“What happens next?”
“All must await the new Doge’s taking office. Lorenzo Tiepolo will not wish the very start of his Dogato made notorious, for this case now involves rather more prominent persons than just a boy playing bravo. The lady widow of the murdered Doge-elect, a priest of San Marco … well, the Doge Tiepolo will do everything possible to minify the scandal. He will probably allow the priest to be tried in camera by an ecclesiastical court, instead of the Quarantia. My guess is that the priest will be exiled to some remote parish in the Vèneto mainland. And the Doge will probably command the Lady Ilaria to take the veil in some remote nunnery. There is precedent for such procedure. A hundred or so years ago, in France, there was a similar situation involving a priest and a lady.”
“And what happens to me?”
“As soon as the Doge dons the white scufieta, he proclaims his amnesties, and yours will be among them. You will be pardoned of the arson, and you have already been acquitted of the sassinàda. You will be released from prison.”
“Free!” I breathed.
“Well, perhaps a trifle more free than you might wish.”
“What?”
“I said the Doge will arrange that this whole sordid affair be soon forgotten. If he simply turned you loose in Venice, you would be an ever present reminder of it. Your amnesty is conditional upon your banishment. You are outcast. You are to leave Venice forever.”
During the subsequent days that I remained in the cell, I reflected on all that had come to pass. It was hurtful to think of leaving Venice, la serenìsima, la clarìsima. But that was better than dying in the piazzetta or staying in the Vulcano, which provided neither serenity nor brightness. I could even feel sorry for the priest who had struck the bravo’s blow in my stead. As a young curate in the Basilica, he had doubtless looked forward to high advancement in the Church, which he could never hope for in backwoods exile. And Ilaria would endure an even more pitiable exile, her beauty and talents to be forever useless to her now. But maybe not; she had managed to lavish them rather prodigally when she was a married woman; she might also manage to enjoy them as a bride of Christ. She would at least have ample opportunity to sing the hymn of the nuns, as she had called it. All in all, compared to our victim’s irrevocable fate, we three had got off lightly.
I was released from the prison even less ceremoniously than I had been bundled into it. The guards unlocked my cell door, led me along the corridors and down stairs and through other doors, unlócking the final one to let me out into the courtyard. There I had only to walk through the Gate of the Wheat onto the sunlit lagoonside Riva, and I was as free as the countless wheeling sea gulls. It was a good feeling, but I would have felt even better if I had been able to clean myself and don fresh raiment before emerging. I had been unwashed and clad in the same clothes all this time, and I stank of fish oil, smoke and pissòta effluvium. My garments were torn, from my struggle on the night of the aborted escape, and what was left of them was dirty and rumpled. Also, in those days I was just sprouting my first down of beard; it may not have been very visible, but it added to my feeling of scruffiness. I could have wished for better circumstances in which to meet my father for the first time in my memory. He and my uncle Mafìo were waiting on the Riva, both dressed in the elegant robes they had probably worn, as members of the Council, at the new Doge’s accession.
“Behold your son!” bellowed my uncle. “Your arcistupendonazzìsimo son! Behold the namesake of our brother and our patron saint! Is this not a wretched and puny meschìn, to have caused so much ado?”
“Father?” I said timorously to the other man.
“My boy?” he said, almost as hesitantly, but opening his arms.
I had expected someone even more overwhelming than my uncle, since my father was the elder of the two. But he was actually pale alongside his brother; not nearly so big and burly, and much softer of voice. Like my uncle, he wore a journeyer’s beard, but his was neatly trimmed. His beard and hair were not of a fearsome raven black, but a decorous mouse color, like my own hair.
“My son. My poor orphan boy,” said my father. He embraced me, but quickly put me away at arm’s length, and said worriedly, “Do you always smell like that?”
“No, Father. I have been locked up for—”
“You forget, Nico, that this is a bravo and a bonvivàn and a gambler between the pillars,” boomed my uncle. “A champion of ill-married matrons, a lurker in the night, a wielder of the sword, a liberator of Jews!”
“Ah, well,” said my father indulgently. “A chick must stretch his wings farther than the nest. Come, let us go home.”
THE house servants were all moving with more alacrity and more cheerful demeanor than they had shown since my mother died. They even seemed glad to see me home again. The maid hastened to heat water when I asked, and Maistro Attilio, at my polite request, lent me his razor. I bathed several times over, inexpertly scraped the fuzz off my face, dressed in clean tunic and hose, and joined my father and uncle in the main room, where the tile stove was.
“Now,” I said, “I want to hear about your travels. All about everywhere you have been.”
“Dear God, not again,” Uncle Mafìo groaned. “We have been let talk of nothing else.”
“Time enough for that later, Marco,” said my father. “All things in their time. Let us speak now of your own adventures.”
“They are over now,” I said hastily. “I would rather hear of new things.”
But they would not relent. So I told them, fully and frankly, everything that had happened since my first glimpse of Ilaria in San Marco’s—only omitting the amatory afternoon she and I had spent together. Thus I made it seem that mere mooncalf chivalry had impelled me to make my calamitous try at bravura.
When I was done, my father sighed. “Any woman could give pointers to the devil. Ah, well, you did what seemed best to you. And he who does all he can, does much. But the consequences have been tragic indeed. I had to agree to the Doge’s stipulation that you leave Venice, my son. He could, however, have been much harder on you.”
“I know,” I said contritely. “Where shall I go, Father? Should I go seeking a Land of Cockaigne?”
“Mafìo and I have business in Rome. You will go with us.”
“Do I spend the rest of my life in Rome, then? The sentence was banishment forever.”
My uncle said what old Mordecai had said, “The laws of Venice are obeyed … for a week. A Doge’s forever is a Doge’s lifetime. When Tiepolo dies, his successor will hardly prevent your returning. Still, that could be a good while from now.”
My father said, “Your uncle and I are bearing to Rome a letter from the Khakhan of Kithai—”
I had never heard either of those harsh-sounding words before, and I interrupted to say so.
“The Khan of All Khans of the Mongols,” my father explained. “You may have heard him titled the Great Khan of what is here miscalled Cathay.”
I stared at him. “You met the Mongols? And you survived?”
“Met and made friends among them. The most powerful friend possible—the Khan Kubilai, who rules the world’s widest empire. He asked us to carry a request to Pope Clement … .”
He went on explaining, but I was not hearing. I was still staring at him in awe and admiration, and thinking—this was my father, whom I had believed long dead, and this very ordinary-looking man claimed to be a confidant of barbarian Khans and holy Popes!
He concluded, “ … And then, if the Pope lends us the hundred priests requested by Kubilai, we will lead them east. We will go again to Kithai.”
“When do we depart for Rome?” I asked.
My father said bashfully, “Well …”
“After your father marries your new mother,” said my uncle. “And that must wait for the proclamation of the bandi.”
“Oh, I think not, Mafìo,” said my father. “Since Fiordelisa and I are hardly youngsters, both of us widowed, Pare Nunziata will probably dispense with all three cryings of the bandi.”
“Who is Fiordelisa?” I asked. “And is this not rather abrupt, Father?”
“You know her,” he said. “Fiordelisa Trevan, mistress of the house three doors down the canal.”
“Yes. She is a nice woman. She was Mother’s best friend among all our neighbors.”
“If you are implying what I think you are, Marco, I remind you that your mother is in her grave, where there is no jealousy or envy or recrimination.”
“Yes,” I said. And I added impertinently, “But you are not wearing the luto vedovile.”
“Your mother has been
eight years
in her grave. I should wear black now, and for another twelvemonth? I am not young enough to sequester myself in mourning for a year. Neither is the Dona Lisa any bambina.”
“Have you proposed to her yet, Father?”
“Yes, and she has accepted. We go tomorrow for our pastoral interview with Pare Nunziata.”
“Is she aware that you are going away immediately after you marry her?”
My uncle burst out, “What is this inquisition, you saputèlo?”
My father said patiently, “I am marrying her, Marco,
because
I am going away. Needs must when the devil drives. I came home expecting to find your mother still alive and still head of the house of Polo. She is not. And now—through your own fault—I cannot leave you entrusted with the business. Old Doro is a good man, and needs no one peering over his shoulder. Nevertheless, I prefer to have someone of the name of Polo standing as the figurehead of the company, if nothing more. Dona Fiordelisa will serve in that capacity, and willingly. Also, she has no children to compete for your inheritance, if that is what concerns you.”
“It does not,” I said. And again I spoke impertinently, “I am only concerned for the seeming disrespect to my own mother—and to the Dona Trevan as well—in your haste to marry solely for mercenary reasons. She must know that all Venice will be whispering and snickering.”
My father said mildly, but with finality, “I am a merchant and she is the widow of a merchant and Venice is a merchant city, where all know that there is no better reason for doing
anything
than a mercenary reason. To a Venetian, money is the second blood, and you are a Venetian. Now, I have heard your objections, Marco, and I have dismissed them. I wish to hear no more. Remember, a closed mouth says nothing wrong.”
So I kept my mouth closed and said nothing more on the subject, wrong or otherwise, and on the day my father married the Dona Lisa I stood in the confino church of San Felice with my uncle and all the free servants of both households and numerous neighbors and merchant nobles and their families, while the ancient Pare Nunziata tremblingly conducted the nuptial mass. But when the ceremony was over and the Pare pronounced them Messere e Madona and it was time for my father to lead his bride to her new dwelling, together with all the reception guests, I slipped away from the happy procession.
Although I was dressed in my best, I let my feet take me to the neighborhood of the boat people. I had only infrequently and briefly visited the children since my release from prison. Now that I was an ex-convict, the boys all seemed to regard me as a grown man, or maybe even a person of celebrity; anyway, there had come a sort of distance between us that had not existed before. However, on that day I found no one at the barge except Doris. She was kneeling on the planking inside its hull, wearing only a skimpy shift, and lifting wet wads of cloth from one pail to another.
“Boldo and the others begged a ride on a garbage scow going out to Torcello,” she told me. “They will be gone all day, so I am taking the opportunity to wash everything not being worn by somebody.”
“May I keep you company?” I asked. “And sleep here again in the barge tonight?”
“Your clothes will also need laundering, if you do,” she said, eyeing them critically.
“I have had worse accommodations,” I said. “And I own other clothes.”
“What are you running away from this time, Marco?”
“This is my father’s wedding day. He is bringing home a marègna for me, and I do not particularly want one. I have already had a real mother.”
“I must have had one, too, but I would not mind having a marègna.” She added, sighing like an exasperated grown woman, “Sometimes I feel I am one, to all this crowd of orphans.”
“This Dona Fiordelisa is a nice enough woman,” I said, sitting down with my back against the hull. “But I somehow do not wish to be under the same roof on my father’s wedding night.”
Doris looked at me with evident surmise, dropped what she was doing, and came to sit beside me.
“Very well,” she whispered into my ear. “Stay here. And pretend that it is your own wedding night.”
“Oh, Doris, are you starting that again?”
“I do not know why you should refuse. I am accustomed now to keeping myself clean, as you told me a lady ought to do. I keep myself clean all over. Look.”
Before I could protest, she stripped off her one garment in one lithe movement. She was certainly clean, even to being totally hairless of body. The Lady Ilaria had not been quite so smooth and glossy all over. Of course, Doris was also lacking in feminine curves and rotundities. Her breasts were only just beginning to be distinct from her chest, and their nipples were only a faintly darker pink than her skin, and her flanks and buttocks were but lightly padded with womanly flesh.
“You are still a zuzzurullona,” I said, trying to sound bored and uninterested. “You have a long way to go to become a woman.”
That was true, but her very youth and smallness and immaturity had their own sort of appeal. Though all boys are lecherous, they usually lust for real women. Any girl of their own age, they tend to regard as only another playmate, a tomboy among the boys, a zuzzurullona. However, I was somewhat more advanced in that respect than most boys; I had already had the experience of a real woman. It had given me a taste for musical duets—and I had for some time been without that music—and here was a pretty novice pleading to be introduced to it.
“It would be dishonorable of me,” I said, “even to pretend a wedding night.” I was arguing with myself more than with her. “I have told you that I am going far away to Rome in a few days.”
“So is your father. But it has not prevented his getting
really
married.”
“True, and we quarreled about that. I did not think it right. But his new wife seems perfectly content.”
“And so would I be. For now, let us pretend, Marco, and afterward I will wait, and you will come back. You said so—when there is another change of Doge.”
“You look ridiculous, little Doris. Sitting here naked and talking of Doges and such.” But she did not look ridiculous; she looked like one of the pert nymphs of old legend. I truly tried to argue. “Your brother always talks of what a good girl his sister—”
“Boldo will not be back until tonight, and he will know nothing of what happens between now and then.”
“He would be furious,” I went on, as if she had not interrupted. “We should have to fight again, the way we fought after he threw that fish so long ago.”
Doris pouted. “You do not appreciate my generosity. It is a pleasure I offer you at the cost of pain to myself.”
“Pain? How so?”
“The first time is always painful for a virgin. And unsatisfying. Every girl knows that. Every woman tells us so.”
I said reflectively, “I do not know why it should be painful. Not if it is done the way my—” I decided it would be maladroit of me to mention my Lady Ilaria at this moment. “I mean, the way I have learned to do it.”
“If that is true,” said Doris, “you could earn the adoration of many virgins in your lifetime. Do show me this way you have learned.”
“One begins by doing—certain preliminary things. Like this.” I touched one of her diminutive nipples.
“The zizza? That only tickles.”
“I believe the tickling changes to another sensation very soon.”
Very soon she said, “Yes. You are right.”
“The zizza likes it, too. See, it lifts to ask for more.”
“Yes. Yes, it does.” She slowly lay back, supine on the deck, and I followed her down.
I said, “A zizza likes even more to be kissed.”
“Yes.” Like a lazing cat, she stretched her whole little body, voluptuously.
“Then there is this,” I said.
“That tickles, too.”
“It also gets better than tickling.”
“Yes. Truly it does. I feel …”
“Not pained, surely.”
She shook her head, her eyes now closed.
“These things do not even require the presence of a man. It is called the hymn of the convent, because girls can do this for themselves.” I was being scrupulously fair, giving her the opportunity to send me away.
But she said only, and breathlessly, “I had no idea … I do not even know what I
look
like down there.”
“You could easily see your mona with a looking glass.”
She said faintly, “I do not know anyone who owns a looking glass.”
“Then look at—no, she is all hairy down there. Yours is still bare and visible and soft. And pretty. It looks like …” I reached for a poetic comparison. “You know that kind of pasta shaped like a folded little shell? The kind called ladylips?”
“You make it feel like lips being kissed,” she said, as if talking in her sleep. Her eyes were closed again and her small body was moving in a slow squirm.