The Floating Book

by Michelle Lovric

  When the envelope arrived, he felt the key to his studio in its wrapping. So that’s it, he thought. The key returned. I renounced my honour; I disgusted myself, for this.

  He slumped down in his chair, tucked his hands under his armpits. He could not lift his eyes. They seemed cast down like a Madonna’s, unable to be raised to the piteous spectacle of the world. Occasionally he pulled one hot hand out from under his armpits and made a weak gesture of desperation. He looked at the floor of his apartments, at the space between his bed and the floor. He paced, as if there were a harness on his shoulders and breast, which dragged him from room to room. It was too painful to sit still, too frightening, as if the pain might catch up with him.

  It had taken nearly all morning to build the pyramid of furniture. Unaccustomed to physical labour, he was now so tired, Venetian-tired, that he was already effectively a dead person. Unfortunately, he’d constructed his pyramid just slightly out of alignment with the noose, so the circle of cord hung behind him, grazing his neck as it thudded against him. He had to reach behind him and grope for it blindly. Then, with typical clumsiness, he’d tangled the tassel round his ear before dragging it over his face, burning the delicate skin to a rash with its coarse bristles of gold wire. He whimpered.

  His servant knocked politely at the door and entered without waiting for a reply. With him were two Signori di Notte, who bowed low to the ground before looking up at Nicolò Malipiero standing high above them with his scarlet face in the noose and one foot dangling uselessly from his perch.

  ‘With respect, sir,’ the leader said to him, ‘you are requested to accompany us to the Doges’ Palace. There is a little matter that the Avogadori would like to discuss with you, should it please your Lordship.’

  Chapter Three

  … Fancy the rut of the lash to blush

  your sweet flanks and soft buttocks?

  You’ll gyrate like a toy boat

  caught out at sea in a wind grown wild with pain.

  The prisoner will stand

  You are the Jewess Sosia Simeon of Dalmatia?

  Yes

  You are the wife of the physician Rabino Simeon, also a Jew, of San Trovaso?

  Yes

  Sit

  The other prisoner will stand

  You are the nobleman Nicolò Malipiero, of San Samuele?

  Yes

  You are the son of Alvise Malipiero, also of San Samuele?

  Yes

  On this day of our Lord, 15 December 1472, you both stand accused of crimes against the Serene Republic of Venice. You are accused of vile fornications, violations of the laws of race, and of commerce with the Devil, this last in contravention of the law of 28 October 1422, which forbids sorcery of any kind.

  The Avogadori of the Comune have considered the matter in the light of information collected by the Signori di Notte. We have examined the diary of the prisoner, Nicolò Malipiero, and the account of an eyewitness, one Ianno Spippoleti, who has beheld you at your congress. We have also a witnessed denunciation on the part of one nun of Sant’ Angelo di Contorta, Suor Gentilia Uguccione.

  Sosia Simeon, it is alleged that with alluring speeches, gestures and looks, and by the help of salvia leaves, beans and consecrated oils, you created in the breast of Nicolò Malipiero a diabolical desire to know your body carnally on a bed, on a chest, against the trunk of a tree, in the campi dei morti of more than one church, in a gondola and in diverse other places.

  It is alleged that, on the twentieth day of March this year, you, Sosia Simeon, prepared a potion made from the heart of a rooster, wine, water and your own menstrual blood, mixed with certain flowers whose esoteric properties are known only to witches. This potion you placed in an iron vessel and cooked until it formed a powdery cake. On that night, or one soon after, you induced Nicolò Malipiero to eat of this cake, and as a result he became insane with love for you. After this point, his copulations with you became both frequent and diligent.

  It is further alleged that after one of these copulations you took the dust of his navel and mixed it with the dust of your own. Then you mixed these scrapings together in a goblet with red wine, and you caused Nicolò Malipiero to drink of it. You also drank. From that day his love, and the number of his copulations, already, as predicated, diligent, increased twofold.

  If the state had not intervened in a timely manner to save him, it is clear that you would soon have induced him to adopt the monstrous resolve of leaving his noble wife and marrying you, by which means you planned to bring into the world scandalous, subversive bastards of ambiguous status.

  It is alleged that you possess the Devil’s secret repertoire of smells for the temptation of the flesh, and that this is signified by the large letter ‘S’ tattooed on your back. You required Nicolò Malipiero to humiliate himself at your feet in ways we do not care to name in this place, that whilst so doing you required him to whisper the words of Our Lord’s Prayer continuously. In this way, too, you increased the madness of his lust for you and caused him to hold God and the Serene Republic of Venice in the most disgustful contempt.

  The insane love of Nicolò Malipiero also caused him to commit further perverse and sad stupidities. For by your ministrations you were able to force him to abandon the dignity of a Venetian nobleman to indulge in acts of a wild bestiality, both with you and with young men whom you procured for these purposes at his expense. In these acts you yourself took part.

  It is alleged that you, Sosia Simeon, also measured the membrum virile of Nicolò Malipiero against a candle that had been blessed in church. After you had inscribed certain notches in this candle, to show the measurements of the membrum in its quiescent and provoked states, you took this same candle to the Church of San Giobbe, to the funerary chapel of the Moro, and that you did deface that place of holiness created by the genius Lombardo, in that you lit that same candle and in its light you chanted obscene verses by the pagan Roman poets, most particularly the one known as Catullus, to celebrate your vile loves.

  A copy of this book, printed by Wendelin von Speyer, was found in your personal possession on the day of your arrest. The officer of the court is holding it aloft now to show the members of the Council of Forty.

  We take this moment to point out that your uncanny grasp of our language, given that you are a foreigner and a woman, is further proof of your occult tendencies, for the Devil himself is known to talk with facility in all tongues.

  Sit

  Rise, prisoner Nicolò Malipiero

  Have you anything to say?

  No

  Sit

  The Council of Forty has considered the case. We have reached our judgement.

  Nicolò Malipiero, you are acquitted of the charges of fornication and blasphemy because we consider that you were acting, helpless and unconscious of your state, under the diabolical will of the foreign woman Sosia Simeon. We consider that your most egregious act has been to cast off your rationality, the precious treasure that distinguishes us from beasts, and succumb to such a woman. For this, your name will be excised from the Libro d’oro, the Golden Book of our patrician class.

  The prisoner may stand down

  Rise, prisoner Sosia Simeon

  As a foreigner, you are not entitled to speak in this court

  The Venetian Republic considers that the responsibility for evil deeds applies only to intentional acts. Nicolò Malipiero we regard, with compassion, as having suffered a period of temporary insanity, this being clearly demonstrated in that he was able to lose himself in such a creature as you. He surrendered his will to yours and so we hold you responsible for all the deeds he committed during the time you held sway over him.

  You are convicted of all the charges brought against you, including blasphemy and fornication. Stimulated by sensual dissoluteness, you followed your appetites without reference to the law, forcing Nicolò Malipiero to break the sacred yoke of matrimony and betray his own noble wife. Unmoved by modesty, you caused him to know you in ways prohibited
by godly and civil laws. In contempt of God and not holding in awe the State, you used your will to overcome his scruples and dishonour both himself and his family. You are guilty of corrupting a noble Venetian, a Venetian of the Libro d’oro.

  You, being a foreigner, and a woman, have no honour to lose.

  Your sentence is as follows: You will be paraded in a wicker cage from San Marco to Santa Croce, whilst being scourged in the back, along the points of your kidneys, liver, spleen and heart, with spurred whips made from the tails of horses. You will wear on your head the wooden crown of ignominy painted with the scenes of your debaucheries. A herald shall walk in front of you, proclaiming your crimes, particularly as you pass those places where you performed them. You shall perforce submit to the contumelies of the public and the substances they, in their righteous anger, shall throw at you. From Santa Croce you will be taken to the Piazzetta of San Marco, and between the columns you will be made to stand on the Platform of Justice. There you will be branded with an ‘S’ – for your vile trade of stregoneria - upon both of your cheeks and upon your upper lip. Thereafter you shall be exiled from Venice in perpetuity.

  If you are ever found to have returned to Venice you shall suffer the following punishment: your nose shall be cut off and you shall be led through the streets bleeding. Your right hand, with which you have defiled our altars and our nobility, will be cut off and hung around your neck upon a chain. Then you will be taken to the Piazzetta of San Marco and hanged for three days upon that same chain.

  Your book of the poems of Catullus is confiscated by the Republic and shall be burned at your feet while you endure your punishment.

  All present repent upon their own sins, for none of us is without them. Remember always to hold in awe the Serene Republic of Venice and all her officers and laws.

  All rise, and depart Go with God.

  Chapter Four

  At least let’s force a blush upon her iron dog’s face.

  ‘Rub your legs together if you want to start a fire and keep warm, bitch.’ ‘She does things with candles that wives don’t do with their husbands.’

  ‘Got down to your last man, bitch? Trying to fuck the rats now? They’d get lost inside your cavern, bitch.’

  ‘There’s no pricks in heaven, bitch. Where you’re going, you’ll be riding pitchforks.’

  * * *

  Sosia lay on the straw in her cell. The damp fibres had frozen into spikes of ice. Small rivulets of blood ran down her arms and legs where the ice had cut her. She was in one of the inferiori, the cells that ran along the quay at ground level. With grotesque humour the warders gave these cells the most pompous names, as if they were salons in a grand palazzo: the Liona, the Morosina, the Mocenigo, the Forte, the Orba, the Frescagioia, the Vulcano.

  The guards bundled Sosia into the Liona after her trial. Somehow, it had got out that she was in one of the cells near the waterline, one that could be seen from the riva. Despite the intense cold, crowds awaited their turn to try to peer at the witch through her bars. Rotten vegetables wrapped in curses were thrown through the window. Pumpkins exploded like fire against the bars.

  She picked up these offerings and devoured them, and ate the paper too. The guards did not believe that she would survive her sentence and so they no longer brought her food. The stench from her cell was dreadful, worse than other prisoners’ somehow. It was as if the sentence had already been carried out, and her body had started to rot, and an angry, corporeal ghost now lurked down there afire with malice to take her revenge.

  Her sentence was to be carried out on the Friday before Christmas. She looked at the shadow of her profile against the pale light that flowed into the cell. It was the last time she would see it without the ridges of her branding. For Sosia herself did not believe that she would die. She watched the sportive fleas in the moonlight and found it impossible to think that she would not see them again.

  Rabino came to see her, with medicines in his sleeve. She turned her head away from him. He’d brought the Torah under his robes, and started to read aloud, thinking to comfort her. Like the guards, he did not think that she could live through the tortures that would be administered. Her disease was too far advanced. He alone knew of the small murmur in her heartbeat that could be dangerous in extremis. The shock of the branding, terrible enough for witnesses, would almost certainly be too much for a weakened victim. He could only hope that by the time she had been whipped from Santa Croce and back, she would already be unconscious, too far gone towards her death to be roused even by the smell of her own burning flesh. So each night he read from the Torah, of the martyrdom of the Jews, and tried to see Sosia as one in that tradition. He saw himself visiting her grave in the Jewish cemetery on the Lido, laying small flowers there the following spring.

  But when he went to see her, the living Sosia spat at him. She would not share his gentle fantasies.

  She said nothing to him, but as he left, she murmured quietly behind him: ‘The only thing I regret is that I’ve been charged with some crimes I did not yet have time to commit. By the way, don’t look so guilty. It’s not your fault, Mister Doctor, prodati muda za bubrege.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘My parents sold you testicles instead of kidneys.’

  He did not turn around. Rabino did not wish this ghastly death on her, but he could not staunch a welling resentment about the legend she had attached to herself and hence to him, too. He was ashamed of his own selfish thoughts but they piled up inside him, and they would not be stilled. He would be the widower whom no woman would ever want to touch, who would lack the confidence to touch another woman again. He’d been where every man had been. He, more even than Malipiero, alone of all Sosia’s other men, must bear her sins on his reputation. He would go to his own grave starved of tenderness. Sharply, he reminded himself, ‘I deserve this. I am among her violators.’

  He had worried that Sosia might try to compound her sins by wishing to take her life, but he realised now that she was still fighting. She did not care to die well. She detested posterity already. She would go snarling and kicking out of this life. He, Rabino, was trying to feel for her as if she was already dead, in a state of renewed innocence.

  God be good, he prayed, take her from us as quickly and cleanly as possible.

  Outside the cell, the crowd roared.

  ‘Listen to them,’ she said to Rabino’s retreating back. ‘You’d think they’d all had me.’

  He turned back to her with sudden bitterness. ‘Yes, plenty of them did, but you won’t find them outside howling like animals. They’ve abandoned you. Where are they now, those men who said they loved you? The noblemen? The rest?’

  While his words still hung in the air Rabino was filled with shame. ‘I apologise, Sosia. You do not deserve my unkindness now.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Perhaps you loved those men. You never cared for me so I cannot identify the symptoms of love in you. At least I’ll be honest with you, and tell you what perhaps you wish to know. I’m afraid Nicolò Malipiero has left the city and he’s not tried to intervene on your behalf. It’s being said that he was trying to hang himself when they came to get him. I’m sorry if this hurts you.’

  ‘The idiot! He could never do anything right,’ Sosia muttered. ‘Da padne na ledja, slomio bi kurac, if he fell on his back he’d break his prick.’

  ‘You didn’t love him either, then?’

  Sosia laughed.

  ‘Did you love any of them? If it helps you to talk about it, I can listen. Don’t worry about my feelings. I just want to help you.’

  Sosia did not answer.

  Rabino asked again: ‘Didn’t you love anyone?’

  ‘Go away,’ she hissed. ‘As if I would tell you.’

  * * *

  They say the Jew’s wife was found guilty, that she did things …

  It’s a shame, for he’s a good man, the Jew.

  The Jew’s wife, they say, is beautiful. Just to see her sting
s the heart like a snake. They say she’s so pale that waxlight faints when it sees her face. They tell me that she’s a strange gold skin on her body and big golden eyes like an owl. It would take days to count her eyelashes, so lustrous are they. She speaks and reads in all tongues, they say, like the Devil. Yet she swears like a porter and smells like a dog!

  As always, I go to my friend Caterina for the truth. She’s seen this Sosia Simeon a sack of times. She alone tells me: ‘That woman is beautiful only to those who want to see her that way.’

  This made me wonder that perhaps I’d passed her in the street many times, even brushed against her arm or caught her eye, but I did not notice her for I was not in love with her?

  Caterina said: ‘Oh no, you would notice her.’

  And how did Caterina know this? It turns out that the Jew’s wife came to the Sturion to do what she does – with Felice Feliciano! This makes me think she’s lovely after all. He’s not known for choosing ugly playmates for his bed.

  Now the Jew, he touched this wife of his and he touches me. In different ways of course, yet he has the taste and feel of our two skins on the tips of his hands. How does that feel to him? I wonder.

  Despite his problems, he still comes to me. (Paola may go to hell, if the Devil will have her.) We do not mention the brutal matter of his wife.

  Instead we talk of a terrible story at Rialto, that some owls have come to Venice who carry off the dogs. They take them away in their talons, nipping their necks. No dog is safe, if he’s small, and the loved ones usually are, so the town is full of noblewomen, clutching these little balls of fluff to their breasts and looking fearfully at the sky.

  They say dogs constantly attend the Jew’s wife. Now, when I go about the town, I think of her each time I hear a dog bark.

  Suddenly I’m bilious with hate for dogs and wish the owls to take them all. They remind me of men, of husbands. Dogs and husbands wear their sex and their conscience on the outside; women keep theirs within.