Balthasar's Odyssey (51 page)

To tell the truth, I'm not sure of anything. I imagine all these things and dread some of them, but don't believe in any. I've spent a whole year running after a book I no longer want. I've dreamed of a woman who has preferred a brigand to me. I've filled hundreds of pages and there's nothing left of them. And yet I'm not unhappy. I'm in Genoa, in the warm, I'm wanted, and perhaps even loved a little. I look at the world and at my own life as if I were a stranger. I wish for nothing, except perhaps that time would stop on the 28th of December 1666.

I waited for Gregorio, but it was his daughter who came just now. The door opened and Giacominetta came in, bringing me a tray of coffee and sweetmeats. She obviously meant to use it as an excuse for us to talk to one another. Not, this time, about garden trees or the names of plants and flowers. But about what's in store for us. Because she's impatient — and how can I blame her? My own questions about our future marriage take up a quarter of my thoughts. She's only just fourteen, and her questions about the matter must occupy absolutely all her time! But I pretended not to notice.

“Tell me, Giacominetta, did you know your father and I have talked a lot about you and your future?”

She blushed and said nothing, though she didn't pretend to be surprised.

“We've mentioned betrothal and marriage.”

She was still silent.

“Did you know I'd been married before, and am a widower?”

She didn't know. And yet I'd told her father.

“I was nineteen. My family arranged for me to marry the daughter of a merchant living in Cyprus.”

“What was her name?”

“Elvira.”

“What did she die of?”

“Sorrow. She'd wanted to marry a young man she knew, a Greek; she didn't really want to have anything to do with me. But they didn't tell me. If I'd known, I might have refused to go through with it. But she was young, and I was young, and we did as our fathers told us. But she could never be happy, and she didn't make me happy either. I'm telling you all this because I don't want the same thing to happen with us. I want you to tell me what you want. I don't want you to be forced to do anything you don't want to do. You need only tell me, and I'll pretend the difficulty's on my side.”

Giacominetta blushed again, turned her face away, and said:

“If you and I get married, I won't be unhappy.”

Then she ran out of the room. The door had been wide open all the time.

In the afternoon, while I am still waiting for Gregorio to come back for my answer, I look out of the window and see his daughter walking in the garden. She goes up to the statue of Bacchus that I gave to Gregorio, and leans against the shoulders of the recumbent god.

When her father comes back I shall ask him for her hand as I promised. If the world lasts out until my wedding day, I can only be glad. And if it doesn't, if it dies, and Genoa dies, and we all die, I'll have paid my debt, and I'll be easier in my mind as I go, and so will Gregorio.

But I don't want the world to end. And I don't really think it's going to. Did I ever? Perhaps. I can't remember …

29 December

While I was away, the letter I was expecting, the one from Pleasance, arrived in Genoa. It's dated Sunday, 12 September, but Gregorio didn't receive it until last week, and didn't give it to me until this morning. He claimed he'd forgotten about it. I don't believe him. I know perfectly well why he didn't give it to me before. He wanted to be sure no news from Gibelet would hold up my decision. But he was being too careful: there's nothing in the letter that could affect my relationship with his daughter or with him. But how was he to know?

My sister says both her sons came home safe and sound. But she has no news of Hatem, and his family is very worried. “I try to reassure them, but I don't really know what to say,” she writes. She begs me to let her know if I have any news.

I reproach myself for not asking Marta about it when I saw her. I meant to, but I was so shaken by the way things turned out I didn't think of it. I regret it now, but what good does that do me? And what good does it do poor Hatem?

I'm particularly affected by this piece of news because I didn't expect it. I didn't have much confidence in my nephews. One was motivated by his desires and the other by his crazy ideas, and they both struck me as weak and vulnerable. I had been afraid they might refuse to go back to Gibelet, or get lost on the way. But I was used to emerging unscathed from difficult situations with the aid of my clerk, and I'd hoped he'd manage to get to Smyrna to take charge of Habib and Boumeh before they left.

My sister also tells me that a parcel arrived from Constantinople, delivered by a pilgrim on his way to the Holy Land. It contains the things I had to leave behind at Barinelli's. Pleasance mentions some of them, but she doesn't say anything about my first notebook. Perhaps they didn't find it But it may be that my sister didn't mention it because she doesn't know how important it is to me.

She doesn't say anything about Marta either. It's true that in my letter to Pleasance I merely said she'd joined us for part of the journey. I expect her sons have put her in the picture about our idyll, but she chose to say nothing about it. That doesn't surprise me.

30 December

I went to thank Brother Egidio for bringing Pleasance's letter. He spoke as if it were understood that I was going to marry Giacominetta, praising her piety and that of her mother and sisters. When it came to Gregorio, he lauded only his good-nature and generosity. I didn't argue. The die is cast, the Rubicon crossed, and there's no point now in fussing about the details. I didn't really choose to get mixed up in all this, but does one ever really have any choice? It's better to go along with the ways of Providence than spend your whole life consumed with regret and resentment. Surrendering to fate is nothing to be ashamed of; it was an unequal contest, so honour is satisfied. In any case, you always lose the last battle.

In the course of our conversation, which lasted for over two hours, Brother Egidio told me that, according to travellers recently arrived from London, the fire was eventually put out. It's said to have destroyed most of the city, but not many people were killed.

“If He had wished it, the Almighty could have wiped out that country of infidels. But he just gave them a warning, so that they might renounce their errors and return to the merciful fold of Mother Church.”

In Brother Egidio's opinion, it was the secret devotion of King Charles and Queen Catherine that persuaded the Lord to be lenient this time. But one day the perfidy of the English themselves will exhaust God's infinite patience.

A crowd of different thoughts crossed my mind as he spoke. While I was hiding up in the roof of the ale-house, it was rumoured that it was because of the King that God had punished London — because of his secret devotion to the “Antichrist” in Rome, and because of his marital infidelities.

Was God too hard on the English? Or not hard enough?

We ascribe to Him such sentiments as vexation, anger, impatience and satisfaction, but what do we know of His real feelings?

If I were He and presided over the whole universe for ever and ever, master of today and tomorrow, master of birth, life and death, I don't think I'd ever feel either impatient or satisfied. What is impatience to Him who disposes of eternity? What is satisfaction to Him who possesses everything?

I can't imagine Him being angry or outraged or shocked, or vowing to punish those who turn away from the Pope or stray from the marriage bed.

If I were God, I'd have saved London for Bess's sake. After seeing her rush about and worry and risk her life to save a Genoese, a passing stranger, I'd have stroked her tousled red hair with a little breeze, sponged the sweat from her face, removed the debris that barred her way, scattered the raging mob, and put out the flames encircling her house. I'd have let her go up to her room and lie down, and fall asleep with an untroubled brow.

And is it possible that I, Baldassare, miserable sinner that I am, could be kinder than He? That my merchant's heart could be more generous than His, and more inclined to mercy?

When I look over what I've just written, carried away by my pen, I can't help feeling rather scared. But I shouldn't be. A God who deserves my prostrating myself before Him can't be petty or easily offended. He must be above all that, He must be greater. He
is
greater, as the Muslims say.

So, whether tomorrow is the last day before the end of the world, or just the last day of the present year, I mean to stick to my Embriaco uppishness and not take anything back.

31 December 1666

This morning, all over the world, lots of people must be thinking today will be the last day of the last year.

But here in the streets of Genoa, I haven't noticed any trepidation, or any special religious fervour.

But Genoa has never prayed for anything but its own prosperity and the safe return of its ships, and never had more religion than is reasonable. God bless it!

Gregorio had decided to give a party this afternoon to thank Heaven for restoring his wife to health. She got up yesterday, and really does seem to be well again. But I have a feeling my host is already celebrating something else. A sort of disguised betrothal. Disguised like the writing in this journal.

Dame Orietina may be quite well again, but whenever she sees me she seems to get a pain in her face.

I still don't know if she looks at me like that because she doesn't want me as a son-in-law, or because she thinks I ought to have solicited her daughter's hand humbly, instead of just accepting it with my nose in the air as something due to the name I bear.

Gregorio had engaged a viol player and singer from Cremona to entertain the guests at the party. He played the most delightful tunes by various composers, including, if my memory serves, Monteverdi, Luigi Rossi, Jacopo Peri, and someone called Mazzochi or Marazzoli, whose nephew is supposed to have married one of Gregorio's nieces.

I didn't want to spoil my host's pleasure by telling him that the music, even the gayest pieces, made me feel sad. That was because the only other time I'd heard anyone playing the viol was soon after my first marriage, when my family and I went to Cyprus to visit Elvira's parents. I was already very unhappy, and listening to music that was at all affecting only made me feel worse.

But today, when the man from Cremona began to play and the large room was filled with his music, I immediately found myself drifting into a gentle daydream where there was no room for Elvira or Orietina. The only women I thought of were those I've loved, those who held me in their arms when I was a child — my mother, and the black-robed women in Gibelet — and those I have held in my arms as a man.

Among the latter, none arouses such tenderness in me as Bess. Of course, I do think of Marta a little, but now she causes me as much sadness as Elvira — the wound is taking a long time to heal. Whereas my brief and surreptitious stay in Bess's garden will always remain a foretaste of paradise for me.

How glad I am that London wasn't destroyed!

For me, happiness will alway have the taste of spiced beer and the smell of violets — and even the creak of the wooden stairs that led to my kingdom up at the top of the ale-house.

Is it right that I should be thinking of Bess like this in the house of my future father-in-law, who is also my benefactor? But dreams have nothing to do with houses or proprieties, promises or gratitude.

Later in the evening, when the man from Cremona, who had had supper with us, had just left with his viol, there was an unexpected storm. It couldn't have been far off midnight. Lightning, long rumblings, gusting rain — and all the time the sky, though cloudy, looked calm. Then came the sound of a thunderbolt, with a deafening crack like a splitting boulder. Gregorio's youngest daughter, who was drowsing in his arms, woke up and started to cry. Her father comforted her, saying lightning always seems much nearer than it is, and that this bolt must have struck up near the Castello, or in the docks.