Machiavelli: The Novel

by Joseph Markulin

  “Making love to you.”

  “He was a bashful lover—until I outright refused his advances.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then he locked me in a room. When I still refused him, he started to get nasty. He started threatening to put me back in jail. He started to belittle you. ‘Our Machiavelli of blessed memory’ he called you. He said a lot of things that were true.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you always went around with your head in the clouds and dreamed big, preposterous dreams.”

  Niccolo made a face.

  “He also said a lot that wasn’t true. He said he was twice the man you were, and that you had had all the breaks, but he had had to scheme and work for everything he got. He even went so far as to imply that you were sleeping with Soderini to hold onto your position.”

  “The bastard!”

  “Messer Michelozzi was a very bitter man. But he said he could wait, because now he had it all within his grasp—everything that you had.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That he had already been promised your job by the Cardinal de’ Medici, and now he had your woman too, whom he said he loved from the first time he laid eyes on me.”

  “And you believed him!”

  “It was obvious. He was insanely jealous of you. He said you were a fool and didn’t know how to treat a woman, and it drove him crazy to see you ignoring me and going off on your fantastic exploits with the militia.”

  “And what did you think of that?”

  Giuditta ignored the question, “He said he could make me happy. That I should give him a chance.”

  “Why didn’t you, if you thought I was dead?”

  “Niccolo, he was obviously mad.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “What do you want me to say, that I vowed never to love another man as long as I lived and to be faithful to your memory until the day I died?”

  “That would have been nice.”

  “Perhaps there were some residual feelings, hmmmm, caro?”

  He relaxed. “What happened then?”

  “He came to me all on fire one night, and when all his arguments failed, he tried to force himself on me. That’s when I managed to get away.”

  “How?”

  “I kicked him in the place where his balls would be if he had any.”

  “And he doesn’t? Have any I mean.”

  “Not in the sense that you sons of Ishmael use the word, no. Anyway, I grabbed his keys, locked him in his own prison, and was gone.”

  “Where to?”

  “I didn’t want to go to your house, so I went to Callimaco and told him everything. He took me to a place called the Burelle.

  “Where’s that?”

  “I found out it’s where an old Roman amphitheatre used to be. There are all these caves, deep underground, and tunnels. They used to keep the wild animals and the gladiators down there.”

  “How did Callimaco know about this place?” asked Niccolo. “I never even heard of it.”

  “Callimaco knew about it because the old tunnels and caves are full of prostitutes. You know he made a point of finding out those kinds of things. He hid me there and went back to the bottega, so as not to arouse suspicion. He said guards came and questioned him, asking about me. He said he thought they were watching the place, too. After a few days, when things had calmed down, we escaped.”

  Giuditta pulled herself closer to Niccolo as their horse plodded up into the foothills outside of Rome. For a while, they rode in silence, these two lovers who had, miraculously, risen from the dead for each other. She squeezed him tightly until they were so close and were moving so much in unison that it was like one person sitting in the saddle.

  “Niccolo, where are we going?”

  “Back to Florence, I guess.”

  “I don’t want to go back to Florence. Not yet. I want you to myself for a little longer. I’m afraid if we go back, they’ll take you from me again.”

  “I told you I’d never let that happen again. I promised.”

  “I know. Just the same, let’s go somewhere else for a little while. Just the two of us.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Let’s go somewhere magic where we can dream some more.”

  “Constantinople?”

  “That’s too far. I don’t have enough money to get there and I’m sure you don’t.”

  “Where then?”

  “Have you ever been to Venice?”

  And so they headed north and east, to Venice, even in those days called “La Serenissima,”—that most serene city by the sea.

  When it came to shipping, Niccolo was accustomed to the flat-bottomed barges and small skiffs that plied the Arno. He had seen larger vessels before, ocean-going vessels, but he had never seen so many in one place. Venice was surrounded by them—galleys and galleons and galleasses, carracks and caravels. Rising from the sea on all sides was a veritable forest of masts. Every banner in Christendom could be seen depending from them, and even the crescent of the Turkish sultan was much in evidence, flapping gaily in the salty sea breezes.

  The three-masted ships of the mighty maritime trading empire hovered and buzzed around the island city like bees, coming and going, laden with precious cargoes of saffron and silk. Venice, through much of her history, had turned her back on the Italian peninsula and turned her attention outward, toward the sea. Because of this reaching out to the East across the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, she had become a more exotic place by far than most of the inland Italian city-states. A Turkish or Moorish flare could be seen in her arches and domes, and even the fashion in hats tended toward the turban.

  But by far the most exotic of exotic touches was the fact that the city itself was built on the water, on a group of islands linked by bridges and crisscrossed by an intricate network of canals. The only way to reach the exotic wonderland was by boat or ferry from the mainland. From the moment they glided into this watery paradise, Giuditta was taken by the beauty and the strangeness of it all. Niccolo was more skeptical and spent the whole first day after their arrival making fun of Venetian accents—all fricatives and sing-song.

  They had settled into a tavern where the smell of fish was overwhelming—fish frying and roasting, steaming and stewing. Platters heaped with crabs and scampi and lobsters floated by. Fish of every size and shape, from huge sturgeon to tiny eels, could be seen adorning the tables of their fellow diners.

  “Squid,” said Niccolo. “I want to try squid.” Giuditta took no exception. The tavern keeper buzzed and hummed at Niccolo’s choice. In his silly Venetian accent, he lauded the excellence of his establishment, of his cook, of the catch, and of Venice in general. Finally going away, he left a flask of prosecco on the table for their entertainment while the squid was being prepared.

  “A little sweet,” was the dour Florentine’s verdict.

  “And not as good as Tuscan wine,” added Giuditta judiciously, before breaking into laughter.

  “Certainly not,” said Niccolo, failing to get the point of the joke.

  “Niccolo, isn’t there anything about Venice yet that you like?”

  “It’s not my fault if the air smells heavy and rotten and wet.”

  “That’s the smell of the sea, the salt.”

  “I’d rather have my salt on my meat and vegetables than up my nose.”

  “Don’t you think the canals are marvelous, the way they reflect the evening lights, the way they shimmer. It’s like being in a magic city, floating out to sea.”

  “It’s like being plopped down in the middle of the world’s largest open sewer. Have you seen some of the stuff that’s floating around out there? Dead dogs and cats, turds of every description . . .”

  “You’re such a keen observer.”

  The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the tavern keeper who ceremoniously set a large bowl of black sludge on the table squarely in front of them.

  Aghast, Niccolo looked u
p at him. “What’s that?”

  “The squid,” he replied.

  “Squid is white, if I’m not mistaken,” said Niccolo severely. “This is very black.”

  “Ah,” buzzed the obsequious Venetian, always ready to please and explain, “This squid is cooked in its own ink. That’s what gives it such intensity, such a rich flavor. Try it, Messer, you will see.” And with that, he ladled rich, steaming mounds of the inky stuff onto Niccolo and Giuditta’s plates.

  More adventurous than her companion, Giuditta sampled the fare first. Her face lit up. “Delicious! Niccolo, try it.”

  “He dipped the tip of the spoon in the stew, tentatively, the way an uncertain swimmer dips his foot in ice-cold water before taking a plunge. He dug up the smallest morsel he could find and laid it on his tongue. His face clouded over.

  “Well?”

  “It’s good, but I don’t like the way it feels in my mouth. And I don’t like the way it looks. Besides, I don’t think I’m all that hungry. My stomach’s upset.”

  “Dai Niccolo, l’apetito viene mangiando—you’ll find out how hungry you are as you eat.”

  “But it doesn’t look like something you eat! It’s grey-black. I don’t eat things that are that color. It looks like something you scrape up out of the bottom of . . . of . . . of a . . .”

  “That’s enough, Niccolo. If you’re not going to eat it, don’t spoil it for me. I think it’s mouthwatering.”

  Niccolo prodded his squid, fished out a few more pieces of the black flesh, and managed to send them down. On the way out of the tavern, he gulped down two of the big, blue pills, which he knew would be needed if his stomach were to make any headway with the sullen black sludge.

  After the meal, they strolled in the direction of the Piazza San Marco, where Giuditta wanted to stop to see the new dolls. The dolls were changed frequently. They were life-size models designed to show the latest in Venetian fashions for women. And Venetian fashions for women were the latest fashions in the world. With a score of other women, she clucked and oooooed and aaaaahed around the exhibit. The colors were bright, the cut daring, and, like everything else in Venice, tinged with exoticism. Niccolo wandered off, having little interest in these womanly affairs. He inspected the great cathedral of San Marco and, in no time, was coming to the conclusion that it lacked the majesty, the sublimity, of the cathedral in Florence.

  “Pssssst, you! Hey! Ecco qua Signore!” A rather grimy and disheveled collection of beggars seemed to be competing for his attention. Niccolo ignored them. A clawlike hand reached up, grabbed hold of his cloak, and hung on.

  “What do you want? I don’t have any money.”

  “You look like a lucky man. Buy a chance?” It was a crone speaking and waving a book of tickets.

  “What?”

  “Buy a ticket in the lottery. You could win. You could be rich.”

  Niccolo laughed out loud at the very idea. The crone pulled him closer. Conspiratorially, she whispered, “This one is the winner, this ticket. Do you want it? You look like a lucky man.”

  “That one’s the winner?” said Niccolo. “How do you know?”

  “I know!” she said, her eyes flashing with that secret knowledge.

  “Another madwoman,” thought Niccolo. Nevertheless, to disengage her iron grip on his cape without violence or unpleasantness, he acquiesced. “How much?”

  “Two lire.”

  Niccolo came up with the coins and handed them to her. She looked at them suspiciously. “Not Venetian money. You have any Venetian money?”

  He rooted around in his pockets until he found the correct coinage. “Here.”

  “Write your name and address here.” She handed him the book. He scribbled his name and the name of the inn where they were staying. She tore off half the ticket and gave it to him. “That’s your name?” she said, examining what he had written.

  “Is there something wrong with it?”

  “Not a Venetian name, that’s all,” she said suspiciously. “A foreign name.”

  “Florentine,” declared Niccolo.

  Unimpressed, eyes still sparkling, she said, “Doesn’t matter. That ticket is the winner. Mark my word.”

  “What was that all about?” asked Giuditta coming up behind him.

  “I just bought a ticket in the lottery, but not just any ticket. It’s the winning ticket and I’ll soon be rich.”

  “And when you are, will you buy me one of those dresses over there?”

  “Anything you want, picconcina. Anything you want.”

  “Well, what shall we do now?” said Giuditta. “It’s still early in the day.”

  “I think I’d like to stop and get something to eat. You know, I’m a little hungry.”

  “What happened to your upset stomach?” she said, prodding his belly. “I thought you were indisposed?”

  “Maybe just something light would be good for me, you know, some soup . . .” So they went to another tavern, scrupulously avoided the local squid concoction, and, in the end, Niccolo was satisfied with two “light” helpings of liver smothered in onions with a turnip compote on the side and plenty of red Bardolino to wash it down.

  Having little to do but eat and stroll, Giuditta and Niccolo rose late in the morning. To Niccolo, who was not at all taken with the pleasures of Venice, their lingering in bed was the best part of the day, so when he was rudely awakened early the next morning by a rough pounding on the door, he was irate.

  “Go away,” he moaned sleepily.

  The pounding continued. “Open up in there.”

  When Niccolo did nothing of the sort, they barged in on him. “Machiavelli?”

  “What do you want? Get out of here.”

  “Are you Machiavelli?”

  “What if I am, you have no right . . .”

  “We have orders to take you to the commune.”

  “What for? I haven’t done anything.”

  “Oh, yes you have,” said one of the two men standing in the room. Both were dressed in some semimilitary, semiofficial kind of uniform. They were beginning to make Niccolo nervous.

  “Get dressed and come with us.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” said Niccolo firmly.

  “Suit yourself,” the man shrugged. “But if I had just won the lottery, I’d be running to collect my prize.”

  “What!” Niccolo nearly jumped out of bed. Only a last-minute twitch of modesty restrained him. “Are you saying I won the lottery?”

  “Only three thousand ducats,” said the man, as though the figure were common enough, as though he personally found nothing extraordinary in the sum of 3,000 ducats.

  “Three thousand ducats,” said Niccolo to himself, letting out a low whistle and sinking, dumbstruck, back into the bed. In his fifteen years of working tirelessly and relentlessly in the chancery office, he had not managed to earn 3,000 ducats!

  He turned to Giuditta. “Do you still want one of those dresses you saw yesterday?”

  “Yes,” she said coyly, “but I still haven’t decided which one.”

  “Forget about it,” he said. “Don’t trouble yourself. You can have one of each.”

  The wheel of fortune was spinning so merrily in Niccolo’s head that, when they finally returned to San Casciano to spend the rest of the summer, he was in such high spirits that he took up his pen and wrote, of all things, a stage comedy. It was produced in Florence and was such a tremendous success that its fame quickly spread throughout Italy. Niccolo’s friend Francesco Guicciardini saw to it that the comedy was staged in the Romagna and then in Venice. Orders and commissions for more plays began to pour in. For the first time in his life, thanks to the Venetian lottery and the revenues from his plays, Niccolo was solvent. He paid his back taxes. He paid off his creditors. And he was deliriously happy. He was content to spend the rest of his life in just this way—with Giuditta and with his Venetian ducats writing comedies. What more could any man ask?

  “What are you writing, another pla
y?” asked Giuditta. “Let me see.”

  “No,” said Niccolo, scrambling to cover up the piece of paper on which he was working. “It’s just a letter.”

  “Who’s it to,” she said. “And why are you trying to hide it from me?”

  “It’s nothing. I’m not trying to hide it from you. It’s only to Guicciardini.”

  “Are you sure it’s not to another woman?”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Then let me see what you’re writing.”

  “I told you it was nothing, don’t you believe me?”

  “I thought we didn’t have any secrets from each other?”

  “There’s nothing secret about this.”

  “Then let me see it,” she said devilishly.

  With a guilty smile, Niccolo uncovered the page and she bent to read it. “I can only send you twenty five now, but I’ll send the recipe so you can have a batch made up for yourself. They work really well for me. Start by taking one after dinner. If that does it, fine, if not, take two or three more. You can take as many as five, but I usually don’t take more than two. And they’re good for headaches as well as the stomach . . .”

  “Niccolo, what is this nonsense. You’re not sending him those blue pills that your charlatan prescribed for you?”

  “He asked for them. He’s been having a lot of trouble with indisposition.”

  “Where’s the famous recipe?”

  “Here,” he said sheepishly.

  Giuditta snatched up the little scrap of paper: “Cardamom, 1 dram; saffron . . . What is this? It sounds like a recipe for roast chicken.”

  “It happens to be very effective,” said Niccolo evasively.

  “Brettonica, pinpinella, whatever that is,” Giuditta continued to read from the treasured recipe, “Ah, here’s the active ingredient—Armenian tree bark! So that’s the secret! Niccolo, when are you going to learn? I told you those pills weren’t good for anything.”

  “That’s your opinion.”

  “I’ve studied medicine. I know what I’m talking about!”

  “Moorish medicine.”

  “At least a Moorish physician would never prescribe something like that . . . that placebo you’re taking! And make you pay for it!”