Looking for Marco Polo (9 page)

“He had the mind of a merchant, not a missionary, but the Buddhists he encountered in China—‘idolators’ he called them, but not in a sneering way—made a big impression. He mentions them often, and their temples.”

“What religion are you?” Mark asked.

Hornaday shrugged. “I’m a doctor. Medicine takes in all religions. Illness doesn’t choose among sects. Muslim, Catholic, Jew, Buddhist, Protestant, Hindu, pagan, atheist—the bodies are all the same.”

“Okay,” said Mark, “but what about when you were a kid?”

“A.M.E. African Methodist Episcopal.”

“What church is that?”

“A church for black Protestants. In slavery time blacks weren’t allowed in the white churches, so they organized their own.

“What religion are you?” Hornaday asked.

“Mom’s a Lutheran, Dad’s a Quaker,” Mark said.
“We switch back and forth. With Quakers nobody’s in charge—people just wait around until somebody gets up to say something. With Lutherans there’s a program to show how close you are to the end of the service, so I like that better.”

They stood aside for a struggling porter wheeling a handcart heavy with jugs of wine.

“Just like a thousand years ago,” Hornaday said. “Everything you see has been floated in and moved by hand—all the paving stones, clothes, bricks, oil, food—all of it.”

The vaporetto stop was a gently pitching barge tied up at an opening on the Grand Canal. Across the water the sun had caught the front of a church with gold ornaments and a palace with a covered porch on the top. There was a square and docks, but no grass in sight anywhere.

“Where do kids play?” Mark asked.

“In the streets, the campos, but mostly on the water. The sea is their playground. Venetian kids grow up swimming, rowing, and sailing. They have boat races year-round—regattas.”

The waterbus arrived with a lot of engine noise, splashing and slithering. Its wake sent the dock heaving as the captain worked the big tan boat up against the stop. It was crowded, big as a street bus, dirty and rusted.

The dog hung back.

Hornaday took him by the collar. “Okay, boy,” the doctor said as he led Boss up the heaving gangplank.

“He had a bad experience with a boat once,” the doctor explained, “which is why we walk most everywhere.”

Mark already knew.

Striped poles banded blue and red and green and yellow announced intersections. In the channel there
were speed signs just like on land: 5 MPH—but most of the boats were going faster than that. As they rode, Mark pointed to the sunstruck buildings. “Did Venice look like this when Marco was here?” he asked.

“If he came back today, he’d recognize it,” the doctor said, “but it would look worn down, because there isn’t enough money to keep things fixed up.

“In Marco’s time Venice was rich beyond imagining. The Piazza San Marco, where we’re headed, was
home to the cathedral, but it was also the biggest and most famous marketplace in the Western world. All the goods of the East came through here because the port of Venice was closest to the heart of Europe. Everything was traded in the piazza—jewels, silk, slaves, spices, soap, perfumes, ivory, drugs. Every ship brought in the choicest goods from the caravans that had opened their bundles and bags where the Silk Road ended.

“Remember the signora saying how every merchant had to bring back something for the church? Well, much of it was booty, stuff plundered from Egypt, Greece, and Persia. Venetians looted everywhere they landed. They were called ‘sea sharkers.’

“Their biggest haul came when Marco’s father was a boy. The Venetians sacked Constantinople, then the richest Christian city in the world. The four great bronze horses you’ll see out front, the columns inside—no two alike—most of the sculptures, all the marble, the gold in the dome of the apostles—it was all stolen.”

Mark began walking fast when they got off the boat. He wanted to see the horses robbed from Constantinople. Doc made the church sound like a thieves’ paradise with valuables piled up in the corners.

Boss picked up the boy’s excitement. He lifted his nose as if he were scenting game.

“The wonder is what they made of what they took,” Hornaday was saying. “Ancient stone columns, panels of veined marble—the builders and artists turned it into something holy. Some of the gold was melted and spread thin on tiny pieces of glass to make the ceiling mosaics. They did the same thing with the floor, cutting and fitting thousands of semiprecious stones into beautiful patterns.”

Mark was walking faster and faster, his head filled with images of Venetian robbers staggering under sacks of treasure.

“Why did they have to steal stuff?” he asked, breathing hard. “You said Venice was really rich.”

“She wasn’t always,” Hornaday said, putting out his hand to slow Mark a little. “That’s why robbery figures so much in her history. She had a lot of catching up to do to become as grand as her rival, Genoa.

“Genoa was in her glory and Venice was nothing more than a cluster of huts when marauders came out of the north and sent people fleeing here.

“The newcomers looked around. ‘What do we have to work with?’ they wondered.

“They sold fish, made salt, melted sand to make glass, and they built boats. They were soon sailing out into the Adriatic and down to the Mediterranean as merchant raiders.”

Mark looked out over the water as if he expected to catch sight of one.

“For all its elegance,” the doctor was saying, “there’s always been an air of stealth and thuggery about this place. It was never holy like Assisi or noble like Rome, but for the sake of their religion the Venetians pulled off their greatest heist when they stole the bones of the Apostle Mark.”

“Stole his bones?” Mark exclaimed. “Why’d they do that?”

“Folks believed they’d bring good luck,” Hornaday said. “Don’t you carry something for luck?”

“Yeah,” said Mark as he felt in his pocket for the flint scraper he’d found on a trip with his dad. He didn’t know why, but he was sure it was lucky.

“The saint’s remains were buried in Alexandria in Egypt,” the doctor explained. “When Alexandria fell to the followers of Islam, it was rumored here in Venice that the sultan had ordered St. Mark’s church pulled down and his bones thrown into the common garbage pit.

“Two young Venetian merchants worked themselves into a frenzy over this. ‘Pitch the apostle’s remains into the garbage pit?’ they cried to each other. ‘We must save him!’

“They set out in a borrowed boat. The pope had banned Christians from stopping in Muslim Alexandria, and the Egyptians weren’t exactly welcoming, so the Venetians broke up some of the ship’s rigging and limped into port, pretending to have been blown in by bad weather.

“There was a long exchange with the port officials about the ancient rule that harborage and courtesies had to be afforded distressed sailors. Finally, with the passing over of a bit of silver, the Venetians were allowed to dock.

“They went ashore and bought the tools they said they needed to fix their ship. Tools in hand, they sneaked over to St. Mark’s church and bribed the old caretaker to let them in. Once inside they tied him up, barred the door, and set to work getting Mark’s bones.

“This took some doing. His bones and hair and the cape and crown and shoes he’d been buried in weren’t just sitting in a suitcase ready to go. It took hammers, crowbars, and chisels to tear down the altar and pry away masonry to get at the heavy stone box containing his body. They worked all night. Finally at dawn they cracked open Mark’s sarcophagus. A sweet smell filled the church and the neighborhood around. Nobody knew what it was.”

“Huh?” Mark asked. “Wouldn’t old bones stink?”

Hornaday laughed. “Maybe they did, but the legend has it that they smelled good. Anyway,” he continued, “the Venetians stuffed the saint’s remains in the sack they’d carried their tools in and hurried to the dock, pretending to be carrying stuff to fix their ship. The fragrance they’d noticed in the church surrounded them—an odor so pleasing, the story goes, it was as if all the spices in Alexandria had been tossed into the air.

“Just as they got the bones on board, the sultan heard that people were rushing out of their homes, singing and dancing in the street, seemingly crazed by a miraculous sweet fragrance.

“He sent his soldiers to investigate. They couldn’t smell the sweetness themselves, so they stumbled around for hours asking people what it was, where it was coming from.

“At last they discovered the tied-up watchman and the robbers’ tools. The once-fine altar was rubble. The watchman told them what had happened. The soldiers hurried to the Venetians’ ship.

“Meanwhile the robbers, knowing the Muslims’ aversion to pork, had buried Mark’s relics in a barrel of freshly salted pig meat and hung strips of pork
around their ship, pretending to be curing provisions in the salt air while they fixed their rigging.

“When the sultan’s agents got to the boat, they found the sight—and worse, the smell—of those bloody strips revolting.

“
‘Hanzir! Hanzir!’
they screeched. ‘Pork! Pork!’ The tub of pink pig flesh under its veil of salt made them sick. They didn’t stay to dig around in it; they fled, retching.

“The Venetians were under sail by the time the sultan’s ship heaved anchor. The robbers were blown along by what seemed a divine wind, while the Muslim sailors, a mile behind, sat becalmed in searing heat.

“It was said that sweet dreams, along with the fragrance, preceded the robbers and announced the saint’s arrival at Venice. The doge welcomed the sailors as heroes. There was a huge celebration. Money was collected. The grave robbers became wealthy men.”

“Where did the good smell come from?” Mark asked.

“According to the legend it was a miracle, proof of the saint’s sweetness,” the doctor said. “Venetians adopted Mark’s emblem as their own—the winged lion standing with a front paw upraised, jaws open. It wasn’t long before the Lion of Saint Mark, embroidered in
gold on a brick red field, fluttered from every masthead, and by the doge’s order the lion’s head was carved on every wellhead.

“Get ready,” said the doctor. “We’re coming up on the square.”

The Piazza San Marco was like a glittering box, its red, peach, and yellow painted walls studded with ornaments and flags. There were tubs of trees and blooming plants around cafés with tables outside, each place with its own little orchestra squeaking away, trying to play over the milling din of hawkers selling crosses and bottles of holy water. There were Japanese tourists in plain dark coats, Buddhist monks in capes of carmine and saffron, priests from Greece in large black hats, Russians in furs, tour groups clustered around flag-bearing guides hollering through loudspeakers in strange languages.

The great doors of the cathedral stood open. The inside glowed with gold and candlelight. Chanting and singing drifted out in waves, music of Christmas.

“You could go in alone,” the doctor said. “They won’t let me in with Boss.”

Mark was hesitant. He didn’t like crowds. “I’m fine just looking at the outside.”

“Okay,” said Doc. “We’ll skirt the crowd and get a good look from the doge’s palace, over there,” Hornaday said, pointing.

They walked to the far side of the piazza, to the pink and white building at the edge of the lagoon where the Grand Canal began.

“Here’s where they set the spring that shot Marco east,” the doctor said. “Here’s where the doge in his gold-embroidered robes and what looked like a stuffed animal on his head schemed over maps.”

Hornaday leaned against the wall. “When we were kids,” he said, “we made make-believe telephones out of two tin cans and a piece of string. We’d punch a small hole in the bottom of each can and run the string through, knotting the ends. With the string pulled tight, the listener would hold his can to his ear while the speaker shouted into his. You could make out something, but it was muffled.

“I picture the doge yelling into his can here while Kublai, thousands of miles away, listens to his. Marco is the string stretched tight between them.

“Squint,” the doctor suggested. “Pretend you’re
Marco, sitting on that stone dock over there watching a long war galley from Constantinople approach, sails down, her sides rough and dark with bits of seaweed caught in clots of pitch and tar and loose caulking. Her deck shines like metal, freshly washed and sanded.

“Picture her entering the Grand Canal, passing the immense coil of gleaming chain they kept ready in those days to be stretched across should enemy ships approach.

“The oars flash together like centipede legs as the ship’s boy beats time on his drum and the captain bellows
‘Ohi! Ohi! Ohi!’
to warn off smaller boats. Chained to the mast, a black African and a pale Russian study the eyes studying them.

“See those two columns at the edge of the square? Those are the seamarks sailors landing at Venice looked for. On top of one a saint stands with his foot on a crocodile. Saint Mark’s winged lion is on top of the other.

“In Marco’s time strolling musicians played for money here as wealthy merchants and their wives and men and women of court paraded slowly in embroidered silks and rich velvets, flashing their jewels and lifting their robes slightly to show their fine pointed shoes. Some wore thick gold rings set with diamonds over brightly colored kidskin gloves.