In the Company of the Courtesan (10 page)

“Until they get you between the sheets.”

“Ah, that's where La Draga comes in. She has a trick”—she is laughing now, so I don't know if this is sport or not—“for women who need to fool their husbands on their wedding night. A plug made with gum alum, turpentine, and pigs' blood. Imagine that! Instant virginity. See—I told you you would like her. It's a shame you aren't taller with less stubble. We could dress you to play my mother.” But we are both laughing now. “As it is, they'd have to go through Meragosa, and I'd lose the highest bidder before they even got halfway up the stairs…. Oh, Bucino, you should have seen the look in your eyes. I do believe that I took you in for a moment. Though I am not saying I couldn't do it, you understand…. Oh, it is an age since I have fooled you so well.”

There were times in Rome—when the money was flowing and when the wit in our house was such that it was the best place to spend an evening even if you didn't end up sleeping with the hostess—when we had laughed until the tears rolled down our faces. For all its corruption and hypocrisy, the city was a magnet for clever, ambitious men: writers who could use words to charm their way under women's skirts or to launch satires as deadly as a hail of arrows into their enemy's reputation, artists with the talent to turn empty ceilings into visions of Heaven, with Madonnas as beautiful as any whores rising out of the clouds. I have never known such excitement as when I was around them, and though we are alive when so many of them are dead, I still miss it dreadfully.

“What are you thinking?”

“Nothing…Of the past.”

“You still don't like it here, do you?”

I shake my head. But I keep my eyes somewhere else.

“It doesn't smell so bad now.”

“No.”

“And with the ships in and my looks back, we can make things work for us.”

“Yes.”

“There are people who think Venice is the most wonderful city on earth.”

“I know,” I say. “I've met them.”

“No you haven't. You've met the ones who boast about it because it makes them rich. But they don't really understand its beauty.” She looks out over the sea for a moment, her eyes squinting in the sunlight. “You know what is wrong with you, Bucino? You live with your eyes too close to the ground.”

“It's because I'm a dwarf,” I say, with an irritation that surprises me. “And it stops me from getting my feet wet.”

“Ah. Water again.”

I shrug. “You don't like men with big bellies, I don't like water.”

“Yes, but when they come with purses the same size as their paunches, I get over it quickly enough. I can't make the water go away, Bucino. It
is
the city.”

“I know that.”

“So perhaps you have to learn to look at it differently.”

I shake my head.

She pushes herself against me playfully. “Try it now. Look at it. There—in front of you.”

I look. A wind has come up under the sun and is cutting the surface into fitful waves. If I were a fisherman and saw a man walking toward me over it now, I would surely lay down my net and go with him. Even if his Church did end up selling pardons to the rich and damning the poor.

“See how the light and the wind move over it, so that the whole surface shimmers? Now, think about the city. Imagine all those rich houses with their inlays and frescoes, or the great mosaics on San Marco. Every one of them is made from a thousand tiny fragments of colored glass, though of course you don't notice that when you first see them because your eye makes the picture whole.

“Now look back at the water again. Squeeze your eyes, tight. See? It's the same, yes? A surface made up of millions of fragments of water lit by the sun. And it's not only the sea. Think of the canals, the way the houses are reflected in them, still, perfect, like images in a mirror; only, when the wind blows or a boat goes by, the image breaks and trembles. I don't know when I first saw it—I must have been a child, because I was allowed to walk out with my mother or Meragosa sometimes—but I can still remember the thrill of it. Suddenly Venice wasn't solid at all, just made up of pieces, fragments of glass, water, and light.

“My mother thought there was something wrong with my eyes, because I kept squinting as we walked. I tried to explain it, but she didn't understand. Her eyes were always focused on what was in front of her. She had no time for frills or fancies. For years I thought I was the only one who could see it. As if it was my secret. Then, when I was thirteen and started to bleed, she put me into the convent to learn decorum and protect my precious gum alum, and suddenly it was all taken away from me. No water, no sunlight. Instead, everywhere I looked there was only stone and brick and high walls. For the longest time I felt as if I'd been buried alive.” She pauses. “I felt the same thing when we first went to Rome.”

I stare out over the sea. We used to talk together about all manner of things, she and I: the price of pearls, the rise or fall of a rival, the wages of sin, the judgment of God, and the wonder of how two paupers like us came to find themselves invited to the feast. If I had been born full-size with a purse as big as my prick, it would have been her brain as much as her body that ensnared me. But, as she often tells me, I am more a woman than a man in some things.

A small fleet of boats are making their way across from Murano to the north shore, their hulls splashes of solid black in a multicolored sea. She is right, of course: once you look hard enough, the surface is its own mosaic, each and every fragment a sparkling mix of water and light.

But that still doesn't mean you can't drown in it. “How long did it take you to get used to it?” I ask grimly.

She laughs and shakes her head. “From what I remember, I don't think I began to feel better until the money started flowing in.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The world becomes busier as we move back into town. We pass noisy knots of men, some laborers, some youngbloods in embroidered jackets with legs as colorful as the striped mooring poles in the Grand Canal. My lady keeps her body covered and her head well down, but neither of us can miss a rising excitement in the air. For a city known for its sense of order, Venice also understands the need for release. There have been so many feast days since we got here that I am beginning to lose count of the saints we have celebrated. By nightfall the Piazza San Marco will be heaving. Though it is too early for street mayhem yet.

As we turn in to the Campo Santa Maria Nova, I hear the rush of the feet too late, and they hit us head-on. The impact hurls me against the wall, knocking my breath out at the same instant as I see her lose her balance and sprawl onto the cobblestones. The men are so intent on their destination they don't even pause to register the damage. But halfway across the
campo,
a Turk in turban and flowing green robes has watched it happening, and before I can recover myself, he is at her side, solicitous for her welfare.

Her cloak is half off, her hood has fallen from her head, and as he raises her from the ground, I watch their eyes meet and I know that she will not be able to resist the challenge.

If there were not so many rules to hinder them, I think that men would look at women all the time. Once there is food enough in one's stomach, what else is there to do in life? You see it every day with women in the market or on the streets: the way men's eyes fix on them, like iron snapping onto a magnet, scooping their breasts out of their bodices, lifting petticoats and parting shifts, savoring thighs and bellies, burrowing into the beard that hides the moist little pleat beneath. Whatever the priests may tell you about the Devil, for most men it is so natural that it is like a second language, chattering away under the surface of life, louder than prayer, louder even than the promise of salvation. And while I may be small, I am as fluent in its vocabulary as any man twice my size.

So I also understand something of the thrill a man might feel if such a moment were to be reversed and a woman were to look at a man in the same way. In all my years, the only women I have ever seen do it with conviction are either drunk or professional. And while most men, if they were honest, would not refuse either, if they had the choice they would surely take the second, for it is only women like my lady who make the idea of desire as much a thing of joy and mischief as of sin and desperation.

Or such has been my observation of Christian men. As to the effect of her talent on a heathen—well, I have never seen it until now, though the gossip on the street is that the Turks are so jealous of their women that they do not even allow their painters to put their likenesses onto canvas in case their beauty should inflame other men. Which, if you think about it, would suggest that they are as susceptible to temptation as any men, regardless of creed.

By the time I get my breath back, it is over. They are standing, facing each other: she smiling, sweet now rather than coquettish, her hand on her breast, protecting and exposing the paleness of her skin underneath, while he, dark eyes in a dark face, is still looking, his attention as fierce as a bright ray of sunlight. Her skills work, it seems, with heathens too.

“Are you hurt, my lady?” I say loudly, shouldering my way into the magic circle and kicking her in the shin somewhat more sharply than I had intended.

“Ah! Oh, no, I am quite fine. This courteous gentleman—er…?” She stops.

“Abdullah Pashna. From Istanbul, or Constantinople, as you still call it.” And while there are no doubt as many Pashnas in Constantinople as you might find Corners or Loredans in Venice, the name comes laden with mystery. “At your service, Madam…?”

“Fiammetta Bia—”

“If you are well, then we are late,” I interrupt rudely. I look up at him. “Sorry, Magnifice Pashna, but my lady is due at the convent.” And I hit the word hard. “To visit her sisters.”

To my disgust, his look is more amused than aggrieved. “Then I will accompany you both to the door. Your fellow Venetians are fighting one another on a bridge in the Cannaregio, and the city has gone mad to see the show.”

“Thanks. But we prefer to go alone.”

“Is that your opinion too, my lady Bia—?”

“Bianchini.” She enunciates carefully. “Oh, you're very kind, sir,” she goes on, her voice like a feather over skin. “But it is probably better that I travel with my servant.”

He stares at us both, then turns and gives her a little bow, holding out his hand. The wild scent of ambergris from his glove rises up to torment us with its price tag. I feel her waver, and if there were not a risk of crippling her, I might kick her again. But she holds firm.

“Then I will let you go alone.” He drops his hand. “Though for a man as homesick as I am, a woman of such beauty and a dwarf of such…perfect proportion and passion bring rare warmth to my heart. I have a house off the Grand Canal, near Campo San Polo. Perhaps on another occasion, when you do not have your ‘sisters' to visit, you might—”

“Thank you, but—” I break in.

“We might indeed,” she adds sweetly.

I pull her away, and we walk carefully across the square, his eyes on our backs until we move around the corner into another alley. Once we are far enough away, I turn on her.

“How could—”

“Ah, Bucino, don't lecture me. You smelled those gloves. That was no ordinary Turkish merchant.”

“And you are no ordinary whore, to pick up men on the streets. What would you have done? Taken him back to your bedroom and had me creep in and steal his jewelry?…That would have been the end of it then and there.”

“Oh, it was safe enough sport. He was as eager to get to the fight as the rest of them. I wouldn't have done it if he hadn't been. But you have to admit, we had him, Bucino. With no hair and someone else's dress on, we still had him.”

“Yes,” I say. “We had him.”

 

The house sleeps early tonight. In the kitchen, Meragosa is wedged into the broken chair by the stove, a grumbling snore coming from her open mouth—a pose to which she is becoming accustomed as her stomach grows rounder on our savings. While I cannot swear to it, I suspect that these last few weeks she has been creaming off a few scudi from each shopping purse, but I have had better things to do than watch her every move, and until we are ready to fend for ourselves, the devil we know is the one we have to live with.

Upstairs, my lady lies buried beneath the coverlet. She often sleeps this way now, her head and face covered as if, even in sleep, she is protecting herself against attack. But while I am tired enough, my spirit is jumpy with the excitement of the day, and from the window there is a glow to the south, where the city is celebrating. I slip a few coins from the purse between the slats of the bed and head to the streets toward San Marco.

Though I would not admit it freely, the city still sends shivers into my soul at night. By daylight I have trained myself to walk the narrowest of the canal
fondamenta
without fear of falling in. But after sunset, the city shifts closer to nightmare. In Hell the boiling oil at least has smoke rising off it, but on nights with no moon and few lamps, there is little here to tell black water from black stone, and in the darkness sound moves differently, so that voices which start by moving toward you end up surprising you at your back. Since many of the bridge parapets are higher than my nose and most windows start above my head, any journey after dark is like running through swerving tunnels, and there are moments when the water comes loud on all sides and my heartbeat interferes with my sense of direction. I move fast, keeping tight to the walls, where my companions are rats, who scurry head to tail like links in a chain. The only consolation is that, while they look fierce enough, I know them to be as scared of me as I am of them.

Tonight, at least, I am not alone on the streets, and by the time I reach the Merceria, I am merged into a stream of figures pulled like moths toward the lights of the great piazza.

In general I am not much prone to wonder. I leave that to those who have the time and the stature. Heaven is too far above my head for me to be able to detect even a shadow of it, and what others see as great architecture usually gives me a crick in my neck. In fact, there were times before I realized how easy it was to die when the great Basilica of San Marco would have been an opportunity more for crime than for wonder, since any crowd of pilgrims busy gaping upward would have offered instant pickings for a dwarf with fast hands. But I am a respectable citizen now, and I value my lumpy flesh too much to risk having bits of it strung up between the Pillars of Justice, and while the Roman in me still finds the basilica's fat domes and Byzantine gaudiness too rich for my classical stomach, I have seen how its splendor puts the fear of God—and of the power of the Venetian empire—into all those who come to wonder at it.

As for me? Well, I am fonder of the more humble stone carvings around the columns of the Doge's Palace in the
piazzetta
nearby. Not only are they low enough for me to see but the stories they tell are more about real life: bowls of fruit so lifelike that the fig skins look about to burst open; a dog with startled eyes crunching on a mouthful of honeycomb with the bees still buzzing in it; and my favorite, the story of a man courting a woman, goes all the way around the column, even—after marriage—into bed, where they lie wrapped together under a stone sheet, her hair cascading in hard, frizzy waves across the pillow. When I was young, my father, who was so shocked by my shape that for some years he assumed I was an imbecile, once gave me a piece of wood and a small whittling knife in the hope that God might have put talent in my thumb. I daresay he was thinking of the stories of the great Florentine artists who were discovered in the countryside chipping Madonnas out of road stones. All I did was gouge a piece out of my finger. But I could remember the Latin name of the salve the doctor gave us to stanch the wound, and by the end of the day I ended up in my father's study with a pile of books in front of me. I would probably be there still if he hadn't died six years later.

But there is no room for maudlin thoughts, not tonight; the place I walk toward now is filled with pleasure, bursting with people and noise, and lit by so many firebrands and candle lamps that the basilica's high old mosaics glow fiercely in the firelight.

 

I cut in from the northeast. I have a healthy fear of crowds (we dwarves are as vulnerable as children in mobs and are more likely to die underfoot than in our own beds), but I know this one will be worth it, and I thrust my way quickly through until I am near a stage built in front of the basilica. A group of half-naked, blackened devils are prancing around, yelling obscenities and poking pitchforks at one another and into the crowd, until every now and then a spout of flame leaps up from a hole in the floor and one of them is pulled screaming and shouting down through a trapdoor nearby, only to clamber back onto the stage a few minutes later to boost the throng. Behind them under the north loggia, a choir of smooth-faced castrati is singing like a host of angels, only someone has built their platform too close to the dogfighting pen, and their voices are half drowned by the frenzied howling of the animals waiting for their turn to die. Meanwhile, on the other side, in a built-up pit of sand, a man and two large women are wrestling as a crowd cheers them on and occasionally joins in.

From every window around the piazza, there are tapestries and banners of arms unfurled and hanging, and the open spaces are crammed with young noblewomen, dressed as if they were going to their own weddings, so that when you look up it feels as if the whole city has let down its hair and is showing off to the crowd. Gangs of bright-stockinged young men are gathered underneath, yelling up to them, while an old man parades back and forth through the crowd, a wooden prick the size of a club poking out from his velvet cloak, gleefully showing off his wares to anyone who cares to look.

I skirt around the edge of the crowd and buy some sugared fruits from a stall in the
piazzetta
near my beloved columns, where the butchers and salami makers have their stalls during the day. The great wharf at the end is filled with long ships, their masts all dotted with hanging lamps so that it looks as if the very sea is lit up. Everywhere you look there are flags of the great lion of Saint Mark, and in front of the two Pillars of Justice, a troupe of acrobats is forming a human pyramid four stories high to be finished off with a dwarf on its top. They have set poles with firebrands all around so the spectacle is well lit, and the first three tiers are already complete. I worm my way forward, and the spectators, taking me to be one of the performers, push and manhandle me gleefully to the front. The final two men are scaling their way up now, cautious, like young cats, while at the side the dwarf is perched on the shoulders of another single acrobat, waiting for his turn.

When the top tier is secure, the two of them move over to the pyramid, the dwarf waving to the crowd and swaying dramatically as if he is already about to fall. He is dressed in silver and red, and if anything he is even smaller than I, though his head is better proportioned, which makes him less ugly, and he has a wicked grin. He hooks himself onto the back of the existing second story. In the torchlight, you can see the sweat on their bodies and the twitching of the muscles as they strain to hold the geometry in shape against his extra weight. He stills himself for a moment before starting to clamber higher. While the street is full of performances that are made to look harder than they are, this is not one of them. A fit dwarf may be able to do all kinds of things that another man cannot, like squatting on his heels for hours or getting up from sitting on the ground without using his hands (you would be surprised how people delight in watching me repeat this simplest of movements), but once we are standing, our leg bones are too short to allow much flexibility. Because of this, we make bad acrobats but excellent clowns, and for that reason we are more fun to watch.