I, Iago

by Nicole Galland

  After dinner, we gentlemen retired to her father’s study, which adjoined the great room. It was unremarkable and dominated by a wooden desk. He encourage me to sit, and then with a preparatory intake of breath, he began:

  “Emilia is a decent cook, and I think she’d make any man a good wife, although she is better at cleaning than at tidying. From what we can tell she would be an excellent hostess of parties and events, which is why, although we have a decent enough dowry to offer, we are not adverse to her being taken on as a mistress, for in many ways she’d make a better mistress than a wife, given that she can throw a party better than she can clean it up. So if you’re already promised to somebody, or your brother has a profitable match in store for you, but you are interested in Emilia, she may still be available, provided you can offer assurance that you would not return her to us if your wife insisted on it. But I’d need to know your intentions quickly, because there are a number of gentlemen, including a patrician’s son, who have expressed an interest in her as a mistress if you don’t want her. She’s rejected all of them so far, but that just makes their friends and associates more intrigued, so I expect they will be presenting themselves to me soon. It’s a relief to have her actually interested in somebody, and my strong preference is for you to have her, but again, sir, it would be very inconvenient for us if you cannot make your mind up quickly.”

  He finally paused.

  I blinked. My head was spinning like a whirligig. I had only reentered into Venetian society four days ago, and already I was exposed to outright madness. On the one hand, it was certainly as blunt and honest as anything I’d ever said, but it absolutely lacked humanity. Were all discussions of marriage like this? I suddenly wished I’d asked my brother for advice. “Don’t you want to know what kind of life I’d offer her?” I said.

  He shrugged. “She knows you’re a soldier, does she not? If she’s not bothered by it, I am not either.”

  I blinked, incredulous at his offhandedness. “She is a young woman, caught up in her emotions, and perhaps misjudges what is best for her. Is it not your business as her father to look at what I offer with objective, weighty measuring?”

  Again he shrugged. “I’m responsible to get her married, she’s responsible for what she makes of it,” he said agreeably.

  I felt hugely indignant on Emilia’s behalf. “You know I have received my officer’s commission,” I announced. “That greatly improves my living conditions wherever I am posted, so she need not be discomfited by her surroundings.”

  “That’s good,” he said indulgently. “Then you’ve just proved I don’t need to worry about her making the wrong choice. She’s yours if she’ll have you, sir, and I’d be very pleased about it. Truly her mother and I thought we would never get her to agree to anyone.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said uncertainly.

  “Oh, no, thank you, sir,” he replied heartily, and shook my hand.

  Unsettled by this encounter, I left him in the study and went back to Emilia and her mother in the great-room. “May I have the honor of a word alone with your daughter?” I asked my future mother. The lady said of course, and happily humming to herself, she scurried back toward the kitchen.

  I stood by the open window and pushed the tapestry away, needing air. I gestured Emilia to come near to me. Smiling, she rose from the table and did so. She looked so lovely in the candlelight.

  “I have had a very strange conversation with your father,” I began. She laughed.

  “I’m sure you did,” she said. “He seldom has any other kind.”

  “Among other things I was not expecting to hear, he offered you up as my mistress. In case I wanted to marry somebody richer later on. He is fine with that, so long as I’d still keep you as my mistress.”

  “How very considerate of him,” she said with her sweet small laugh. “I’d rather be your mistress, Iago, than anybody else’s wife.”

  After taking a moment to steady myself from that declaration, I said, “I cannot afford to keep a mistress.”

  She leaned in toward me so that our faces were nearly touching. “Well, in that case, you’d better marry me, do not you think?” she whispered.

  I finally dared to kiss her. It was delicious. She kissed me back, and when I wrapped my arms around her she pressed into me so hard she nearly backed me against the wall. A week ago, I had not known of her existence; now I could not imagine life without it.

  THE WORST THING about being married is that one must have a wedding first. We were all in agreement that we wanted to keep it small and simple, but small and simple in Venetian terms is still Venetian. Both houses obligingly hung tapestries in all the windows. At the church overlooking Emilia’s campo, I went to meet her, with her gorgeous auburn mane hanging loose over a white dress; she was surrounded by female friends and relatives I’d never met and hardly ever saw again, none of them anything close to her in beauty or wit. Roderigo and my family were all the witnesses I brought. After we exchanged vows, we repaired to her parents’ home for a reception, which consisted mostly of everyone getting drunk on Lagryme di Christo (a Venetian specialty). This was on the second day of February, Candlemas, the day on which—it is said, at least in Venice—you can begin to tell the days are growing longer in anticipating spring. She chose this day specifically, she told me, “Because you have brought the sunlight to my life.”

  IF THE LORD gave me the chance to freeze time, I would freeze it there, the moment after she made that declaration. Even if it meant there never was a wedding and I never had the chance to know her as a wife, even if it meant I never had a chance to prove myself as a commissioned officer. She was the best soul I had ever known, and it was I who brought the sunlight to her life. What higher peak is there to ascend to?

  Chapter 11

  WITHIN A WEEK of our wedding I signed a contract with the army—an officer’s contract—and immediately after that I received my new posting, which would send me to Stato da Màr, the seaward face of the Venetian empire. Emilia and I spent the next two years on Corfu.

  An army posting on Corfu, even for an officer, hardly differs from an army posting out in the far western reaches of Terraferma. My lodgings were better, and of course I shared my bed and my meals and my free hours with a woman I continued to consider the greatest prize any man could ever win.

  My days were duties (more interesting than they’d been before, and fewer hours on guard duty), continuing my fencing studies, and teaching others how to shoot. I still read a lot, and played chess, with officers and with Emilia, who had no knack for it but was always happy to try. She befriended the wives of the higher-ranking officers, no matter their background—most officers were not Venetians but mercenaries from all different backgrounds. She would patiently practice the Venetian dialect with them, teach them dance steps and table manners, and in all ways prepare them to blend into “society” should their husbands ever find themselves in Venice. The aging patrician commissioners who were here fulfilling their civic obligations were happy to have dance partners less than half their age. I commented, more than once, on the irony that Emilia herself had never been all that concerned with blending into “society,” and here she was, herself creating it.

  I was a jealous husband, I admit that. Some of the higher-ranking officers, seeing their wives mincing merrily about the mess hall in the evenings, asked Emilia to show them how they themselves should dance. At least once every week I had to watch her in the arms of some other man—usually of a higher rank than I was—moving about in harmony to a tune that she would hum aloud from memory. They did nothing improper, but I still felt a thrill of nervousness course through me every time she had a dance partner. She teased me for my jealousy and said she liked how, later at night, in bed, I possessed her so intensely.

  “Perhaps I should flirt with some of them,” she’d whisper as I lay spent and breathing hard on top of her, in the cold dark bedroom on a hard bed with weathered sheets, still inside her, feeling I’d reclaimed her from
the world. “Then you would really have a go at me. I’d be walking awkwardly for days, and everyone would know it was because Iago was such a master over his mistress, and they would so envy both of us.” The darkness would sparkle with that soft, sweet laugh of hers, and I’d be hard again.

  We spoke of children. We knew we wanted, someday, to have a family, but also knew it was not the time. We were too immersed in each other’s presence; there was no room yet for a third. “We will get used to each other soon enough,” she’d say. “That happens in every marriage I have ever seen. We will bore each other someday, and then it will be time for offspring. That’s just how the world works.”

  TWO YEARS INTO IT, we were not used to each other, and we were not bored, and we were no more inclined to share each other with a child than we’d been on our wedding night. Emilia learned ways to prevent conception; there were concoctions from the older wives of officers, who had in their turn learned it from older wives before them. Once her flux was late and very heavy, and she seemed melancholy for a day or two. “That might have been a babe, but it’s good it was not, it’s not time yet,” was all she said, and smiled and caressed my face. That was the only moment of our time on Corfu that was not perfect domestic bliss.

  Professionally, however, it was a time of political upheavals. I will attempt to summarize in a manner that does not seem as if I am inventing or exaggerating. Two officers, let us call them Sforza and Orsini, each wanted to be the highest of the high in the armed forces. Sforza had the higher rank, but Orsini (for reasons too Byzantine to explain here) was in a position to be promoted to a rank above Sforza’s, and Sforza didn’t like that. As a result, each of them had a secret pact with a different branch of the government that they would never have to be subordinate to the other one. It all got quite out of hand and resulted in Orsini finding some other form of employment, and Sforza leading the cavalry on Terraferma. This created an absence of leadership for the infantry.

  Neither man was Venetian, but they were both Italian. The commissioners leaked a rumor that the Senate was looking farther afield for military leaders. If a Greek or Pole or Russian could be hired to lead our troops, then there was no risk they would get caught up in complicated family ties or local political pressures. There was a rumor that the Senate’s first choice was a mainlander who believed Venice should seize Rhodes from the Turks. This was a thrilling proposal, but it was in complete opposition to the doge’s edict that the last thing the army should attempt was further conquest of any sort.

  I was glad these were not my headaches to sort out. As a young ensign, I would not be working directly with the new general anyhow, but I had ambition and intended someday to rank high enough that I might serve near him. I had fought beside Greeks and Poles and Russians, and I would be content with any of them as my commander in chief. I would be equally well- disposed to obey the orders of a Croat, a Spaniard, or even a Christian Turk!

  Not that the Senate would ever consider an apostate heathen to govern our armed forces.

  Chapter 12

  EMILIA AND I RETURNED to Venice near the end of Carnival. I was two years into a three-year contract, and so, until I was posted again, we were quartered at the Dolphin, an inn in the campo just outside the Arsenal gate. The view out our window was almost identical to my first sight of the famously guarded entrance, that hot August afternoon some seven years ago. I marveled almost every morning at what the years had wrought.

  IT WAS PLEASING to live in Venice without living under my family’s roof. I liked the city much better when I had only a room, a small closet, and Emilia. Our first week home, we paid dutiful visits to our families. We then burrowed into our lodgings, having brought back the finer outfits from our respective boudoirs.

  “We should go out to celebrate Carnival,” Emilia said, running her fingers fondly over the red wool skirt I’d first seen her in, the one dear thing her parents had given her.

  “I’m sure the styles have changed insufferably in our two years away,” I said, looking for an excuse. “If you make an appearance wearing that you will be noted as terribly unfashionable.”

  “I will be noted as someone who has been abroad long enough for the fashions to change,” she countered, now holding up the skirt with nostalgic admiration. “That, I think, shall make me exotic.” She glanced over toward me and grinned bewitchingly. “Would you not like to parade your exotic wife around at a few balls?”

  This was unlike Emilia. Perhaps, as with my time on Terraferma, absence made her appreciate what she’d left behind. My nostalgia had proven temporary. I hoped that hers would too. “The only thing I ever liked about those balls is that I met you there,” I said.

  She moved over to the table where I sat with my Aldine octavo of the Divine Comedy. She grinned down at me.

  “Indulge me. Let us invent our own divine comedy tonight. If you are hating every moment, I promise to flirt with some masked stranger and make you so mad with jealousy that you will drag me home and ride me ferociously for all night, and I’ll yield to you completely and beg and beg and beg for more.”

  “Then why are you not dressed yet, hussy?” I grinned, closing Dante.

  WE WORE OUR MASKS, which had each survived Venice in our absence. We had no invitation anywhere. But as an army officer, wearing my ensign’s insignia and jerkin, I was welcomed into almost any party. We decided we would wander through the streets of the Rialto at whim and drop into whatever house emanated pleasing music, delicious aroma, or (if we knew them) the hosts.

  The first fete we decided to infiltrate was at the home of a patrician named Gratiano, who lived in the best neighborhood of San Polo. Although not a senator, he had a high-ranking post within the government. His event was enormous, spilling out into the campo in front of his palace. Both indoor and out it was brightly lit with chandeliers and braziers and torches and huge, heavy-scented beeswax candles that must have each been equal to Emilia’s dowry. There was an impressive acrobatic act on the campo as we arrived—not only the traditional human pyramid but also stilt walking and a contortionist. As the acrobats finished, a hundred sets of gloved hands applauded, and a cornet summoned people back indoors. We simply went along with them.

  The house resembled the setting of any other ball, except for a trio of young men passed out in a corner, which seemed graceless in such a setting.

  “Have you seen him?” a masked woman with a gravelly, elderly voice asked Emilia as we came in. “I just caught a glimpse of him over by the wine. It’s true, what they say.”

  “What do they say?” Emilia asked, imitating the gossip’s eager tone so perfectly I almost started laughing.

  “They say it’s not a mask at all! They say that is his real face! Can you imagine? So ugly and so dark?”

  Emilia and I exchanged glances, and I saw permission glitter in her eye. I reached up to untie my mask.

  “I am ugly and dark,” I informed the woman, revealing my face to her.

  She looked vaguely affronted, but then said impatiently, “You’re just sunburned. This man is a different color. As if his face was painted.”

  “How shocking,” I said, “Nobody ever paints their face in Venice. What could he be thinking?”

  “No, it’s not paint,” she explained with exasperation. “That’s what is so incredible. Several young men took bets with each other and tried to wipe the paint off, it will not come off!”

  I tried to imagine the humiliation of some poor stranger having his face swiped at by a group of drunken youths. “What did he do?” Emilia asked, reading my thoughts.

  “Oh, he would not have it!” said the gossip. She pointed to the unconscious trio near the stairway, whom I’d assumed were passed out from drink. “He smashed each one across the pate and knocked them out!”

  “Good for him,” I said at once. I said it aloud in hopes of inflaming the gossip.

  “Absolutely!” she agreed. “Just because he isn’t quite human does not mean he should be treated as an animal!”
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  I felt Emilia stiffen beside me. “What do you mean, he isn’t quite human?” she demanded.

  “Well, it isn’t human skin,” the masked lady pointed out. “Human skin is not that color.”

  Emilia immediately took my hand and pulled me gently toward the middle of the room. “Iago, I’m very thirsty, please come with me to get some wine.”

  “Of course,” I said, and with a small nod to the woman, I stepped after my wife. Safely away from the gossip, immersed in gowns and masks and fragrances and chitchat, I whispered to her in a tone of mischief, “Were you afraid I was going to torment her, or were you simply so sickened you needed to get away from her?”

  “Both,” she answered, not amused.

  We walked perhaps two dozen paces, down the length of the semicrowded hall; we heard three inane and mystifying conversations about the man whose face was a living mask. I assumed they were commenting on a circus performer.

  “They’ve been having trouble with Italians,” an older gentleman was saying to two others and a grey-wigged lady. “Surely you’ve heard about the manipulations and double-crossings. Shamefully, there are no Italians equal to the task.”

  “But where did they find him?” the lady asked. “Who gave him the appointment? How do we know he’s not a Turk?”

  “He’s much too dark to be a Turk,” one of the gentlemen said.

  Emilia and I exchanged glances and slowed our pace.

  “Excuse me,” I said as we reached them. “May I ask whom you are discussing? I am just arrived from Corfu and I fear I missed some news while I was at sea.”