The Birth of Venus (14 page)

“Where did you meet my brother?” I said, because if ours was to be a meeting of souls I would need to know.

He paused. “I think you know where.”

“In a tavern?”

“How much does it shock you?”

“Not much,” I said. “You forget I have lived with him a long time. I know he spends much of his life in such places.”

“He is young, though.” He paused. “I have no such excuse.”

“It is not my business what you did before me,” I said, and I was pleased by my own meekness.

“How sweetly you put it.” And he smiled.

Yes, I thought. Women would find him attractive. Though he has presence, he does not pursue. Given the incessant way lust drives some men, I could see how this would be its own subtle seduction.

We fell silent. I think we both knew the time had come. Despite his courtliness I wished he would touch me. Some simple contact: a brush of clothes or hands meeting across the parchment. Though I might want him purer, I had need of his knowledge now. I yawned.

“You are tired?” he said immediately.

“A little. It has been a long day.”

“Then we shall retire. I shall call for your slave. What is her name?”

“Erila.”

“Erila. She can help you get ready.”

I nodded, finding it hard to speak now, such was the pressure in my windpipe. I moved to the side, concentrating on the paintings, while he rang the bell. Hell’s bodies were all around me, writhing and rolling in savage memories of pleasure. This was a man at home with naked flesh. As his wife, I would have the advantage of his years of experience. Yes. I could have done worse.

FIRST SHE TOOK OFF MY SHOES, EXTRACTING FROM INSIDE THE
sole the gold florin my mother had placed there to bring my union wealth and fertility. As I held it in my palm I feared for a moment it might make me cry, so much was it the symbol of my lost home. Then she undid my laces and I stepped out of my dress and my chemise until I stood in front of her naked. My wedding night shift was ready on the bed. The room was cold, and as I shivered the surface of my skin rose up like the corpse of a plucked chicken. She stood with the gown in her hands, studying me. She had dressed me since I was a child and had watched the changes in me year by year. Now we both wondered where the thickened hips and the sprouting thatch of pubic hair had come from.

“Oh, my lady,” she said, trying to be light and using the term in jest. “Look at you—such a ripe peach.”

Despite myself I laughed. “I think fat, more like. I am puffed up like a diseased bladder.”

“It’s flesh that comes and goes with the moon. But it suits you. You are ready.”

“Oh, not you too, Erila. I have had enough of it from Tomaso. The only thing that has changed in me is that I bleed like a stuck pig now. Otherwise I am the same as before.”

She smiled. “Not quite the same. Mark my words.”

I wished again that she had been my mother. Then I could have asked her all the things I didn’t know and that might save my life or at least my dignity over the next few hours. But it was already too late. I grabbed the gown and pulled it over my head. The sheet of silk fell to the floor, my father’s profits caressing my naked hips and legs. Inside it I looked almost graceful.

I sat while she took down my hair. It was so thick and unruly that when the last few pins came it fell heavily down my back.

“It is like a river of black lava,” she said, as she began brushing and tugging its tangles free.

“A field of squabbling crows, more like.”

She shrugged. “Where I come from the color is beautiful.”

“Oh! Then can I go and live in that country too? Or I have an even better idea.” I caught her eye in the mirror. “Why don’t you go to him tonight in my place? Really. It is perfect. It will be dark so he’ll never know the difference. We’ve barely exchanged twenty words together. No, stop laughing, I mean it. You are nearly as plump as I am. As long as he doesn’t talk Greek to you it’ll be simple.”

Her laughter has always been a benign contagion, and for a while now we were both unable to stop. If he heard us, what would he think? I took a deep breath, held it in, and closed my eyes. When I opened them again she was smiling at me.

“Do you think I am too young for this, Erila?” I said anxiously.

“You are old enough.”

“When did it happen to you?”

She pursed her lips. “I can’t remember.”

“Really?”

“No.” She paused. “I can remember.”

I sighed. “At least give me some tips. Please. Tell me what to do.”

“Don’t do anything. If you do he’ll think you’ve done it before and ask for the contract back.”

And we both laughed again.

She went about her business, tidying the room, picking up my wedding gown, and holding it to her in front of the mirror with a secret smile and a flounce. It would look better on her than it had on me. When she gets her freedom or a husband, whichever comes first, I will give her such a dowry, something majestic to go with that velvety skin and mane of crinkled hair. God help the man.

“What did you tell me once? Before Plautilla’s wedding . . . That it was not as bad as having a tooth pulled but that it could be as sweet—”

“—as the top string vibrating on a lute.”

I laughed. “And which poet said that?”

“This one,” she said, and pointed between her legs.

“So how about . . . like the first suck of a juicy watermelon.”

“What?”

“That’s what my brother Tomaso said.”

She shrugged. “Your brother knows nothing about it,” she said more sternly.

“Well, he makes a good pretense at it.”

But she had stopped playing now. “Come. Enough of this,” she said, smoothing down my dress and finishing my hair. “Your husband’ll be waiting.”

“And where will you be?” I said, a little frantic.

“Downstairs with the other slaves. Where, I have to tell you, it is dank and colder than your father’s house. You’re not the only one who will need ways to warm herself in our new home.” But she still took pity on me. “You’ll be all right,” she said, and she grabbed my cheek. “It won’t kill you. Stop thinking about it. Clever women don’t die of it. Remember that.”

Nineteen

I
SLID INSIDE THE CRISP EMBROIDERED SHEETS, CAREFUL
to keep my gown from ruffling up around me. Of my husband there was no sign. I waited. Yesterday I had not even known what the inside of this house looked like. In an hour’s time I would know everything about what I did not know now. Was an hour enough? Truly, despite all the gossip, I did not know anything.

The door opened. He was still dressed. It looked as if he were going out rather than coming to bed. He went to the table, where a flagon of wine had been left, and poured two glasses. For a moment I wasn’t sure he had even seen me. He came over to the bed and sat down.

“Hello,” he said. I could smell the wine on his breath. “How do you feel?”

“Well. Perhaps a little weary.”

“As you say. It has been a long day.” He took a sip of the wine and handed me the other glass. I shook my head. “You should drink it,” he said. “It will relax you.” I thought at that moment that I was relaxed. Or as relaxed as I was going to get. But I did as I was told. The taste was different, stronger than the wine I was used to. I had eaten little at supper and that was now some hours ago. The liquid burned its way down my throat. I felt slightly woozy. I shot a glance at him over the top of the glass. He was looking at the floor, as if his mind was on something else entirely. He put down the glass. Certainly he seemed a little unsure. If I was not his first virgin, then certainly I would be his first virgin wife.

“You are ready?” he said.

“Sir?”

“You know what happens now, yes?”

“Yes.” I said, dropping my eyes and blushing, despite myself.

“Good.”

He moved closer and lifted the sheet away from me, folding it neatly to the bottom of the bed. I sat in my silk finery with my toes peeping out from the bottom of the hem. For some reason they made me think of Beatrice, her naked little feet flying Godward under the joyful strokes of Botticelli’s pen. But Dante had loved her too much to have carnal knowledge of her. Of course, there was also the fact that she was someone else’s wife. What had Erila said? Stop thinking . . . clever women don’t die of it.

He laid a hand on my lower leg, connecting with my skin through the silk, and his touch felt clammy. He left it there for a while. Then, using both hands now, he lifted up the material of my nightgown and carefully folded it upward until my legs were revealed almost to my sex. Now when his hand went to my calf it met my bare flesh. I swallowed, watching his fingers rather than his face, trying to stop my body from going rigid. He traced a line up over my knee and my thigh to the edge of the ruffled gown, then pushed it farther, until my bush started to show, the hair as dark if not darker than that on my head. Had Plautilla dyed there too? Too late now, I thought frantically. My instinct was to cover myself again. I had been taught modesty for too long to discard it so suddenly. He took his hand away and sat for a moment studying me. It felt like something was wrong. As if something had displeased him. But whether it was me or him I couldn’t tell. I thought of his statues: the smooth marble flesh so perfect, so young. Maybe he was embarrassed by the imperfections of my gawkiness and his age.

“Will you not get undressed?” I asked. To my distress, my voice sounded like a child’s.

“That won’t be necessary,” he said, almost stiffly.

I had a sudden image of the courtesan and the man with his head buried in her lap, and I felt sick. I wondered if he would kiss me now. Surely this would be the moment. But he did not.

Instead he shifted himself farther to the edge of the bed and with one hand started to unbutton his doublet. When the clothing was freed he dipped his hand inside and pulled out his penis, letting it sit limply in his palm. I sat, frozen with panic, not knowing whether to watch or look away. Of course I had seen penises on statues before and, like all young girls, had been both amazed at their scrawny ugliness and confused as to how something so sluglike and shriveled could grow into a weapon hard enough to pierce inside a woman’s hole. Now, though I couldn’t look, I also couldn’t keep my eyes away. Why did he not come to bed? Erila had said there were many ways that a man and woman could do this, but this was not one that I recognized. He clasped his fist around himself and started pulling and stroking, running his hand up and down the stem with a regular almost rhythmic movement. His other hand lay inert on my leg.

I watched transfixed. He seemed to go into a trance. He was no longer looking at me. Instead he seemed to be watching himself, his eyes half closed and his mouth half open, and there were small half-grunting noises coming out of him. After a while he took his other hand off me and applied it to the task too. He glanced back at me once but his eyes were glazed, and though I think he was smiling it left his teeth slightly bared, more like a grimace. I tried to smile too, but there was such a rising panic in me now that I am sure he could see it. I felt my legs glued together.

He was working harder now, and under his fingers his penis began to swell. “Ha, ha . . .” He took a half-laughing series of breaths and looked down. “That’s better,” he muttered, taking air in bigger gulps now.

He maneuvered himself farther up the bed toward me, all the time working his member to keep it stiff. He freed one hand to pull something out from the cabinet nearby. It was a blue glass jar. He fumbled with its lid, then plunged his fingers in, drawing up some clear substance. He rubbed it over himself, then dipped his hand in again and moved toward me. I recoiled involuntarily.

“Don’t move,” he said sharply. I froze. His fingers reached inside my thatch, fumbling for the opening. The ointment was greasy and icy, so icy that it made me cry out.

“It can’t hurt,” he said, between breaths. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

I shook my head, trembling. “It’s cold,” I said. “It’s cold.” And I was trying not to cry.

He laughed out loud. I laughed too from sheer terror.

“Oh, God, don’t laugh now, we’ll lose all my good work,” he said hurriedly, and started pummeling himself again. The laughter stuck in my throat.

“You are a virgin, right?”

“Yes.”

“So, I am going to break the hymen. It will make it easier when I push myself inside. Do you understand?”

I nodded. What was the teaching they gave to young women?
Virtue is a more valuable dowry than money.
But there was no comfort in such advice now. Nothing to make sense of the awful confusion unfolding before me.

He started to slide two fingers inside me. And just before he did so I saw a shiver pass over his face. This time he could not hide his distaste. Then he pushed in. I cried out. It hurt: a scalding tearing pain, like the cutting of a layer of flesh. I thought of teeth pulling, but could feel no sign of the lute.

“Good girl,” he muttered thickly. “Good girl. That’s it.” He pushed again and once more I yelped, though quieter this time, because this time there was less pain. “Good girl,” he said again. It felt like he was talking to an animal, a dog or a cat in labor. He withdrew his hand from me, and I noticed a filmy layer of blood on his fingers. I also noticed that his penis had started to droop. “Damn it,” he said, and now he used both his hands to pull at it. “Damn it.” And he seemed almost angry now.

When he had coaxed it back into life he climbed on top of me, maneuvering himself into a position where his cock was above my sex, and fiddled and started to push to fit it in. It began to soften as soon as it touched me, but he stiffened it with his fingers and finally managed to push them and it in together. But though my virgin skin was broken I was neither big nor slippery enough to handle the size of him. My mother’s transgression had deformed me after all and I cried out again, only this time I could not stop crying. He pushed farther. I closed my eyes tight shut, like a child waiting for the danger to pass, and felt a flush of shame run through me, dark and giddy. But he was too busy to take note of me now.

He was hard at work, grunting and thrusting and swearing slightly under his breath. “God damn it, God damn it. . . .” And even in my pain I felt him swell inside me. He removed his finger and thrust some more, his breath coming now in large pants, like a horse snorting his way uphill with a full load. I opened my eyes to see his face above me, eyes screwed up, a grimace like a death’s-head upon him, every muscle strained and pushing as if it would snap. Then suddenly there came a great grabbed snort and yell, and I felt him go limp both inside and out, and a hot stream of liquid came spurting half down my legs as he slid out of me and rolled heavily onto the other side of the bed, gasping for air, like a man rescued from the edge of drowning.

He lay getting his breath back, half laughing, half gasping.

It was over. I was plucked. Erila was right. I had not died of it. But of
Vinculum Mundi
there was no sign at all.

After a while he pulled himself up off the bed and walked across the room. I thought for a moment he was going to leave. Instead, he went over to the table where there was a jug of water and cloth. He stood at a half angle to me, wiping himself off and then sliding his penis back into his clothing. He seemed to have forgotten me already. He gave a heavy sigh, as if to put the memory of it all behind him, and when he turned his face was calm again and I swear he looked almost pleased with himself.

The sight of me must have alarmed him though. I know I was still crying. It hurt too much inside for me to close my legs, so I pushed my gown down over myself and leaned over for the sheet, wincing as I moved and noting the pinkish stain spreading like my shame across the white sheet underneath me.

He studied me for a moment and then filled another two glasses and took a long swig. He came to the bed and held out the second one to me.

I shook my head. I could not look at him.

“Drink it,” he said. “It’ll help. Drink.” His voice, though no longer unkind, was firm and brooked no disagreement.

I took it and gulped. But the liquid got caught up with my tears and I coughed violently. He waited for it to subside.

“Again.”

I did as I was told. My hand was shaking so violently that I spilled some of it on the sheet. More red blood everywhere. But this time the liquor connected, sending a river of warmth into my throat and stomach. He stood watching me carefully. After a while he said, “That’s enough,” and took it from me, putting it on the side table. I lay back against the pillows. He looked down at me for a while, then sat down on the bed. I think I must have recoiled.

“Are you all right?” he said, after a while.

I nodded.

“Good. Then maybe you could stop crying. I didn’t hurt you that much, did I?”

I shook my head. I held in the sob that was coming and swallowed it back down. When I was certain I had it under control, I said, “Will I . . . will I have a baby now?”

“God. Let’s hope so.” He laughed. “Because I can’t imagine either of us would want to go through that again.” And I think he must have seen the blood drain from my skin because the laughter froze in his throat and he looked at me closely.

“Alessandra?”

But I still couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Alessandra,” he said, quieter this time. And I think it was then that I realized something was wrong. Even more wrong than what had already happened between us. “I . . . are you telling me you didn’t know?”

“Know what?” I said, and to my horror the sobbing started again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about
me.
I’m asking you if you knew about
m
e
?”

“Knew what about you?”

“Oh, God’s blood.” And now he buried his head deep in his hands, so that I could barely make out the next words. “I thought you knew. I thought you knew everything.” He looked up. “He didn’t tell you?”

“Who didn’t tell me? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said again helplessly.

“Ah.” And now he was angry, a quick violent anger that made me frightened.

“Did I not please you?” I said, and I was surprised by how small my voice sounded.

“Oh, Alessandra.” He groaned. He leaned over and made a move to take my hand, but I was shaking now and pulled it back. He didn’t try again.

We sat for a moment, united in confusion and despair. Then he said, more quietly but firmly, “Listen to me. You must hear this. Are you listening?”

And everything suddenly seemed so important. I nodded, the trembling notwithstanding.

“You are a splendid young woman. You have a mind like a new-minted florin and a soft young body. And if soft young women’s bodies were what I desired, I would no doubt desire you.” He paused. “But I don’t.”

He sighed. “The fourteenth canto.
‘The wasteland was a dry expanse of thick burning sand.
.
.
. Many herds of naked souls I saw all weeping desperately, each group assigned a different penalty.
.
.
. Some stretched out flat upon their backs, while others—the greater number—wandered, never stopping, round and round.

‘And over all that sand land a fall of slowly burning broad flakes of fire showered steadily
.
.
.
and without a moment’s rest the dance of wretched hands went on, this side, that side, brushing away the freshly fallen flames.’
”

As he spoke I could see the illustration, the tortured male bodies pitted and scarred from the endless burning of the flesh.

“I prefer Dante to Savonarola,” he said. “But our monk is perhaps the clearer of the two. ‘And so the sodomites shall rot in hell, which is too good for them, for their perfidy does destroy nature itself.’” He paused. “Do you understand now?”

I swallowed and nodded. Once it was said, what was there not to understand? Of course, I had heard stories. Who hadn’t? Crude stories and cruel jokes. But even more than usual fornication, this had been kept locked away from children as the grossest of man’s sins: unspeakable to the purity of family and the honor of a godly state. So my husband was a sodomite. A man who spurned women in favor of the Devil in other men’s flesh.