These dreams of mine, he says, are no mundane sifting of the day’s affairs. They are eruptions from the depths of my most secret heart. Faces that death shrouded long ago from my eyes, faces I recall only from inferior portraits I’ve passed for years without regard — my mother, my father, my brothers and sisters, my own lost children, even the wet-nurses and the favored stewards of my infant home — these faces haunt me in sleep, appearing as vividly to me as you do now. They have led me along corridors of reminiscence to times and localities I had utterly forgotten, where I have spent whole nights feasting on details I never remarked upon my initial visitations. What is most confounding of all, Vettor, is the haste by which these dream-shades are queered and dispersed by the first morning rays that penetrate my feeble old eyes. What in sleep was pure becomes base and ridiculous. Please understand that I have no wish to avoid these dreams. On the contrary, I find myself rising from them with calm suffusing my spirit, with fervor quickening my steps. I simply regard them with wonderment, as one might a new comet or a chimeric beast, and I seek to understand them. Have you any advice to share with an inquisitive old man on such a trifling matter?
Crivano has been only half-listening; he shifts slightly in his seat. There is a substantial corpus of literature on dreams, he says, but my own expertise in the area is far from complete. Perhaps you will permit me to study the issue further, to meditate on it for a few days, before I conceive a diagnosis. There may well be physic to help clarify these phantasms.
Of course, dottore. My curiosity is inflamed, but my urgency is not great. And I shall myself seek out the writings you’ve mentioned. I must confess that I have already been lured into the pages of the Oneirocritica of Ephesius, a book whose utility in these chambers until recently consisted of flattening curled paper on humid afternoons. It is a strange and wonderful thing, dottore, for a man of my age to awaken feeling younger, with the sense that the daylit world has grown sharper and more vivid before his eyes. It is surprising, too, to find the invigorating agent linked so closely to memories of the past, changed though those memories might be by the lens of the dreaming mind. It is not generally a tonic for old men, this act of remembering. Don’t you agree?
Crivano notes the trenchant cast of the senator’s white eyebrows, and he takes a moment to respond. I suppose, he says, that that depends on what is being remembered. Dottore de Nis has spoken to me of one you might consult on this matter. An expert on the art of memory, hailing from Nola, who is currently a guest in the home of Lord Zuanne Mocenigo.
Contarini spits out a rough laugh. Yes, he says. I’ve met the Nolan of whom you speak. An interesting fellow. Disagreeable. Quite deluded, I think. I understand from my colleagues at Padua that he has applied for their vacant chair in mathematics, which, from what I can follow of this man’s thinking, seems somewhat akin to the Turkish sultan’s chief astrologer seeking to become the next pope. I have begun writing letters in support of one of his competitors — the son of the famed lutenist Vincenzo Galilei, lately resident in Pisa — who seems rather promising despite his relative youth. You learned of the Nolan from Tristão, you say?
That’s correct, senator.
I see, Contarini says. I hope you will forgive an old man his harangues, Vettor, if I remind you to exercise caution with Dottore de Nis.
Crivano gives the senator a broad, empty smile. As always, I receive your advice with gratitude, he says, but I have seen nothing at all in Dottore de Nis’s conduct worthy of censure.
You would not. Nor would I. In fact, I would trust — I have trusted — Tristão de Nis with my life. The pressing issue is not what we see, but what the Inquisition sees.
Crivano smoothes his beard, runs a thumb across his pursed lips. I am told, he says, that the Inquisition is weak in the territories of the Republic. Is this not so?
It is indeed so. And it is aware of its weakness. And like a starving animal, it now hungers after anything more vulnerable than itself. Jews and Turks are now entirely safe within our city, provided they identify themselves and keep to their approved areas. Likewise, all established Christian families have little to fear. But for new Christians like Tristão — for any person who navigates the boundaries between the discrete communities of our polis — dangers do remain. Because the conversions of the Jews of Portugal were coerced by King Manuel, the sincerity of Portuguese Christians is always suspect here. Dottore de Nis has many friends among the learned men of the Ghetto, including several widely reputed to be alchemists and magi. I also know him to be acquainted with Turkish scholars. The great affection he engenders among noble families — members of this household foremost among them — has thusfar kept him above reproach. But if the wrong person were to denounce him, it could be very bad.
Do you believe Tristão to be sincere in his profession of faith, Senator?
In the end, what you or I or anyone else believes will not matter.
Of course, Crivano says. I understand completely. But I humbly put the question to you again. Do you believe that Dottore de Nis is sincere?
A flash of irritation clouds Contarini’s face, then dissipates. He reaches across the desk to lift a large hexagonal crystal — perfectly clear but for a few fine capillaries of gold — that weights a stack of his correspondence. He shifts the crystal absently from palm to palm. Do you read Boccaccio, Vettor? he asks.
Not in a great number of years.
Perhaps you will recall a story that Boccaccio puts in the mouth of Melchizedek the Jew. Melchizedek tells the sultan the tale of an exceedingly wealthy old man, whose family passes to its most favored son of each generation a ring of great antiquity. When the time comes for this old man to write his will, he is unable to choose between his three equally virtuous sons, and instead hires a skilled jeweler to fashion two copies of the ring. So exact are these replicas that after the old man’s death, no one, not even the jeweler, can tell which is the original. So it is, Melchizedek declares, with the Christians, the Muhammadans, the Jews. How is one to resolve this puzzle? If the three rings are truly identical, is it blasphemous to wonder whether this should be a concern for mortal men? Whether it matters at all?
Tongue-tied like a schoolboy, Crivano stares at the insignia carved into the senator’s desk, unable to think of any response but one: the old man is dead. He opts to keep his silence.
The senator places the rock-crystal in a sunbeam, rotating it on its point. Colored rays sweep the desk like spokes of an invisible wheel. On its smooth sides Crivano can make out the iridescent whorls of Contarini’s fingerprints.
This afternoon, Contarini says, you met my young cousin.
Perina. Yes.
She had questions for you.
Yes. She did.
Contarini draws a deep breath and lets it out. For the first time today, he looks old. I had asked Perina, he says, to be delicate and respectful, in a manner befitting a young lady of her station. But I fear that her youth in this house suffered a lack of womanly paragons for such behavior, and thus her tread is often heavier than it should be. For this you have my apologies.
No apology is needed, Senator. I enjoyed speaking with—
Contarini quiets him with a raised palm. Please, he says. Grant an old diplomat a few frank words to ease his guilty conscience. Perina sought to interrogate you about the Battle of Lepanto, for reasons you have perhaps by now ascertained. I indulged her, not only by arranging today’s encounter, but also by withholding from you my knowledge of her intentions. I allowed you to be ambushed. I had imagined this to be a thing of small consequence — an amusing stratagem to disrupt your usual reserve, to encourage you to speak freely of your past deeds — but I see now that I was presumptuous.