Imprimatur

by Rita Monaldi;Francesco Sorti

  "We have another fugitive too. One who hails from a distant mari­time city," added Melani with a little smile, while his face, which had drawn gradually nearer and nearer, looked down on me.

  "Brenozzi the Venetian?!" I exclaimed, raising my head from the bed with a start and involuntarily striking the snub nose of the abbot, who let out a groan. "Precisely him, of course," he confirmed, rising to his feet and massaging his nose.

  "But how can you be so sure of that?"

  "If you had listened to Brenozzi's words with greater perspicacity and, above all, if your awareness of worldly matters had been more extensive, you would certainly have noticed something unconvinc­ing," he replied in a vaguely vexed tone of voice.

  "Well, he did say that a cousin..."

  "A distant cousin born in London, from whom he learned English simply by corresponding: now, do you not find that explanation a tri­fle curious?"

  And he reminded me of how the glass-blower had dragged me downstairs by force and almost shocked me out of my senses and then subjected me to a flood of questions concerning the Turkish siege and the infection which was perhaps overcoming the resistance of Vienna, after which he had babbled of marguerites.

  Only, continued Atto, he was not speaking of daisies, but of one of the most precious treasures of the Most Serene Venetian Republic, which it was prepared to defend by all means and which was doubt­less the cause of our Brenozzi's present troubles. The islands which lie at the heart of the Venetian lagoon guard a secret source of wealth which the Doges, who for centuries have been at the head of that Most Serene Republic, watch over jealously. In those isles are manu­factures of glass and of decorated pearls, known in Latin as margaritae (or "daisies"), and the art of manufacturing these depends upon se­crets handed down for many generations, of which the Venetians are both proud and inordinately jealous.

  "But then the daisies—the marguerites—which he mentioned and the little pearls which he put into my hand are one and the same thing," I exclaimed confusedly. "But how much could they be worth?"

  "You cannot even imagine it. If you had travelled a tenth as much as I have, you would know that there clings to the trinkets of Murano the copious blood of the Venetians; and for these, it will perhaps flow until who knows when," said Melani, seating himself at his desk.

  Many master glass-blowers and their apprentices had, indeed, at­tempted to flee to Paris, London, Vienna and Amsterdam, but also to Rome or Genoa, where they sometimes found more generous masters and commerce with fewer competitors.

  Such fugues were not however to the taste of the magistrates of the Council of the Ten of Venice, who had no intention of losing con­trol of that art, which had brought so much money into the coffers of the Doges; and they had therefore placed the matter in the hands of the State Inquisitors, the special council responsible for ensuring that no secret should be propagated which might be prejudicial to the interests of the Most Serene Republic.

  The Inquisitors were most skilful: violence was followed by prom­ises and blandishments, damage to new workshops and threats to relatives remaining in Venice; everything possible to persuade the glass-blowers to return.

  "And did the glass-blowers return?"

  "You should rather be asking 'do they return?', for the drama con­tinues to this day and I think that it is being played out even in this hostelry. For those unwilling to return, there is the skilful and secretive work of the assassin. To steel, which announces violent death, they often prefer poison. That is why our Brenozzi is so worried," concluded Abbot Melani. "The maker of margaritae, glass or mirrors who flees Venice finds himself in hell. He sees assassins and betrayal everywhere, he sleeps with one eye open, he keeps looking over his shoulder. And Brenozzi, too, has surely known the violence and the threats of the inquisitors."

  "And I, who ingenuously allowed myself to become so scared when Cristofano spoke to me of the powers of my little pearls," I exclaimed, not without some shame. "Only now do I understand why Brenozzi asked me, with such a nasty expression, whether those three pearls were enough. With those three little pearls, he wanted to buy my silence about our conversation."

  "Bravo, you have grasped the point."

  "Yet, do you not find it strange that there should be two fugitives present in this inn?" I asked, alluding to the presence of both Bed­fordi and Brenozzi.

  "Not so strange. In recent years, not a few have fled London, and no fewer, Venice. Your master is probably not the kind of person who tends to spy on his guests and nor, no doubt, was Signora Luigia Bonetti who kept the inn before him. Perhaps the Donzello is con­sidered to be a 'discreet' hostelry where those fleeing from serious trouble can find refuge. The names of such places are often passed on by word of mouth from one exile to another. Remember: the world is full of people who want to flee their own past."

  I had in the meanwhile risen from where I was lying and, tak­ing the necessary from my bag, I poured into a bowl a syrup which the physician had indicated to me for the abbot. I explained to him briefly what it was and Atto drank it without complaint. Then he rose to his feet and, singing to himself, began organising some papers on the table:

  In questo duro esilio... *

  It was curious how Atto Melani could draw from his own repertory the perfect little aria for each occasion. He must, I thought, hold a truly lively and tender affection for the memory of his Roman master, Le Seigneur Luigi, as he called him.

  "So poor Brenozzi is in a state of great anxiety," resumed Abbot Melani. "And he may, sooner or later, ask you again for help. By the way, my boy, you have a drop of oil on your head." He wiped the little spot from my forehead with a fingertip and carelessly brought it to his lips, sucking it.

  "Do you believe that the poison which killed Mourai could have anything to do with Brenozzi?" I asked him.

  "I would exclude that," he answered with a smile. "I think that our poor glass-blower is the only one to entertain such a fear."

  "Why did he ask me, too, about the siege of Vienna?"

  "And you, tell me: where is the Most Serene Republic?"

  "Near to the Empire, just to the south, and..."

  "That is quite enough: if Vienna capitulates, in a few days the Turks will spread out, above all to the south, entering Venice. Our Brenozzi must have spent quite a long time in England, where he was able to learn English discreetly in person, and not by correspondence. No, he would probably like to return to Venice, but he realises that the time is not propitious."

  "In other words, he risks falling straight into the hands of the Turks."

  "Precisely. He must have come as far as Rome, hoping perhaps to be able to set up shop and thus to find shelter. But he understood that here too the fear is great: if the Turks succeed in Vienna, after Venice, they will come to the Duchy of Ferrara. They will cross the Romagna and the Duchies of Urbino and Spoleto, and moving beyond the gentle hills of Umbria, they will leave Viterbo on their right and head..."

  * In this hard exile...

  "For us," I shivered, realising clearly for the first time the danger that hung over us.

  "It is not necessary for me to explain to you what would hap­pen in that eventuality," said Atto. The Sack of Rome a century and a half ago would be a mere trifle by comparison. The Turks will lay waste to the Papal States, taking their natural ferocity to its most extreme consequences. Basilicas and churches, beginning with Saint Peter's, will be razed to the ground. Priests, bishops and cardinals will be dragged from their houses and their throats cut, crucifixes and other symbols of the Faith will be torn down and burned; the people will be robbed, the women horribly violated, the cities and countryside will be ruined forever. And if that first collapse takes place, all Christendom may well end up a prey to the Turkish horde."

  The Infidel army, bursting out from the woods of Latium, would next cross the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, then the Duchy of Parma, and, passing through the Most Serene Republic of Genoa and the Duchy of Savoy, it would overflow into French territory (and he
re perhaps I saw on Abbot Melani's face a trace of genuine horror) in the direction of Marseilles and Lyons. And at that point, at least in theory, it could head for Versailles.

  It was then that, giving way again to discomfiture and taking my leave of Atto on a vague pretext, I picked up my bag and ran upstairs, stopping only when I reached the short stairway leading to the little tower.

  At this point, I gave free rein to all my anxieties, abandoning my­self to a doleful soliloquy. Here was I, a prisoner in a cramped hos­telry which was suspected, with good reason now, of harbouring the plague. Hardly had I succeeded in shaking off that terror, thanks to the words of the physician, who foretold my resistance to infection, when Melani came telling that I ran the risk of leaving the Locanda del Donzello only to find Rome invaded by the sanguinary follow­ers of Mahomet. I had always known that I could count only on the kindness of a very few persons, among them Pellegrino, who had generously saved me from the hardships and dangers of life; this time, however, I could count only on the (surely not disinterested) company of a castrato abbot and spy, whose precepts were for me almost exclusively a source of fear and anguish. And the inn's other lodgers? A bilious-tempered Jesuit, a shady and inconstant gen­tleman from the Marches, a brusque-mannered French guitarist, a Tuscan physician whose ideas were confused and perhaps even dangerous, together with my master and Bedfordi, who lay supine in their beds. Never before had I experienced so deeply the senti­ment of solitude, when my murmurings were suddenly interrupted by an invisible force which knocked me backwards, leaving me lying spread-eagled on the floor; and there, looking down on me, stood the guest whom I had omitted from my silent inventory.

  "You frightened me, silly!"

  Cloridia, feeling a strange presence behind her door (on which I had in fact been leaning) had opened it suddenly, causing me to roll into her chamber. I rose to my feet without even trying to excuse myself and hastily wiped my face.

  "And anyway," she went on "there are disasters worse than the plague or the Turks."

  "Did you hear my thoughts?" I responded, astonished.

  "In the first place, you were not thinking, because whoever truly thinks has no time for snivelling. And besides, we are in quarantine on suspicion of infection, and in Rome these days no one can sleep a single night without dreaming of the Turks entering through the Porta del Popolo. Whatever should you have to whine about?"

  And she handed me a dish with, on it, a glass half full of spirits and an aniseed ring-cake. I was about to seat myself timidly on the edge of her high bed.

  "No, not there."

  I stood up instinctively, spilling half the liquor on the carpet and somehow catching the cake but covering the bed with crumbs. Cloridia said nothing. I fumbled for an excuse and tried to make amends for the little disaster, wondering why she had not harshly scolded me, like Signor Pellegrino and indeed all the guests of the locanda (except, it is true, Abbot Melani whose conduct in regard to me was more liberal).

  The young woman who stood before me was the one person of whom I knew so little, yet what I knew was certain. My contacts with her were limited to the meals which my master ordered me to pre­pare and bring to her, to the sealed notes which she would sometimes ask me to deliver to this or that person, to the maids whom she often changed and whom from time to time I would instruct in the use of the water and the pantry in the hostelry. That was all. For the rest, I knew nothing of how she lived in the little tower where she received guests who entered through the passage that gave on to the roof; nor did I need to know anything.

  She was not a common prostitute, she was a courtesan: too rich to be a harlot, too avaricious not to be one. Yet all that is not sufficient to understand properly what a courtesan might be, and of what re­fined arts she might be mistress.

  Everybody knew what took place in the "stufe", those hot vapour baths imported into Rome by a German and recommended for elimi­nating putrid humours through perspiration. Those baths were for the most part kept by women of easy virtue (indeed, there was one within a stone's throw of the Donzello which was generally regarded as the most famous and ancient in Rome and was known as the Stufa delle Donne, the Women's Baths. Everybody knew, except me, what commerce one could have with certain women near Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, or in the vicinity of Via Giulia, or at Santa Maria in Via; and it was common knowledge that at Santa Maria in Monterone an identical business took place even in the parish apartments; and in former centuries the pontiffs had found it necessary to forbid the clergy to live in the same neighbourhood as such women, yet these prohibitions had as often as not been ignored or circumvented. In any case, it was perfectly clear who hid behind such noble Latin names as Lucrezia, Cornelia, Medea, Pentesilea, Flora, Diana, Vittoria, Polisse- na, Prudenzia or Adriana; or what was the true identity of the Duchessa or the Reverendissima, who had been so bold as to filch their titles from illustrious protectors; or, again, what lusts Selvaggia and Smeralda enjoyed unleashing, or what was the true nature of Fior di Crema, or why Gravida—the Fragrant One—was called by that name, or indeed what trade Lucrezia-the-Slut carried on.

  What point was there in investigating all this? That had already been done a century and more ago and, furthermore, a classification had even been made of all the categories: meretrici, puttane, curtail (those of the Curia), whores of the lamp, of the candle, of the Vene­tian blinds, of the silhouettes, and "women in trouble, or of lesser fortune", while some burlesque ballads sang, too, of the Sunday girls, the church mice, the Guelf girls, the Ghibellines and a thou­sand others. How many were they? Enough to give Pope Leo X the idea, when repairs had to be made to the road leading to the Piazza del Popolo, of levying a tax on the harlots, of whom many lived in that quarter. Under Pope Clement VII, some swore that every tenth Roman was engaged in prostitution (not even counting bawds and pimps), and perhaps Saint Augustine was right when he said that if prostitutes were to disappear, unbridled licence would flourish everywhere.

  The courtesans, however, were of quite another kind. For, with them, mere amorous beguilements were transformed into a sublime exercise: one that gave the measure not of the appetites of merchants or the soldiery, but of the genius of ambassadors, princes and cardi­nals. Genius, because the courtesan jousted against men victoriously in verse, like Gaspara Stampa who dedicated an entire ardent canzoniere to Collatino di Collalto, or Veronica Franco who challenged the poten­tates of the Venier family both in bed and in poetry; or like Imperia, the queen of Roman courtesans, who would gracefully compose madri­gals and sonnets, and was loved by men of such illustrious and opulent talents as Tommaso Inghirami, Camillo Porzio, Bernardino Capella, Angelo Colocci and the unbelievably wealthy Agostino Chigi, and who posed for Raphael and may have rivalled the Fornarina herself. (Imperia died by her own hand, yet on her deathbed, Pope Julius II granted her full absolution for her sins, while Chigi had a monument erected to her). The celebrated Madremianonvuole,* thus nicknamed following some imprudent juvenile refusal, knew all of Petrarch and Boccaccio by heart, as well as Virgil and Horace, and a hundred other authors.

  So the woman before me belonged, in Pietro Aretino's words, to that shameless race whose pomp leaves Rome drained, while through the streets the wives go veiled and muttering paternosters.

  "Have you, too, come to ask what the future holds in store for you?" asked Cloridia. "Are you in search of good news? Take care, for fortune—and so I tell all those who come here—does not always ordain matters as one might desire."

  Taken by surprise, I was rendered speechless.

  "I know nothing of magic. And if you wish to know the arcana of the stars, you must go to someone else. But if no one has ever read your hand, then Cloridia's is indeed the door to come to. Or perhaps you have dreamed a dream and wish to know its hidden meaning.

  *My-mother-doesn't-want-me-to

  Do not tell me that you came here without any desire, for I will not believe you. No one ever comes to Cloridia without wanting some­thing."

  I was at
once curious and so excited that I found it hard to keep my composure. I remembered that I was supposed to administer Cristofano's remedies to her, too, but that I put off. Instead, I seized my opportunity and told her of the nightmare in which I had seen myself fall into the obscure cavity below the Donzello.

  "No, no, it is not clear," commented Cloridia at the end, shaking her head. "Was the ring of gold or of base metal?"

  "I could not say."

  "Then the interpretation is unclear; because a ring signifies a re­ward or a punishment. A gold ring signifies great profit. I find the trumpet interesting, for it betokens secrets, hidden or revealed. Per­haps Devize is the holder of some secret, which he may or may not be aware of. Does that mean anything to you?"

  "No, I really know only that he is the most splendid guitar player," said I, remembering the marvellous music which I had heard issuing from the strings of his instrument.

  "Of course, you can know no more, otherwise Devize's secret would not be one!" laughed Cloridia. "But in your dream Pellegrino too is present. You saw him dead and then resuscitated, and the dead who rise again signify travail and damage. So, let us see: a ring, a secret, a dead man resuscitated. The meaning, I repeat, is not clear because of the ring. The only clear things are the secret and the dead man."