He again climbed onto the wagon with the furs. After settling in comfortably on the sable pelts, Brother Hugo continued:
There are all kinds of people. They say there are people known as androgyns. They have a body that is masculine on one side, feminine on the other side: a person like that has a masculine right nipple but a feminine left nipple. And there are people known as satyrs. Their dwellings are in mountain forests and their movement is quick: nobody can catch up when they run. They go around naked and their bodies are covered with hair. They speak no human language, they just shout shouts. As we know, there are also sciapods, people who rest in the shade of their own feet. Their feet are so big (Brother Hugo raised his own feet) that in hot weather they cover themselves with them, like an awning. There are, I can report to you, many various creatures born into the world: some have dog heads, some have no heads, teeth on the chest, eyes on the elbows, some have two faces, some have four eyes, some have six horns on their heads, and some have six digits on their hands and on their feet.
If they truly exist, asked Arseny, turning, what is the purpose of their existence?
Brother Hugo grew pensive.
There is no purpose, only a reason. The whole thing is that after the Tower of Babel, God let everyone live as their hearts desired. And so some went astray. They chose their paths to conform to their desires, and their outward appearances began to correspond to their ways of thinking. It is all very logical.
Ambrogio began laughing:
Logical? I have known people whose ways of thinking were such that, according to this logic, they should have looked very frightening. But they looked totally fine nevertheless.
Ambrogio spurred his horse and galloped ahead without waiting for an answer. Arseny followed him after reflecting a bit.
There are no rules without exceptions, Brother Hugo shouted to them as they rode off. They tell, for example, of antipodes who live on the other side of the earth. And, just imagine, many of them look exactly the same as us.
But Ambrogio could no longer hear him.
How do you like that? Brother Hugo said to the Kiev merchants.
The merchants nodded. They did not understand a word of German.
But I do not much believe the stories about antipodes, continued the brother, encouraged, and do you know why? Well, because to take them seriously, one must be willing to declare that the world is round! I am not even saying that this is funny or that it is blasphemy—it is, above all, ridiculous. As soon as we acknowledge that the world is round, we will simply be obligated to acknowledge that people on the other side of the earth walk upside down!
Brother Hugo began loudly laughing. The Kiev merchants also started smiling as they looked at him. Brother Hugo’s laugh proved so infectious that within just a minute the entire caravan was laughing. Thanks to that laugh, the anxiety that everyone felt after being subjected to mortal danger over the last several days departed. That laughter contained the joy of people for whom Venice, the most wonderful city on earth, awaited ahead.
As the caravan was leaving its nighttime campsite the next morning, two horsemen rode up from the Alps side. Members of the caravan recognized them as the highwaymen they had met the day before. When the highwaymen saw Arseny and Ambrogio, they approached them.
Our leader is in a very bad way, the highwaymen said to Ambrogio. He was stricken yesterday and is lying motionless. Can your comrade help in some way?
Ambrogio interpreted for Arseny what they had said.
Inform them that I am now powerless to help, Arseny answered. This person’s hours are numbered and he will die in the evening. There is mercy in the quick death the Almighty has presented to him.
After hearing Arseny’s reply, the highwaymen said:
When he was still able to speak, he asked to give you this.
One of the highwaymen took out the little bag with the gold coins and gave it to Ambrogio. Right then and there they returned the money to the people who had given it the day before. The caravan set its course for Venice.
Guards stopped the caravan upon its arrival into Venice. They asked everyone for traveling papers that could prove the wayfarers were arriving from the north, not the southeast. The plague was raging in Asia Minor and the authorities feared its entry into the Venetian Republic. Everyone had letters except Brother Hugo, who had lost his along with his bags and donkey, but the caravan unanimously confirmed the brother had crossed the Alps with them.
I crossed, sighed the Franciscan, though he was not convinced it had been the right decision.
They all parted ways in Venice. The parting was marked with an especial cordiality, for many knew they were parting forever. In this lay a particularity of partings during that era. The Middle Ages rarely presented opportunities that brought people together twice during the course of an earthly life.
Brother Hugo invited Arseny and Ambrogio to spend the night at the Franciscan monastery. With no other shelter in Venice, they gratefully accepted the invitation. Brother Hugo’s memory of the route was shaky, so it took some time to reach the monastery. He rode the same horse as Ambrogio, pointing out which way to go. Streets looped, turned into dead ends, or led back to previous spots. Thrice they found themselves on Piazza San Marco and twice at the Rialto Bridge. The horses went one after the other, the clopping of their hooves overpowered by its own echo. Sometimes they had to press right up against walls to let through horsemen riding in the opposite direction. Ambrogio looked at Arseny with a smile. It was the first time he had seen his friend so amazed.
Arseny truly was amazed: he had never seen anything like this. One time he even stopped on a bridge to watch as an elderly Venetian woman stepped directly down from the doorway of her own home into a gondola. The gondola began rocking under her foot. Arseny turned away. He cautiously turned his head when he heard the splash of an oar. The woman was sitting calmly in the stern. She had been leaving her house just like this for the last half-century, so never suspected Arseny was alarmed.
The travelers were received affably at the monastery. Brother Hugo informed the prior that Arseny was not a Catholic and the prior answered with an elaborate gesture. That gesture could be interpreted in various ways, but it did not indicate a direct ban on staying at the monastery. That, at least, was how Brother Hugo perceived it. He brought Arseny and Ambrogio to a cell intended for three, where water for washing and beds had been prepared for them. They would be expected at evening table in an hour.
None of the three went to table. Brother Hugo and Ambrogio sank into a deep slumber after the road, but Arseny was experiencing deep excitement over his encounter with Venice. It would not let him sleep. It would not even let him stay in the cell. He quietly went downstairs and stepped outside after bowing to the porter.
The monastery stood on a canal. It seemed like a regular house from the street, no different from the other houses built right up against one another. A thin strip of a roadway ran between the houses and the canal, so here one need not walk straight onto the water from a house. Arseny took several steps toward the canal. He crouched and watched seaweed billowing on a mooring post. The water here smelled different from that of other places he’d visited. The smell was putrid. Arseny felt happy when he remembered it afterwards, for this was the smell of Venice.
Evening was falling. The sun was not visible because of the buildings, but the walls that the sun’s last rays still reached had turned ocher and yellow. Arseny walked along the canals—in the places it was possible to walk—and crossed arch-shaped little bridges. At first he tried to remember the route he had taken so he could return, but after just a few streets he could not even determine the direction in which the Franciscan monastery lay. Never in his life thus far had he found himself in such an astonishing place, and now he could not commit it all to memory. Arseny had developed a feel for the expanse of the forest and the expanse of the field, the icy emptiness of Beloozero and the wooden streets of Pskov, finding his way around everywhere without difficulty. But now, after ending up among overlapping water and stone, it occurred to him that he had no sense of this expanse. He was alone in a strange and wonderful city and did not know its language. The only one who could help him was asleep, exhausted, in a monastery that was in some unknown place. And Arseny grew calm.