He shades his eyes to find an idle traghetto. A grizzled boatman beckons with a brusque wave, and Crivano steps aboard his tidy black-hulled sandolo. The Contarini house, he says. In San Samuele.
In reply he gets only a flash of raised fingers and a bestial bleat: the boatman has no tongue. Crivano counts him out a palmful of gazettes, then sits in the shade of the canopy. Looking over his shoulder as the long oar chews the water, he can make out the hazy shape of the new bridge, its single span arching like the brow of a submerged leviathan eye. It slips from sight as the sandolo’s bow swings west.
The broad highway of the canal is paved with broken bits of sun, reflections that outshine the sky itself. The windowsills and balustrades that edge the water are draped with bright patterned carpets from Cairo and Herat and Kashan, but the rows of windows behind them are impenetrable voids. The shouts of the Riva del Vin are fading, and from time to time Crivano can hear the laughter and soft voices of unseen daughters of the Republic, bleaching their frizzed coiffures on hidden terraces somewhere high above.
Heavy-lidded from the rolling boat, he keeps himself awake by pondering what blasphemy a gondolier might pronounce, or to whom he might pronounce it, that would oblige him to forfeit his tongue. In this city blasphemy is the gondolier’s cant and his lingua franca, as indispensable as his oar; it seems more likely that this rough fellow is a slanderer, or was. This comforts Crivano: the reminder that denunciation can also impose a cost on its utterer. He smiles to himself, tilts his face to catch the sun.
He’s not certain Narkis would endorse his expenditure of the better part of a day in Senator Contarini’s court — this excursion will do nothing to advance their plot — but Crivano feels justified nonetheless in making the visit. The Senator is his sole legitimate connection here, the authority that has established him as a person of substance and introduced him to the circles in which Narkis requires him to move; the association must therefore be cultivated. If Crivano displays something beyond dutiful resignation at the prospect of acquainting himself over extravagant meals with the most distinguished minds in Christendom, well, Narkis can hardly object, can he? Besides, how otherwise might Crivano spend the afternoon? Sequestered in his rented room, awaiting a response from Narkis that might not materialize for weeks?
The Contarini palace rises on the intrados of the Grand Canal’s southward bend, its imposing façade flush with those of its neighbors. As they approach, a sleek gondola rowed by a tall Ethiope in rich livery pulls away from the water-gate, and Crivano wonders how many others have been invited to dine.
Marco, the senator’s youngest son, greets him with an embrace beneath the gate’s broad tympanum. We’re honored that you’ve come, dottore, the young man says, guiding him to the stairs. We’re blessed with fine weather today, so my father has chosen to hold the banquet in the garden.
One of Marco’s nephews, a chubby boy of around seven, takes Crivano’s hand and leads him up two flights to the great hall on the piano nobile. The furnishings he knows from previous visits — suits of armor, shields and bucklers, sunbursts of swords and spears, all framed by tattered banners bearing emblems and devices he recalls from his childhood — are now clustered at the hall’s far end, and the nearby walls are lined with folded wooden screens, rolled black curtains, and partly assembled scaffolding. Before he can make a closer inspection, the boy tugs him into the blazing atrium.
A long table shaded with parasols stretches between two neat rows of almond trees, their branches already sagging with green fruit. A dozen or so servants — twice the usual retinue, temporary help hired for the Sensa — set places across its oaken expanse with goblets and flatware. Crivano recognizes a few of the milling guests from state banquets and earlier introductions, but most faces are strange to him.
The senator himself stands at the edge of the grass, looking well-rested and magnificent in a lynx-trimmed velvet robe. He claps his big hands warmly on Crivano’s shoulders. I am gratified to find you well, senator, Crivano says.
Contarini’s response is spoken in the language of court, not that of the Republic; foreign visitors must be present. I give credit to you and to your physic, dottore, he says. It has restored me so completely that I am scarcely able to recognize myself.
The senator turns to the man on his right, a gaunt and balding Neapolitan of sallow complexion. This is the heroic personage of whom I spoke, my friend, he says. Dottore Vettor Crivano, a child of Cyprus like myself, who suffered years in infidel bondage, who made a daring escape from Constantinople and helped restore the remains of the valiant Marcantonio Bragadin to the hands of the Republic. Devoted in equal measure to wisdom and to brave deeds, he graduated from Bologna with distinction, and has come our city to commence his career as a physician. Dottore Crivano, I don’t believe you’ve met Signore della Porta.
Crivano and the Neapolitan exchange polite bows.
Dottore Crivano’s father, Contarini continues, was chief secretary to my kinsman Lord Pietro Glissenti, the last chamberlain of Cyprus, and served him faithfully until they were both massacred at Famagusta. Were that sacrifice insufficient to place the Contarini family in his debt, Dottore Crivano has recently cured me of a sleeplessness that has troubled me since well before Lent. You really should seek his council about your own ailments, Giovan. He is the best man to help you.
You are unwell, signore? Crivano asks.
The Neapolitan’s voice is quiet and crisp, like a shuffle of documents. It’s nothing at all, he says. I’m fine.
Contarini leans toward Crivano, lowers his voice. He coughs, he says. At times I imagine his heart will leap from his jaws like a toad, he coughs so much. It’s worse after he eats, which is why he refuses to dine with us. One hesitates to believe, dottore, that such terrible noises can come from the lungs of such a small man.
I pray you will forgive my discourtesy, senator, the Neapolitan says, but as you have no doubt noticed, the sun nears its zenith. With your permission, I will see to the children.
Della Porta takes his leave across the peristyle, entering the great hall. Contarini claps Crivano on the arm with a conspiratorial wink and turns to greet another guest. Momentarily at a loss, Crivano fades into the crowd, seeking faces he knows, pondering the Neapolitan. Della Porta, he thinks. From Naples. Why is this familiar?
The servants have begun to seat the guests. Crivano winds up between a sullen and heavily veiled maiden and an elderly gentleman called Barbaro — a procurator of San Marco, quite deaf — who loudly denigrates the glassmakers’ guild until the first course arrives. The glassworks of the Medici, old Barbaro shouts, makes lenses of quality, but it has no prayer of competing with the factories of Holland. And where do their finest craftsmen come from? They come from here! We treat our guildsmen like merchant princes, and they conduct themselves like roundheeled whores!
Crivano wants to raise a polite dissent — a pointless impulse, since the procurator is certain not to hear him — and he’s sifting his brain for what little he knows of optics when recollection comes. I beg your pardon, lady, he whispers to the veiled girl. The Neapolitan gentleman who was here a short time ago, the one called della Porta — is he not Giambattista della Porta, the author of Magiae Naturalis, and the famous book on physiognomy?
Beneath clouds of gray lace the girl’s eyes are riveted to his own, but she makes no reply.
Or perhaps, Crivano says, you know him as a playwright, and not as an eminent scholar? As the author of the popular comedies Penelope, and The Maid, and Olympia?