AT the hour of vespro on a day of blue and gold, we departed from the basin of Malamoco on the Lido, the only paying passengers in a great freight galeazza, the
Doge Anafesto.
She was carrying arms and supplies to the Crusaders; after unloading those things and us in Acre, she would go on to Alexandria for a cargo of grain to bring back to Venice. When the ship was outside the basin, on the open Adriatic, the rowers shipped their oars while the seamen stepped the two masts and unfurled their graceful lateen sails. The spreads of canvas fluttered and snapped and then bellied full in the afternoon breeze, as white and billowy as the clouds above.
“A sublime day!” I exclaimed. “A superb ship!”
My father, never inclined to rhapsodize, replied with one of his ever ready adages: “Praise not the day until night has brought its close; praise not the inn until the next day’s awakening.”
But even on the next day, and on succeeding days, he could not deny that the ship was as decent in its accommodations as any inn on the land. In earlier years, a vessel that touched at the Holy Land would have been crowded with Christian pilgrims from every country of Europe, sleeping in rows and layers on the deck and in the hold, like sardines in a butt. However, by that time of which I am telling, the port of San Zuàne de Acre was the last and only spot in the Holy Land not yet overwhelmed by the Saracens, so all Christians except Crusaders were staying at home.
We three Polos had a cabin all to ourselves, right under the captain’s quarters in the sterncastle. The ship’s galley was provided with a livestock pen, so we and the seamen had meals of fresh meat and fowl, not salted. There was pasta of all varieties, and olive oil and onions, and good Corsican wine kept cool in the damp sand the ship carried for ballast at the bottom of the hold. All we missed was fresh-baked bread; in its place we were served hard agiàda biscuits, which cannot be bitten or chewed but have to be sucked, and that was the only fare of which we might have complained. There was a medegòto on board, to treat any ailments or injuries, and a chaplain, to hear confessions and hold masses. On the first Sunday, he preached on a text from Ecclesiasticus: “The wise man shall pass into strange countries, and good and evil shall he try in all things.”
“Tell me, please, about the strange countries yonder,” I said to my father after that mass, for he and I had really not had much time in Venice to talk just between ourselves. His reply told me more about him, however, than about any lands beyond the horizon.
“Ah, they brim with opportunities for an ambitious merchant!” he said exultantly, rubbing his hands. “Silks, jewels, spices—even the dullest tradesman dreams of those obvious things—but there are many more possibilities for a clever man. Yes, Marco. Even in coming with us only as far as the Levant, you can, if you keep your eyes open and your wits about you, perhaps begin the making of a fortune of your very own. Yes, indeed, all the lands yonder are lands of opportunity.”
“I look forward to them,” I said dutifully. “But I could learn of commerce without leaving Venice. I was thinking more of … well, adventure …”
“Adventure? Why, my boy, could there ever be any more satisfying adventure than the descrying of a commercial opportunity not yet glimpsed by others? And the seizing advantage of it? And the taking of a profit from it?”
“Of course, most satisfying, those things,” I said, not to dampen his ebullience. “But what of excitement? Exotic things seen and done? Surely in all your travels there have been many such.”
“Oh, yes. Exotic things.” He scratched meditatively in his beard. “Yes, on our way back to Venice, through Cappadocia, we came upon one instance. There grows in that land a poppy, very like our common red field poppy, but of a silvery-blue color, and from the milk of its pod can be decocted a soporific oil that is a most potent medicine. I knew it would be a useful addition to the simples employed by our Western physicians, and I foresaw a good profit to our Compagnia from that. I sought to collect some of the seeds of that poppy, intending to sow them among the crocuses in our Vèneto plantations. Now, that was an exotic thing, no xe vero? And a grand opportunity. Unfortunately, there was a war going on in Cappadocia at the time. The poppy fields were all devastated, and the populace in such disarray that I could find no one who could provide me with the seeds. Gramo de mi, an opportunity lost.”
I said, with some amazement, “You were in the middle of a war, and all that concerned you was poppy seeds?”
“Ah, war is a terrible thing. A disruption of commerce.”
“But, Father, you saw in it no opportunity for adventure?”
“You keep on about
adventure,”
he said tartly. “Adventure is no more than discomfort and annoyance recollected in the safety of reminiscence. Believe me, an experienced traveler makes plans and takes pains
not
to have such adventures. The most successful journey is a dull journey.”
“Oh,” I said. “I was rather looking forward to—well, hazards overcome … hidden things discovered … enemies bested … maidens rescued …”
“There speaks the bravo!” boomed Uncle Mafìo, joining us just then. “I hope you are disabusing him of such notions, Nico.”
“I am trying,” said my father. “Adventure, Marco, never put a bagatìn in anybody’s purse.”
“But is the purse the only thing a man is to fill?” I cried. “Should not he seek something else in life? What of his appetite for wonders and marvels?”
“No one ever found marvels by seeking them,” my uncle grunted. “They are like true love—or happiness—which, in fact, are marvels themselves. You cannot say: I will go out and have an adventure. The best you can do is put yourself in a place where it may occur.”
“Well, then,” I said. “We are bound for Acre, the city of the Crusaders, fabled for daring deeds and dark secrets and silken damsels and the life voluptuous. What better place?”
“The Crusaders!” snorted Uncle Mafìo. “Fables, indeed! The Crusaders who survived to come home had to pretend to themselves that their futile missions had been worthwhile. So they bragged of the wonders they had seen, the marvels of the far lands. About the only thing they brought back was a case of the scolamento so painful they could hardly sit a saddle.”
I said wistfully, “Acre is not a city of beauty and temptation and mystery and luxury and—?”
My father said, “Crusaders and Saracens have been fighting over San Zuàne de Acre for more than a century and a half. Imagine for yourself what it must be like. But, no, you need not. You will see it soon enough.”
So I left them, feeling rather dashed in my expectations, but not demolished. I was privately coming to the conclusion that my father had the soul of a line-ruled ledger, and my uncle was too blunt and gruff to contain any finer feelings. They would not recognize adventure if it was thrust upon them. But I would. I went and stood on the foredeck, not to miss seeing any mermaids or sea monsters that might swim by.
A sea voyage, after the first exhilarating day or so, becomes mere monotony—unless a storm enlivens it with terror, but the Mediterranean is stormy only in winter—so I occupied myself with learning all I could about the workings of a ship. In the absence of bad weather, the crew had nothing but routine work to do, so everyone from the captain to the cook willingly let me watch and ask questions and even occasionally lend a hand with the work. The men were of many different nationalities, but all spoke the Trade French—which they called Sabir—so we were able to converse.
“Do you know anything at all about sailing, boy?” one of the seamen asked me. “Do you know, for instance, which are the liveworks of a ship, and which are the deadworks?”
I thought about that, and looked up at the sails, spread out on either side of the ship like a living bird’s wings, and guessed that they must be the liveworks.
“Wrong,” said the mariner. “The liveworks are every part of a ship that is in the water. The deadworks are everything above water.”
I thought about that, and said, “But if the deadworks were to plunge under water, they could hardly then be called live. We should all be dead.”
The seaman said quickly, “Do not speak of such things!” and crossed himself.
Another said, “If you would be a seafarer, boy, you must learn the seventeen names of the seventeen winds that blow over the Mediterranean.” He began ticking them off on his fingers. “At this moment, we are sailing before the etesia, which blows from the northwest. In winter, the ostralada blows fiercely from the south, and makes storms. The gregalada is the wind that blows out of Greece, and makes the sea turbulent. From the west blows the maistràl. The levante blows out of the east, out of Armeniya—”
Another seaman interrupted, “When the levante blows, you can smell the Cyclopedes.”
“Islands?” I asked.
“No. Strange people who live in Armeniya. Each of them has only one arm and one leg. It takes two of those people to use a bow and arrow. Since they cannot walk, they hop on the one leg. But if they are in a hurry, they go spinning sideways, wheeling on that hand and foot. That is why they are called the Cyclopedes, the wheel-feet.”
Besides telling me of many other marvels, the seamen also taught me to play the guessing and gambling game called venturina, which was devised by mariners to while away long and boring voyages. They must endure many such voyages, for venturina is an exceedingly long and boring game, and no player can win or lose more than a few soldi in the course of it.
When I later asked my uncle if, in his travels, he had ever encountered curiosities like the wheel-feet Armeniyans, he laughed and sneered. “Bah! No seaman ever ventures farther into a foreign port than the nearest dockside wineshop or whorehouse. So when he is asked what sights he saw abroad, he must invent things. Only a marcolfo who would believe a woman would believe a seaman!”
So from then on I listened only tolerantly, with half an ear, when the mariners told of landward wonders, but I still gave full attention when they spoke of things to do with the sea and sailing. I learned their special names for common objects—the small sooty bird called in Venice a stormbird is at sea called petrelo, “little Pietro,” because, like the saint, it seems to walk on the water—and I learned the rhymes which seamen use when talking of the weather—
Sera rosa e bianco matino:
Alegro il pelegrino
—which is to say that a red sky in the evening or a white sky in the morning foretells good weather in the offing, hence the pilgrim is pleased. And I learned how to toss the scandàgio line, with its little ribbons of red and white at intervals along its length, to measure the depth of water under our keel. And I learned how to speak to other vessels we passed—which I was allowed to do two or three times, for there were many ships asea upon the Mediterranean—shouting in Sabir through the trumpet:
“A good voyage! What ship?”
And the reply would come hollowly back: “A good voyage! The
Saint Sang,
out of Bruges, homeward bound from Famagusta! And you, what ship are you?”
“The
Anafesto,
of Venice, outward bound for Acre and Alexandria! A good voyage!”
The ship’s steerer showed me how, through an ingenious arrangement of ropes, he single-handedly controlled both the immense steering oars, one raked down either side of the ship to the stern. “But in heavy weather,” he said, “a steerer is required on each, and they must be masters of dexterity, to swing the tillers separately and variously, but always in perfect concert, at the captain’s calls.”
The ship’s striker let me practice pounding his mallets when none of the rowers was at the oars. They seldom were. The etesia wind was so nearly constant that the oars were not often needed to help the ship make way, so the rowers had their only sustained work on that voyage in taking us out of the Malamoco basin and into the harbor of Acre. At those times they took their places—“in the mode called
a zenzile,”
the striker told me—three men to each of the twenty benches along each side of the vessel.
Each rower worked an oar that was separately pivoted to the ship’s outriggers, so that the shortest oars rowed inboard, the longest outboard and the medium-length oars between them. And the men did not sit, as oarsmen do, for example, in the Doge’s buzino d’oro. They stood, each with his left foot on the bench before him, while they swept the oars forward. Then they all fell back supine on the benches when they made their powerful strokes, propelling the ship in a sort of series of rushing leaps. This was done in time to the striker’s striking, a tempo that began slow, but got faster as the ship did, and the two mallets made different sounds so the rowers on one side would know when they had to pull harder than the others.
I was never let to row, for that is a job requiring such skill that apprentices are made to practice first in mock galleys set up on dry land. Because the word galeotto is so often used in Venice to mean a convict, I had always assumed that galleys and galeazze and galeotte were rowed by criminals caught and condemned to drudgery. But the striker pointed out that freight ships compete for trade on the basis of their speed and efficiency, for which they would hardly depend on reluctant forced labor. “So the merchant fleet hires only professional and experienced oarsmen,” he said. “And war ships are rowed by citizens who choose to do that service as their military obligation, instead of taking up the sword.”