Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice (25 page)

And what did he say to me after we had made the beast with two backs again and again, after we had devoured “cormorant devouring time” with our hungry mouths, our hungry hands, our hungry thighs? Did he quote one of his own sugar'd sonnets, or compose a new one to commemorate this moment? No—that would come later. He quoted instead a rival poet, quoted him with envious admiration.

It lies not in our power to love, or hate,

For will in us is over-ruled by fate.

When two are stript, long 'ere the course begin,

We wish that one should lose, the other win;

And one especially do we affect

Of two gold ingots, like in each respect.

The reason no man knows; let it suffice,

What we behold is censur'd by our eyes,

Where both deliberate, the love is slight;

Who ever loved, who loved not at first sight?

“If only I could write like that!” said a spent and languorous Will—but not too spent and languorous to be envious. “Tell me, Jessica, am I a knave to sometimes wish such a splendid poet dead?”

“Beware of wishes, Will.” I laugh, hugging him tighter and mussing his thinning auburn hair.

“Were he to die,” says Will, “I would be the greatest poet of my age.”

He hesitates a moment, repents of his words, then adds, clearly not meaning it:

“Or maybe not.”

“Do not wish Kit Marlowe dead,” I say, “for it might come to pass.”

“Marlowe? How knowst thou it is Marlowe that I quote? Those lines are still unpublished, a mere fragment sent in a letter to my lord to flatter him out of his ancestral gold.”

“I only know that wishing another poet dead is the same as wishing silence to one's muse. For we are all part of God's unearthly choir, and to silence one is to silence all. Silence Kit Marlowe, and you perhaps silence your own muse. I promise, Will, in time he'll be no rival to your verse, while you, perhaps, will rue the day you wished him dead.”

“Yet his fame outburns, outshines mine—and he is but my age. I swear it galls—”

“How can you know God's plan for him? Perhaps he burns more brightly because his light will be the sooner spent.”

“I am nearly thirty—and a failure in the eyes of all my kin! At thirty Alexander was already dead, and Antony had bedded his Cleopatra.”

“So have you bedded yours,” say I, smiling slyly. “Besides, Antony was already an old soldier by the time he came to Egypt and found her dying. He was almost fifty to her forty, an old man…”

“What a subject for a tragedy!” says Will.

“You must write it, then.”

“If I live,” says he. “Or else damned Kit Marlowe will—and make Mark Antony a Ganymede!”

“Hush,” say I. “Our revels await.”

And so the revels begin! Drunk with love and danger, flushed with love, we are ushered into the great ballroom where the revelry will take place. The room is bright with candles. On the walls, painted giants hold aloft painted balustrades and balconies. Another set of feasters and revelers graces the walls—painted people echoing the real people who fill the room, greeting and bowing to the strains of the music: virginals and viola da gamba, lute and cornet, trumpet, organ.

This may be a Jewish household, but few Jewish laws are here observed—for everyone is masked and disguised in a manner that would cause a pious rabbi to wring his hands in grief. Women dress as men, and men as women; and all the masks of the most clever and ingenious Venetian artisans are on display. Women with the heads of unicorns, courtiers with jesters' masks topped by ringing bells as well as suns and moons, fabulous insects and butterflies, lions with solar manes blazing round their faces, tigers with golden spots, zebras with silver stripes. Even the valets and porters, the waiters and sewing maids, are gorgeously dressed and masked. On a real, not painted, balcony, Arlecchina—who wears no mask but her own terrifying face—reads the tarot cards; courtiers come to her, crossing her palm with sequins and ducats to hear their future fates.

Will and I mingle in the crowd, amazed by the beauty and excess of the costumes yet still on our guard because we do not know which of our enemies lurks behind which mask. My mask, as befits the Innamorata that I play, is a simple black velvet loup, which only covers my eyes, the better to offset the whiteness of my skin. Will wears his Harlequin mask, and it gives his face a pantherlike appeal. He is a trifle wicked, I know now, and wildly mischievous abed—now puppyish, now playfully violent, now tender. My thighs ache for him and my heart seems ready to explode whenever he touches me. There was no way not to fall in love with this man; it was written in the heavens, spelled out in the starry constellations in whose fire all loves are foretold. And now all my resolve, my independence, are of no account to me—and I am tethered to him, thigh to thigh, by raging lust, the poetry bred in the blood, God's plan to trick us into reproducing our own kind, at any cost.

I am musing thus when the musicians start to play and various dances begin. The masked courtiers now disport themselves to the sounds of viola da gamba and lute, virginal and organ. I recognize the
pavana
, the
pavaniglia
, the
gagliarda
(all danced two by two), and then the
villanico
(danced by four). Will and I dance the
pavaniglia
together, then stroll about the periphery of the throng, warily checking the crowd for a familiar gait if not a familiar face, then join another couple to dance the
villanico
. Our partners both wear golden ruffs and capes of plum-and-gold brocade. The woman's pushed-up powdered breasts shake as she dances, and the man's golden codpiece has been stuffed to make it appear that he is endowed like a beast of burden—an ox or plowhorse. Her mask is the full moon; his the blazing sun. Suddenly he drops his mask and it is none other than Björn Persson who winks at me! I gasp. He pulls his mask back on.

“Björn!” I whisper.

“I am Del Banco, Signorina,” says the blazing sun, “and this is my lady.” Signora Del Banco whispers through her mask, “Do not fear, the babe is well.” But I do not see this lady's face behind her silver moon-mask, nor her hair beneath her pointed, silver hat topped with a twinkling crescent.

We dance together for a while, we four, and when the music stops, we part. Will and I now wander in the crowd, looking for the English and Italian lords but hoping not to find them.

“Perhaps, having delivered the babe, we should flee,” says Will, “for we will be safer even on the river than here.” But as the night is dark, there is no thought of fleeing until morning; besides, our host and hostess are never far away and they seem to watch us through their masks. Indeed I am glad of that, for the very thought of parting from the baby boy fills me with pangs of dread. In only a few days, he has become like my own child, and though I know I must leave him someday, I do not want to think about that parting now, for it makes my breasts ache and my heart as well.

We are not the only commedia dell'arte players in the room, for in the crowd we also see more than one Brighella with his brothers in knavery Beltramo, Finocchio, Scappino, Flautino, and Truccagnino as well as various Pagliacci, Pulcinelli, Pantaloni, Capitani, and Zanni. I am not the only Innamorata—nor is Will, I presently discover, the only Harlequin. There are different Harlequins in different motleys throughout the room—and even on the painted walls. Their costumes are various. There is Harlequin the jewel merchant (with gems sewn all over his coat and breeches), Harlequin the Emperor of the Moon (with silver breastplate covered with moons in every phase), even a strange transsexual Harlequin (Diana in a skirt and farthingales and feathered headdress dripping crystal crescents like tears). It would be easy to lose each other in this masquerade, so we hold hands even as we dance or stroll about the room, though it is not the custom of the times in which we find ourselves.

After an hour or two of dancing and music, food is laid on—such fanciful food as I have never seen: pies baked with live quails' eggs that hatch before our very eyes; marchpane palazzi filled with marchpane clarissimoes of Venice, wearing marchpane cloaks and golden candy hats that can be crunched between the teeth; whole roasted oxen and pyramids of roasted hens; glazed ducklings covered in sugared fruits that mime the mosaics of San Marco. The
valletti
who bring in the viands are all dressed as perfect Pantaloni—so that they, too, appear to be part of this commedia dell'arte masquerade. The forks they bring are of the finest beaten gold, the platters of worked silver, the napkins of embroidered linen, and all the table hangings of gorgeous golden damask. The musicians play on as the masked revelers crowd about the feasting tables to sample these delicious delicacies, and Will and I are warier than ever now—for many lift their masks a little in order to eat, and we both hope and fear to recognize our pursuers.

Suddenly, a reveler dressed as Brighella—the rascal, the gigolo, the light-fingered, facile-tongued intriguer (who does not so much steal from people as he may be said to find objects
before
their owners have lost them)—appears behind us and taps Will on the shoulder.

He is dressed like the classical Brighella from Bergamo: a military coat (though of what army we cannot discover—nor, probably, can he), breeches with golden braid, a leather pouch and dagger at his waist, a soft biretta with a turned-up brim. But it is his olive-colored mask that betrays him most: sloe eyes, hooked nose, sensual lips that half invite, half sneer, a brutal, bristly chin (the beard is sparse and scraggly), and the waxy mustache of a confirmed fop. This Brighella has a russet mustache and beard, but that misleads us only for a few seconds—for the hair that cascades down his back is flaxen and appears to be as much his own as the red mustache and beard are part of his mask, through which he whispers to Will these familiar lines:

“Whoever hath her wish, though hast thy Will,

And Will to boot, and Will in overplus.

More than enough am I that vex thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus.

Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,

Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?

Shall will in others seem right gracious,

And in my will no fair acceptance shine?

The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,

And in abundance addeth to his store;

So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will

One will of mine, to make thy large Will more.

Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;

Think all but one, and me in that one Will.”

He recites—nay, he hisses—the lines with ascending menace, as if they spoke not of lust but of murder, not of the pounding of the poniard in the thighs but of the passion for the dagger drawn from its sheath and dripping blood.

“Harry…” Will whispers, knowing his friend.

“Will to boot, and Will in overplus,” says Harry, dropping his Brighella mask just long enough for us to see the sweet, maidenly girlish face, the eyes of blue cut-crystal, the pale tresses and the pale cheeks.

“And this must be the Jewess. Madam,” says he, bowing with what seems like subtle mockery, “I hope the mirror this monster hath stolen pleases you. It belonged once to my lady mother…May it reflect your beauty even as it did hers.” And then to Will: “May I observe that even thievery will not save your parti-colored skin, for you are doomed? If Bassanio and Gratiano do not feed you to the wolves, strip of skin by strip of skin, then surely Shalach will. He raves in Venice of his long-lost daughter—it seems he hath gone mad with grief of her. He claims you stole a sable skin of him. No ducats can assuage him for his daughter. I doubt not that he will be here soon.”

“How can that be?” I say. “He blessed my going.”

“Blessed on Sunday, repented Monday, swore vengeance Tuesday, rode on Wednesday, rowed on Thursday, climbed on Friday, killed on Saturday,” hisses Harry. “Many men go mad for loss of their daughters and their ducats. Marry come up, Will—thou art more of a fool than I thought to steal my mother's glass. ‘Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee calls back the lovely April of her prime'—or so you wrote in that third bartered sonnet. A man who will write sonnets for money will do anything at all—even steal family heirlooms, the crack't mirrors of a legacy. Go to—thou art no more than a riming beggar. Dost this lady know what manner of man she hath bedded?”

“Bedded?” say I. “Sirrah, I protest.”

“Lady,” says Southampton, “I was there, watching from behind a painted door. I mean to be there again—this time, not watching.”

He grasps my arm quite harshly and begins to drag me a little way to show he can.

Will protests. “Harry!” he whispers, stunned by his friend's revelations.

“Harry me no Harrys, Will. This lady will I have in forfeit for your debt—else I feed you to the wolves.”

“Feed me, then—but spare her.”

“Why should I spare her, or the babe?” asks Harry.

I gasp, “How knowst thou of the babe?”

“It is my business to know lecherous business,” says Harry. “'Twould be your business too if you loved a beggarly poet who gambled like a lord, whored like a player, and cowered like a Jew. Come! Or I let Bassanio and Gratiano know which knaves you are behind your masks.”

“And which knaves are
they?
” I demand.

Harry points to two masked dancers not far from us. One is dressed as Pagliacco, the other as Pulcinella. The Pagliacco slips down his mask for a moment and winks at me. He looks like Grisha Krylov! Pulcinella's face I cannot see.

“Come,” says Harry. “'Twill not be so bad. I am a tolerable lover—if not so earnest as my poet friend, then at least more skilled in lechery…What? Is rime all? The quim rimes not with the cock, yet they get on together. I've never had a Jewish quim and I'm told they're hairier withal and juicier…What say, Will? Is't true? Doth the lance-of-love slip through to Egypt on a churning sea? Doth it smell like raw fish or burnt mutton? Certes, 'tis not pork…Come!”