by Martin Seay
I want to know, Tristão says, how God is unlike us. I want to know how our eyes become traitors. To know what they refuse to see. I no longer seek to transcend, nor even to understand. I want only to dirty my hands. To smell. To feel. Like a child who plays with mud. I believe the key is here—
His fingers brush the flat glass before him; they’re met by fingers from the opposite side.
—but not in the way that others have said. The Nolan warned us of this. Do you remember? He said the image in the mirror is like the image in a dream: only fools and infants mistake it for the true likeness of the world, but likewise it is foolish to ignore what it shows us. Therein lies the danger. Do we look upon these reflections without delusion, like bold Actaeon? Or, like Narcissus, do we see only what we wish to see? How can we be certain? With love in our hearts, we creep toward each shining surface, but we are all haunted, always, by ourselves.
Tristão raises his other hand to the braided-glass border of the mirror. Then he lifts it from its easel and turns, bearing it before him like a platter. Crivano glimpses the top of his own head just inside its frame; he backs away in alarm.
I would like you to have this, Tristão says.
Crivano grimaces. No, he says. You are—you are far too generous, my friend. You paid so much.
I have no further use for it. I needed it to arrange my mind for the challenges I am soon to face, but now I am ready. And I cannot travel with it. Our passage through the Alps is it certain to result in its breakage. And if someone were to find it—the risk is too great, you see. Shipboard, however, it may travel safely. Take it, Vettor. Or tomorrow night I must cast it into the lagoon.
The talisman’s tilting plane catches the cracked stucco of the ceiling; the cracks sweep and jerk across its surface. Crivano shuts his eyes and pictures the strongbox of coins that paid for it: the bend in the drunken gondoliers’ oar. Very well, he says. I thank you.
He makes no move to take it. Tristão holds it, a bemused look on his face, then sets it on the countertop. The mirror’s retreat feels like the snuffing of a light, the closing of a door: Crivano is both relieved and diminished by its departure. I shall have this wrapped securely for you, Tristão says.
Yes, Crivano whispers. You’re very kind.
Are you all right, my friend?
Crivano’s arms shiver, as if he’s cold, though he is not cold. He sighs. I’m quite tired, he says. I should rest.
That is wise. Tomorrow will be difficult. And the many days to follow.
I would like to see Perina.
The words rise to Crivano’s throat with the timbre of a challenge—which, he supposes, they are. He and Tristão watch each other in the darkening room. Firelight glints in their eyes. Their shadows move with the wind.
No doubt she is eager for your visit, Tristão says. She has been concerned for your well-being, but unwilling to disturb your sleep.
If Tristão knows the rest—the last secret, the one that would unravel Crivano completely—he gives no sign. Perhaps he has judged Crivano unraveled enough.
You will find her in the room beside your own, Tristão says. Go to her now, my friend. Then sleep. Sleep soundly, with all my gratitude.
Crivano nods. He raises his left hand in salute, and turns toward the exit.
Tristão’s voice comes again as he opens the door. Oh, Vettor, it calls. I took the liberty of extracting a tincture from your henbane.
Crivano stops, half-turned in the doorframe. My henbane, he says.
Yes. In your box of physic you had a very large quantity of what appeared to be biennial henbane. An alarming quantity. I think it is better not to travel with so great a measure of the raw plant, so I have made from it a tincture, which will be much easier to transport. When the extraction is complete, I will bottle it and put it among your things.
My things?
Your box of physic. Also, your trunk. If you need them, you will find them in the storeroom below. If you like, I can have them brought to your room.
A fresh chill settles on Crivano’s neck. When did my things arrive? he says.
I cannot be certain. A footman found them inside the water-gate last night, just after sundown. I assumed that you had them sent.
Crivano’s brow furrows, but the muscles of his face are too weak to hold the expression. Instead he smiles: an airy drunken smile, with no mirth in it. Yes, he says. Yes, I suppose I did.
In the darkening kitchen Crivano finds a tallow candle, lights it with a brand from the hearth: the mutton-fat smokes and sputters as a glow fills the room. The cheese and bread and apples the Jewess set out are greatly diminished; Obizzo must have eaten and retired. A pile of iron filings still blots the tabletop, casting a small shadow on the wood.
Three soft knocks bring Perina’s voice from behind her door: a vague sound, either an invitation to enter or a request to keep out. Crivano tries the latch. The portal swings open.
The air in the room is thick, trapped by shuttered windows, heavy with long-forgotten smells of home. Crivano stands in the entrance with his eyes closed—his mind reassembling the rooms and corridors of the great house in Nicosia, the house this girl was born too late to know—until he has adjusted to the darkness within.
Perina emerges from her blankets like a part-risen shade: a bare white arm from the brown wool, then a tonsured head. The girl watches Crivano as he closes the door, lights two candles atop a low trunk with the wick of his own. She does not speak.
A chair sits beside her bed; Crivano eases into it, puts his candle on a shelf fixed to the bedpost. Perina slides backward, sits up, takes hold of his hand. You are well? she says. Her voice is coarsened by snores. The rough tick of her mattress has left a gridded imprint on her cheek.
I survive, lady, Crivano says.
She smiles.
I am greatly in your debt, he tells her. You must know that. I endangered myself foolishly, and in the course of my rescue you were injured. That fact rests like a capstone upon me.
I was not so badly hurt, dottore. Tristão must have told you.
Yes, Crivano says. He did. May I look?
Her large eyes grow larger in the dim. She does not answer, and she does not move. Wind rattles the shutters. The light falters as the candleflames dance.
Crivano grips the blanket’s edge. You were struck on this side, he says. Were you not?
She nods.
He lifts the cover just enough to examine the pale band of flesh beneath it. A violet quarter-moon darkens Perina’s swollen skin a palm’s-breadth below her half-hidden breast. Had the blow been lower, had it landed more squarely, she might be dead. As it is, she likely won’t think of the wound at all by the time another Sunday has passed. For once, Fortune has smiled.
He lifts the blanket higher, slides the candle closer on its shelf, squints. With a tinge of impatience, she plucks the fabric from his still-weak fingers and draws it aside, baring her body to the knees.
Crivano blinks. His ears fill with too-sharp sounds—the wind, the water, distant voices, the creaks and pops of the settling building—as if he’s about to faint. Take a deep breath, he says: to the girl, to himself. Breathe in as deeply as you are able.
She breathes, wincing as her lungs swell, but neither coughs nor cries out: her ribs remain unbroken. Her strong shoulders angle back: they’re Dolfin’s shoulders, almost exactly. Aren’t they? After so many years of careful forgetting, it’s difficult to be sure. The girl’s oblong areolae wrinkle in the cool air; her nipples grow stiff. Cutis anserina appears on her forearms. Crivano reaches across her lap to replace her blanket. In Dottore de Nis’s care, he says, you will heal very rapidly. Of this I am certain.
Perina looks down, smoothing the blanket to the contours of her hips. We are leaving the city, she says. Going to Amsterdam. We’re to depart tomorrow night. Did Tristão tell you?
We spoke of it, yes.
Her hand closes on his once more. One of them is trembling; he can’t tell which. Perhaps both. You’r
e coming with us, she says. Are you not?
Crivano looks at the shuttered windows. Of course I am, he says.
You can’t remain here. Every villain in the lagoon now stalks you.
He pulls his hand away, rests it on the black fuzz of her cropped head. I will come to Amsterdam, he says. I will. Of course I will.
She’s weeping now, quietly; her voice remains steady. There are many things I would ask you, she says. So many things. About Gabriel. About my lost brother.
I will tell you, Crivano whispers. I will tell you many things.
He smoothes the short hair at the base of her skull. Then he lowers his heavy head onto her shoulder and closes his eyes. For once—for the last time—permitting himself to remember. How he snatched the slow match from the blood-slimed deck where Captain Bua threw it. How he leapt into the hold as the Turks pushed past the pikemen. How he turned not toward the powder magazine, as ordered, but toward his own hammock, and that of the Lark. Tears inch down his nose, land with heavy taps in the folds of the blanket. After a moment, he feels Perina’s hand on his neck.
They sit together for a long time, both of them near sleep, half-dreaming.
What was your name? Perina says. The name they called you?
Crivano doesn’t answer. He lifts his head, sits up. Keeping his eyes shut. His damp cheeks are cool in the open air.
The things I recall, Perina says, the things told me by my mother and my sister before the plague took them, it all slips away now. I write down as much as I can, of course. But memories do not simply vanish, do they? They alter. They become something else. And there is naught to take bearings against save the shifting memories of other minds. Thus it becomes difficult to know what is true.
Yes, Crivano says. You have spoken fairly.
He’s thinking now of the lies he’s told through the years: to others, to himself. Clearly enough he remembers what he did that day on the Gold and Black Eagle, but he cannot remember why. His mind in those frightful hours was twisted by grief and panic, filled with misshapen fragments, wriggling like grubs churned from the earth by a spade. My mother will never believe I’m dead. If you give her this, then maybe she’ll know. He feared being ransomed; he feared being butchered. He wanted to go home to his family; he wanted to vanish forever. He wanted to live; he wanted to die. But none among those reasons seems adequate to what he did. Something else inhabited him. In that moment, who did he become?
With the Turks howling victory, with cannonballs plucking at the cordage, with his shipmates abovedecks screaming in despair, he ransacked the darkness, the match smoking in his teeth, until his fingers found them: two certificates of matriculation, for Gabriel Glissenti and Vettor Crivano. He tucked his dead friend’s document into his shirt. Then he touched the tip of the slow match to his own, pressing it against the careful letters of his name—the name his father gave him—until the parchment blackened, and the flames took it away.
It was because of your voice, Perina says. You had such a beautiful voice, and you knew every lovely song. My mother spoke of this often, with great affection. What was the nickname they gave you? Until I recall it I’ll be rendered sleepless, even in my great exhaustion. Won’t you take pity on me, dottore?
Crivano opens his eyes. His face is wet, but his vision is clear. Across the room, another gust pushes against the shutters; the candleflames tip away from the windows, and the candles’ shadows stretch toward them.
The Lark, Crivano says. Your family called me the Lark.
With a broad melancholic smile, Perina slides supine on the mattress. Her eyelids droop, as if in a rush to meet the blanket that she draws to her chin. In the morning, she says, our faculties will be restored. Then we shall speak pleasantly and at our leisure of the happy past, and what warm recollections we share will bring us both solace. Now, we want for sleep. Will I be judged greedy, dottore, if I beg you to lull me in the old manner of your boyhood? This small favor, I promise, will discharge any debt you may imagine you accrued last night, and will tilt the balance toward me.
Her blanket-hooded face smiles up at him. Her eyes are squeezed shut against encroaching disappointments. He watches her closely. Much has been lost; much more will be: among those casualties, an ancient name is hardly foremost. But the courage of his forefathers—the fatal courage that Fortune spared him—still persists on the undeserving earth. This brave girl has made him proud.
His throat tightens. He clears it, then leans forward to blow out the candle on the bedpost. The second bell moves across the city, measuring the sun’s retreat; the gaps between the shutters have gone black. Crivano draws a steady breath and tries, as sweetly as he is able, to sing.
The Shroudy Stranger’s reft of realms.
Abhorred he sits upon the city dump.
His broken heart’s a bag of shit.
The vast rainfall, an empty mirror.
—ALLEN GINSBERG, “The Shrouded Stranger”
60
Curtis wakes to white light, black dark, a cop’s voice. It’s Coach Banner’s voice from high school, Colonel Gandy’s from Kosovo; he can’t understand anything it says, but he knows exactly what it’s saying. You did okay, Stone, but you screwed up, too. Curtis doesn’t need to be told. His eyes roll back; he’s out again.
Time passes: a slideshow flashed on a flapping white sheet. Doctors and nurses in masks and gowns. The bright OR; the dim recovery room. Interchangeable LVMPD badges. At first there’s no sequence—everything happening all at once—but then events line up, and Curtis starts to make memories again. Albedo rode in the ambulance with him, he’s pretty sure of that, but never made it to the ICU.
Curtis wakes again, realizing that he’s already awake. Taking inventory. Adding up limbs, losing count. He feels like something’s missing, or something extra’s been added. He must’ve twisted left when he the headlights came at him: his right wrist is in a cast. A figure-eight sling pins his shoulders back; that means collarbone. Foam boots on both feet, pendent weights hung from the bed’s edge: traction to keep his legs straight. That means both hips broken.
Curtis takes a breath, lets it out. His throat hurts; his arm itches where the IV needle’s taped. He’s going to bounce back from this. Probably not all the way back, and that’s fine. Nobody ever bounces all the way back. Not from anything. That’s the way it goes, bouncing.
He’s on a bunch of pretty heavy drugs. Even as he thinks this, he can feel them fade: a cold dead tide going out. That’s probably why his eyes are open. Somebody must want to talk to him.
Mister Stone?
A tall thin Hispanic guy, in a steel-tube chair beside Curtis’s motorized rack. Curtis’s age, or a little younger. Patient. Not fed up, or put-upon. Not like most cops Curtis has known. Federal, probably. Somebody in Jersey got his message.
Curtis? the guy says, like he’s trying different frequencies. Mister Stone? Master Sergeant Stone?
Yeah, Curtis says. I’m here.
His own voice sounds harsh and loud, although he knows it can’t really be loud. His throat feels like it’s tearing. He clears it, coughs. His right side aches.
The Hispanic guy gives Curtis his name—Agent Something—then starts with the customary spiel. LVMPD wants to bring serious charges against you, Mister Stone, he says. I asked them for some time with you first. There’s a bigger picture here that I don’t think anybody has seen yet.
Yeah, Curtis says. You got that right.
You want to tell me about it?
Curtis licks his lips. Flecks of dry skin scrape his tongue. There’s a lot of pain inside him someplace; he glimpses it now and again, like a lantern moving through the windows of an old house. The traction on his legs means the docs haven’t cut there yet. Maybe he hasn’t been out so long. I want to talk to my wife, Curtis says.
The agent smiles. Danielle’s on her way, he says. She’s in the air now. Metro’s sending a car for her. Of course, we don’t know yet when they’ll clear you to see her.
I’m u
nder arrest?
You haven’t been arrested. I understand you used to be a military policeman, so you know how this works. I should tell you, though, before we say anything else, that you have the right to remain silent, and to have an attorney present for any discussion with me. You can get an attorney, and I can get a tape-recorder, and we can do this more formally. Do you want to do that, Curtis?
Curtis closes his eyes, toggles his head back and forth. I’m sky-high, man, he says. No judge’ll let you use any of this.
The guy shrugs. He already has an inkstick out; now he flips open a spiral notebook, stuffs his tie in his breast pocket. You want to wait? he says. Sober up?
Curtis shakes his head. No, he says. I want to tell it now.
He tells it as well as he can. It’s hard to keep it all straight. He gets confused, makes mistakes, goes back to correct himself. Even uninjured, unmedicated, he never had a handle on a lot of it. But he does his best.
He tells about the call he got from Damon, about meeting him in Philly at the Penrose Diner, and also about Stanley, and about the cardcounters at the Spectacular. He tells about Albedo, and about Argos, and about the missing dealer, and about what Argos said in the desert, and he tells about the call he had his dad make to the Jersey cops. For the most part he keeps Veronica out of it. He’s not entirely sure why. It’s what Stanley would want him to do, he figures, and she never seemed like that big a part of it anyway. She was about as far outside as Curtis was himself.
Hang on, the Hispanic guy says, scribbling. Wait up a second. What’s the point?
Curtis blinks. Say again? he says. What do you mean, what’s the point? You asked me to tell it, so I’m telling it, goddamnit.
No no no, the guy says. You keep talking about the Point. Like, the cardcounters hit the Point. You wanted to get a job at the Point. I don’t know what that means.
The Spectacular, Curtis says. The Spectacular is the Point. The name’s got an exclamation mark after it. In its logo. The official name. Exclamation point, I mean to say. Before they even opened, this story went around—I don’t know if it’s true—that a PR guy got fired because he forgot to put the explanation point, the exclamation point, on the end of the name. People working there started calling it the Point. As a joke. And it spread. Most people who say it now, they don’t even know how it got started. But that’s how I heard it from Damon.
