The Floating Book

by Michelle Lovric

  * * *

  Recoiling from the fumes of stale wine on the editor’s breath, Wendelin abruptly turned the sheaf over in his hands, so that the edges of the paper fanned wood-scented air into his face. It was Wendelin’s predisposition to mis-trust but feel a timid, desirous affinity with enthusiasm. Squarzafico had been somewhat over-eager to press this work upon him, and was standing just a little too close to him as he cast his eyes down the first page.

  Wendelin sucked in his breath, scanning the pages. So this was the famous Catullus, in his own hands at last. A cold light fell on the page, perforated with the delicate shadows of the frost patterns on the windows of the stamperia.

  Words of love and lust tripped up his eyes. There was something about a sparrow in the very first poem. Was this not an indecent allegory? That ‘sparrow’ was surely the poet’s virile organ. In a blushing conversation, Wendelin had learned from Bruno that this was also so in the modern Italian idiom. He searched back in his well-archived memory for the disturbing association – Ah, yes, sparrows were sacred to Aphrodite, Goddess of erotic love, for they drew her chariot across the skies.

  He groaned. Even from the first page, he knew, the Catullus manuscript was the kind of thing that could be used against an honest businessman.

  ‘So why this one, Gerolamo? How can we justifícate it? It is filthy like a hound!’

  Squarzafico lurched closer, gesticulating with hands not quite synchronised in their movements. Wendelin steered him subtly away from the matrixes. In these moments, less lucid than liquid, Squarzafico was likely to break delicate equipment.

  ‘Surely, Wendelin, you know that the market is ripe and clamouring for such things from antiquity. I thought I would write a little biography to re-introduce Catullus to the world. Something to mitigate the more difficult aspects of the poetry, you know, make them think “other times, other morals”, look upon it with indulgence.’

  Wendelin looked hard at Squarzafico, who was lapping inside his jowls as if trying to extract a last wine-sodden breadcrumb from between his teeth. Wendelin observed the deep groove from each side of the corner of his mouth, and a long simian curve between his nostrils and condescending upper lip. His hair was surprisingly neat, moulded to his head like a helmet.

  ‘But are you sure it is genuine? The ridicule for printing a fake, we cannot afford it. Our dignity is very important …’

  ‘I am sure.’ As he stopped talking, Squarzafico’s mouth commenced to bulge with his tongue’s investigations.

  ‘You worry too much, Wendelin. Trust in me. Domenico Zorzi himself has provided me with a complete dossier on these poems.’ Gerolamo made a low sucking noise in his throat.

  Aha, thought Wendelin, he’s found that nourishing speck.

  ‘Show me then.’ Wendelin handed him a goose-feather.

  Squarzafico dipped the pen, stabbing once or twice ineffectually before achieving the narrow mouth of the inkpot. In jagged strokes he sketched a single word.

  ‘“Veronensis,”’ he said aloud, dragging out the syllables. ‘The very first manuscript, discovered in Verona in 1300.’

  Wendelin nodded; that part of the tale was well known to him already. His shelves were stacked with unique manuscripts rescued by similarly slender chances.

  He asked: ‘But this is not the original, is it? This copy is no older than I am. Look at the vellum, not yet discoloured, and the ink still bold as night on the page.’

  Squarzafico said: ‘You do not disappoint me in your eye for detail, Wendelin, so meticulous, like all of your honoured colleagues from the North. No, this is not the original. But it is an immaculate copy! At least a hundred such paragons are known to exist.’

  ‘How can we be sure it is one of the true hundred? So it is identical to them?’

  ‘Again, Wendelin, your immaculate instinct for the difficult impresses me. It is unfortunately true that all those manuscripts do not always agree in every detail of the text. But you are doubtless aware of the very good reasons for that. As usual, some of the scribes mistakenly thought that the original manuscript was inaccurate in parts, and so they wrongly corrected it. Sometimes they made unlucky guesses about missing stanzas and words. Other times, they saw things that made no sense, but copied them anyway. But this manuscript is a legitimate offspring of that very first one, a descendant, copied by Felice Feliciano himself, from a manuscript in the library of Pacifico Massimo, who commissioned it himself, and it is now the property of our distinguished friend the nobleman Domenico Zorzi.’

  ‘Pacifico Massimo, the pornographer?’

  ‘Yes, the very one.’

  Wendelin sighed. ‘And what if that should become known? It’s hopeless, hopeless. We shall be blamed. They will say we are all merchants of lust and godlessness. They always say that. It will come to trouble with the Council of Ten. Remember, I am a foreigner here. I cannot put my head above the ramparts without someone throwing stones at it.’

  ‘On the contrary, you will be admired for your courage and your taste, to bring such a delicious thing into print.’

  Squarzafico raised an imaginary goblet, and drained it, smacking his lips. ‘It will be like nectar for the Venetians,’ he said. ‘Remember, this is Venice, not Rome. This book will save your business. In fact, not to print it …’ His voice trailed away and he looked significantly at the floor.

  Wendelin flinched to realise that Squarzafico was aware of the dire state of affairs at the stamperia.

  ‘I know not, I know not,’ keened Wendelin. The editor had a point, he knew. This book could make money, could solve half the problems of the stamperia in one edition. Nor was he deaf to the subtle threat underlying all the editor’s flattery: he knew him to be a creature of Zorzi s.

  And Squarzafico was right: even from a brief glance he could see that the poetry was unusually beautiful. The editor contrived to hold the manuscript relatively steady under his nose.

  Why be a printer if not to print such things as this? he thought. That’s what Johann would have said, or is it?

  His eyes still dragged over delectable images, as Squarzafico wafted its pages in front of him. Wendelin sniffed at the manuscript. Why did they always smell of cypress trees in the autumn? It made them so hard to resist. So many times he’d tried to catch a manuscript out in an unfragrant moment. Yet always the vellum breathed sweetly on him, making a pleasure of his business, which seemed to him, quite possibly, to be a sin.

  Squarzafico frowned at these procrastinations, so intent upon suppressing a belch, that he inadvertently broke wind. Both men blushed and Squarzafico fanned the air apologetically with the manuscript.

  He said: ‘Wendelin, at this point I merely ask you to read it all. It will not take you long. Then you will want to publish it.’

  Wendelin shrugged his shoulders. He could not help but feel Squarzafico’s disdain. He knew his own editor looked down on him, not just for his Germanness, but because he inhabited the sordid world of business. Squarzafico thought he lived without a soul. Perhaps the publication of Catullus, if Wendelin dared it, would show the twice-sodden bore that he was mistaken.

  * * *

  Wendelin read. His Latin was workmanlike; he paid people to have souls in this language. Italian and the Venetian dialect caused him enough problems. However, even Wendelin von Speyer could not resist Catullus. After three poems he stopped trying to do so, and merely revelled in the unaccustomed voluptuousness between his thighs. A book had never reached him there before. That night, he turned to his wife, and wished to love her as Catullus wrote of love.

  ‘Little sparrow,’ she whispered lovingly as he raised himself above her.

  They spent themselves, as always, at the same moment. As his thoughts powdered to a scintillating nothingness, Wendelin thought, ‘Little sparrow. Little sparrow? Has she been reading that manuscript too?’

  When he woke in the morning, light as an omelette in his spirits, he was already justifying his decision. He disentangled himself from his sleeping wife, smooth
ed her hair over the pillow, and prepared himself for work.

  His employees were all Venetians, as were his readers. His first books had been Pliny and Cicero, to answer the Italians’ new craving for their classical past. It was no passing phase, it seemed, this rebirth of desires for ancient art and writings. After bringing out the obvious candidates, he’d been obliged to dig deeper, to look for more obscure texts. The educated drawing rooms and clubs of Venice, as far as he could see, had always run amok with greed for pleasures: perhaps this Catullus would answer to them, and better and more profitably than anyone had done before.

  But he needed more affirmation before taking such a risky step.

  Wendelin had handed the manuscript to his young editor, Bruno Uguccione, Squarzafico’s capable assistant and substitute on the days when the senior editor could not rouse himself from the Falernian stupor.

  ‘It is possible that we are going to publish this.’ Wendelin regarded the young man with great earnestness.

  Bruno said: ‘I’ve heard about it, Sior. And I know some of the poems already. Do you really think …?’

  ‘Take it home and read it, my son. I would like to know what you think of it, as a young man, and as an editor. Does he write the truth about love, this Catullus? Will the Venetians love him?’

  * * *

  So he came home one chill night with poems in his sleeve. That’s how it started.

  ‘Catullus,’ he said as if it were a good-witch word. ‘Finally, I meet him in person and I should like to introduce him to you. Let us go to bed so I may read them to you.’

  He was already puzzling at the latchets of my dress.

  Poems in the bed? thought I. Oh, no. Poems are for the wise ones, who bend over their desks. Or to wrap mackerel in, if they fail to catch the hearts of the public. Not for those of us in love.

  Not fair, I thought. I try not to show the hurt when he works late or the midday meal is missed or when he comes home with nothing left but a faint light behind the eyes.

  But it is too much, yes, and more, if he brings work home now and worse still to our bed, where he should be mine and I his, with no book between us.

  He saw my face then and smiled. I could not be fierce after that. I tucked my head beneath his arm and walked up the stairs with him.

  So the poems were read and did their work on us, which I’ve no need to describe, as everyone has read and felt them now. Later, as we were at the rest that comes just when love has been done, then he asked me, ‘Should I print these poems?’

  ‘How can you not?’ I asked. ‘He’s a god, I think, this Catullus, it would be a sin not to print them.’

  ‘In this town you choose your gods for your high tastes,’ he laughed at me, ‘not for their high tone or good souls!’

  I thought then of the wax-lady from Sirmione, certainly not godly at all! I did not mention her.

  ‘For this’, said I, ‘shall these poems make you in this town. We shall be rich as Malipieros …’

  ‘Or break me. There are risks.’

  ‘I care not,’ I said. ‘Read me once more the poem of the kiss and the sand.’

  ‘I have no need to read it,’ he said. ‘I can tell it by heart.’

  And so he told it, and so he kissed it, after.

  The next morning he took them away, and I was sad, but I knew that it must be so, for the journeys of those songs had only just begun.

  * * *

  Nicolò Malipiero, delectably plump as he was, was starting to bore Sosia. She enjoyed the soft linings of his skin, knowing them to be lineaments of wealth. Inserting a hand into the folds beneath his belly, she closed her eyes. Malipiero had grown this way on oysters, peacock-flesh, wine-essences and cream sauces.

  The contents of his belly were pleasing to her, but when he spoke to her, when he held her in his tentative arms, when he kissed her uncertainly, she felt a raw and cheap anger against Nicolò’s pampered softness. He’d never needed to grasp for anything with both hands, hard. When she seized his head and forced his lips to hers, she felt indelicate. She blamed him; he made her feel feral. Her body seemed poor and stringy, in comparison to his lushness. She did not hide her irritation, terrifying him with glares and rants of insults. When these did not relieve her, she resorted to pinches and bites. She nipped the thin skin at the top of his ears, which always made him whimper, though he never asked her to desist.

  What incensed her more was the pathetic way in which he was always trying to be careful of her, treating her like some kind of wild and dangerous animal that would destroy the world if wrongly provoked.

  If only he’d show a bit of backbone, she thought, I’d be nicer to him. Why doesn’t he understand that?

  Sosia thought to herself that she’d never really realised before the sheer emptiness of the space between Malipiero’s large, aristocratic ears. She was starting to stare in wonderment at some of the comments made and questions asked, and the endless repetition of things already said, the important names and high connections reiterated so many times with fresh flourishes as if she’d not heard them a hundred times before and as if she cared a pajanca for any of them, the first time or the hundredth!

  She no longer found it amusing that he was a part of the Malipiero clan, entrusted to control the outbreaks of prostitution and vice in the city for decades. No, Nicolò did not enjoy the double standard, and so she could not. For hypocrisy to be enjoyable, it must be relished à deux, and sauced with a little irony, she thought. The way Felice did it.

  Sosia suspected that other women, kinder women than herself, had in the end found it very sad and in fact felt sorry for him. Nicolò Malipiero lived in such a perpetual mist of blurred intentions and the maladroit expression of them, that he was always apologising for something or other. His money and privilege could in most cases protect him from his deathly errors of tact and taste. However, sometimes, pitiably, he himself was even aware that he was lacking, and it felt terrible to him, transporting him to a place outside his birthright, a grim wasteland of a place where he wandered alone. But he was usually rescued by a profound inner smugness, a sense of his high place in the world, of being one of the ‘top’ people; this consoled him. It disgusted Sosia.

  Until he had produced the borrowed Catullus manuscript and insisted on reading passages of it aloud before they made love, she’d been thinking of leaving him. But there were ideas in the text, and shivery feelings to be got in the execution of them, which decided her to prolong the storia di Malipiero just a little more. He had been lent the manuscript, penned by Felice Feliciano him-self, by the humanist nobleman Domenico Zorzi, who was also Felice’s patron. For reasons unknown to Nicolò, Sosia knew that the manuscript was now somewhere else, a humbler location altogether.

  She had last held it in Bruno’s sparse apartment, when she’d arrived to surprise him the night before. Seeing the well-known pages open on his desk, she had suppressed any sign of recognition and had allowed Bruno to read the very same poems to her, as if they were fresh and new.

  Her thoughts returned to the matter in hand.

  ‘I’ll have you upstairs and downstairs,’ she quoted, tunnelling through the crimson satin to find Nicolò’s nervous organ with her fingers. It was unreliable, tentative as its owner, but she liked the way it nestled between his fat thighs.

  As Sosia did this Nicolò Malipiero was wondering if he could divorce his aristocratic wife and marry her. Such a college was not unknown – noblemen were occasionally permitted to marry down into the privileged lower class of ‘original citizens’ and with daughters of doctors, lawyers, spice merchants and glass workers of Murano … Sosia tightened her grip. All Nicolò’s thoughts were extinguished in a spasm of pain and pleasure.

  Outside early snow piled up in pale swathes, like the unbought pages in the stamperia von Speyer.

  Chapter Seven

  When her husband’s around,

  Lesbia calls me every colour of black.

  The old fool thinks it so funny.

&n
bsp; Ass.

  If she had forgotten me and ignored me,

  she would be cool.

  Instead she snarls and scratches.

  She not only thinks about me,

  but, what is worse, she’s on fire.

  She’s hot to whip me, with her tongue.

  Watch her fume, watch her speak.

  I do not wish that Giovanni Bellini would paint me, great though he is. Great and kind and a friend of my man, who is most proud of that fact.

  I’ve no desire to rest frozen in one spot, with one smile, and one look in my eyes to be so summed up for ever – when I’ve a sack of thoughts and smiles to share – my face may not hold them all at once; my features are dappled with them, like the sun on the sea. No, and I’ve no wish to be trapped and mounted up on the wall.

  I am strange in this, for most in this town are mad for the face. The nobles think that each painted face on their wall shows how pure’s the line of their blue blood. They trace the family nose or lip down the generations and persuade themselves each father’s son is fully legitimate.

  My man also loves each painted face he sees. He tells me they talk like a book and in his terms he can say no more than that.

  Felice Feliciano says it is like that with words. He says that everything you want to know lives in their letters.

  Ha! That’s where he’s wrong. It is wonderful not to know things. It means you can speculate and imagine, look beyond what you can make out with your poor limping senses, and into the world of magic and ghosts and many marvellous things besides.

  Felice, of course, sees just what he wants, no more; he lives as he likes, he dares to say anything he pleases, for he’s no love in him, and so no fear. He only likes things, like letters and words. As if liking was enough. It’s like saying that kissing is enough! He’s the kind of man who goes to the Rialto market because it looks like a tragic opera for fish – he loves fish not for the taste but for the way they look.