Sofia (2 page)

I couldn’t answer for watching how her flesh was pillowed against the opulence of her sleeves. She had beautifully sculptured shoulders, collarbones, and a long neck that vied with a string of pearls in whiteness. Her face was a fine oval like a Florentine alabaster egg with a pinch of chin and nose. Its shape was reflected in the heavy, teardrop pearls that hung from her ears, and her eyes were like almonds—that color, large and luscious.

“Come,” she insisted, “what does His Serenity the Grand Doge of the Republic of Venice say to my suit? I, Sofia Baffo, daughter of the governor of the island of Corfu, have lately been ordered by my father to join him on that island in the middle of nowhere. It seems he has found a husband for me—some petty noble of the island—by which match he hopes to secure his position so as to govern with efficiency and as little bloodshed among the natives as possible.”

Watching her as she spoke, I determined that the most remarkable thing about Baffo’s daughter was her hair. Many Venetian ladies endured agonies with lemon and vinegar solutions only to have their hair bleach out to a harsh, lifeless, brittle shock of straw. Her blond, on the other hand, was real and full of life that could not be contained. Like polished gold filigree, it spilled from the somber white linen of her veil, a promiscuity of which, I decided, she was not totally innocent.

She was not innocent, but at the moment totally unaware of her effect. “I am to marry a Corfiot!” she despaired. “I who deserve—! God above, a peasant with dirt under his nails!”

Abashed, I shifted my cap and my hands behind my back, for I am always rather careless of my nails.

“I, Sofia Baffo! I, who should always be at the center of things. In the heart. That is all I ask. In the very heart!”

“Corfu is a lovely island.” I tried to redeem myself with some display of my knowledge of the world. “I have weighed anchor in her lovely harbor four times. And I even met your father once. A striking gentleman. Much like his daughter.” I nodded the compliment toward her and took her silence as permission to continue.

“And Corfu is not so far from the center of things as all that. She lies on the throat of our trade routes to the East, at the very mouth of the Adriatic Sea. A secure Corfu is very important to Venice.”

“Fool!” she exploded. “You think I don’t know that? My father writes very pretty letters, yes. But what is Corfu...? What is any place on earth compared to Venice?
Here
in the Piazza of St. Mark, here where the Doge sits and governs, here in the Great Basin where every merchant ship must finally dock from every corner of the world. Here is where I intend to stay-—here, whence things are truly controlled.”

I found it curious that she imagined the world in this guise—and that she felt such feelings so keenly here in the peace of the convent.

“So tell me,” she continued. “What does the Doge say? Has he not found some husband for me a little better than a Corfiot peasant?”

“The man is not a peasant.” How anxious it made me to be speaking another’s suit! I couldn’t make it sound honest to save my soul. “His family’s name is listed in the Golden Book.”
So is mine, so is mine!
my heart, if not my tone, kept saying. And I am the only male left of our branch, and so allowed—obliged,
dying
—to marry. “The name must be in the Book, or a marriage to a noble Baffo would be unthinkable.”

Baffo’s daughter brushed my words away with a wave of her hand. Just so easily could she brush away the Golden Book as well. “There is the Doge’s nephew, I hear. A fine young man, unmarried...”

Now it was my turn to be impatient, for I knew the nephew to be a fool though he was twice her age, hardly a match for this creature before me. “Yes, the Doge’s nephew. You did have the audacity to make that very suggestion in your letter to His Serenity, didn’t you?”

“Well, why not? I am a Baffo, after all, and though my father may have belittled our name by taking that governorship, I will not be as he. I will speak as I see fit to any man on earth. To the Doge, to the Pope, if I care to. No, I would not hesitate to speak my mind to Saint Mark himself, and if he doesn’t listen to me, then it will be his own fault if he passes by an excellent opportunity.”

“Saint Mark is hardly one to be in need of opportunities for self-aggrandizement,” I said, having felt a shudder at the blasphemy—in a convent garden, no less. “And a young woman should not go about arranging her own marriage. Even widows are rarely given that privilege. Young women...”

“Women, fie! A flock of silly geese. I have to live among them; you do not. Well, I never intend to behave like one, for they are all too whiny and ridiculous. Tell me, what does the Doge say? Am I to marry his nephew or not?”

“I think not,” I replied.

“No? Well, who shall it be, then? One of the house of Barbarigo? Andrea Barbarigo would not be a bad match, for all that he’s young.”

Ready for action, the blood surged to my heart at the familiarity with which she mentioned that young nobleman’s name. But what action? I only managed to shift on the gravel beneath my feet, and it made a sound that accented my awkwardness.

She ignored me and forged ahead. “A Priuli, perhaps? A Barbaro?”

She did not mention Veniero. Ours was a house as favored as any she had mentioned—once. Our fortunes, however, were on the wane. I grew more determined than ever to repair these fortunes personally.

“Well, what is the Doge’s message, then?” she demanded. “Since he has sent you at the appointed time and the appointed place, he must have something to say to me.”

By now I was angry, as much at myself as at her. “His Serenity the Doge says you are to get on the ship bound for Corfu and do exactly as your father bids you or he will personally turn you over his knee and thrash you as he would his own daughter.”

“What sort of message is that to a daughter of Baffo? I shall have you pilloried in the Piazza, you scoundrel, for speaking to a gentlewoman so.”

“Forgive me, Madonna, but those were his words exactly. If you wish to confirm them, come with me to the Palace, and we will stand before the Doge together.”

It was not quite the truth I told. I had never actually been in the presence of His Serenity at all, but only in that of a lowly secretary whose task it was to answer routine letters. But I was not going to let this girl have the power of that knowledge over me. Governor Baffo was, after all, one of the citizens responsible for the Doge’s election. A petty secretary knew how Governor Baffo must be obeyed, even if his own daughter did not.

Baffo’s daughter believed my little lie that was almost the truth with a wash of angry pallor. “Very well. Good day to you, Signore.”

“Veniero.” I repeated my name for her. If she could not grant me noble status as I had done with the title “Madonna,” she could at least get the cognomen right—and know it was as noble as hers.

“And if you are considering writing any notes directly to the Barbarigo”—jealousy put a sharpness in my voice—”you may erase it from your mind. You might as well know that I will be sailing on the same ship as you. The great galley
Santa Lucia
—I am her first mate.”

“The first mate!” she exclaimed with scorn. “Now I know you are full of lies. You are much too young to be the first mate of a fishing boat, let alone a galley.”

Although this time I had spoken the truth, her scorn cut as deeply as if I had been caught in an abominably proud boast.

“My uncle is her captain,” I insisted. “I have been at sea with him since I was eight and he does indeed charge me with such responsibility. As a matter of fact,” and now I sought to get back at her, “I have been personally charged with the safe conduct of both yourself and your holy chaperon.” I nodded in the direction of the aunt’s convent. “Good day, Madonna Baffo. I will see you on the dock at the rising of the tide on Saint Sebastian’s Day.”

The girl sucked her breath at this and then let it out in a little squeal of anger. She stooped down and grabbed a handful of pebbles from the path which she flung at me. I scrambled up the wall in a moment—it was easy for one used to the rigging of ships—and sat perched on the top, out of her range.

I tipped my hat once more and bade Governor Baffo’s fair daughter a fond “Until Saint Sebastian’s Day.”

Then I dropped over the wall, pursued by her curses to the end of the lane and the canal.

“A willful and headstrong girl,” my uncle Jacopo said with a disbelieving shake of his head as I finished telling him my afternoon’s adventure.

His voice gave me a moment’s chill, coming as it did from behind the mask he was trying on before a small mirror in our room. The black mask’s beetling brows that made the eyes empty pits and the grotesque nose that gave a sepulchral hiss to his words had me convinced for a moment that my uncle spoke to me from beyond the grave.

Uncle Jacopo swept the mask off his face. It was of a piece with the tall, conical white hat, so that he now stood revealed as the man I’d always known and loved, who’d taken me in when my own parents and his wife had died in the same epidemic. Life fairly burst from his dark eyes, the flash around them heavily crinkled from much gazing across a sunburned sea. The gray on his wavy hair was no more than the white -caps formed before a warm, gentle south wind that made for good sailing and a quick homeward journey.

“Why don’t you wear this mask tonight?” he asked, handing me the now-limp disguise.

“Me, Uncle?”

“Oh, I masked my share in my day, I can tell you. Used it to cover youth and folly and more indiscretion than I can remember.”

“You, Uncle?” I teased. “My pious, God-fearing uncle? I won’t believe it!”

“You don’t believe it because I was always careful to wear a mask when I did it,” he replied with a conspiratorial wink. He rested a hand on my shoulder, which was now almost level with his. “The time comes to pass everything on to younger blood, those with the stamina to take it. Accept the mask as the first of everything I shall leave you.”

“Uncle, I expect to be best man at your remarriage any day now, and then what follows—”

“No, Giorgio. I won’t remarry. I couldn’t get a son if I did. Too many whores in too many ports. The pox they carry— I won’t put another decent woman through what I put my Isabella in her honest attempts to get an heir. It’s up to you. The continuation of our line, the charge from God in the Garden to multiply and replenish, it’s all on your shoulders now. See that you don’t fail that responsibility as I have done.”

“I shall not,” I answered my uncle’s sudden and unaccustomed sobriety with what I hoped would match it. “But let’s not think of that now, not tonight, not at Carnival.”

The mood would not leave my uncle yet, though he pushed at it with sarcasm and a flourish. “I bequeath to you the grand old mask of the Veniero revelers.”

“Thank you, most gracious uncle. I accept.” When he phrased it like that, I could hardly refuse. “But you will wear my visor. For Carnival.”

Uncle Jacopo took my simple black satin band and fingered it as he turned to look more out the window than at what he held in his hand. We were on the third story; the more prosperous branches of the family claimed the lower floors but allowed us these small rooms whenever the sea brought us home. Our long months abroad, after all, paid for their tapestries, their Persian rugs, their silverplate, their long winter evenings by the fireside. Our labor paid for their glass windows, a luxury we rarely saw elsewhere, but which were common here, even on third floors, like the one my uncle gazed through now.

The window was made of twenty or more separate little panes, their round bull’s-eyes leaded together in a pattern of alternating red, green, and clear. All I could see from where I stood was the occasional dart of a sea gull through the clear circles. I supposed my uncle could see more.

“Ah, Venice.” He sighed, laboring under his mood of dark premonition. “ ‘If the Earthly Paradise where Adam dwelt with Eye were like Venice, Eye would have had a difficult time tempting him away from it with a mere fig.’

He was quoting Pietro Aretino, the famous satirist who was then but six years in his grave. I knew my uncle meant merely to comment on the fact that in none of her colonies, where we spent most of our time, was the tradition of masks at Carnival allowed. But I could not help recalling the image Baffo’s daughter evoked for me in another garden that afternoon. Signorina Baffo was a subject I felt we had left too soon, but I didn’t know how to bring my uncle around to it again, especially with this mood on him.

I had gone so far as to admit aloud, “I shall never lose the taste for talk of her.”

At this my uncle had laughed and joked about my “growing lad’s appetite.” Then he’d gone on to say, “I wonder about Governor Baffo’s willingness to entrust his daughter to the year’s first sail. What is she, that the marrying of her cannot wait for more settled weather?”

“The governor must be acquainted with your skills, Uncle. He trusts you to find the harbors in the worst storm and bring her safe if any can.”

“Let us pray to Saint Elmo it may be so.” My uncle let me know by his tone that my sense of immortality was a youthful rashness. With a sigh, he’d gone on, “I, for one, am ready to be off. Enough of this anchored life, this tedium! This constant sense our land-locked cousins give me that I cannot swim in this little drop of theirs. Pray, Giorgio, for good weather on the twentieth, lest the Council rescind its leniency, fear more losses of the Republic’s profits, and shove the day of first sail on into Lent once more.”

To distract myself as much as anything, I fit the mask on my head and over my face. I breathed the sour, slightly salty smell of my uncle as if the black leather over my nose were his own flayed skin. But what a transformation I discovered in the mirror Uncle Jacopo had propped up in the niche along with the guardian statue of the Virgin!

The anxious hunger for more about Sofia Baffo that twitched my cheeks was wiped clean like a slate of chalk marks. Such cleansing power is in the mystery of the mask, the total evaporation right before the eyes of all individuality, of joy and sorrow, of good and evil, of youth and old age. Even male and female, the very first attribute with which a midwife burdens a babe, even that could vanish behind a mask and one could be at once unborn, as yet only hoped for. I had heard stories of it happening.