“She will be mine,” he murmured to il Machia, and his friend looked amused. “On the day I am elected Pope,” he said, “Alessandra Fiorentina will invite you into her bed. Look at you. You are not a man with whom beautiful women fall in love. You are a man who runs errands for them, and on whom they wipe their feet.”
“Go to hell,” Ago replied. “It’s your curse to see the world too fucking clearly, and without a shred of kindness, and then you can’t keep it to yourself, you just have to spit it out, and to hell with people’s feelings. Why don’t you go and masturbate a diseased goat.”
Il Machia raised his bat’s-wing eyebrows, as if to concede that he had gone too far, and kissed his friend on both cheeks. “Excuse me,” he said in a repentant voice. “You are right. A young man of twenty-eight who is not particularly tall, who is already losing his hair, whose body is a collection of soft pillows stuffed into a case that’s slightly too small to hold them, who remembers no verses except filthy ones, and whose tongue is a byword for obscenity—that’s exactly the fellow who will part Queen Alessandra’s legs.” Ago shook his head unhappily. “I’ll tell you how big a prick I am,” he said. “I don’t just want her flesh. I want her fucking heart.”
In the high-ceilinged salon of Alessandra Fiorentina, under a domed ceiling frescoed with flying cherubs in a blue sky attending upon the cloud mattress where Ares and Aphrodite were making love, listening to the celestial music of the German Heinrich Zink, the greatest player of the cornetto curvo in all Italy, Ago Vespucci felt as if he had been illuminated by a ray of the sun at midnight, and turned once again into that petrified virgin of years before who had sat on a skinny tart’s bed reading her the verses of the great poets of the day and blushing and sneezing when she decided to get to the point. La Fiorentina was nowhere to be seen and in her absence he stood cap in hand by a little fountain, unable to join in the orgy all around him. Il Machia abandoned him for a time and ran off into a trompe l’oeil wood with a pair of nude dryads. Ago’s body weighed heavily upon him. He was a phantom at the feast. He was the only living man in a house of orgiastic ghosts. He felt ponderous, sad, and alone.
Nobody in the reborn city slept that night. Music crowded the air, and the streets, the taverns, the houses of ill repute and those of good reputation too, the markets, the nunneries, all were full of love. The statues of the gods came down from their flower-decked alcoves and joined in the fun, pressing their cold marble nudity against warm human flesh. Even the animals and birds got the idea and went at it with a will. Rats rutted in the shadows of bridges, and bats in their belfries did whatever it is that bats like to do. A man ran through the streets naked and tolling a merry bell. “Wipe your eyes and unbutton your pants,” he shouted, “for the time of tears is done.” Ago Vespucci in the House of Mars heard that bell ringing in the distance and was filled with an inexplicable fear. A moment later he understood that it was the terror of his life passing, his life slipping through his fingers while he stood paralyzed and alone. He felt as though twenty years might pass in that instant, as if he might be borne away by the music, carried helplessly into a future of paralysis and failure, when time itself would stop altogether, crushed under the burden of his pain.
Then, at last, the ruffiana Giulietta Veronese beckoned him. “You are a lucky such-and-such,” she said. “Even though she has had a big night, a magnificent night, La Fiorentina says she will see you now, and your sex-crazy friend as well.” Ago Vespucci burst with a yell into the bedchamber of the painted woods, dragged il Machia off his dryads, threw his clothes at him, and pulled him, still dressing, toward the enchanted chamber where Alessandra the Beauty was waiting.
In the sanctum of the great courtesan, the city’s grandees were asleep, sated, in déshabillé on velvet couches, their limbs flung wantonly across the prone bodies of naked hetaerae, Alessandra’s junior troupe, her supporting act, who had danced naked for the dignitaries until they forgot their dignity and turned into howling wolves. La Fiorentina’s bed, however, was empty, its sheets pristine, and Ago’s heart gave a little leap of stupid hope. She has no lover. She is waiting for you. But radiant Alessandra was not thinking about sex. She lounged across her unused bed eating grapes from a bowl, clothed in nothing but her golden hair, and gave only the most minute indication of having noticed their entry into her boudoir in the company of her midget watchdog. They stood and waited. Then after a few moments she spoke, softly, as if telling herself a bedtime story.
“In the beginning,” she said, absently, “there were three friends, Niccolò ‘il Machia,’ Agostino Vespucci, and Antonino Argalia. Their boyhood world was a magic wood. Then Nino’s parents were taken by the plague. He left to seek his fortune and they never saw him again.”
When they heard these words both men forgot about the present and were plunged into memories. Niccolò’s own mother Bartolomea de’ Nelli, who cured sicknesses with the help of porridge, had died suddenly not long after the nine-year-old orphan Argalia had headed to Genoa to seek employment in the arquebus-armed militia commanded by the condottiere Andrea Doria. Niccolò’s father Bernardo had done his best to cook up a polenta cure but Bartolomea had died anyway, burning up and shivering, and Bernardo had never been the same since. These days he spent his time on the farm in Percussina, scratching out a living and blaming himself for lacking the skills in the kitchen that could have saved his wife’s life. “If I had just paid attention,” he said a hundred times a day, “I could have learned the proper recipe. Instead I just covered her poor body in a useless hot muck and she left me in disgust.” And while il Machia was thinking about his dead mother and his ruined father, Ago was remembering the day Argalia left them looking like any destitute tramp, with a bundle of possessions hanging on a shouldered stick. “The day he left,” he said aloud, “was the day we stopped being children.” But that wasn’t what he was thinking, or not all of it. And it was the day we found the mandrake root, he added silently, and a fantasy began to take shape in his head, a plan that would make Alessandra Fiorentina his love-slave for life.
Their distraction irritated Alessandra, but she was far too grand to show it. “What a pair of cold-hearted good-for-nothings you are,” the courtesan chided them without raising her low, smoky, indifferent voice. “Does the name of your lost, best friend mean nothing to you, though you have not heard it for nineteen years?”
Ago Vespucci was too tongue-tied to reply, but the truth was that nineteen years was a long time. They had loved Argalia and lost him and for months, even years, they had hoped for news. Finally they had both stopped mentioning him, both separately convinced that Argalia’s silence must mean their friend was dead. Neither of them wanted to face that truth. So each of them had hidden Argalia away within themselves, because as long as he was a taboo subject he might still be alive. But then they grew up and he got lost inside them, he faded, and became no more than an unspoken name. It was hard to call him back to life.
In the beginning there were three friends, who each went on a journey. Ago, who detested travel, was destined to go down the rocky path of love. Il Machia was far more desirable than he, but was most interested in the quest for power, which was a surer aphrodisiac than any magic root. And Argalia, Argalia was lost in the heavens, he was their wandering star…“Is it bad news?” Niccolò was asking Alessandra. “Forgive us. We have feared this moment for most of our lives.”
Alessandra gestured toward a side door. “Take them to her,” she told Giulietta Veronese. “I’m too tired to answer any of these questions right now.” With that she slipped into sleep, her head resting on her outstretched right arm, and from her perfect nose there emerged the faintest little ghost of a snore. “You have heard her,” Giulietta the midget said roughly. “It’s time to go.” Then, relenting a little, she added, “You will get all your answers in here.”
Behind the door was another bedchamber, but the woman in this place was neither naked nor recumbent. The room was poorly lit—a single candle burned low in its h
older on a wall—and as they accustomed their eyes to the gloom they saw standing before them an odalisque of royal bearing, bare of midriff, wearing a tight bodice and loose pantaloons, and with her hands clasped in front of her chest. “Silly bitch,” said Giulietta Veronese, “she thinks perhaps that she is still in the Ottoman harem, and has not become accustomed to the facts.” She went up close to the odalisque, who was almost twice her height, and shouted up at her from the level, approximately, of her navel. “You were captured by pirates! Pirates! Already two weeks ago—il y a déjà deux semaines—you have been sold at a slave market in Venice! Un marché des esclaves! Understand? You hear what I say to you? Est-ce que tu comprends ce que je te dis?” She turned back to Ago and il Machia. “The owner, he offers her to us on approval, and we still make up our minds. She’s a looker all right, the breasts, the ass, these are good”—here the midget fondled the stationary woman lasciviously—“but this is a strange one, for sure.”
“What is her name?” Ago asked. “Why do you address her in French? Why does she look as if she has been turned to stone?”
“We have heard a story of a French princess kidnapped by the Turk,” said Giulietta Veronese, circling the silent woman like a predator. “But it is only a legend, we have thought. Maybe this is she. Maybe not she. She speaks French, that is sure. However, she will not answer to a real name. When you ask her what she’s called she says, I am the memory palace. Ask her yourself. Go ahead. Why not? Are you afraid?”
“Qui êtes-vous, mademoiselle,” il Machia asked in his kindest voice, and the stone woman replied, “Je suis le palais des souvenirs.” “You see?” Giulietta crowed in triumph. “Like she’s not a person anymore. Like she’s more of a place.”
“What does she have to do with Argalia?” Ago wanted to know. The odalisque stirred, as if on the verge of speech, but then became still once more.
“It’s like this,” said Giulietta Veronese. “When she came here she wouldn’t speak at all. A palace with all the doors and windows locked, she was. Then the mistress said, do you know where you are? I repeated it, obviously, est-ce que tu sais où tu es, and when the mistress added, you are in the city of Florence, it was like turning a key. ‘There is a room in this palace containing that name,’ she said, and she began to make small, incomprehensible movements of the body, like a person walking without moving, as if she was going somewhere in her head. And then she said the thing that made my mistress command me to bring you here.”
“What did she say?” Ago demanded.
“Listen for yourself,” Giulietta Veronese replied. Then, turning to the shrouded woman, she said, “Qu’est-ce que tu connais de Florence? Qu’est-ce que se trouve dans cette chambre du palais?” At once the slave girl began to move, as if she were walking down corridors, turning corners, passing through doorways, without ever leaving the spot where she stood. Then, at last, she spoke. “In the beginning,” she said, in perfect Italian, “there were three friends, Niccolò il Machia, Agostino Vespucci, and Antonino Argalia. Their boyhood world was a magic wood.”
Ago began to tremble. “How does she know that? How can she possibly have heard it?” he asked in amazement. But il Machia had guessed the answer. A part of it lay in the books in his father’s small, highly prized library. (Bernardo was not a rich man and books were always a struggle to afford, so the decision to purchase a volume was not lightly made.) Next to Niccolò’s favorite book, the Ab Urbe Condita of Titus Livius, stood Cicero’s De Oratore, and next to that was the Rhetorica ad Herennium, a slim volume by an anonymous author. “According to Cicero,” Niccolò said, remembering, “this technique was invented by a Greek, Simonides of Ceos, who had just left a dinner party full of important men when the roof fell in and killed everyone. When he was asked who was there he managed to identify all the dead by remembering where they had sat at the dinner table.”
“What technique?” Ago asked.
“In the Rhetorica it’s called by the same name, the memory palace,” il Machia answered. “You build a building in your head, you learn your way around it, and then you start attaching memories to its various features, its furniture, its decorations, whatever you choose. If you attach a memory to a particular location you can remember an enormous amount by walking around the place in your head.”
“But this lady refers to herself as the palace,” Ago objected. “As if her own physical person is the edifice to which these memories have been attached.”
“Then somebody has gone to a great deal of trouble,” said il Machia, “to build a memory palace the size of an entire human brain. This young woman has had her own memories removed, or consigned to some high attic of the palace of memory which has been erected in her mind, and she has become the repository of everything her master needed to have remembered. What do we know of the Ottoman court? This may be a common practice among the Turks, or it may have been the tyrannical whim of a specific potentate, or one of his favorites. Suppose now that our friend Argalia was that favorite—suppose that he himself was the architect, at least of this particular chamber in the memory palace—or suppose, even, that the architect was someone who knew him well. In either case we must conclude that this beloved companion of our youth is still, or was until recently, very much alive.”
“Look,” said Ago, “she’s getting ready to speak again.”
“There was once a prince named Arcalia,” the palace of memories announced. “A great warrior who possessed enchanted weapons, and in whose retinue were four terrifying giants. He was also the most handsome man in the world.”
“Arcalia or Argalia,” said il Machia, very excited now. “That sounds like our friend all right.”
“Arcalia the Turk,” said the memory palace. “Wielder of the Enchanted Lance.”
“That complete bastard,” said Ago Vespucci, admiringly. “He did what he said he’d do. He went over to the other side.”
{ 12 }
On the road to Genoa an empty inn
On the road to Genoa an empty inn stood with darkened windows and open doors, abandoned by the innkeeper, his wife, his children, and all the guests on account of the Partly-dead Giant who had recently moved in upstairs. According to Nino Argalia, whose tale this was, the giant was partly-dead because while he was completely dead in the daytime he came to fearsome life at night. “If you spend a night in there you will surely be gobbled up,” the neighbors told the boy Argalia when he passed that way; but Argalia wasn’t afraid and went indoors and ate a hearty meal all alone. When the giant came to life that night he saw Argalia and said, “Aha! A snackerel! Excellent!” But Argalia replied, “If you eat me you will never know my secret.” The giant was curious, and also stupid, as is often the way with giants, so he said, “Tell me your secret, my little snackerel, and I promise I won’t eat you until it’s told.” Argalia bowed deeply, and began. “My secret is up that chimney,” he said, “and whoever gets up there first will be the richest boy in the world.” “Or giant,” said the Partly-dead Giant. “Or giant,” Argalia agreed, sounding doubtful. “But you are so huge that you won’t be able to fit.” “Is it a big treasure?” the giant asked. “The biggest on earth,” Argalia replied. “That is why the wise prince who amassed it hid it up the chimney of a humble roadside inn, because nobody would suspect that so grand a monarch would use such a stupid hiding place.” “Princes are dumb,” said the Partly-dead Giant. “Not like giants,” Argalia added thoughtfully. “Exactly,” said the giant, and tried to stuff himself up the chimney. “Too big,” Argalia sighed. “Just as I feared. Too bad.” The giant cried out, “By the gods, I’m not done yet,” and tore off one of his arms. “Not so wide now, am I?” he said, but still he couldn’t get up the chimney. “Maybe if you bit off the other one,” Argalia suggested, and at once the giant’s great jaws chewed up his remaining arm as if it were a mutton shank. But even that didn’t make the great brute narrow enough. “I have an idea,” said Argalia, “suppose you just send your head up there to see what can be seen?” “I d
on’t have any arms anymore, snackerel,” the giant said, sorrowfully, “so although your idea is excellent, I can’t very well detach my head by myself.” “Permit me,” Argalia replied smartly, and, picking up a kitchen cleaver, he jumped up on a table and cut through the behemoth’s neck—snickersnee! snackersnee!—with a single fluent stroke. When the innkeeper, his wife, his family, and all the guests (who had spent the night sleeping in a nearby ditch) learned that Argalia had beheaded the Partly-dead Giant, so that he was now totally deceased, by night as well as by day, they asked if he would help them out one more time and also behead the rapacious Duke of nearby U., who had been making their lives a misery. “Solve your own problems,” Argalia said. “That’s none of my business. I only wanted to have a quiet bed for the night. Now I’m on my way to sail with Admiral Andrea Doria and make my fortune.” And with that he left them flat and went off to find his destiny…
The story was completely untrue, but the untruth of untrue stories could sometimes be of service in the real world, and it was tales of this sort—improvised versions of the endless stream of stories he had learned from his friend Ago Vespucci—that saved little Nino Argalia’s own neck after he was found hiding under a bunk in the forecastle of the flagship of Andrea Doria’s fleet. His information had been out of date—the French had been dispatched by the Band of Gold some time ago—and when he heard that Doria was about to set off to fight the Turk he knew it was time for desperate measures. The eight triremes full of ferocious mercenaries armed to the teeth with arquebuses, cutlasses, pistols, garrotes, daggers, whips, and bad language had already been at sea for five days when the starving wretch of a stowaway was dragged by the ear into the presence of the great condottiere himself. Argalia looked like a dirty rag doll, dressed in rags and clutching a bundle of rags to his chest. Now, Andrea Doria was not a man of good character. He lacked all scruple and was capable of acts of extreme vindictiveness. He was tyrannical and vain. His bloodthirsty army of soldiers of fortune would have risen up against him long ago except that he was a great commander, a grand master of strategy, and was also entirely lacking in fear. He was, in short, a monster, and when he was displeased he looked as dangerous as any giant, whether half-deceased or not.