The Floating Book

by Michelle Lovric

  The blonde nun, who never identified herself, gradually became less abrupt with her. After six weeks, she seemed to realise that Gentilia’s discretion could be relied upon, or perhaps she had simply heard the truth: Gentilia had no friends to gossip with.

  The corpses were so many that at times the blonde nun also took up her needle, swearing as she pricked herself. To pass the tedious hours, she told Gentilia the story of each baby, and if she did not know it, she made it up.

  Some, she knew, had died naturally. There were others who had, according to the popular imagination, been murdered by witches, who consumed little souls merely by placing their hands upon them. After a minute under a witch’s finger, a healthy baby would commence to perish from a wasting disease. ‘Witch-eaten,’ lamented the mothers, watching their little ones slip away. They sometimes brought them to the convent to be blessed, though such babies could never be saved.

  Gentilia could not hear enough of these stories. She plied the blonde nun with questions in relentless pursuit of inconsequential details until her informant grew bored and stopped the interrogation.

  Gentilia continued her researches elsewhere, demanding answers of Felice and Bruno when they came to see her. They tried to laugh at her dark questions, but she would not be shrugged off. In the end, Felice undertook to instruct her in what she wished to know, to spare Bruno the difficulty of it.

  Such strange things Gentilia asked! Felice was astonished at the slant and direction of her curiosity. From somewhere she’d acquired smatterings of witchcraft and worse. The crude and simple facts of life interested her not at all; she wanted to know only about unnatural practices.

  He did not scruple to indulge her, finding amusement for himself in the lurid tales he told her. Sometimes he repeated whispers from the taverns; other times he used his own invention.

  Thanks to Felice, Gentilia now knew that some witches would exert their horrid powers by measuring the swaddling with their forearms and the palms of their hands.

  ‘Ah yes, Gentilia,’ he sighed, any witch who wants to devour a child, simply makes certain signs over it, saying “God bless this little bocconcino,” this little mouthful, and there’s that child consigned to a slow death to feed an evil old woman and her cat.’

  Remembering Felice’s description, Gentilia shivered pleasurably, and hunched over her sewing.

  * * *

  In the event it was not so disagreeable.

  My belly was no bigger than any Venetian belly. The midwife was kind and good and the babe slipped out of me in just a few hours that I had rather forget. There was never any danger, though the midwife had, as usual, prepared the syringe of holy water to baptise him in my womb if it looked that he might die before he made his way outside me. She’d stopped at San Giacometo on her way to our house to have it blessed and when she arrived she put it down beside my head as if it might comfort me in my travails. It did not! It made me fight! I kept looking at it, and saying to myself: No! She will not need to use it! The babe shall be born, and I shall live and we shall have no need of that holy water.

  For I knew that if I died in childbirth then I would become one of the fade, the beautiful women in white who haunt young girls, promising them beauty like their own.

  The midwife sent my man away. He did not wish to leave me, but the birthing room is said to be unwholesome and no place for men. I missed him all through the bad hours. When I have a pain in the gut from too many vongole or mussels, only he knows how to hold me to make the pain go away. He rubs my belly with slow round movements until I fall asleep, the way he did when I was poisoned with too much cream in the Alps.

  In my travails, I cried out his name again and again.

  Such was the pain of our son being born – it seemed that only my man’s arms around me and his breath on my neck could take it away. And that gentle, sacred look in his eye, such as he always has, when he beholds me. I saw it soon enough when I handed him our son. Then he did not know where to look – at this new priceless treasure or at me.

  When I myself first gazed on our son, it was with a pang of fear. I checked swift and quiet to see if he were witch-eaten or jaundiced, or if he bore a mark of the Devil. No, he was perfect in every detail. Just an artisan’s small copy in flesh of my man – the same chicken-fluff hair and blue eyes and the same shapely buds of privities all rendered in miniature. He had my little nose, perhaps, and most certainly my lips, for from them came not cries but tiny laughs.

  In spite of that, we called him Giovanni, after his solemn uncle. At least I call him Giovanni. My man calls him ‘Little Johann’. We gave him both names at his baptism. Many of this town believe that the power to see ghosts belongs only to those children whose godfathers have stumbled over their creed at the font and so I practised Bruno till he was perfect in every word and he said the words without a fault.

  In making a babe, I did not lose myself, as I had feared. Now I have my grown-up matron-self, and she rejoices in the baby, and I have my lover-self, who rejoices in my man, who loves me not less but more for I have brought him the gift of a son. And then there’s my quiet spirit-self, who knows that there are hurtful things that are not of this world, and respects them, and will keep her new family safe from them, at all costs.

  He’s a proper child of Venice, our son.

  By day he laughs and prattles. But by night, when he cannot sleep he cries fit to wake the dead. Neither the taste of my milk, nor my little finger in his mouth, nor my lips on his hair, nor the rock of my arms can still him. My man cannot quiet him, not with his strange sweet baby songs from the North (which he does not sing very tunefully, but with great tenderness) or the way he has in which he makes a crib of his two huge hands and holds the babe up to God, like an offering. That serves sometimes, and the crib is full of laughs and then, soon after, sweet little snores. But it does not help when our son wakes in the dark of the night, full of fear, as if he has heard in his dreams that a bad time has come, that the witches are clamouring after his toes and there will be no more milk or love in this world for him. I see that the night terrors of Venice were born in him, as they were in me.

  So on those nights, when we hear that hopeless tone to his cries, we pull apart (slowly) and rise from our bed, saying not one word, for we both know what we must do. My man goes straight down the stairs to get our cloaks and his oars (we do not pause to dress, just pull the cloaks on top of our nude backs) and I go to our son, change him to dry wraps, and take him down to the door and out to the boat which by that time has come to wait for us with its red lamp lit and my man’s face all white as curd under his hood in the moonlight.

  I slip in to the boat with the babe in my arms and I place him in a box at the prow. As soon as he sniffs at the wood and the lamp oil he grows more quiet, his screams turn to sobs and he points his toes up to the stars and stares up at them; his eyes still glisten with old tears. He paddles his feet as if he wants to drive the boat up to the silver sparkles in the sky now.

  When we leave the shore my man gives a small push with his free leg, just like a gondolier, but once that’s done it seems that the sea is in charge of us. It’s as if it’s not my man who poles through the waves but the waves their own selves who pass our boat one to the other one.

  And so we set off down the dark canals. My man poles well, taught by the stamperia’s boatman. I sit at his feet, with one arm hooked round his knee and I stroke it soft, soft, and sometimes turn my nose to push at it like a cat will push his muzz at one who sleeps when it’s time that a cat should be fed.

  The little silvery boat cleaves its prow through the water, like a slim hand through a vat of squid ink. There’s no noise save for the waves and our three breaths: my man’s quite hard, for he poles with all his strength, mine soft and the babe’s little tearings of sob and sigh.

  All lie stretched in quiet sleep in each house. There’s not a footstep, not a voice: just the waves at play, lively as young mice. Sometimes we stray out to sea, even as far as the island
of Sant’ Angelo di Contorta, but when I see its silver shape against the sky, I beg my man to turn back. It seems to be tempting evil fate to bring a young babe near that dreadful place.

  One night, returning, I glimpsed a sight most strange. In a dark corner, near San Salvador, I saw a woman whispering to a man. Illicit lovers, was my first thought, and old enough to know better, for I could see that neither of them was in his first youth. They stood with their hands on their hips, at elbow distance, as if to deny any intimacy, but why else should they be there at that time of night?

  Then a shaft of light from the moon crossed their two faces and I saw they were those of Paola di Messina and the red-haired man I’d seen before.

  So Paola misbehaves herself already, and she not long remarried. For shame.

  I opened my mouth to tell my man, but it came to me how such looseness in the wife of his dear brother would pain him, so I closed it into a kiss that I pressed on his knee, soft and ticklish as rabbit down.

  When we were home, and the baby safe abed, I made good the promise of that kiss.

  ‘Does Jenson have this?’ I asked my man when we were panting afterwards. Then I was sorry, for at the mention of the Frenchman in the midst of all our pleasure, his face turned dim and doleful.

  Then he lay with his profile instead of his lips to me. I saw despair in the slope of his nose and only half the glitter of his eye.

  My small campaignings to do with Jenson do not yet bear fruit. I have started a rumour that his success is ill-founded, or rather founded on ill-deeds. Before he became a printer he was a maker of coins. So when he claims to be selling books in their hundreds, in fact he is quietly smelting the coins with which to pay for new materials. And everyone knows that the materials for printing and for making coins are exactly the same: even I can recite the list of metals that go to make the dies for both type and money. They are identical.

  Nothing succeeds like success in Venice. I have hinted that Jenson finds us too gullible in this direction. Nothing enrages the Venetians more than to be thought less wily than a Caliph from Constantinople. And thus, at Rialto, am I stirring my hot stew of little whispers against the Frenchman.

  Chapter Four

  Do you believe that I could abuse my love, my life,

  who is dearer to me than both my eyes?

  I could not do so.

  Nor, if I could do so,

  should I love her so desperately.

  My man often speaks of a most wondrous sad-eyed Madonna at the home of Domenico Zorzi. It’s rare for folk such as us to see Bellini’s great works. The nobles keep his paintings for their private devotions. But my man once took me to Bellini’s studio and I can never forget the faces I saw there. Of course I am newly a mother myself, and his Madonnas turn me inside-outwards.

  Those Madonnas of Bellini’s are so … how to say it? I see now that those who own them have no need to go to church. They just kneel down in front of his Mary or Christ Child and it is an act of love for God. That is how good they are, and how full of what is holy.

  He has this way, you see, with the small parts of the scene. The foot of the Christ Child will rest on a ledge low down. This means those sweet pink toes are in our world and you feel you might put one to your lips and kiss it, or bury your nose in a crease of His fat little leg and smell its babe-smell like mice and eggs and sweet liquor …

  It is quite a shock that Christ is in your world and you are in His. The space between you and God is small and you can reach so close to the whole tale, the babe’s vile death, and you think how, those pink toes will one day hang down bleeding from the strut of a cross. You feel God as you feel your own teeth and the night crust on your eyes. You are part of Him and He is part of you.

  Once you are drawn into his art, Bellini makes you feel more things too. You see from Mary what takes place if you are near to God in the flesh. Where her hands touch the Christ Child, the tips of her fingers turn the pale rose tint of dawn. I felt like that, a soft buzzing in my hands, when I first held my tiny son.

  Then again, in the dread scenes at the end of His life, you see his Mother kiss the face of His grown corpse. When I look, I know in my bones how I would feel to hold my son or my man that way. Of course, I would howl, but poor Mary’s tears are killed in her eyes. She must hold in her own grief for it is the grief of the world she bears, not some little sadness just for her own self. And yet it is personal to me, too, when I behold it.

  There are other paintings in Bellini’s studios but I like them not at all. Allegories, they are, and full of witchery and evil. I peered at them, and turned my head away as if I had smelled something bad. Such twisted little children, such devilish men emerging from conch-shells, such yellow-skinned hags pretending at beauty!

  My man used to go often to Bellini’s studio, for Giovanni is the closest thing he has to a friend in this town. But these days the business ties him to his desk with chains of lead and he never leaves it, except to come home to me, or at least the shell of him comes home, for I believe he leaves his soul in the stamperia.

  * * *

  Sosia watched Bellini dip his paintbrush into the liquid vermilion. His hand never hovered; he always reached directly for the colour he needed as if picking the most obviously perfect rose from a bush. She stared at his mild face, pointed and pale, drained of vivacity because overburdened with sensibilities, devoid of the egotism that believes in its own personal beauty and therefore projects it disarmingly upon even plain features.

  Bellini is not like other men, she thought. He has a face that would not rasp against a woman’s cheek, or stuff itself with sausages when it was time for love, nor gaze out of the window instead of at me. He almost has no face because it is a face merely to look out of; not to look at From those eyes he collects beauty and passes it on through paint.

  She sniffed. There was a strong smell of vinegar, of white lead and verdigris fermenting together. Bellini always painted white lead over the gesso with which he prepared his boards, to stop any light being absorbed. It was all to be refracted.

  How would it be to lie with a man like that; entirely unselfish? Not whining about love all the time like Bruno, not scrabbling clumsily at her skin as if to release the incense of love like Malipiero, not cold like Felice – always looking over her shoulder at his own more gorgeous reflection in the mirror. No, Giovanni would hold her as tenderly as a bladder of lapis pigment; he would unroll her like the little gland of paint; he would gently squeeze the sweetness out of her.

  Giovanni was gazing at her belly now; measuring the heat of its yellows and pinks. She imagined that superb hand on her stomach; pressing it slightly.

  I could love this man, she thought, I could love him the way I love Felice, but he would be worth it.

  ‘Please turn your head a little to the right,’ said Bellini politely.

  ‘May I look now?’ asked Sosia.

  Giovanni did not notice the butter, honey and sugar in her normally astringent voice. He said, ‘I apologise, Sosia, you’ve been standing a long time. Let us break for a while, so you may rest. I’m almost finished with you, in fact.’

  He carefully turned the easel to face her. Immediately, she stiffened and her lips became rigid. She looked quickly away and reached for her robe. She could not confront this painting without the protection of her clothing.

  He had painted her sag-belly and thigh-thick. He had pulled her nose out like a handle and then pushed it a little to one side. He had pursed up her eyes and painted an idiot grin on her mouth. Her breasts were like hard shells glued to a breastplate; even her hair was coarse as hemp.

  Bastard! Old fish-head! In disarray, she tried to select the most potent insult for him. I shall never pose for you again was what she wanted to say, and was about to tell him, but the words would not come out. They seethed at the top of her throat, acidly. Instead, as always in moments of extreme anger, she resorted to her own language.

  ‘Krvavu ti majku jebem, fuck your blood-splattered mother,
’ she hissed aloud.

  Giovanni flushed. Though he did not understand a word, Sosia’s feelings were clearly imprinted on her scarlet face and narrowed eyes.

  ‘Did you after all expect me to paint you like a Madonna, my dear?’ he asked, gently. ‘You know this is not a portrait, but an allegory, do you not?’

  She shook her head, vehemently, stumbling from the dais. One of the child-models tottered on his pedestal. She turned and lifted a bare leg to kick him.

  Giovanni said, ‘Do it, if you feel you must. But remember you were a child once and I see from your face that you know what it is to be kicked.’

  In that moment she hated him with a pyramid of hatreds, built on a base of rage and disappointment, narrowing to a sharp point of loathing.

  Giovanni, she realised, thought he might sanction her anger, as if it were a small tame thing to be managed.

  She withdrew her foot. Kicking the putto was not the way to hate Bellini. She knew what she must do: make something ugly.

  Sosia prickled with malice. She felt a sense of returning from a journey. The hours of posing, during which she’d thought of loving the artist, had been a brief excursion to another world. Now she had come home to her own.

  She had already realised something: this was not Bellini’s fault. He was merely a conduit, permeable to beauty or allegorical messages to make the world more beautiful. The corruption in this canvas was Felice’s gift, Felice who had stood prattling malevolently in front of it day after day while Bellini painted, not because he loved her company but because Bruno might at any point arrive.

  * * *

  When my man leaves for work each dawn I turn this thought in my mind, like a leaf in my hand: he is mine, he is mine, he is mine.

  I miss him sorely, but I have my duties to keep me occupied. I have my missions to Rialto, where I continue to dispense hints, like drops of lemon juice, about Nicolas Jenson and his history as a coin-maker. I find the rumour has swelled and spread, even in my absence. Others have taken it as their own, and puff it up with their own ideas. Good. I have other things to do.