Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) (17 page)

Florio and Massimo cornered him in the warehouse. They said: You've got luck, brother; there's no denying that.

Jovo Cirtovich replied nothing.

Brother, they said, we've been talking. It seems you've kept Father's legacy for yourself—

Watch what you say. Haven't I given you bastards money and ships?

We praise you for that. But treasure comes easily to you. The other day Lazzaro brought up a certain point. You see, we've come to believe that what Father left you—

Measure a wolf's tail once he's dead, said Jovo Cirtovich. Now get out.

Again and again, Jovo Cirtovich asked his only friend whether he ought to show the treasure to Tanya. What was he to do with her anyhow? None of his sons possessed her aptitude, but how could a woman command ships? A little shyly, Vasojevic said: It might be given unto her to petition him. She's a good girl, so sweet and so religious; if she said to him,
sainted Lazar, please return to us,
how could he deny her?— You're too kind, said his master, smiling a little, because he believed every bit of it. And then the grimaces of care remasked both their faces, so that any stranger might have said: Two more refugees from the Turks!— But schools of gold ducats swam in; they were more successful every year. Better still, Cirtovich now decoded that papyrus from Heracleopolis,
acquired on Vasojevic's second voyage to Egypt, for a trifling price. Recognizing from the idiosyncratic excellence of the handwriting the geometer called High-Seeing, whose observations had been verified by Ptolemy, and being further reassured by the perfect errorlessness in the Greek, not to mention the later addition of a very specific critical sign before the lemma, which implied that some other careful intelligence had found the treatise worth considering in detail, Cirtovich saw fit to trust it as corroboration of what he had formerly merely hoped for: Nearly every voyage became possible. The night skies were dangerous, to be sure, but certain vibrating chords could speed a ship from orbit to orbit; then there were starry tangent courses, and a spiral way, inhabited by a kind of current, which passed through all the Spheres. The mind that believed itself condemned to a stationary or isolated existence committed a crime against itself. No reason remained not to dare ever higher. That night in the warehouse the two friends quaffed a bottle of Friulian wine, dreaming aloud about stars. Feeling quizzical, the master laid down the dark-glass on one of their astrological maps. The topic had turned to Jupiter, whose inhabitants, wrote High-Seeing, had invented a red fire of superlunary potency. The Great Red Spot was their work. The man who obtained some of this stuff would be invincible in war. So those two rode their hobbyhorse, and envisioned liberating Serbia forever. All the while their companion lay watching them with its electric-blue eye. Sometimes it glowed all through its body, and ever so often it uttered pinpricks of radiance. Rising suddenly, Vasojevic said, upraising his hand like Saint Mikhail: If I ever saw any such monster on the high seas, I'd take an axe to its arms!— Careful, my friend, murmured Jovo Cirtovich.

It was Vasojevic who first proposed (having dreamed strangely, about some distressed ship seeking to forge over a sandbar) that they might be imperiled or polluted, not by their end, of course, but by their means.— No, said his master. We're getting old, so the world draws in; that's all. Everything seems uglier as we age.

But why?

They watched each other carefully, to discover how well they slept.

On one occasion, as the two men completed the conveyance of a certain trunk from a fallen favorite of the Sultan to a hireling of the Holy Roman Empire, having rented a stevedore's skiff, they were rowing
toward the Ponterosso when Vasojevic's gratitude came out; one of Cirtovich's rivals (I think it was Luca Morelli) stood up at the extreme edge of the working half-bridge of little boats attached to the stone slab on the west side of the Canal Grande, shading his eyes with his hands as he gazed after them: to starboard there was Vasojevic in the red cloak, his silhouetted oar wounding the skiff's reflection in the blue-black water, while to port sat Cirtovich, himself entirely a shadow, as was his side of the boat; and they passed beneath the Ponterosso without looking back, while on the east side of the canal, obscure within the dark crowd of beggars, idlers, prostitutes, and those who waited for their men to come home (not to mention Cirtovich's brothers outstretching their longfingered hands), the consignee, which is to say the hireling, drifted slowly toward the sail-furled, forest-masted ships, where on the third gangway he was supposed to receive delivery, all parties well aware that their meeting, once accomplished, would be no more a secret, although since he had prepared, in Cirtovichian fashion, a closed carriage, any reaction of the Triestini would comprise a negligible quantity; and just before they emerged from the Ponterosso's shadow, the two Serbs, sensing the observation of the man on the bridge of boats behind them, turned not toward him, but, being discreet men, toward each other; and in that instant the work of the thing in the neck-pouch advanced itself: Each found horror in the other's sight, and knew it. After that, were they friends? They would have said so.

Nicola was home from sea; he had gone cruising with Stefano, and even seen a hundred-cannon English ship with her long bowsprit-proboscis rigged out in glory; Stefano called him a good boy, brave, intelligent and quick to work, but perhaps too softhearted. Nor did he have his father's luck with winds. Then Vasojevic was absent for a year, during which time his master's eldest daughter Nada died in childbirth—a clear case of strangulation of the womb. Marija Cirtovich mourned extremely over this, and travelled to Serbia in a closed ship, together with Massimo's elder maidservant Ivica, Srdjana being needed to keep house in Trieste. Marija's husband, although he uttered both tears and prayers, had no leisure to visit Nada's grave. On that gloomy voyage Florio was the
captain, since he had failed to clear a profit on a cargo of Caribbean sugar, which even Captain Robert (may he count his teeth on the palm of his hand!) could have sold for a profit, and so Jovo thought it best to set him something easy to do. So he commended Marija to Florio's care, along with several well-chosen bereavement gifts for the widower's family, who, truth to tell, had already put that grief behind them, since they were preparing to assassinate a certain Turkish bey of exceptional cruelty. As for Jovo Cirtovich, while he cherished a mild partiality toward their lurid doings, these could accomplish but the merest local effect; he preferred to command and underwrite Vasojevic's voyage, which had been intended to establish the coordinates of that singing chord which runs down the earth, parallel to the Longitude of Death, and on which there lies a certain island where a white boulder stands out on white scree. Beneath this boulder hides a chest (or possibly a human-headed cremation urn), and within this, they say, lies an object especially esteemed by Jesus Christ the Victor.— While Marija was absent, he grew still closer to Tanya, dreaming less about his ten-armed angel, which could emit either black or white ink from the funnel in its head. Again and again, he despairingly appraised his children. Now that Veljko had grown older, he could no longer deny that this third son of his resembled steel badly forged. Aside from Tanya, the daughters were no more or less than he had expected them to be.

One day he was down at the harbor, that gently panting beast whose fur was the masts of ships, where one of Stefano's sons informed him that Marija was nearly home; Florio had sent tidings from Ragusa. He thanked the young man. Now was surely the moment to instruct Tanya, as indeed he might have done, were it not for the dark-glass demon's warnings, which reminded him of a crow cawing just before the rain comes.

Srdjana came running to kiss his wife's hand, with many thanks to the saints for her return. Marija had gone entirely grey. It seemed unlikely that she had ever been a slender young woman breasted like an hourglass. Jovo Cirtovich greeted her affectionately enough. Within the hour he overheard her confiding to Florio that someone must have cast the evil eye upon her husband.

The triumphs which he had once expected for himself might yet be
accomplished, if and only if the center of the Sphere of Spirits corresponded to the center of this earth. (How foolish and useless to seek the Sphere of Fixed Stars before exploring the Sphere of Skulls!) Tanyotchka had caught up with all that month's accounts, so to gratify her, he watched her calculate the distance from the center of the earth to Saturn, which she accomplished very nicely by means of arcs and chords, according to the new method which he and Vasojevic had discovered. Marija and the other daughters were carding wool. His wife looked ancient; his pity became guilt, so that she made him feel all the more lonely. But Tanya . . . Again he asked himself whether he should have listened to Marija, and confined the girl to female work. But it was to Tanya if anyone that he'd hand over his father's bequest. Massimo had now come right out and asked him for it—but Jovo Cirtovich disagreed with his brothers about many things, not least the magnitude although not the injustice of the Turkish terror. Massimo would use the treasure for revenge, in the service of Death the Huntsman; worse yet, he'd call that liberation. Sometimes Jovo Cirtovich grew melancholy without cause, and sought out one or another of his brothers, although he would never meet them at the “Heaven's Key” tavern. Whenever they exhausted their words, which occurred quickly among these hardheaded men, they spoke admiringly of their late father. None admitted that they had feared him, in part because none could have said why, for hadn't they themselves made a bloodily brutal crew, as the uncles still did in Serbia? Jovo Cirtovich, the head of that family, kept silent. He felt sure that had their father now come striding out of darkness, with dark clots of blood falling from his pale breast, he alone would not have fled. So he stared down his brothers, smiling bitterly, longing to get back to his accounts. Friulian wine was becoming still more profitable in Russia; wax prices were falling; from Tartaria he could buy four magic scrolls for the price of three. And his brothers read his disregard, and hated him. On Saint Lazar's Day he strung silver coins around their daughters' necks.— As for his sons, too clearly he perceived that they were obedient but feeble, even Vuk, the most aggressive, who lacked the faith and daring to cast his ducats upon the waters—nothing to hope for there. Nicola, the rightful heir, was too greedy; Alexander remained yet young for judgment. Only Tanya possessed the mind and spirit to use his dark-glass properly. (She said:
Father, I need to finish weaving this cloth or Mother will be angry.) So far as he could see, the whole business remained on his shoulders. Commending Marija and the children to the saints, he accordingly made one of his own rare voyages, this time merely to Bar, where he closeted himself with a Father Anzulovic, who was said to know more than anyone about the posthumous doings of our sainted Lazar. Cirtovich poured out Friulian wine, and the priest proposed a toast to the destruction of the Turks, may the earth pursue them and the sea vomit them up!— The guest raised his glass in silence. Frowning, Father Anzulovic urged him to ride to Kosovo. Lazar's sword, which would facilitate the deed proposed, was certainly beneath the threshold of the Red Mosque, as a holy document now proved. A brave man could do anything, the priest said. Smiling sadly, Cirtovich replied that he would consider the question. Instead he sailed home to Trieste, because he lacked Vasojevic to help him, and because Massimo was incompetent in the countinghouse, while Florio was too rash; besides, he could not forget how Marija had prayed to the souls of drowned men, in order that they would watch over him, and how when he said goodbye to Tanya she had looked up at him, her face already glowing with tears. Although he made his customary good way even against head seas, the squid-thing kept peeping in at him from under the foresail, whether or not in warning never clarified itself. No sooner had he arrived at the Ponterosso than he proceeded to church, praying for a long time to Saint Lazar, in longing to know where the heavenly kingdom lay. He decided not to burgle the Red Mosque. Massimo begged for another loan, which he granted. Stefano caught Captain Robert sneaking aboard the
Lazar,
and pitched him into the harbor. Petar needed money to repair the carriage. There was a dutiful letter from Gordana, who was pregnant again, praise God; Marija had the colic; he physicked her himself, for the squid-thing had long since taught him which herbs were best. Next he dispatched Vasojevic, who had indeed verified the coordinates of that singing chord of earth, not to Kosovo but all the way to Dejima Island, in order to barter with Dutchmen for the Japanese porcelains which only they could get. On Saint Sava's Day the two men ascended into the countinghouse and toasted their purpose. I'll hold onto the wind with my teeth! said his old friend, making the old joke; now he too possessed wind-luck. They shook hands. Cirtovich
watched through the window as that two-sailed
bragozzo
passed out of the Canal Grande, bearing her officers into the harbor-night where the
Lazar
awaited them, and through the spyglass Cirtovich saw the frown
of grief and worry on Vasojevic's face. That voyage proved fair and lucrative, to be sure; each of Tanya's sisters presently received a chrysanthemum-patterned robe, while her brothers were delighted to possess curved and double-grooved Japanese
tanto
daggers. Marija took custody of many ducats, not to mention a
kakiemon-
style vase decorated with birds. It was a successful adventure, for a fact, and after that the Triestini stood in even greater awe of him; all the same, Tanya could not help but note the day that the
Lazar
returned, when her father came in leading Vasojevic by the hand; he bade them bring out the wine-jug, and make the triple sign of the cross; they drank to God, the Holy Cross and the Holy Trinity, and then of course to Prince Lazar, after which Vasojevic and her father confabulated in the garden, and when she ran silently up to what she childishly called “the tower room,” to peep at them, they reminded her of tired fishermen with empty nets draped over the mast. But they reentered the house smiling; oh, yes, the business prospered, the grain-shed grew full again, and that week her father dedicated a gift not only to the Serbian Orthodox church but even to the cathedral at San Giusto. People now compared him to Count Giovanni Vojnovich, the hero of the
Madonna dell'Assunta.
Her mother looked as if she were expecting him to confess something. In the garden the lilies were brilliant. A mountain of crates with Japanese characters on them rose up in the coach shed, but only for a fortnight; and two days after they had disappeared, the
Sava
embarked for Venice, Genoa and Bar. This brought in more money than ever, and yet her father did not seem satisfied. Rereading his face, unable to stop hunting for weakness, she spied out, for the first time, uncertainty in his pouchy eyes. This unwelcome fact, which might have ushered her into pity and horror, she managed to set aside. Of course he resembled other people, in that he could not know everything; he had never found out (or had he?) about her peeping into his chest of death-books. Perceiving that she was anxious about something, he stroked her cheek, and she closed her eyes, won back to certainty. Why not escape ill consequences forever?