In the Company of the Courtesan (20 page)

“Traitors!” Aretino's voice whistles above my head. “Come back here, both of you. You are peasants without souls. Look around you. The greatest city in Paradise is waking up and bringing the world to your doorstep. We'll buy bread from the market, fish from the boats, and drink ourselves stupid into the morning.”

“Not tonight, Pietro.” She waves her hand up to him as we make our way onto the boat. “Go to bed. We will come and visit when we have our house.”

“You'd better! And bring me those engravings to look at, you poxy dwarf.”

The traders on the water are watching the performance now, and they whoop and gesture as my lady climbs back into the cabin. The Saracen, who no doubt has seen it all before, offers me his hand as I stumble my way onto the bench close by. I thank him and let the Turk's purse rattle a little on my belt so that he knows his night will be worthwhile too. Inside the cabin, my lady leans her head back against the rumpled cushions and closes her eyes as he steers the gondola smoothly out into the current, weaving us through the rising noise and hustle of a Venetian morning, heading for home.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Venice, mid-1530s

On Thursday, my lady takes no visitors, for she is busy about her beauty. She rises at first light, and with the help of her maid, Gabriella, sets about washing her hair. After the first soaping, Gabriella massages her scalp for half an hour with a cedar paste to encourage new growth and then rinses it twice in waters made from boiled vine stock with barley straw and crushed licorice root to bring out the highlights and make it shine. It is grown to her waist again now, and while it has never quite regained its first glorious weight, it is fine enough for those who did not know her then, and the color still runs rich with seams of honey and gold, which light up as it dries, resting like a cloak over the edge of a high chair where she sits with her back to the morning sun. She uses the hours it takes to dry to have Gabriella pluck her hairline so that her forehead is high and clear. Around midmorning La Draga arrives with a series of freshly made ointments, including a special bleaching paste that she herself applies to my lady's face and neck and shoulders. I asked her once about its ingredients, and she told me it includes bean flour, mercury, dove entrails, camphor, and egg white, but in what proportions and with what other refinements I have no idea, since she keeps such information as guarded as any state secret. Whatever is left over from the paste, I keep the pot in my room in case of substitution or theft, for you would be amazed by the espionage of beauty among the courtesan community. (For a woman with no eyes, La Draga has proved herself a veritable miracle worker in the business of beauty, so that no one—least of all myself—can begrudge her a regular place in our household now.)

When the mask is removed—an hour and half is too short, and two hours too long—my lady's skin is red and sometimes even blotchy, and Gabriella soothes it with cucumber water and warm towels. She spends the early afternoon seeing her dressmaker, practicing the lute, and memorizing some verses. To cleanse her stomach, she drinks only vinegared water prepared by the cook, and before her afternoon sleep she brushes a thicker bleaching paste with rosemary onto her teeth, rubs her gums with mint, and treats her eyes with drops of witch hazel water to moisten and highlight the whites. She is woken at eight, has Gabriella dress and set her hair, and lightly powders her skin, which is now white and smooth as unveined marble, and thus she steps out into the world ready for the night.

In the Arsenale, where no visiting is allowed but about which there are countless stories, there is apparently a great canal bounded by storehouses on either side and manned by hundreds of workers. When a ship is to be launched, it moves slowly along this wet dock, and at every stage through its windows and onto its decks it is fitted out: cordage, mortars, gunpowder, arms, oars, hourglasses, compasses, maps, and provisions, down to its barrels of wine and fresh bread. In this way, within a single working day, from the first Marangona bell to the last, a great Venetian vessel is made ready for the sea. I think of this sometimes while I watch my lady attending to the construction of herself, for while ours is a smaller business, in our way we too fit out a vessel, all of us equally committed and focused on its demands.

As to our house…well, it is fine enough. Not on the Grand Canal itself but nearby, in San Polo, to one end of a wide stretch of waterway between Campo San Toma and San Pantalon. Our
piano nobile
is washed by the morning sun, which makes it cooler during summer evenings, when we do a great deal of entertaining, and we have a view over sparkling water with no close neighbors to hook their noses into our business.

Inside, our
portego
is spacious and elegant, its walls covered with the best secondhand tapestries and silk and leather hangings; while in my lady's room, her built-in walnut bed is encased in gold-veined curtains, with linen as white and crisp as a fresh snowdrift. For the first few months, this piece of furniture was the exclusive domain of our soap merchant, in whose company she would also read poetry (unfortunately, most often his own) and run occasional soirees for men of letters and trade where everyone talked literature, art, and money. It was only common sense that, as her reputation grew, she should take on extra customers, for exclusivity always breeds competition, and the business of desire is so fickle that even the best purses go home after a while. When faced with other suitors, Treviso's ardor first grew sharper with jealousy and then became as insecure as his rhyming schemes, so that by the time they parted company, we were already firmly established with other patrons.

As well as Gabriella (a sweet-faced young girl from Torcello, with few airs to match her graces), our household now includes Marcello, our own Saracen boatman, and Mauro, the cook, who reminds me of Baldesar only in the fact that the more he moans the better his food tastes. He and I go daily to the Rialto, which I rank as one of my great pleasures, for in Venice, with respectable women kept indoors, shopping is a trade for men, and these days I am someone in the markets. The early crowds can be fierce, but Mauro's bulk and my purse elevate me above the worst of the crush. The stall owners know us and save us the best cuts or the finest fish, for our kitchen has a reputation that almost rivals my lady's. “Signor Bucino!” I hear their voices calling me. They treat me politely, with an almost exaggerated deference, squatting down in front of me sometimes to point out the shining freshness of a particular fish they have put aside for me. I do not mind their mockery. It is gentle enough, and more palatable than being insulted or ignored.

This fish market is its own Venetian wonder, sitting on the edge of the canal under a high loggia with drains dug under the grilles into the stone floor, so that even in the worst heat they keep the fish watered and cool. I have seen slabs of ocean fish here so thick and scaly-tailed that you can almost trace the line where the fishermen might have sliced off the body of a mermaid at its waist. When the full purses are gone, there are always pickings for the poor, who loiter by the edges ready to grab the innards or discarded heads as they're washed into the water, though they have to fight with the seagulls, which swoop in to land, big as well-fed babies and twice as noisy, their beaks sharp as hammered nails. You can hear their screeching all the way to the San Marco, and I've seen half a dozen senators streaked with bird shit as the gulls let out the remains of yesterday's meal to make room for the next one.

One of those senators will be gracing our casa tonight, and it is his dinner that I am buying now, for he has a passion for roasted fish and meat in rich sauces. He is the jewel in our crown, a colored Crow (for a senator's robes are dark red), as noble as they come; one of the Loredan family, which can trace its ancestry back to the ninth century, as he has told me more than once. He is a member of the Senate, has been on many of the state's most important committees, and until recently was one of the Council of Ten, which is the nearest Venice comes to an inner sanctum of power. He wears these honors heavily. Indeed, he is a fellow of unparalleled pomposity, his jowls as weighty as his business, but he is our chief prize, for he has status and influence, and every good courtesan needs both in her portfolio (not least because, as a state, Venice has the tendency to be prim and censorious, and the better you know those who run it, the more easily you can predict their moods before they have them). He comes every Tuesday and Friday night. We usually entertain him alone, as members of the government are not allowed to fraternize with the citizen class, though this rule, along with every other in this great state, is as bent as the course of its waterways, and my lady much prefers company: “That way he can bore other people and I can be sure to stay awake until I have to go to bed with him. You have no idea, Bucino, how tedious power makes some men.”

 

I leave the cook to haggle and make my way back across the bridge to a tavern near the German Fondaco where they fry the morning fish in a batter so light and fresh that your taste buds confuse the sweet and savory and where the watered malmsey (an acquired taste, but my tooth has grown sweeter with age) is fresh out of barrels shipped from Cyprus. Early on I made it my business here to give tips as large as I am small to the growling proprietor, and now I have a seat of my own at a table near the door with its own bolster cushion, which I retrieve daily from behind the bar. In this way I sit as tall as any man and join in the latest gossip.

This morning the talk is all of an impromptu bridge battle that erupted yesterday on the Ponte dei Pugni, near Campo Santa Margherita, in which the Castellani Arsenale workers inflicted a savage defeat on the Nicolotti fishermen. It is festival time again: the great feast of the Ascension, when Venice celebrates her annual marriage to the sea and for a while the art of street fighting becomes a national sport. When the Turk was still living in the city, he had been as good as his word and sometimes bought a place for me with him on the pontoon to watch such battles (the company of my deformity was evidently more pleasing to him than to my native Italians). But he left for Constantinople more than a year ago, and since then I have not risked the crowds alone.

I glance up from my conversation and, through a gap in the crush, find myself looking straight into the eyes of a man a few tables away: a merchant, well dressed with a new hat, cloak, and nicely turned velvet jacket; and though there is something familiar enough about him, I have no idea who he is. But he, it seems, knows me, for he keeps on staring. A visiting client? Surely not. My memory is near perfect when it comes to business, and I have not taken a purse from him, or heard his moans through the walls of our casa. He stands and carefully makes his way toward me through the crowd.

“We know each other, I think.”

The voice is the true man. But my God, he is changed. The dangling curls and cap are gone, and the chin is freshly shaved. Even his walk seems taller. If one did not know, one might think he was a trader from Spain or Greece, for the Greeks have a great community in the city and there is talk that they will get their own church soon enough. Though where this man would worship I can only wonder, for while he is in some ways the very picture of a Christian gentleman, I know him to be a Jew.

“It is Signor Teodoldi, yes?” And one who after all these years still remembers my name. Well, why not? He saw me write it on enough bonds in that darkened little office in the Ghetto where I pawned our jewels a lifetime ago.

A big man standing close to us gives a small grunt, which I ignore.

“Yes, I am he.”

“I was not sure at first. You look different.”

“Not as different as you,” I say bluntly.

“Ah! Indeed. I should introduce myself.” He sits and holds out his hand. “My name is Lelio da Modena. Taken after the city I was born in.” He hesitates. “Though I was once known as Chaim Colon.”

The man is leaning over our table now and gives out a great guffaw, spewing out some venom on the gross corruption of deformity. A few heads turn. But he is marked by the stench of beer and, more important, poverty, which sits ill against the cut of our cloth, and when his taunts get him nowhere, he lunges off into the crowd muttering. We have both suffered worse, and it is a statement of our present status to be the ones who remain at the table.

“So. You are converted?” I say, and he must hear the wonder in my voice.

“Yes. I am converted.” His voice is clear and emphatic. “I left the Ghetto three years ago. I am a baptized Christian now.”

“And a successful one at that.”

“I have been fortunate.” He gives a small smile, which feels uncomfortable on him. He always had the air of a too serious man about him, and the change of faith has not made him any lighter. “I was able to use my skills for the cutting and selling of precious stones as a jewel merchant. But you—you also have done well.”

“Not bad,” I say.

“It is your lady's business?”

“Yes. My lady's business.” And I suspect we are both now thinking of certain images in a certain book which once so appalled a Jewish pawnbroker that he could hardly bring himself to talk to its owner, but which might perhaps be more acceptable to a more worldly Christian businessman.

A gong sounds from behind the bar. “Ah, I must go,” he says. It is too noisy inside to hear the morning Marangona, and so they must repeat it to make sure the city is ready for work. “I am due at a meeting near the Arsenale. Oh, but this is God's fortune to have found you. I was hoping I might see you again.”

“Really?” And I feel again his fury and fear as he pushed the door closed in my face. “I thought you were pleased to be rid of me.”

“Well…I—It was a long time ago. I was…” He is clearly embarrassed. “Look, I must go. But I would like…I mean…if…”

“We live at Casa Trevelli near San Pantalon. Fiammetta Bianchini's house. It is well enough known in the area. I am there most afternoons and evenings.”

“Thank you.” He is up now and shaking my hand. “I am due to leave Venice in a few days. For the Indies. But if I can come before, I will.”

“You will be welcome.” I shrug. And why not? We cater to all people. Well, all people except Jews, that is. As far as I know, there is no law in the city against a courtesan entertaining a convert, assuming his purse is big enough, though as I watch him disappear into the throng, I feel somehow disappointed that he of all people should be so changed.

 

Still, the encounter makes for a good story, and I have honed it perfectly by the time I reach home. My thunder is stolen by the chaos I find there. On the nearby bridge, a crowd is watching as a dozen workmen on a large barge roll up ropes and pieces of cloth while shouting and laughter bounce out over the water from our
piano nobile
above.

I go up the stairs fast (wealth makes for shallower steps, which are better for smaller legs) and at the corner collide with La Draga coming down, though as always her ears are sharper than my eyes, and she grabs the stone banister to protect herself. She stays standing, but her bag flies open in her hand, a thick glass vial jumping out and hitting the step beneath.