The Mascherari: A Novel of Venice

by Laura Rahme

  At once, he raised his head and turned at me in disbelief. Fear deformed every line around his eyes and lips as he shook his head. I thought he would weep.

  “It is too late. He will come to find me. We will all die, avogadore. I tell you today, that my death will follow. He will have his revenge! I know this, Antonio! They have told me about what happened to Ubertino...to Guido...and to... He killed them all! It was him!”

  “Him? Who? Giacomo? Who do you mean?”

  He never replied. He cradled his head in his trembling hands and began to chant anew. And nothing I could say would bring the man comfort, nor bring back his reason.

  His sobs haunted me long after I had deserted the dark prison passages.

  ***

  I met Almoro Donato outside the Sala Gradenigo. He advanced toward me with a curious expression.

  “And how did you find our prisoner, avogadore?”

  “It seems that he has been badly treated.”

  “You think so?”

  He seemed genuinely surprised at my reproaches.

  “The man is ruined,” I pursued. “Not the haughty Rolandino I once met. It is an unfortunate happenstance of applying The Question. His testimony will be all the more incoherent...”

  Almoro Donato turned to me with a frightening violence.

  “The Question? Rolandino Vitturi was not tortured, Antonio. I can vouch for it.”

  I must not have appeared convinced. Almoro gripped my arm, his eyes bulging until I had to take note that he was as perplexed as I was.

  “Antonio, there was no need to apply The Question. He confessed!” he spit.

  A chilling wave filled through me. Almoro recomposed himself. With a reluctant air, he shuffled to another Consiglio session while I took to Piazza San Marco, immersed in conflicted thoughts.

  Here was a man, who upon murdering a fellow merchant, had resigned himself to the accusations against him and chosen to confess. Yet, I pondered, a man who truly confesses is almost always relieved of his guilt.

  I crossed to the noisy Piazza. I paid no heed to the reveling crowds. Strange figures writhed before me in all the splendor of their youth, spraying color and gaiety behind their ridiculous masks. Leather straps, feathers, lace, towering turbans encrusted with gems–they were mere illusions after the reality I had seen. Did none of these festive fools even comprehend that beneath their feet, nay, beneath the Carnivale merriment, there lay the state prisons, places of agony and terror; the Republic’s Wells.

  I froze.

  A notion struck me.

  I had delved too closely into Giacomo’s murder. What if Rolandino were guilty of something else? No. What if all these men had precipitated their deaths through the reckless consummation of their guilt.

  I remembered Guido’s intoxicated plunge into the canal. Why anyone would venture close to the waters when his senses were no longer his own could only be accounted for in moments of great foolishness. Drinking to death...yes! As foolish as it was soul-destroying! Eating to death... Now there, there was a pastime that would be incomprehensible to most had it not been for Ubertino’s desperation to escape guilt.

  I might be near the truth.

  These were, then, the absurd notes I scribbled in the middle of the Piazzetta:

  Ubertino and Guido died of guilt.

  But guilt from what?

  I had written without thinking. I had listened to a voice deep within. I was sure of myself and altogether ignorant of the reason that had compelled me.

  It was midday when I finally cast aside my notes and walked out of the Piazza. Behind me, I felt the cold specter of the two granite columns– Saint Theodorus and the lion of San Marco, towering over me. Rolandino was destined to die and there was nothing I could do.

  But more chilling was the memory of what I had seen. The terror on Rolandino’s face.

  He had spoken of Him. He believed that God would punish him...

  He has confessed and yet he remains haunted.

  Haunted by what?

  Haunted by…

  And now, as I sit in my room, writing these notes, I realize that there is another confession I need to extract from Rolandino Vitturi.

  There is no running away from the festering prisons. And the scourge of the inquisitor is to find himself again and again, at their threshold.

  Reluctantly, I promised myself that I would return there as soon as I could.

  Carampane

  After midday, exhausted from lack of sleep and little time to eat, I had no choice but to meet the marquis’ servant. Together we ventured into the jasmine-scented Rampani district, where the lecherous Balsamo Morosini had met his grisly death. After leading me to a narrow calle, the servant left.

  For a moment, I hesitated. I was persuaded that these pleasure houses would be hostile to an avogadore. Yet my appearance did not cause a stir. The women had seen it all.

  The Madam seemed to hark from the Battle of Chiogga. She was sniffling from cold. Under her heavy shawl, she wore a coarse woolen dress marred by the latest artichoke weave and several gold rings on her plump fingers. She was all sleeves, bosom and layers. A sheer muslin veil hung upon her headdress, like the relic of her long lost chastity. She greeted my every question with a nonchalant air, tossing her heavy head about so violently that I feared her horned headdress might fall off.

  “How many girls did he want? Five? Six? What do I care, Signore? The man has ducats. He is clean. I look at his clothes, I like what I see. Strong, gazelle of a man. He tells me, ‘Maria! You bring me the wine and the girls. Make them come to me. Tonight, I am king. Not the shy ones tonight,’ he says. ‘I want puttane, real puttane!’ So I gave him what he wanted and he paid me. The Morosini was a generous man when he was up, let me tell you.”

  “In this room?”

  “No.” She gestured to the end of a corridor. “That one. They came to him after midnight. Stayed right up until the sunrise and until...”

  “Until?”

  I followed her morose silence as we entered the room in question. She left me standing at the door.

  “I need to attend to my books,” she sniffed. “I will let you talk to Margarita.”

  “But I...”

  “Margarita! Bring yourself down here. Come, dolcita. There is a man from the Consiglio dei Dieci who wants you to tell him all about the Signor Morosini. Make haste!” She turned to me. “Avogadore, she will be down soon. Let her dress.”

  Then she added in a dry tone.

  “When you are done, you leave, avogadore. This is a respectable place. All the foreigners come here and they are never dissatisfied. I count on you to save us from trouble.”

  I was stunned by the sudden sharpness of her gaze. It was clear that she ran a profitable trade under the auspices of the Signoria. Preserving chaste wives from the perversions of their husbands was one of the aims of such houses, but the Consiglio dei Dieci also encouraged unmarried men to frequent the carampanas, in the hope they would refrain from quite another vice.

  A few moments passed and then my eyes were drawn to the golden locks bouncing into the room. Soft, bare shoulders of the purest nacre were wrapped in a gauze shawl of yellow, the mark of the prostitute by law. Their owner was a sultry donna of no more than twenty years. Tired years, still.

  She gave a half-mocking gaze as she entered the room, undulating her hips in a lusty sway. Her voice was like a cat’s breath, velvet and dark. The voice of one who knows more about Venezia than the entire Signoria combined. A voice that could speak against the senators and tear their families apart if it so desired. There is darkness in this voice because it keeps quiet.

  “What does the avogadore need?” A smile. I knew from that first moment that this one knew more than she would tell.

  She swirled her tongue in her mouth, slowly, her red lips apart. She calculated perhaps; what she could do to me, the avogadore who sweated and quivered as she passed, resenting her. I saw that she had tucked a red flower into the folds of her partly expos
ed breasts.

  I was not impervious to Margarita–the forbidden curves she flaunted, the scent of her jasmine ointment, the treacherous damp pit I knew was buried in her thighs and which she offered to those who paid ducats–all these things, they set my pulse to quicken. Men who risked gossip and ill sayings coursed daily through Venezia to taste of this sin. How I envied them. I envied them as much as...

  I found my breath and wiped my forehead. In the dim candle light, I made a renewed effort to examine Margarita. Despite my desire, I noted the tiredness in her eyes. Now she was smiling, beckoning me to shower her with questions.

  “You are one of those women...” I began, clearing my throat. “The women who took with the Signor Morosini.”

  Another smile. “That man!” she said. She looked up, as though to better remember the night. A glow of malice flicked across her face.

  “What can you tell me about that night, Margarita?”

  “Signor Morisini was a very very...able man. He took us, four…no, five of us on that night.”

  And then she observed me, her eyes lingered to where my calza ended beneath my tabard. She made a mocking pout, sucking in her cheeks while in deep thought. Her voice came at me in a whisper.

  “Avogadore, he sought a man, too! But I know that you won’t tell anyone, will you? Morisini liked it better with another man. I always suspected it. No women were enough for that stag. I should show you the bruises he gave me...” She bit her lips as though she could barely contain her own pleasure.

  Again, that mocking glare. The taunting in her eyes, when she noted how I trembled. She saw through me, saw that I had not been with a woman since my wife had died.

  But she was mistaken in her summation of me.

  “Tell me about his face.”

  She was surprised.

  “What about his face?”

  “Was he well? Did he suffer from a fever? Was he... Margarita, I have learned that Signor Morosini died of some mysterious illness that left him without a nose and much of his face fallen off. I came to enquire about the how of this curious death. His physician assured me he was in good health before that night.”

  The seductive gaze had faded. Margarita shrugged. But I saw through that. She thought she would live forever but I had reminded her of mortal flesh and of disease. I had reminded her that her soul was corrupt and that the man she had bedded was now a rotting corpse. It was her turn to resent me.

  “Signor Morisini wore a dottore della peste all evening. We never saw his face. He removed the ugly hose, the doublet and the shirt. We gripped onto every part of his body and I sunk my teeth into his bare ass so I can tell you that it was a healthy stag we had in bed with us. I can tell you that his limbs and chest were smooth and oiled. There were no sores. That is…right until he slept. And in the early hours of the morning, one of the girls awoke.”

  She paused. She bit her inner cheek and took a deep breath.

  “She saw him...lying there. She is a brave girl, but even she was horrified.”

  A veil of disgust clouded her face.

  “There he was, the signore–not the same man as the night before–rotting away with his red sores leaking all over the sheets. He was dead. We do not know when he died. Perhaps during the night when the other man left. But the physician saw us afterwards, Signore. None of us are ill. I am not ill. None of us are. This is a good whorehouse, this one. All the girls are clean.”

  “Perhaps he was already ill and you had not noticed. Have you thought of that?”

  “I am not a foolish woman, avogadore. I know it if a man smells ill. The Morosini did not. What does it matter, now? Morisini parted with his ducats and his life. He made a choice. You look pale, avogadore.”

  “It is nothing. I am not accustomed to these dim lights.”

  “I will fetch you some milk. Please sit.”

  I had sensed what I felt was a phantom. A shadow had, for a moment, invaded this very room and I felt its presence, so close, that my heart leapt in my chest. A flicker of gold passed before my eyes, until I raised my head and realized what I had seen.

  And there, hanging above the bed, was the most hideous mask I had ever laid eyes upon. As grotesque as it was beautiful–the dottore della peste–with the hooked beak of a gold vulture.

  Margarita had returned. She presented me the milk. I drank. My heart raced at the thought of that mask.

  “Is this…is this the mask that the signore wore before he died?”

  She nodded. She looked a little apologetic for having kept it.

  “We did not think anyone would want to claim it after what had happened. Who would want an object of such augury? We left it here. It was awfully stained that morning. The pustules had—”

  “He slept in that mask? Why would he do that? Was he afraid of revealing his face, you think? Perhaps he believed you might be frightened by something on his face?”

  “You really want to know? The Morosini was in a spirited humor. He wanted to play games, play at being our physician. At first he remained masked because he thought it would frighten us. He liked to thrill the ladies. It was all good fun. You ever tried bedding a woman with a mask on?” She gave me a beckoning smile. “There is a girl here, a Sard from the Kingdom of Sardinia. She told us of the cheeky pagan ways of her village. She said that up in the mountains, the men still fashion themselves into beasts during yearly pageants. Their women love them for it. I tell you one thing, handsome signore, the more beastly the mask, the more pleasure a woman will feel when she is taken. You listen to Margarita, she knows about these things.”

  She emitted another audacious smile. And then it, too, faded.

  “Avogadore, let me remember something. You asked me…before, if the Signor Morisini had something to hide…and if that was why he kept to his mask. I don’t think so. I tell you again, that all night, I never saw a healthier, happy man. And all night he was at us. He waved his parts at us and told us to get in this way and that, to run our tongues there and over there. He took me front and back and in the way, you know, is forbidden. He did all that. I had never seen him grow so wicked. It was all good fun. He took us one after the other until he grew very hot.” She gasped. “Now… Now, I remember.”

  “What is it?”

  She gave a soft grunt almost as though she were dismissing her previous thought.

  “What is it that you remember, Margarita?”

  “He did it once. He tried to remove the mask...”

  I could see that she wrestled with a memory. Something had unsettled her. The heaving of her breasts betrayed her even under that dim red light.

  “What happened? Did he remove it? Did you see his face?”

  There was a frown and a veil of sadness.

  “No.”

  “So you never saw his face? Not once?”

  “No, avogadore. None of us did. Because, you see...none of us could remove the mask.”

  And suddenly she emitted a shrill laugh.

  “Poor Signor Morosini! How he struggled at first! Twas as though…the mask had eaten his face! And then one of us climbed on top of him and in the end, he forgot all about it. A naked animal, save for that gold mask. Ha! And we were all too drunk to care!”

  ***

  I knew pleasure that night. Bathing in the dim red torches of my dream, I flew back to Ca’ Rampani and went to Margarita the whore.

  I heard the thousand echoes of her voice drawing me near, calling me to her.

  “Antonio! Antonio!”

  A darkness descended upon me as I reached for her skin.

  And it was I who inhaled the perfid musk of her flesh and bruised her thighs. It was I who wore that hideous dottore mask and who gripped the curves of her hips. It was I who guided her, again and again, to my throbbing manhood.

  Fearless, I glistened with the sweat of my sin. I gritted my teeth as desire tore my soul asunder. With every brutal thrust, I gazed upon Margarita’s quivering lips, upon the wandering whites of her eyes and I cried for joy at
the sight of the thrill I stirred.

  I took that joy. Like a godless pagan, as though fires danced within me, I let it fill me until I could take no more—I had to have her. I needed to feel free. In the only way I knew, the way that was forbidden. Obeying the urgent throb between my thighs, I tumbled the willing Margarita, face down. And as she arched herself to take all of me, I had made her tender mount my own, forcing myself into that tight, forbidden slit until we had both tasted of its most delicious secret.

  When I awoke, dripping with humors, my sheets soiled by the odious fruit of my passions, I clenched my heart, detesting myself.

  What was I?

  I could not answer. An unbearable solitude ran over me in the silence of my shame.

  Another sleepless night stretched its canvas over Venezia.

  The Mascherari

  Letter from Antonio da Parma to Almoro Donato

  Signor Donato,

  The last two days have shed no light on the patrician murders.

  I wish to once again speak with Rolandino in his cell.

  I have thought of Lorenzo’s deposition whereby he claims that the masks delivered to the Contarini family were signed by a certain “Il Mascherari”. Attended by members of your sbirri, I scoured the entire San Polo and Santa Croce calli, in the hidden labyrinth of artisan streets and beyond.

  I have with me a list of all the mascherari known to the city of Venezia and I can assure you that none of them answer to the name “Il Mascherari”. Further to this, I know of no such guild, since as you know, the mascherari of Venice do not, as yet, belong to a guild body. Might this “Il Mascherari” be a false signature?

  I put to you my other suspicion. I suspect that none of the men who wore these masks knew of whence they had come and by whom they had been fashioned. It is my suspicion, albeit from intuition alone, that the Signor Contarini never purchased those masks. According to his son, he fretted about the delivered coffers. He only consented to their usage in the spirit of Carnivale.

  Further, I put to you, that of the five deaths I have so far attested to–that of the Signorina Giovanna Contarini who was strangled by her own father, that of Giacomo Contarini who Rolandino has admitted to stabbing to death in a fit of rage, that of Ubertino Canal who died of stomach rupture, that of Guido Canal who was found bloated in the canal, and that of Balsamo Morosini who, imbued with health and beauty one day, inexplicably suffered a deadly pox overnight until it consumed him in a manner never before seen by most respectable physicians–yes, of those five, not one, but two deaths possess a curious happenstance relating to a mask worn by the victim.