The Mirror Thief (65 page)

He needs to eat something. Outside, behind the cracked apse, he finds a small casino serving spit-roasted kid along with chewy bread and an unimpressive red wine. The only other customers are four hard-faced Arsenal workers with scavenged wood shavings bundled at their feet; they cease their dice-game when he walks in, unhurriedly hiding their cup and coins, glaring in silence. With so many ridotti springing up around the city, Crivano’s surprised to see them gaming in public; their flagrancy speaks to the decline of the campo. The stares don’t abate, so Crivano makes short work of his meal, rises, and—feeling restored by the food, emboldened by the wine—approaches them. Will you good fellows take a physician’s wager? he says.

After permitting them to cheat him out of a small sum, Crivano orders wine for the table, and inquires about the state of the church. It’s shameful, they agree; no fit memorial for Lepanto’s honored dead. One of the four was in the battle himself, or says he was: at the oars of Vincenzo Quirini’s flagship, jabbing his pike through Turkish ribcages. He came home with his freedom, a few ducats’ worth of loot, a few stories no one wants to hear. Only fools boast of fighting for nothing, he says, so I never boast. The diplomats, they never intended to retake Cyprus. That’s clear enough now, isn’t it? They were making their deal with the sultan even as we sailed into battle. But I defended the lives of my bench-mates, I sent a lot of Turks to hell, I didn’t shame myself through cowardice. I’m satisfied. If anything else matters, I don’t see how.

The sun is low by the time Crivano is on the street again. Beside the church’s steps he meets a young priest with a taper, drunker than he is, skulking inside to light the few remaining candles. The sallow skin of the man’s neck is inflamed by traces of the Spanish disease. For a moment Crivano wants to pursue this wretch, to thrash him with his stick, but he thinks better of it. His anger surprises him. Why should he be troubled that Lepanto is forgotten? Hasn’t he tried to forget it himself?

He thinks of Perina: her urgent questions, her wide searching eyes. What convent is she in? Santa Caterina, isn’t it? Nearby, past Zanipolo, not far from the Crucifers’ church. What was it she said?
It is precisely this chaos I seek knowledge of, for in such disarray resides the truth!
Ah, youth’s sincere conviction when it speaks such words! Amusing, disquieting, embarrassing. Like watching children at play with their fathers’ swords. He wants to see her, to speak to her. And the fact that he’s about to commit an act of treason shouldn’t preclude him from keeping his promise to the senator, should it?

A busy salizzada takes him to Campo San Zanipolo, where he steps between the peddlers’ carts by the mounted bronze of Colleoni to pause in front of the Scuola of Saint Mark and regain his bearings. The odd trompe-l’oeil façade with its pelicans and phoenixes and winged lions only serves to confuse him further, so he rejoins the crowd, moving west. At first he’s able to plot his route by the ancient squat belltower of
the Crucifers and the slender onion-domed campanile of the Apostles’ church, but he’s soon among the high walls of hospitals and new palaces and has only the sun to locate him. He’s all but given up hope of finding his way when he crosses a broad canal to see the long latticed façade of the Zen palace, and Santa Caterina just beyond.

A lamp burns by the convent’s outer door, though the sun has not yet set. Crivano tries the handle, finds it locked, and raps with the head of his stick. His parcel grows heavy; he sets it down, then picks it up again, swaying on the stone steps. After a moment he resumes his knocking.

A bolt slams, and the door opens to reveal a sliver of nun: downturned mouth, wrinkled cheek, patient eye. I’m sorry, dottore, the nun says. Visitors are not permitted in the parlor after sundown. I hope you will come again tomorrow.

Crivano’s words emerge somewhat slurred; he tries to polish his elocution. The sun, good sister, is anything but down, he says. Even now its fiery orb cleaves my eyes. I have come a great distance to see Signorina Perina Glissenti, who is an educant in your care. Admit me, please.

The eye narrows, but the voice remains courteous. Again, it says, I’m very sorry, dottore, but that’s simply not possible. Even in daylit hours only the educants’ close relations may enter the parlor. And under no circumstances can inebriated persons be admitted. Good night, dottore.

Crivano places his left hand in the door as she closes it. The wooden edge presses against his fingers: it’s quite smooth. As if he might be only the latest player in a scene repeated many times at this portal. Inebriated? he scoffs, pressing his nose to the crack. Sister, I am a physician; I will thank you to leave such diagnoses to me. Open now, and fetch the signorina. It is very important that I speak with her at once. It concerns an exceedingly vital matter of state security.

The nun gives the door a careful shove to indicate her conviction, and Crivano winces. He can feel eyes from the campo on his back. We’d like to assist you, dottore, the muffled voice says. Simply return tomorrow with a relative, or a written directive from the Council. Good night.

I am a relative, Crivano shouts. I am. I am the young lady’s brother.

The pressure on his hand lessens a bit. As I understand it, the nun says, the signorina’s siblings are all deceased.

Yes, Crivano says. That’s right. As you can very plainly see, I am dead. I have come back tonight from my sailor’s grave to visit my young sister, and would fain be admitted to your parlor at once.

Again, I bid you good night, dottore.

Now see here, good sister, Crivano says, moderating his tone. I have been asked to visit the signorina by her cousin, Senator Giacomo Contarini, whose name I’m sure is familiar to you. This was a special request put to me by the senator himself. I believe he gave authorization for my visit. Consult with your abbess if you must, and supply her with another name: I am called Vettor Crivano.

After a lengthy silence, the door swings slowly inward.

Without bothering to take his robe, the nun directs Crivano to a pair of high-backed caquetoires, lights an oil lamp on the candle-stand between them, and stalks away down a dim corridor, leaving him alone. Aside from scattered chairs and endtables the large room is bare. Over the cold hearth hangs a painting of Catherine of Alexandria in the antique style: gilt aureole shimmering in the lamplight, spiked wheel demolished by a touch. Crivano seats himself, resting Tristão’s wrapped mirror across his knees, resting his stick atop the mirror.

He falls asleep immediately, then jolts awake again, uncertain of where he is. Overhead and across the city, bells toll once for sundown; vespers echo through the wall from the adjacent sanctuary. A commotion in the corridor: footfalls and whispers. Then Perina, with the nun at her heels. She sweeps forward with a long unladylike stride; the nun’s white hands flutter about her face, trying to fix her veil.

When her eyes find his black shape in the lamplight, they burst with gleeful surprise; her mouth forms a word that her breath never catches. Now she’s made out his face. Her expression becomes confused, alarmed. Dottore Crivano? she says.

His stick slides to the floor as he rises. He bows deeply, steadying himself on the backrest. Signorina, he says, it is I.

This is an unanticipated pleasure, she says, and I am glad that you have come. But what urgent matter brings you here at such an odd hour?

Pious lady, I must confess: I have dissembled. For this I beg your pardon. The exigency that impels me to your parlor can claim as its ambit naught save the animal confines of my own person. It is perhaps a priest’s sanctuary I should seek, but my feet led me here, in hope of opening my mouth to evacuate my brain. Fair Perina, I have come lately upon a man who fought at Lepanto, and the reminiscence thusly prompted made me long for your ready ear and kind attention. Will you sit with me?

They sit. With great effort Crivano retrieves his stick from the floor. Be brief, the nun says. Perina, I trust you know the rules that govern proper conduct in the parlor, and I trust you will keep the dottore cognizant of them.

The nun crosses the room, lights a second lamp, sits, and takes up a drop-spindle and a basket of wool. Her unblinking eyes prick him through the shadows as she spins.

After our last meeting, Perina says, I felt certain that thereafter you would seek to avoid me. I feared that my many questions had given offense. So I am very happy to see you now, dottore. Though I do wish I had known to expect you.

He smiles, looks at her. Disgusted with himself for having been even a bit surprised when the senator told him who she is. So much Cyprus in her—though she’s never set foot there and never will. So many echoes that she herself cannot hear. Being near her carries an illicit thrill of invisibility, a thrill compounded by her appearance: dark wool frock and swiftly donned veil, accidental and ingenuous, unornamented for the eyes of men. This pleases him. He could tell her anything.

The senator explained to me who you are, he says.

She swallows. Shadows appear and disappear along her throat.

I will speak to you of Lepanto, he says, though there will be little you do not already know. Your brother and I were on our way to Padua when news came to us of the fall of Nicosia. We elected to sign onto a galley as bowmen. We were young, younger than you are now, and no warriors, to
be sure. The only galley that would take us was a Corfiot ship called the
Gold and Black Eagle
. The
Eagle
met the Holy League in Messina, and on the day of the battle we were in the right wing. The fighting was all in our favor at first, but when the Turkish flank came fully into view our maneuvers became confused. Our admirals doubted one another, our line broke, and we lost sight of the other Christian galleys. We prevailed in a few close exchanges—alas, your brother perished in one of these—but we soon found ourselves entirely surrounded. Our captain, a man called Pietro Bua, chose to surrender, and the retreating Turks towed us to the harbor of Lepanto and assembled us in the town square. They were very angry at their defeat, and greatly sorrowed by the loss of so many men. All Christians of noble birth were divided from the rest. To be ransomed, we thought. But the Turks beheaded these gentlemen, and they flayed Captain Bua alive. The survivors passed into slavery.

How did my brother die?

He was struck by a cannonball. A ball from the centerline pedrero of an Ottoman galley. Quite a large stone: at least fifty pounds, I should think. The ball must have cracked when it was fired, for I found a scattering of limestone chips where it had passed. Had the enemy been in a trough between waves and not riding a crest, the shot would have sundered the deck, and I and many others would have died as well. As it was, it went high. Your brother stood beside me, then he did not.

Were you able to see to his remains before you were overrun?

I tried, lady. But there were no remains to speak of. I am deeply sorry.

She nods. Her posture suggests grief, but there is no grief in her face, only excitement, and exhaustion. Everyone of noble birth was executed, she says. So Gabriel would have died anyway.

Yes. I sometimes comfort myself with that thought. The cannonball spared him agony and indignity alike.

She’s silent now, rubbing her hands in her lap as if to warm them, although it is not cold in this room. Or is it? It’s hard for him to say. He stares openly at her, sorting her into pieces to memorize every detail—her lips, her feet, her brow—but everything his stare gathers slides swiftly toward
oblivion, warm rain striking bare rock. It’s rarely the eye, he knows, that best serves the recollecting mind. He fights the urge to press his nose to her scalp, to take hold of her soft palms, to see what he can untangle from the webwork of lined skin there. After tonight he does not plan to see this girl again.

What happened to you? she says. After the Turks captured you?

Crivano shrugs. I was fortunate, he says. I was not put to the oars, as many of my shipmates were. Owing to my youth, I was given to the janissaries, and with them I encountered hardship and adventure in strange lands I had never dreamed of. I learned their language, and the language of the Arabs, and in time I became an interpreter.

And then you escaped.

Yes. I betrayed the trust that I had earned, and I fled. I wish I could declare my choice to have been an easy one, but it was not. Almost half my life had been spent among the Turks. My boyhood home was lost, my family gone. The lands where I was to seek my freedom were alien to me. The world into which I had been born no longer had any means of recognizing me, nor I it.

With no family, Perina says, you are no one here. Worse than no one. You are a corpse. An effigy. A ghost.

Her expression remains placid, her voice reserved, but Crivano senses a whisper of rage in her, so pure as to be invisible, like a very hot flame. Yes, he says. I’m sure you understand.

Why did you come back?

Crivano looks at his lap, at the floor. His drunkenness is abandoning him, leaving him sluggish and stupid, in peril of forgetting that his lies are lies. As we grow older, he says, we sometimes find that our most momentous decisions are unseen by us as we make them. We perceive only a confusion of paltry choices, like the tesserae of a mosaic. Only with distance do prevailing images become clear. A man came to me in the night and said he had stolen the skin of Marcantonio Bragadin, the hero of Famagusta. He asked me to help him, and I said I would. All else has issued from that.

They sit in silence for a while. The sound of voices singing the
Magnificat
echoes from the corridor. Across the parlor, the nun pulls and winds her thread. Her impatience settles over them like a fog.

I must make a momentous decision soon, Perina says.

To take your vows?

She nods. I am twenty years old, she says. I have been an educant here since I was eight. Most of us are married or clothed as nuns prior to our sixteenth year. I fear I am becoming a source of anxiety to the abbess. She informs me that she has already selected my new name, and looks forward to bestowing it upon me soon. She has been informing me of this on a regular basis for more than a year now, and her considerable patience is on the wane. I have no words to tell you, dottore, how fervently I seek to quit this barren harem of Christ. There is nothing—