people's wealth. Or my office full of ledgers and beads. For we are working men and women, all of us: despite the burdens of our race or our deformities, we have found ways to be in the world, dependent on no one, earning our living with a kind of pride. For even I have to admit that there is much skill in her healing, and even in her witchcraft.

I am high enough to spot her as soon as she turns the corner into the
campo.
She is dressed for the festival, a pale blue gown that I think is new—or maybe I have never noticed it before—its skirt full, with lace fringing, and a shawl of the same color over her head. She is carrying a stick, which I have seen her do at other times, and which makes her progress easier, for she can use it to sweep the ground in front of her and assess obstacles faster. People know her enough to move out of her way here anyway, though halfway across a woman comes up to her, and while I cannot hear what is said, it feels from her square stance and the way she blocks the way that it is not a comfortable encounter. I get to my feet in case La Draga needs help (what help could I give?), but it is over almost as soon as it has begun, and soon she is at the steps, her stick sweeping its way upward.

“I am here,” I say, and she turns to me with that strange little smile of hers, the smile that she has never seen for herself but that seems to say she knew where I was all along and was simply checking. Her eyes are closed, which she also does sometimes. I think it might be painful for her to keep them open, for I have noticed that when she does she seems never to blink, which is one of the reasons why that dense milk stare is so upsetting when you first see it. I have not given much thought to her welfare before, but then I have a recent experience of suffering against which to match that of others.

The tip of the stick locates my foot, and she lowers herself to the step, next to me. We have never met like this, outside the house. Around us the city is celebrating, meeting, greeting, carousing; it is a day that will have all kinds of consequences.

“How did you find me?” Her voice is soft again now, as I remember it.

“Oh, you are famous around here.”

“You are better, yes? To have walked so far.”

“Better, yes.”

“Though weak still, I think.”

“Well…Mauro is feeding me well.”

She nods. I watch her fingers playing with the top of the stick, and it strikes me that she is as nervous as I am, sitting out here alone with me. How many years have we known each other now? Yet how little do we know.

“I…I have come…I have come to thank you.”

She crooks her head, and the smile becomes puzzled. “I did not do so much. The infection took its course. I only helped hold down the fever.”

“No,” I say. “I think you did much more than that.” I pause

“I…I would have gone mad with it. The pain.”

She nods. “Yes. When it comes inside the head, it is very bad.”

Again I think about her eyes. “You said that once before to me. You know about such things?”

“I—I have felt it in other people.”

“I used to get pain like that when I was a child.”

“It is from the shape of your ear.”

“Yes, you told me that too. You have studied such things?”

“A little.”

I am staring at her as she talks. Her skin is so pale and smooth, her eyelashes resting like half-moon fringes on her cheeks. My lady tells me that when Tiziano saw her once at our house, he wanted to paint her, for he thinks she has something of the mystic about her. One can see why. The years have hardly aged her at all, and there is a strange light to her face, the way her thoughts and feelings seem to move across it like constantly changing weather. He is right: she would make a fine addition to one of his religious works, and he of all people might be able to capture that inner light, for he seems to see the spirit of a person as clearly as he sees the body. But she is not interested in immortality, or not the kind that he can offer, and when he asked, she would have none of him. I like that about her, though I have not realized it until now.

“How is Fiammetta?” she says after a while.

“She is…I don't know what words to use…quiet, resigned. You know the pup is leaving? She told you that?”

“Yes. The news of it came when I was there.”

“She is sad,” I say. “But she will recover?” And while I mean to say it firmly, it comes out as a question.

“If a wound is clean, it matters less if it is deep,” she says. “It's when the passion is not shared that gangrene eats its way in.”

“Yes.” I pause.

Come now, Bucino. If you can survive agony, you can do this.

“I—I am sorry…about that day, when I found out about him. I was as much angry with myself as I was with you.”

She gives a little shrug, as if she knew that all along and was just waiting for me to realize it too. Only now that I have started, I have to go on.

“You did not need to be so kind to me, you know…I mean afterward. God knows, I have not always been kind to you.”

“I…” And to my surprise she falters a little too now. “It was nothing. You were…I mean, the remedies worked for you.”

Only now the air suddenly feels strange between us. As if neither of us knows where to step next.

“Your care of me took up a lot of your time,” I say, to stem the disquiet I feel. “Yet you did not leave a bill.”

“No…er…I was busy with other things.”

“I thought you would come back.”

“No. I…The city is crowded now. I cannot move around so easily.”

“No, no, of course not.” Her restlessness is growing, and I am afraid that she is going to leave.

“Well, thank God for you,” I say quickly. “For without you I would be dead now.”

She frowns. “You must not say that. I did not save your life, only brought down the fever.” She repeats quietly, “You should be careful, though; water is not good for you.” She starts to stand. “I—I have to go now.”

I stand up too, and before I have thought about it, I put out a hand—to help her up, to say good-bye, to get her to stay, for I still have things to say: to apologize for my rudeness, my misjudgments. But she pulls away from the touch almost as I reach her, though more gently than she might have done before, as if she is as unsure of me now as I am of her. I can feel it in the way she moves, in the little laugh she gives, the tilt of her head. What is she thinking now? Surely I cannot be the only one who remembers the way she held me and the soft river of words?

“Well, good-bye then, Bucino,” she says, face bright, lips slightly parted on the smile. “Stay well.”

“I will. Good-bye.”

 

I watch her move down the steps and make her way back carefully across the side of the square and into her street. I sit for a while staring into the madness of the crowd. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes pass, and then a man sees me and raises his arm and starts to make his way over. But I am not interested in new friends, especially ones made sociable on
teriaca.
I am into the melee before he can reach me. I take the same corner that she did. And the next. I am going to her house again. Will I stand in front of the door and knock once more? I have no idea. I am too busy walking.