I, Iago

by Nicole Galland

  Lodovico blinked. “Who?” he asked. “I?”

  “Yes,” Othello said, both ponderous and impatiently. “You. You’re the one who wanted me to have her turn back. As you see, sir, she can turn. And she can weep, yes, sir, she can certainly weep, and my goodness, but she’s obedient. Go on, then, keep weeping,” he said, glancing briefly at her and then back to Lodovico. “So I am commanded home.” With a brief, withering glance at Desdemona, he ordered, “Go away, I’ll send for you later.” Back to Lodovico, entirely civil: “Sir, I will obey the mandate from the Senate, and return home immediately.” And back to Desdemona, viciously: “Get out of here!”

  Everyone in the room shifted their weight away from him. Desdemona dissolved into fresh sobs and turned back to the heavy curtain; she nearly tore it off its rod as she pushed it away and ran into the darkened stairwell beyond. Immediately civil again, Othello again returned his eyes to Lodovico. “And yes, Cassio shall replace me. Please dine with me tonight, Lodovico, and welcome to Cyprus.”

  He stormed out of the room through the same curtain Desdemona had exited, muttering to himself in a frightening tone.

  A FEW ATTENDANTS nervously trailed after him; everyone left in the room looked immediately to me, as if it were my job to make everything all right. I was as stunned as they were. Words had done this. My words. It is terrible to see a woman cry, but her tears would dry soon; the import of the moment would last far longer than her tears.

  After a full breath of silence, Gratiano finally burst out, “I cannot believe what I just saw. Is this the noble Moor the entire Venetian Senate is so enamored of? The general who’s famous for his calm in the most dire circumstances?”

  “He is much changed,” I said diplomatically.

  “Has he lost his mind?” Gratiano demanded. He almost seemed angry that I was not showing more distress.

  “It’s not for me to judge that, sir,” I demurred.

  “Iago, he just struck his wife! My kinswoman! In front of all of us!”

  I nodded, grimly, my hands clasped together low before me, looking down. “That was not good,” I admitted.

  “Does he do this all the time?” Lodovico demanded, horrified. Trying to calm himself: “Or did the letter so upset him that he has just lost reason, this moment?”

  The dutiful lieutenant, I declined to meet his gaze. “It’s not for me to say, sir. I suggest you observe him and see his actions for yourself.”

  My delivery was perfect; the tone condemned Othello while the words committed me to nothing. I glanced up when I heard Gratiano sigh; he was staring in the direction Othello had departed, and he looked, above all, saddened.

  “I was an admirer of his, despite the upset with my niece. I’m sorry I was so deceived in him,” he said.

  I turned to one of the gape-eyed attendants. “Show the gentlemen their rooms,” I said. “If you will excuse me, sirs,” I said, and headed through the curtain both Othello and Desdemona had taken. I went a few steps down the stairway, then stopped and leaned against the wall, pressing my cheek against the cooling stone, troubled.

  Until that moment, I did not think it was possible for Othello to actually hurt his wife. I had assumed his vows were all passionate hyperbole, with no danger of execution. I was still confident he would not actually try to murder her, but my assumption that she was immune to danger . . . I was wrong. It further proved to me that a man of such extreme passion was a danger to everyone around him, including those he loved; but I did not like to see a woman weep, and I suspected there’d be more tears, and even wailing, before this ended.

  And I knew now how it had to end.

  When I began my project, it had been to exercise my sense of vengeful indignation, but the only outcome I had been attached to was the lieutenant’s sash. Along the way, however—truly to my shock, absolutely unanticipated—I had uncloaked a demon lurking within my friend and general, and that demon, once revealed, had to be removed. I had genuinely hoped Othello could defeat the beast, but he was falling hourly more under its control. A man who cannot rule himself surely must not be allowed to rule an army. Already Lodovico was musing on that, I could tell. Othello risked demotion upon his return to Venice—rightfully so. I could never take public credit for unmasking his dangerous animus, but I could nonetheless benefit from it, and I intended to. I would be, from this moment until the moment a new general was invested, the perfect lieutenant.

  And then I’d be the first Venetian-born general of the army in at least a century.

  While my brother remained nothing but a silk merchant.

  THE PLEASURE OF that thought allayed my bruised conscience for making Desdemona teary. I continued down the steps. At the bottom, I heard Emilia’s familiar tread coming from the direction of Othello’s room, and realized I had been expecting it.

  “Iago,” she said breathlessly when she saw me, and hurried to me. She threw her arms around me; I could feel her trembling. “You will not believe what—”

  “I do believe it. I was there, I saw it,” I said.

  She shook her head, clutching me, pressing her face against my neck. “Not the slap. She told me about that. It’s worse. He came storming into her room afterward, and the way he spoke to her . . . Please help her.” She released me, grabbed my hand, and rushed me into Desdemona’s room.

  There were candles lit all around the periphery of the room. It was large, but spare; a bed, a few chests to hold her gowns, pegs on the walls for Othello’s clothes; a table for her jewelry. Emilia had lit incense, the soothing smell of sandalwood and jasmine intended to calm the lady, but it was not working.

  Desdemona’s pale face was splotchy red and wet, and a bruise was reddening where Othello had struck her. It was the least attractive I had ever seen her. She sat on the floor, her back against the bed, knees drawn up toward her face like a frightened child.

  “Lady,” I said, moving toward her. “Are you all right?”

  “I do not know.” She sniffed. “I’ve never been spoken to that way.” Emilia knelt down beside her on the other side, and stroked her hair.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, gently laying a hand on her arm.

  “Iago, you will not believe how he just spoke to her, he called her a whore. It was atrocious, it was heartbreaking,” Emilia declared.

  “Am I? Iago?” Desdemona asked between hiccupping tears.

  “ . . . Are you what, sweetheart?” I said, voicing more affection toward her than I had ever felt. It was an instinctual reaction to a fragile girl in pain; I’d have been as kind to a stranger on the street in need of solace.

  She looked sickened. “The . . . the word she said my husband said I was.”

  “He called her a whore,” Emilia repeated with brisk disgust. “A drunk beggar would not use that kind of language to his mistress.”

  Had I said anything to Emilia that would get me in trouble right now? I didn’t think so. “Why did he do that?” I demanded, looking shocked.

  “I do not know,” Desdemona said, tearing up again. “I’m sure I’m not one.” She turned to rest her head against Emilia’s bosom for comfort.

  “Don’t weep,” I said solicitously, patting her head. “Please don’t weep. Oh, heaven,” I muttered under my breath. I wished I were anywhere but here. I thought it was only Emilia’s tears that undid me; I learned at this moment I was wrong.

  I wanted to apologize to her for revealing what a monster her husband really was, but my apology would accomplish nothing; it would not make him less a monster. The truth would have come out eventually in any case; I was doing her a favor to help her see it so quickly, before she had devoted a lifetime to him. Her uncle was here to protect her from Othello’s wrath, and she would soon be Venice-bound. How fortunate this happened now, rather than some few years in the future when she might find herself not only far from home but stranded alone with him somewhere.

  While I was musing on this, Emilia was fuming: “She turned her back on every gentleman in Venice, she left
behind her father and her country and her friends, to be with this man—and now he calls her whore?”

  “Shame on him,” I said with vigor. Did they have any inkling how things had come to this? “What’s happened that he’d think that of her?”

  “Heaven knows,” said Desdemona, moaning. She turned away from Emilia and tried to wipe her face dry with her hands.

  “I bet my life,” Emilia declared, her face livid with anger, “that some nasty little jabbering sycophant slandered her to get ahead somehow.”

  I looked at her in bald alarm, my stomach churning with a panic I had not felt once before in all of this. Did she know? Was she accusing me? She stared right at me with fury on her face.

  “Do not be ridiculous,” I said, feeling faint and sounding, to my own ears, breathless. “There’s no such man.”

  “If there is, God forgive him,” Desdemona said mournfully.

  “Let the hangman forgive him!” Emilia declared. “Let him rot in hell!” She stood up, too agitated to remain seated. She began to pace around the bed. “Why would he call her whore? Who could she possibly be whoring with?”

  I relaxed a little. If Emilia did not know Cassio was the suspected paramour, then she’d have no reason to associate this with my ascension to lieutenancy. The panic in my stomach lessened slightly.

  “He interrogated me about Michele,” Emilia went on. The knot of panic tightened again. “But I put that ridiculous premise to rest.” The knot loosened. “Besides—when does she ever see anyone? Where does she whore herself? And when? And how? Othello has been gulled by a villain. And by all the sainted angels,” she went on, her voice rising as her righteousness exploded, “if I had a whip I’d lash the whoreson myself!”

  “Emilia,” I said sternly. “We are indoors; lower your voice.”

  “Oh, be quiet!” she snapped back. “I’ll wager it was the same malcontent who drove you mad thinking I was sleeping with Othello!”

  “Do not be stupid,” I said brusquely. But she was, in a sense, correct: I was the one who’d made myself suspicious then, as much as I’d made Othello suspicious now.

  “Please help me, Iago,” Desdemona said, grabbing my hand. “What should I do to win him back? Be a good friend and go to him for me. I don’t know how I lost him. I’ve never deceived him, or abused him, I’ve never even looked at another man.”

  There was another wave of tears. Oh, I wanted to get away from there. She was so pitiful, so desperate, so genuine. I patted her wrist.

  “I cannot say”—she took in a loud, rasping breath—“I cannot say . . . whore.” She gasped; for a moment I thought she would vomit on me. “It sickens me just to say the word, I could never do the deed!”

  I put an arm around her and rocked her slightly. There was nothing I could do, to make any one of us feel any better in this moment. “Please calm yourself,” I said gently. “It’s just his mood tonight. The business with the letter offended him, and he’s taking it out on you.”

  She sniffed and looked up hopefully at me. “If that’s all it is . . .”

  “I’m sure that’s it,” I said, as reassuringly as I could manage. I felt more than saw Emilia give me an appreciative, approving smile. I desperately needed her smile at that moment.

  From down the corridor, a cornet sounded the call to supper. “There now,” I said. “Go in to eat, your uncle will be there to keep an eye on you, and I’m sure your husband will mend his attitude. Never cry. All things will be well.” I kissed her on the crown of the head, and stood up.

  Emilia moved swiftly across the room to me; she wrapped her arms around me, squeezed me tightly but briefly to her, and kissed my cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered. “God blesses you for that.” I felt a wave of unease. Thank God, I thought, thank God you do not realize.

  I FOLLOWED SLOWLY behind the women, needing time, ever more time than I ever had, to sort through my thoughts and plans. That brief moment of fear I’d felt, thinking Emilia suspected me of something nefarious—that had unnerved me. I knew to the depths of my soul that nothing I did was errant, that in the greater sense, I acted out of righteousness, however vengeful and indirect it seemed. But I also knew that I could not explain that to her while she was so emotional, and I hoped I would never have to.

  I was ready to end this now. Immediately. Othello had proven himself to be beyond redemption. That happened when he struck his wife. I was content to leave it all to Gratiano now. I trusted him to remove Othello’s title, and take his kinswoman home again to safety . . . Othello’s behavior was so extreme, so far beyond any wrong that I had done or even schemed of, that truly I no longer considered this my project. The complaints now rested with the state of Venice. Let the Serene Republic put to bed the demons I had waked—

  I WENT BACK UP that same stairway and turned a corner that would take me to the officers’ dining hall. I was leaning my weight forward to take a step, when a sound well known to any soldier made me stop: somebody to my left had just drawn a dagger from its sheath. Immediately I found myself staring at a new, well-oiled blade, the business edge right at my throat and gleaming in the lamplight. It was held with a notable lack of soldierly confidence, however, which could only mean one thing.

  “Good evening, Roderigo,” I said. I had entirely forgotten his existence. “Is something wrong?”

  The blade was lowered with a jerk, and my childhood friend stepped out of the shadows, into the corridor itself. He was furious. He grabbed my collar with one hand and poked the dagger against my collarbone, hard enough that it hurt even through my leather jerkin.

  “You have not been honest with me, Iago,” he growled.

  I tried to give him a disdainful look. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears, as if the sound came from somewhere else. The attack itself hardly accounted for this; I knew I could disarm him easily if I had to. What frightened me was the rude remembrance that I had a rogue actor in my drama, and the realization that he could do a lot of damage.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked with incredulity.

  “Every day, all week, you’ve put me off with some excuse or other!” He was so upset, I was reminded of my darling-faced six-year-old friend. But the six-year-old had not been armed. “I’m sick of it, I’m through with it, you’re obviously—”

  “Will you be quiet a moment and listen to me, Roderigo?” I said urgently, in the voice that had served me so well with him our first decade of friendship.

  “I’ve listened too much already,” Roderigo shot back, waving the dagger in my face. He rested it once more against my collarbone. “And your words have precious little to do with your actions, anyhow.”

  I made a hurt expression. “That is unfair.”

  “It may be unfair but it’s the truth,” he spluttered. “The jewels I gave you to deliver to Desdemona would have half corrupted a nun by now, but for all your claims that she delighted in them, I’ve yet to receive one moment of her time or attention.”

  Well, yes. Roderigo’s jewels. I was admittedly amoral regarding Roderigo’s jewels. I had been stowing them away to give Emilia, on the grounds that Roderigo wouldn’t miss them and Desdemona wouldn’t want them. In fact, I had afforded Roderigo priceless pleasure by letting him imagine what might become of Desdemona’s appreciation.

  But I had wanted the jewelry for Emilia because I’d feared I could never afford such finery for her. Now that I was a made man, I did not, in truth, need what Roderigo had so trustingly given me. If I had to, I would just give it all back. But only if I had to.

  “Very well,” I said, in a placating voice.

  “No, it is not very well,” Roderigo snapped. “If I did not know you better, I’d think you were leading me.”

  “Very well,” I repeated, sounding slightly desperate. I glanced down at the dagger with exaggerated nervousness.

  “I’m telling you it is not very well!” Roderigo nearly shouted in response. I gave him a warning look and gestured at his clothing: he was dress
ed as a common soldier, and he knew as well as I did that he’d be in trouble if he was found in the general’s personal quarters. “Listen to me,” he hissed, lowering his voice but pulling my ear nearly to his mouth. “I will make myself known to Desdemona. If she returns my jewels, I will stop hounding her, I’ll even apologize for what I’ve done so far. But if she does not return them”—here again, with a complete lack of confidence, he waved the dagger under my nose—“I will seek satisfaction from you!”

  “Very well,” I repeated, holding up my hands, as if I were afraid he’d have the balls to use the dagger. “You have spoken, and I’ve heard you!”

  “And I mean what I say!” Roderigo announced, shaking the dagger, trying so obviously to feel dangerous.

  I could not continue to pretend to be afraid of him when I wasn’t. Instead, I chucked him on the shoulder nervously and lowered my voice to speak conspiratorially: “Why, now I see there’s mettle in you, Roderigo. I really was not sure before. Give me your hand.” I gently pushed the dagger down from my clavicle and reached to take it from his grip. “Your complaint is entirely understandable, but I’ve only acted in your interest here.”

  “I fail to see any evidence of that,” Roderigo said, jerking his hand away from mine and returning the dagger to its very disagreeable spot near my throat. He was a danger because he had no idea what he was doing. He could slit my throat almost without meaning to, if he lost his calm again.

  “I agree it does not look like that,” I said quickly. “Your suspicion is not without judgment. But, Roderigo, if you have purpose, show me tonight, and if you haven’t gotten what you want by tomorrow night, I’m yours to kill.”

  He frowned and looked uncertain. Then he grabbed me by the collar again and jerked me toward him—nearly impaling me on the dagger without realizing it; I deflected a wound by shifting my body perpendicular to his grasp. “Well, what is it?” he demanded. “Is it reasonable, or is this some new nonsense scheme of yours?”

  “Listen to me,” I said. “There is a special commission come from Venice, to replace Othello with Cassio.”