The Kaisho (13 page)

Nicholas waited, the Venetian night, unlike all others, settling upon him like a second cloak. All at once he remembered the Bauta, and taking it from beneath his arm where he had rather self-consciously kept it during his walk, he slipped it over his head so that it settled upon his face. The sensation was at once singular and oddly familiar, and he recalled his vision as he had passed the Piazzetta di San Marco earlier that evening. Again, he was aware of an acute sense of déjà vu.
Who was I,
he wondered,
to have called this home?

“Bauta!”

He swung around to see a figure in priestly attire holding open a small door to one side of the Chiesa San Belisario’s main bronze-doored entrance.

“Bauta!” the priest called in an odd, throaty voice. “You are late for Mass!” He gestured urgently. “Come! Come!”

Nicholas mounted the worn stone stairs, past the cloaked and hooded priest, into the dank interior of the church. He heard the sharp clang of the door as the priest shut it behind him.

The atmosphere of the interior was infused with a plethora of scents: incense, candle wax, mildew, stone and marble dust, and age.

The priest scurried past Nicholas. “This way!” he said under his breath. “Follow me!”

The church was dimly lit. Only flickering flames from a profusion of thick, pale yellow candles intermittently illuminated vaulted ceilings, frescoed walls, magnificent tiled floors in the intricate Byzantine style, gold-encrusted religious icons. The interior was a treasure trove of historical relics and religious art. A ceiling of blackened wooden beams gave way to an elegant, high ogival arcade encrusted with mosaic scenes from the Bible. But there was an almost Eastern undertone, too, that permeated the dense atmosphere with the pungency of star anise.

Somewhere Nicholas heard the murmur of voices, the call and responses of the solemn liturgical rite. Improbable as it seemed, Mass was being performed this late at night.

“This is a very old church,” the priest whispered as they hurried down stone passageways. The odd parchment-dry voice carried no intimation of age or even of gender. It was, rather, a voice wholly of intent, stripped of any ornamentation or color. “Some say it is the oldest religious structure in Venice. Certainly there is evidence in the foundation and elsewhere that it was once a Greek temple.” The voices of the Mass were fading, only echoes of echoes now. “But before the Greeks, who knows? The Scythians, yes, and perhaps the Cycladeans, giants who roamed the earth at the time of the Phoenicians, and before them, gods now long forgotten by even the oldest living Venetians.”

Nicholas was surprised. This did not sound like the philosophy dispensed by any priest he had ever encountered or read about. He was about to ask the man about his peculiar theories when they stopped at the arched entrance to a small but impressive space.

“The schola cantorum,” the priest whispered, as if this explained everything. A moment later, he had scurried away into the bending and twisting shadows dancing at the edge of the candlelight. That uncertain illumination made elemental cave paintings along the curving stone walls.

Nicholas walked into the room, which was all of stone. He went over, ran his hands over the rough-hewn surface. He was certain that this stone predated that of the exterior of the church—or even of that part of the interior lavished with the labors of Byzantine craftsmen. Could this be part of the original Greek temple? The age of this spot! He looked upward, saw that the ceiling was groined in a pair of unusual arches set at right angles to one another.

“This is where the sacred choir sang,” a melodious voice said. “So many centuries ago.”

Nicholas turned to see a tall woman in a black mask that shone like a dark sun. She was dressed in the cloak of a priest or perhaps a monk, in any case, an ecclesiastical habit that hid her clothing as well as her body.

“The schola cantorum,” she said. “This room was constructed to maximize the beauty of the human voice. It was, in those days long ago, the center of the nave... the very heart of the church.”

“And now it is relegated to the back,” Nicholas said. “Tucked far away from the everyday liturgies of the modern church.”

“But no less awesome for that,” she said. Then a smile broke over her generous mouth. Her deep-set eyes flashed, and it seemed as if the entire interior, ancient and esoteric, was held in their depths. “Forgive me, my name is Celeste.”

“And you know mine—that is, if you can be certain of who I am behind the Bauta.”

Celeste laughed, the sound picked up by the extraordinary acoustics of the ceiling, thrown back at them in segments like a Gregorian chant. “Yes, I know who you are.”

“Where is—” But he stopped at Celeste’s signal, a long, delicate forefinger pressed against her lips.

“Please—Do not mention his name even here in the sanctity of the schola cantorum.” She came toward him, the rustling of her ecclesiastical cloak amplified until it sounded like the murmur of a field of insects on a hot summer’s night. As she crossed a patch of candlelight, he saw that she wore a silk turban on her head. It was the color of the Venetian sky in the moment after sunset and was draped with crescents of white and black pearls. Pale green stones hung from its perimeter, and an intricately worked gold medallion was affixed to the front, from which a long black ostrich feather rose.

“So you know of the mask I chose for you to wear?”

“The Bauta. Yes, a little.”

“I am wearing the Domino,” she said softly. “Actually, the name is taken from the Latin
benedicamus Domino,
‘Bless the Lord,’ a priestly banality.”

“You were the priest who led me here,” Nicholas said with sudden insight.

“I was. I needed to be certain that you were not followed here.”

“Who would follow me?”

Celeste did not answer him directly. Instead, she said, “Do you know what tonight is?”

“The end of October, the beginning of November. With the time change I can no longer remember if we have moved from one to the other.”

“It is All Hallows’ Eve,” Celeste whispered. “The one night, other than during Carnival, when masks once again become the norm. It was important we meet this night. The masks protect us, as they once did our ancestors.”

“Yours, perhaps. I don’t think any of mine came from Venice.”

Celeste’s lips produced a peculiar smile. “Welcome to Serenissima,” she said in her husky whisper. “The Serene Republic.”

Where have I seen that smile before?
Nicholas asked himself. “Isn’t it time we were leaving?” he said. “My summons here seemed quite urgent.”

“It was, and the reasons for the urgency are ever more apparent. But, even so, caution has dictated our itinerary for the evening.” She slid her arm through his and he caught a whiff of a scent, both musky and spicy, wholly unfamiliar to him. “I trust you won’t find my company entirely disagreeable.”

She took him out of the church through a back entrance that let them out beneath the arch of a stone bridge. It was very dark, the somber water lapping gently against stone, green and crusty with algae and barnacles. Only the reflection of lights came to them where Nicholas stood in a semi-crouch while Celeste locked the ancient wood-and-iron door behind them.

“This is a wondrous spot,” Celeste said, turning to him. “In the year 535, the Byzantine emperor Justinian sent his armies across the sea to Italy to retake what had once been part of his empire before Theodoric wrested it from Byzantium’s control. At the head of this host was the brilliant general Belisarius.” Nicholas could just make out the ghost of a smile curling her lips. “It seems ironic now that this ancient church should be dedicated to someone named Saint Belisario.”

“Surely you’re not saying that the two are the same?” Nicholas said. “It’s impossible that a Byzantine army general could become a Christian saint.”

“This is Venezia. If you read its history, you know that here nothing is impossible.” She took his hand, led him out from beneath the bridge. On a small, private
traghetto,
a deep green and gold gondola awaited them like a steed. Celeste bade Nicholas climb in and, when he was settled, came aboard. She cast off, then took up the long pole, began to steer them out into the
rio.
Hooded and cloaked, she seemed an illustration out of some historical account of Venice.

“Venice was created as a kind of Shangri-La, a haven from the waves of barbarians—Goths, Huns, and the like—who periodically ravaged Italy,” Celeste said. “However, as Homer reminds us, Venice was not founded by those folk indigenous to Western Europe, but rather by the peoples of the far-eastern Mediterranean. Whether these were the remnants of those who fell at the sack of Troy, as Homer apparently believed, or whether they were of an even more ancient seagoing people, the Phoenicians, the fact remains that Venice was established because of its natural defenses of malarial salt marshes, quicksand banks, and treacherous shoals whose contours were constantly recreated by the tides.”

Her voice drifted over the
rio
like the wispy fog that lay in strands across the water. Nicholas absorbed this fascinating history as he took in the passage of houses with ornate wrought-iron balconies, tiny, romantic gardens with surprising bursts of color, and deep, curving oriental arches and windows that forever spoke of the manner in which the city’s ancestors had chosen to remember their own origins.

“Whatever the case,” Celeste went on, “the founders of Serenissima were intellectuals on the run from war, rape, pestilence—from annihilation itself. And here they plied their chimerical arts—and their labyrinthine forms of intrigue. Here, the golden politics practiced by the Greeks became collusive, then quickly gave way to bitter internecine vendettas.”

“Which is where the masks came in,” Nicholas said.

“Yes.” Celeste poled them into a
traghetto,
waited patiently while a late-night
motoscafo
purred its way past them. “The masks were pure illusion for purpose. What purposes? Well, in politics they were used by those who came before the state inquisitors to confess confidences. In the personal lives of those ancient Venetians, they allowed anyone and everyone, from highborn prince to lowly fishmonger, the freedom to pursue their amorous heart’s desire.” Celeste leaned on her pole. “These are historical perspectives, but what was the reality? Considering human nature, the masks fostered corruption at every level of Venetian society.”

The launch had disappeared into the low-lying mist, and she pushed them away from the tiny landing.

“These masks, the Bauta, the Domino, the Gagna, the Primo Zanni, the Plague Doctor, are not figures from the commedia dell’ arte, as is often thought. They are characters of a wholly Venetian contract, and they all have their origins in political paradigm rather than in the commedia’s theatrical stereotypes.”

They passed a gondola, with purple velvet seats and gold-painted handrails. A man wrapped in a mohair blanket slept with his head in the lap of his daughter, a dark-haired girl of no more than ten, who smiled at them as her hand stroked the crown of his head.

When they were alone again on the
rio,
Celeste continued, “The masks became the symbol of all things Venetian—the profound mysteries hidden behind the fabulous fairy-tale facades clustered in profusion throughout the city. Think of Venice as a magnificent shellfish that contains within its shell a prize of inestimable worth.”

“Have you lived here all your life?”

“Sometimes it seems so,” Celeste said somewhat enigmatically. “In any event, I was born here, which is all that matters.”

They had turned onto the Grand Canal, and ahead of them on the right Nicholas could see the imposing structure of the Accademia. Celeste steered the gondola to the right, gliding silently over the glittering water. There were only the tiniest sounds: lappings and creakings, and even the soft puffs of her breath as she rhythmically worked the pole into the thick muck of the
rio
bottom. Out of all of this arose a kind of melody, ethereal and enthralling, played on an instrument of the imagination.

At length, they glided into a rather ornate
traghetto
where two other gondolas were tied up. Nicholas felt a start of recognition go through him; these were the gondolas he had seen from his hotel window! Tonight, he had made a long circuit to end up almost back where he had started from.

The gondola bumped gently against the ancient wooden poles. These were striped gold and green. Nicholas jumped out of the gondola, caught the ropes as Celeste threw them, tied up the slender boat.

The palazzo they entered was painted in the Venetian style, sea green and an earthy ocher yellow. Oriental filigree edged the double-curved arches toward which they strode. Past the forbidding sea gates, Nicholas found himself in a courtyard garden much as the one he had glimpsed on his walk to the
campiello.
Bougainvillea and climbing roses perfumed the air even this late in the year, and a massive pear tree overhung the stucco walls in almost every direction.

Inside, Nicholas saw a gleaming teak and stainless-steel
motoscafo
set on a low scaffold of raw two-by-fours. Typical of such palazzos, the floor was a worn and cracked checkerboard or red Cattraran marble and white Istrian stone, used because water intensified their colors. They went up a wide set of stone stairs onto what Europeans called the first floor, the
piano nobile.
The downstairs was deliberately unreconstructed, Celeste explained, because high tides often caused flooding, and the no-level floors were useful now only as garages for private motor launches.

Upstairs, the rooms were sumptuous, sensual. The ceilings were composed of Indonesian teak, stained dark by centuries of smoke; the walls were painted the original Venetian ultramarine, highly costly because the pigment was composed of ground lapis lazuli or inlaid with Byzantine mosaics of dusty colors and swirling patterns. The floors were covered with worn Persian carpets of fine wool and silk, and statuary of carved porphyry and veined oriental marble plundered perhaps from ancient Constantinople were placed in prominent positions.