by Rice, Anne
I thought on this for a long time before I answered.
“Very well. You will tell me all you remember and I will take you where you want to go. And into the hands of your human family you can place whatever wealth you wish.”
He said nothing to this.
“But our secrets will be kept from them, as our secrets are kept from everyone.”
He nodded.
“And then we shall return.”
Again he nodded.
“All this will happen after the great feast that Bianca will start preparing. On that night, here, we will dance with our invited guests. Over and over again, you will dance with Bianca. We will use our greatest skill to pass among our guests as human. And I shall count upon you as much as I count upon Bianca or Vincenzo. And the feast will leave all of Venice in awe.”
A faint smile came over his face. Again he nodded.
“Now you know what I want of you,” I declared. “I want that you befriend the boys all the more lovingly. And I want that you go to Bianca all the more often, after you’ve fed of course, and your skin is ruddy, and that you tell her nothing, nothing of the magic by which you were saved.”
He nodded.
“I thought …” he whispered.
“You thought?” I asked.
“I thought if I had the Blood I would have all things,” he said. “And now I know that it’s not so.”
23
No matter how long we exist, we have our memories—points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.
So it is with me and the night of Bianca’s most supreme feast, and indeed I call it that because it was Bianca who created it, merely using the wealth and rooms of my palazzo for her finest achievement in which all the apprentices participated and in which even humble Vincenzo was given a dramatic role.
All of Venice did come to partake of our never ending banquet, and to delight in the singing and the dancing, whilst the boys performed in numerous and grandly staged tableaux.
It seemed that every room had its own singers or divine pageants. The music of the lute, the virginal, and a dozen other instruments blended to make the lovely songs that lulled and enchanted everyone, as the younger boys, royally costumed, went about filling cups from golden pitchers of wine.
And Amadeo and I did dance ceaselessly, stepping carefully and gracefully as was the fashion then—one walked to music, really—clasping hands with many a Venetian beauty as well as our beloved genius of the whole affair.
Many a time, I snatched her away from the illumination of the candles and told her how dear to me she was that she could bring about such magic. And I begged from her a promise that she might do it again and again.
But what could compare to this night of dancing and wandering amid mortal guests who commented gently and drunkenly on my paintings, sometimes asking me why I had painted this or that? As in the past, no critical word struck my heart deeply. I felt only the loving heat of mortal eyes.
As for Amadeo, I watched over him constantly, and saw only that he was divinely happy, seeing all this splendor as a blood drinker, divinely thrilled by the theatricals in which the boys played wonderfully designed roles.
He had taken my advice and continued in his love of them, and now amid the blazing candelabra and the sweet music, he was radiant with happiness and whispered in my ear when he could that he could ask for nothing finer than this night.
Having fed early, and far away, we were warm with blood and keen of vision. And so the night belonged to us in our strength and in our happiness, and the magnificent Bianca was ours and ours only as all men seemed to know.
Only as sunrise approached did the guests begin to take their leave, with the gondolas lined up before the front doors, and we had to break from the duty of accepting farewells to find our own way to the safety of our gold-lined grave.
Amadeo embraced me before we parted to lie in our coffins.
“Do you still want to make the journey to your homeland?” I asked him.
“Yes, I want to go there,” he said quickly. He looked at me sadly. “I wish I could say no. On this night of all nights, I wish I could say no.” He was downcast, and I would not have it.
“I’ll take you.”
“But I don’t know the name of the place. I can’t—.”
“You needn’t torture yourself on that account,” I said. “I know it from all you’ve told me. It’s the city of Kiev, and I shall take you there very soon.”
There came a look of bright recognition to his face. “Kiev,” he said and then he said it in Russian. He knew now it was his old home.
The following night I told him the story of his native city.
Kiev had once been magnificent, its cathedral built to rival Hagia Sophia in Constantinople from which its Christianity had come. Greek Christianity had shaped its beliefs and its art. And both had flourished beautifully there in a wondrous place. But centuries ago, the Mongols had sacked this grand city, massacred its population, destroying forever its power, leaving behind some accidental survivals, among them monks who kept to themselves.
What remained of Kiev? A miserable place along the banks of the Dnieper River where the cathedral still stood, and the monks still existed in the famous Monastery of the Caves.
Quietly, Amadeo listened to this intelligence and I could see the pure misery in his face.
“All through my long life,” I said, “I have seen such ruin. Magnificent cities are created by men and women with dreams. Then there come the riders of the North or the East and they trample and destroy the magnificence; all that men and women have created is no more. Fear and misery follow this destruction. And nowhere is it more visible than in the ruins of your home—Kiev Rus.”
I could see that he was listening to me. I could sense that he wanted me to continue to explain.
“There exists now in our beautiful Italy a land that will not be sacked by those warriors, for they no longer menace the northern or eastern borders of Europe. Rather they long ago settled into the continent and became the very population of France and Britain and Germany today. Those who would still pillage and rape have been pushed back forever. Now throughout Europe what men and women can do in cities is being discovered again.
“But in your land? There is still sorrow, and bitter poverty. The fertile grasslands are useless—thousands of miles of them are useless!—save for the occasional hunter as mad as your father must have been. That is the legacy of Genghis Khan—a monster.” I paused. I was becoming too heated. “The Golden Horde is what they call that land, and it is a wasteland of beautiful grass.”
He nodded. He saw the sweep of it. I knew this from his solemn eyes.
“Would you still go?” I pressed him. “Would you still revisit the place where you suffered so much?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “Though I do not remember her, I had a mother. And without my father, there might be nothing for her. Surely he died that day when we rode out together. Surely he died in the hail of arrows. I remember the arrows. I must go to her.” He broke off as though struggling to remember. He groaned suddenly as though some sharp physical pain had humbled him. “How colorless and grim is their world.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Let me take them only a small amount—.”
“Make them rich if that’s your wish.”
For a long moment, he was silent and then he made a small confession, murmuring it as though he were communing with himself:
“I must see the monastery where I painted the ikons. I must see the place where at times I prayed I would have the strength to be walled up alive. You know it was the way of the place, don’t you?”
“Very well, I know it,” I answered. “I saw it when I gave you the Blood. I saw you moving down the corridors, giving sustenance to those who still lived in their cells, half immured and wait
ing for the will of God to take them as they starved themselves. They asked you when you would have the courage for it, yet you could paint ikons that were magnificent.”
“Yes,” he said.
“And your father hated them that they did not let you paint, that they made you a monk above all things.”
He looked at me as if he had not truly understood this until now, and perhaps he had not. And then came from his lips a stronger statement.
“So it is with any monastery, and you know it, Master,” he retorted. “The will of God comes first.”
I was faintly shocked by the expression on his face. Was he speaking to his father or to me?
It took us four nights to reach Kiev.
I could have made the journey much more quickly had I been on my own, but I carried Amadeo close to me, his head bowed, his eyes closed, my fur-lined cloak wrapped around him to shelter him from the wind as best I could.
At last on the sunset of the fifth night, we reached the ruins of the city which had once been Kiev Rus. Our clothes were covered in dirt and our fur cloaks dark and nondescript, which would help to render us unremarkable to mortal eyes.
A thick snow lay over the high abandoned battlements, and covered the roofs of the Prince’s wooden palace, and beneath the battlements simple wooden houses that ran down to the Dnieper River—the town of Podil. Never have I seen a place more forlorn.
As soon as Amadeo had penetrated the wooden dwelling of the European ruler, and glimpsed to his satisfaction this Lithuanian who paid tribute to the Khan for his power, he wanted to move on to the monastery at once.
And into it he slipped using his immense blood drinker’s skill to play the shadows and confuse those who might have seen him as he cleaved to the mud walls.
I was near to him always but it was not my place to interfere or instruct. Indeed, I was gripped with horror, for the place seemed infinitely worse than I had ever guessed from the probing of his fevered mind.
With quiet misery, he saw the room in which he’d made ikons with its tables and pots of paints. He saw the long mud corridors through which he’d walked once as a young monk, giving food and drink to those half buried alive.
At last he came out of it, shivering, and he clung to me.
“I would have perished in a mud cell,” he whispered, looking at me, begging me to understand the import of it. His face was twisted with pain.
Then turning away swiftly, he went down towards the half-frozen river, searching for the house in which he’d been born.
With no difficulty he found it, and he entered it—the splendid Venetian, dazzling and confusing the family gathered there.
Once again I kept my distance, settling for the silence and the wind, and the voices I could hear with preternatural ears. Within moments he had left them with a fortune in gold coin and come out again into the falling snow.
I reached out to take his arm and comfort him. But he turned away. He wouldn’t look at me. Something obsessed him.
“My mother was there,” he whispered, as he looked down once more towards the river. “She didn’t know me. So be it. I gave them what I had to give.”
Again I tried to embrace him, but he shook me off.
“What’s wrong then?” I asked. “Why do you stare? Why do you look that way towards the river? What would you do?”
How I wished I could read his mind! His mind, and his alone, was shut to me! And how angry and determined he looked.
“My father wasn’t killed in the grasslands,” he said, his voice quavering, the wind whipping his auburn hair. “My father is alive. He’s in the tavern down there.”
“You want to see him?”
“I have to see him. I have to tell him that I didn’t die! Didn’t you listen to them talking in my house to me?”
“No,” I said. “I gave you your time with them. Was I wrong?”
“They said he’d become the drunkard because he had failed to save his son.” He glared at me as if I had done him some dreadful wrong. “My father, Ivan, the brave one, the hunter. Ivan, the warrior, the singer of songs whom everyone loved—Ivan is the drunkard now because he failed to save his son!”
“Be calm. We’ll go to the tavern. You can tell him in your own way—.”
He waved me off as though I were annoying him, and he set off down the street with a mortal tread.
Together we entered the tavern. It was dark and full of the scent of burning oil. Fishermen, traders, killers, drank here together. Everyone took notice of us for a moment and then ignored us, but Amadeo at once spied a man lying on a bench to the back of the rectangular room which made up the place.
Again, I wanted to leave him to what he meant to do, but I feared for him and I listened as he sat down now close to this sleeping man.
It was the man of memory and the man of visions, that I knew, as soon as I studied him. I recognized him by his red hair and red mustache and beard. Amadeo’s father, the hunter who had taken him out of the monastery that day for a dangerous mission, to ride out in search of a fort which the Mongols had already destroyed.
I shrank back into the shadows. I watched as the luminous child removed his left glove and laid his chill supernatural hand upon the forehead of the sleeping father. I saw the bearded man wake. I heard them speak.
In rambling drunken confession, the father gave forth his guilt in abundance as though it belonged to anyone who roused him.
He had shot arrow after arrow. He had gone after the fierce Tatars with his sword. Every other man in the party had died. And his son, my Amadeo, stolen, and he was now Ivan the Drunkard, yes, he confessed it. He could scarcely hunt enough to buy his drink. He was a warrior no more.
Patiently, slowly, Amadeo spoke to him, pulling him out of his ramblings, revealing the truth with carefully chosen words.
“I am your son, sir. I did not die that day. Yes, they took me. But I am alive.”
Never had I seen Amadeo so obsessed with either love or misery, with either happiness or grief. But the man was stubborn, the man was drunk, and the man wanted one thing from this strange person prodding him and that was more wine.
From the proprietor I bought a bottle of sack for this man who wouldn’t listen, who wouldn’t look at this exquisite young one who sought to claim his attention now.
I gave the bottle of sack to Amadeo.
Then I moved along the wall so that I might better see Amadeo’s face, and all I saw there was obsession. He must make this man understand.
Patiently, he spoke until his words had penetrated the drunken haze from which the man stared at him.
“Father, I’ve come to tell you. They took me to a far-away place, to the city of Venice, and I fell into the hands of one who made me rich, Father, rich, and gave me learning. I’m alive, sir. I’m as you see me now.”
Oh, how strange was this speech coming from one infused with the Blood. Alive? How so, alive, Amadeo?
But my thoughts were my own in the darkness. I had no role in this reunion.
At last, the man, sitting up to face his son, began to understand.
Amadeo was trembling, his eyes fixed on those of his father.
“Forget me now, please, Father,” he begged. “But remember this, for the love of God. I shall never be buried in the muddy caves of the monastery. No. Other things may happen to me, but that, I won’t suffer. Because of you, that you wouldn’t have it, that you came that day and demanded I ride out with you, that I be your son!”
What on earth was Amadeo saying? What did these words mean?
He was on the verge of crying the terrible blood tears which we can never really hide. But as he rose from the bench where his father sat, the elder caught him tightly by his hand.
He knew his son! Andrei, he called him. He had recognized him for who he was.
“Father, I must go,” said Amadeo, “but you must never forget that you saw me. You must never forget what I said, that you saved me from those dark and muddy caves. Father, you gave me life, no
t death. Don’t be the drunkard anymore, Father. Be the hunter again. Bring the Prince meat for his table. Be the singer of songs. Remember that I came to tell you this myself.”
“I want you, my son, stay with me,” said the man. His drunken languor had left him, and he held tight to Amadeo’s hand. “Who will ever believe that I saw you?”
Amadeo’s tears had risen. Could the man see the blood?
At last Amadeo pulled back, and removing his glove, he pulled off his rings, and he placed these in his father’s hands.
“Remember me by these,” he said, “and tell my mother that I was the man who came to see her tonight. She didn’t know me. Tell her the gold is good gold.”
“Stay with me, Andrei,” said the father. “This is your home. Who is it that takes you away now?”
It was more than Amadeo could bear.
“I live in the city of Venice, Father,” he said. “It’s what I know now. I have to go.”
He was out of the tavern so quickly his father could not see it, and I, once seeing what he meant to do, had preceded him, and we stood in the snow-covered muddy street together.
“It’s time for us to leave this place, Master,” he said to me. His gloves were gone, and the cold was fierce. “Oh, but that I had never come here and never seen him and never known that he suffered that I had been lost.”
“But look,” I said, “your mother comes. I’m sure of it. She knew you and there, she comes,” I pointed at the small figure approaching who held a bundle in her arms.
“Andrei,” she said as she drew closer. “It’s the last one you ever painted. Andrei, I knew it was you. Who else would have come? Andrei, this is the ikon your father brought back on the day you were lost.”
Why didn’t he take it from her hands?
“You must keep it, Mother,” he said of this ikon which he had once linked to his destiny. He was weeping. “Keep it for the little ones. I won’t take it, no.”
Patiently, she accepted this.
And then another small present she entrusted to him, a painted egg—one of those treasures of Kiev which mean so much to the people who decorate them with intricate designs.
