In the Company of the Courtesan

  She stops and swallows. I look up at her now and feel the tears rising.

  “You were right. He was a boy, is a boy. He knows nothing. Oh, God, Bucino, but there was something in him. Some flame in his desire that lit up something in me. Ah…I cannot explain it…. Even the words are…what?…stained with overuse. But I felt it. Oh, God, how I felt it! That fever from which no one wants to be well. I think now maybe he was my punishment. To feel it once. So that for the rest of my life I will know what I am missing when I never feel it again.”

  She is crying now, but she is angry with herself as well and keeps pushing the tears away with her hands.

  “Anyway…anyway…the important thing is he never saw it and the book is safe. Of course I would have put it back. Only that same night you were ill. And after that…well, after that there was no time. I didn’t think about it anymore.”

  The room goes quiet. She is waiting for me to speak, but I don’t know what to say. While a part of me is reassured, another part is wild still, only in another way. For while I am looking at her, I am also seeing La Draga: her pearly skin, her slender, willowy body, her newly seeing eyes. La Draga. The woman who betrayed us so long ago but who did not, I know now, steal the book. The woman who saved my life. The woman whose life I have now destroyed in turn.

  Here we sit, God help us: a courtesan and her pimp, eaten up by feelings for others that they should not have. She is right. Of all the diseases in the world, this surely is the one that hurts most sweetly.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  She recovers faster than I do. Or maybe she is simply thinking my thoughts too.

  “You—you said that there was a child? That when you saw La Draga on Murano she had a child?”

  “Yes…a child.”

  “Was it her child?”

  I nod.

  “How did you know?”

  How did I know? The shock of white curls? The translucent skin? Or the way that it stared at me, stubborn already in its sense of self, as curious as it ought to have been afraid? Or the way she burst into the crowd to save it from possible danger, the way their bodies came together in that instant, the way mothers hold their children, whoever they are, however strange or deformed they may look…?

  I tell it again, seeing it more clearly this time, and my lady listens intently. I know what she is thinking. That she will never have those feelings. And she wants to have them. Oh, how much she wants to…. I have seen it before, the way women yearn more for a child when they have fallen in love. It is part of the disease, like the ague that goes with the fever. Maybe the real lover’s prick goes deep enough to ignite some longing in the womb. Maybe it is the promise of a future, something left over once the passion is spent.

  The future. Hers and ours. What of that?

  “So, Bucino, what do we do now? She will know that it was you, yes? Who was in her house?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much damage did you do?”

  I shake my head. “Enough.”

  There is still one thing left to tell. I watch the small white bones tumble out of the sack and disappear into the liquid mud again.

  “Ha! But she won’t know that’s what’s happened to them. So—what? She will think we have them now?”

  “Yes. I think she might.”

  “In which case she will be scared of us. Of what we might do with them now we know she is a thief. And we do know that, don’t we? I mean, God knows, I don’t want to believe it of her, so we need to be sure.”

  I think about it. “Yes, I am sure. I think that along with Meragosa, she took our ruby and sold it.”

  “But then why did she come back and help us?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

  “And all this time—what? She has pretended to be blind to convince us—and others—of her powers?”

  “Yes.”

  “So she is a fraud?”

  “Yes…No…” I see the tiny writing in her book again, the pages of notes and diagrams and all those rows and rows of bottles and jars. “I—I think she has a talent to heal. I think over the years she has studied and worked out remedies and that what she doesn’t know she experiments with.”

  “And the bones? She uses them too?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the one she played the witch with. What potions did she give you to snare the pup’s—I mean, Foscari’s—heart?”

  “Oh, no, no, you’re wrong. It wasn’t like that. She helped me, yes. But it was only ordinary things: pledges, incantations, a few throws of the beans to see into the future; there was no blood or consecrated hosts, as you said.” Her voice sounds almost sad now. “She didn’t need those kinds of things. She…well, she saw things—oh, God, it is obvious now because she was looking at us the whole time, of course she saw—but not just physical things. She also seemed to understand people’s minds.”

  My lady is right. She did. So what of my mind? What did she understand of that? But I will not ask the question. It is too late now.

  “I tell you, she saw a lot, Bucino. You know what she said about you once? That you are a man who should forget what is wrong with him and celebrate what is right. For—and these were her exact words—there is much to enjoy.” Despite herself, she laughs. “I used to think how brave she was: that in her own life she had overcome much worse than you and yet was so strong with it.”

  There is a silence. I feel her gaze upon me.

  “And now you have thought about her too, haven’t you? You have been in her house. You read her notebooks and discovered her secrets. You’ve watched her, seen her with a child, enough to be certain that it is hers. Oh, it seems to me you know a great deal about her, Bucino.”

  Does she see it in my eyes? Is there something in my voice when I talk about her? How does one read the symptoms in oneself?

  “Is that why you followed her? Because all this time you’ve suspected something?”

  I don’t know what to say. “I…No.” I look down. “I—I went to thank her. For saving my life. And because…because I wanted…to know more about who she is.”

  “Oh, Bucino.” She looks at me gently for a while, but whatever more she sees—and I know it is there to be seen—she lets it be. It makes me ashamed, for she is more generous with me than I ever was with her.

  All that day we wait, though neither of us, I think, really knows what we are waiting for. For her to come to us to ask forgiveness? To plead for her bones back? Or maybe she is waiting for us to come to her and make our own demands. The price of a ruby for a bag of bones. But nothing happens. Outside, the city goes slowly back to work. A Genoese merchant in town for the fair and leaving the next day arrives at our casa on the chance that my lady might dine with him tonight, for he has read some new poetry about her in the Register of Courtesans. But when she turns him down (or rather I do) on the excuse of a prior engagement, he looks almost relieved and, I daresay, goes home to bed. The city has been celebrating for a long time now, and everyone, it seems, is tired.

  We both sleep early and the next morning we both know we have to go to her. My lady veils herself, and Marcello takes us, for over the years it is he who has ferried messages to the baker’s shop in the campo whenever we need her. He drops us at the quayside a few bridges up from the damming of the canal and settles down to wait.

  Though it is past the first work bell, the streets are still sluggish. A man pushes past us, swearing to himself as he goes. It is as if the city has a communal sore head after the celebrations. This is not the time to get into disagreements, for tempers will flare easily. On the bridge leading to the back of her house, a sullen mule is pulling a cart with barrels filled with black slop. Both my lady and I are dressed modestly enough, but I can feel her nervous next to me. It is a while since she has walked the poorer parts of town, and her elegance and my size will inevitably draw attention to us.

  In the dank canal, the dredging has begun. Half a dozen men are up to their waists in the middle of the silt, black as demons
, shoveling up evil clods of sludge with cloths tied around their mouths to save them from the stench that the digging unleashes. It will go on for weeks, this process. A couple of them look up as we pass, and one yells something. Now that the city is running out of volunteers to man its galleys, it has taken to using criminals instead: there are some jobs that even hunger will not sell. We cross quickly and make our way into her alley. I count the doors to reach hers, though I know it well enough. There is no outside lock on now, but if she is in, it will be bolted from behind, as it was when I first came. So I am unnerved when it pushes open at my touch.

  My lady glances fast at me, and we move in together. The gloom dulls our sight, so our first working sense is smell. The air is pungent with strong herbs and the high sourness of decaying animal matter. This is the room of her remedies, and my poker, mixed with my panic, sent a few flying off the shelves. What option did I have? When something cannot be reached easily, you pull at it as best you can, and the book could have been anywhere. But here, everywhere we step, our feet crunch glass and stick on thick puddles of liquid, and as our eyes accustom themselves to the light, I take in a room in a state infinitely worse than I left it. Vanilla mixed with rooster hearts, rosemary soaked in urine. I never caused this much destruction. Every single pot and vial is off the shelf, smashed into bits on the floor. Chairs and a small table are axed, the stove is pulled apart, even the fireplace has been emptied, with ashes and soot flung all around.

  Beside me I register her shock. “I didn’t do this,” I say quickly. “This—this wasn’t me.”

  The door that leads to her bedroom is smashed open, one hinge lying loose. From the threshold we can already see that the bed is in pieces, the floor like a barn with straw and matting everywhere. And the chest…well, even with it empty, I could not have lifted it. But someone could. Did. Axed it into bits and shredded every bit of clothing in it. Whoever came after me was not interested in finding anything they might have lost. Nevertheless, they took something away with them. I look everywhere, but I cannot find them: either the notebook or the wooden box. And I know right away the depth of the trouble. I move back hurriedly into the other room.

  “Jesus, which devil’s ass did you spring from?”

  The man is blocking the outer door from the street, another at his shoulder. Big and caked black, both of them, devils pulled out of the slime.

  My lady recovers before I do. “I…We are looking for Elena Crusichi.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my dwarf suffers from his gut and Elena was due to visit him this morning.” Her voice is as clear as glass. She may have come out of a Venetian slum, but she has risen to live in the piano nobile of a great casa.

  “And what does she give you for that, squat fart?”

  He is staring at me. Was he in the campo yesterday? If so, he might recognize me. I play the idiot and start to groan and whimper, rolling my hands over my gut.

  “Oh, he has no idea. Alas, he is a simpleton,” my lady cuts in impatiently. “Where is she?”

  “She is taken.”

  “Taken? By whom?”

  “By the security forces.”

  “When? Why?”

  “This morning, early. For murder and witchcraft.”

  “Oh, but that’s absurd. She is known by everyone as a healer.”

  “Not to people around here she isn’t. There are women lining up to swear she was stiffing the Devil.”

  Yes, and I bet I know which ones would head the line. If Venice were built like any other city, I swear its gossip would be less poisonous. My lady feels the mood well enough too and is making ready for us to leave. “Well, it seems we must go and find help elsewhere.”

  “Before you ‘run’ away…” He takes a step closer, and even in this stink of medicines, he reeks of the canal. “It’s my job to take down details of anyone who visits her. For evidence.”

  I groan again and move my legs tight together. “My lady!”

  She glances at me. “You must hold on as best you can, Antonio. I must say, sir, for a church officer you have a strange smell.”

  “And for a rich lady you are a long way away from home,” he says, and the smile is not one of charity.

  “Madam!” I yelp.

  She moves into her purse and brings out a silver coin. Then, seeing the man behind, another. It is more than he would earn digging out a dozen canals, and more than he ever dreamed the scam would get him. I read that in his eyes. Indeed, it is so much it might even make him greedy. So I let out a great fart, just in case he should harbor any thought of a double cross.

  “Aagh! You disgusting monkey. Get out of here, both of you.”

  He moves aside, and she sweeps past them like a ship under sail with me as her rolling dinghy.

  I limp down the street as best I can while still being in the throes of manufactured gut rot. We make our way toward the boat via the campo to avoid the canal, and as we do I glance in the direction of the bakery. Two young women are coming out: one is the girl to whom I gave the silver ducat. My God, how long ago was that? She waves and is across to greet me before I can get any farther.

  “Hello, sweet little man.” She giggles first at me and then at my lady, for her presence makes me even more a man of substance. “How are you?”

  “Well,” I say. “I am well.”

  “You haven’t come to see La Draga again?”

  “Er, no.”

  “That’s good. For she’s been taken. As a witch.”

  “A witch? Why, what happened?”

  “The men digging out the canal found some bones stuck in the mud outside her house.”

  And I know it, of course, because it is what I have been fearing as I acted my way along the street.

  “They say the bones came from babies. Ones that she pulled from the womb. They say the Devil has been visiting her. The woman across the canal saw him two nights ago, climbing out of her window in the shape of a great dog. When they heard that, they took her away.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “You are right. It would be madness.”

  “Oh, then you tell him. I swear, he won’t listen to me.”

  “What? Do you want your balls cut off and fed to the pigs, Bucino? They may have been underused recently, but it’s as well to keep them on your person for the future.”

  I take a breath, for I am tired of hearing my voice say the same thing. “I am not out to risk my balls. All I’m saying is, if they know I was the dog, then they cannot accuse her of sleeping with the Devil.”

  “The Devil, no, but you are still a deformity consorting with a witch.”

  “There was no consorting, for God’s sake. She was not even there.”

  “I know that. You know that. But why should anyone believe it when the alternative is so much more juicy?”

  “And what about the bones? Your confession can’t help with the bones.” My lady’s voice is more worried than angry now, for, like me, she is caught between the need to save our skins and the desire to help La Draga.

  “On their own, the bones don’t mean anything,” I say firmly, for I have spent hours thinking myself into the mind of the church inquisitors, acting the advocate on her behalf. “Canals throw up bits of old corpses every time they are dredged. Everybody in Venice knows that. Any woman living there for the last hundred years could have washed an early baby away in the mud.”

  “No, that will not do. Anyone ‘could,’ yes. But the fact is that there was a witch living there who did. Fiammetta is right, Bucino. If you continue to think like this, it will undo you. Your conscience—which I must say is a new and wondrous thing to behold—has made you stupid. We live not on truth, man, but on the power of gossip and malice, as you well know.”

  We are sitting in the beautiful loggia of our portego, which looks out over the water. The Sensa is a week over. The city is proud and busy, its dominion over the waters secure for another year and its coffers stuffed with the coins of a thousand visitors. All is w
ell with the world. And no one wants to hear bad news. In fact, when the business is witchcraft, theft, and prostitution, there are few enough men anywhere to whom one can go for advice.

  Yet for all his hunger for fame and riches, Aretino has an appetite for the underbelly as well as the surface, and though he pretends hardness, he is not without compassion.

  “But I thought that in Venice…I mean, you are forever telling us the Church is not as bad here as other places….”

  “Nor is it. Not as vicious, or as corrupt. Because it is more independent of Rome—the government makes sure of that. Listen, if this were somewhere else, they’d probably be piling up the faggots between the pillars now: God knows, there are places where they burn witches as freely as candles. Even so, these are queasy times for Venice when it comes to heresy. For both Church and state. Or are you two too busy sinning with good Catholics to have noticed? I seem to recall you don’t take men of heretical faith as clients, so maybe you don’t know what is happening in Germany.”

  “You mean Münster.” My lady, though she spends more time on her face these days, still sees what is in front of her eyes.