The Pop’s Rhinoceros (30 page)

He talks and talks. Vich and Faria steal stony-faced glances at one another, sifting, calculating. “I cannot tip these scales, not for the love of Fernando, not for that of Manolo. Were the difference just a grain of salt, a mote of dust. …” Gradually it surfaces, milky and amorphous in its camouflage of watery manners, taking imaginary shape on the imaginary scales. He is in search of something, gazing over the gardens, which appear still at first, then twitch and shudder oddly as the animal’s progress reveals itself; a blundering disturbance of branches snapping and startled birds beating up into the sunlight. Hanno crashes into view again, the huge head emerging foolishly from between two bushes covered with small yellow blooms, which the beast’s trunk seeks out with intricate methodical curls. The three men watch in silence. Would that I were transparent, thinks the Pope.

“Holiness,” says Faria, the faint note of exasperation whistling softly, not his own but his master’s, not his impatience but Manolos’. “What is it that you want?”

“Plinius tells a wonderful tale in his
Natural History,”
he says with sudden enthusiasm. “Every beast has its adversary, the Lion and the Tiger, the Tortoise and Eagle. … There are others, though I forget them now. Even Hanno has his enemy, the one he must live to destroy. Even Hanno …”

The beast shakes its head vigorously, flapping its ears. They can hear it, a leathery, slapping sound. The Pope beams at the animal. The animal chews. The two men chance a look between themselves.

“Have you read Plinius?” he asks the ambassadors.

Swelling tongues of steam lick upward, thin to invisible wraiths, thicken suddenly in the bars of light, a rich summery gold deepening with the afternoon beyond the linen screens of the half-shuttered windows. Sunlit swirls of fog thrust solid beams of brightness into the gloom, where, abruptly robbed of light, they continue in secret up the walls. Condensing droplets gather along the oaken joists above and presently drip in a wet echo on the rugs that cover the floor. A light mildew reappearing this autumn will need to be scrubbed off, meaning ladders and clatter, stiff brushes, elbow grease, general commotion. For the moment all is stillness. From the gloom of the far wall, a massive bed tented in fading red velvet coughs dust into a vaporous interior.

Since midday: the trudge of Arnolfo’s boots between woodpile and kitchen, the lighting and stoking of the fire, drawing of water, heating of the same in a blackened copper cauldron groaning and bubbling above the blaze of the fire, the whole kitchen disappearing in bubbly boiling clouds and Emilia herself ejected choking into the courtyard, then wheeling out of the apparatus, boots banging up and down the stairs through the main
sala
and the smaller one beyond to the impromptu
bagnio; jugs slopping and overspilling pots, everybody’s sweat and ill temper, even imperturbable Tebaldo, even little Violetta (tears, a little after noon, put down to the general air of upset), and standing in the midst of all this one hardly seeming part of it yet directing this, reminding of that, keeping the contraption on course, waiting impassively for her own main role to begin, for, as the whole household might forget at its peril, haphazardly and frequently during the sticky months of summer, on the feasts of Saint Urban, Saint Lambert, Michael, Luke, Leonard, Barbara, Sylvester, and Peter, on Epiphany, Advent, and Halloween, the third sunday in Lent (if Easter were early) or the first day of Shrovetide (if not), and most particularly on the feast of Saints Philip and James (today), it pleased their mistress Fiametta to take what she called “a little bath.”

Sploo-ooosh …

“Aieow!”

“Too hot?”

“You are boiling me!”

Pul-losshhh …

“Aaaah …”

“Better?”

“Mmmm.”

Standing now in attendance on her mistress, she has restored her flustered and heat-sodden troupe to their respective domains—kitchen, stable, scullery, study—closed the doors at the top and bottom of the staircase, unfolded the linen liner, thrown it over the bath, and watched the water weight it in darkening patches, dragging it down to settle on the rough planks of the tub. She has added oils and petals to the steaming liquid, then watched her mistress rouse herself, rub her eyes, struggle from her shift, settle with a slow exhalation in the scented swirl of the water. The cooling bedclothes breathe a faint sourness, quickly suffocated under the thickening fug of oily, steam-borne perfumes.
Drip,
a drop from the beam above,
plop,
into the bath. The bedchamber smells of roses.

“Pumice my feet now.”

“A little longer.”

“They feel like hooves, like a great carthorse’s hooves.”

“The water will soften them.”

“You think I have hooves?”

“No, mistress.”

“Pumice them now.”

“Patience.”

At first she knew only “no,” “please,” “yes,” “mistress,” and “Roma.” Ro-ma. Then, quickly after, “water,” “straw,” “good,” “moment,” “soon,” and “patience.” This shrieking city wanted to drown her in its noise: she learned first the words for the things it lacked. “Pear,” “bless you.” Supplied the deficiencies that gnawed at her in those first bewildering months. Her wrist had healed slowly and badly, stiffening in the damp of winter, unfreezing again in spring. Three times now. The
city had its fingers in her. She added her own barbarous accents to the cackle of its shambalic streets, its mires and the stench rising off them—this place of waste, muddle, and noise. “Away with you!” “A
julio
,” “two,” “three,” “four …” She separates her mistress’s toes between her fingers, sets to work with the pumice stone.

“Soap me now.”

“A moment …”

“Let go. I am going to stand.”

“The lemon soap? The rose?”

“He hates the smell of lemons. Rose.”

Reddened forearms surface from the oily waters’ depths. Fingers grip the sides of the tub, shoulder muscles tense, arms stretched forward like an oarsman. She will wait a second or two, gather herself, then … She rises suddenly, water cascading down her breasts and belly, steadies herself on feet now planted well apart, lungs gulping air, disappointment at her lost buoyancy, eyes focused in a vacant middle distance, the faraway look of a porter bracing himself beneath a load and his whole world shrunk, for a moment, to weight. She had passed for a boy once. Skinny as a rake.

“Scrub harder.”

“Raise your arms, mistress.”

“Slower now. … Yes.”

She works down from the shoulders, lathering and rinsing, kneeling, leaning forward awkwardly to lift and soap under the breasts. Her mistress’s hand rests lightly on the tight plaits of her head. The solid rounds of her buttocks. Fiametta turns. The hand leaves her head, and thick fingers cup her chin. She looks up; new sadnesses have swelled the face looking down at her. Accolti dead last March. Young Chigi leaving her the next month, his parting thrust a farewell gift done up in a case lined with black silk, a final humiliation. Black days. The household banished themselves to the kitchen while their mistress completed her abasement—long afternoons of great shouts and thuds, grunts, groans, then hours of sobbing resounding through the house—two weeks of this before Chigi’s gift is replaced in its case. “To fill her hours,” as the note had put it, the base of each implement engraved with the image of its appropriate creature: a dog, a goat, a man, a bull, and last of all—inevitably, since the procession they watched together from the balcony of Agostino’s palazzo, since its centerpiece had furnished him with the first of his taunts—an elephant. In their case of cedarwood lined with silk, finger-size to truncheon-size, five ivory phalluses served mute notice, and terms, of her dismissal. Two Sundays later she sent the largest back to him, reeking, smeared with that month’s blood. Now there is only the old warhorse himself, not so cruel as Chigi, not so rich as Accolti, and sadnesses to be masked with gaiety until she can bury them deeper in her flesh. Interim pleasures. The upturned face is impassive, waiting for her word.

“Your dress is spotted. See the soap, here and here.”

“I will rinse it tonight.”

“And you are sweating.”

“The steam …”

“Come. Take it off.”

Calico, thicker than she would wish for May, crumples slowly on the floor. An underskirt of thin cotton drops, slack with damp, beside it. Sandals clatter over the rugs. This is easy for her. This has all been prefigured before; cloth castles melting about her ankles, herself naked, stepping forward. “Come. Take it off.” Or a barked command in any one of half a dozen languages, or a gesture of the hand. The merchants had peered curiously at the lines scarified across her cheeks. She is turned this, that way. Often she lies, legs up in a V, while a practiced finger prods in her vagina till she yelps. Then she yawns. That is when she outwits her captors. She yawns, and the merchant backs away. The deal is off. This one he will not take. It happens eight times in succession, and her captors grow more furious every time. They are brothers, she thinks. Perhaps cousins. They slap her and spit on her but dare not bruise her badly. The caravan had wound north, always north, with nothing to mark their journey but each day’s nascent and then failing heat, the wadis where they stopped, and the markets where she was rejected. The caravan begins with eighty, but in twos and threes their numbers dwindle as the goats tethered behind them do, too, until finally there is only an old man, a wheezing boy, and herself. One night they kill the old man and the boy in a ditch. She hears them quarrel over money and knows the quarrel concerns her. They hate her, cannot be rid of her. She laughs silently to herself, sitting there with her hands bound together with strips of goatskin, sitting alone in the desert, waiting to learn the outcome. The bitter
uli-
berries itch against her scalp, eight swallowed already, four remaining. Four will be enough, she thinks. They will reach the market by the water, a glare of white buildings, tiny ships on a glittering sea. The brothers will drink arrack and break her wrist, then quarrel again. She is worthless and they should kill her, but they have traveled too far north. She will conceal this injury. A Genoese merchant laughing and holding her up by the wrist, watching her body stretch, break sweat. The wrist, but she makes no sound. The brothers agreeing to a pittance. Once aboard, he sets it. He knew all along. He watches her pick the last of the bitter-tasting berries from her plaits and throw them over the side. Four blue-black stains drifting, dissolving. She mimes popping them into her mouth, one by one, market by market. … Understanding dawns, and the Genoese laughs; his clever little bargain. He points forward, curls his lips around the word. “Ro-ma.” Yes, this is easy. She understands this very well. Ro-ma. Shrewd eyes set in a woman’s laughing face, hanging on the arm of her indulgent lover, who counts the coins into her hand. The Genoese watches, collects, is gone. The woman’s kisses slap wetly against her lover’s gaunt cheeks, but her eyes look over the man’s shoulder, stripping her. Eu-say-biah. Her mistress lowers herself carefully into the tub.

“Eusebia …”

“Mistress?” Fiametta’s eyes sweep up and down her body.

“Hardly more than a girl. … How old are you, Eusebia?”

She shrugs ignorance.

“Turn around now. …” Whispered, the words sheathed in steam-laden air, in the bedchamber’s watery perfumes. Custom has never smoothed the edge of this particular request.

She turns, feels the skin tauten up the backs of her legs, hears the drip-drop of water as a hand surfaces behind her. A first speculative touch, fingers stroking up the backs of her knees, her legs, fingertips brushing the skin of her buttocks. She feels the blood swelling in her sex; so easy. Think back.

“Eusebia …”

She has felt the late summer rains spatter on her face nineteen times and counted three more since “Eu-
say
-biah.” The sky has fattened five moons since the last, and tonight, in a place very distant from here, from this
Ro
-ma, the sixth will bring three fools out to gaze at it and remember her, believing that she is dead. Leaning forward now, steamy breath, lips mouthing silently over fine-grained skin to a secret crease of darkness, parting tight-curled hair. Lips meeting melting lips. Pink-mouthed. Her legs splay slowly.

“Eusebia …”

She has lived through twenty-two years; traveled a desert and a sea. She is not of this place, only adapted to it. Fiametta grunts softly behind her.

“Little blackface …”

She waits for the fat familiar tongue.

Outside, elsewhere, heat thickens with the afternoon’s passage, weighing on Ro-ma, lying slackly in her streets. Her inhabitants take refuge in the shade of buildings and awnings, drift unthinkingly indoors. A lull descends. In the markets of Navona and the Campo de’ Fiori, matrons and their servants turn and head for home. Cows, horses, goats, unsold pigs, and sheep swelter neglected in their pens. Fish, cheeses, and meats are swept off tables and stored in boxes underneath. The tradesmen slump together in untalkative clumps. People sweat. Behind shutters, windows, and screens, in hovels, houses, and palaces, the men and women of this city lie down to wait out the stifling warmth. Nothing to do but yawn and scratch, pull cool bucketfuls of water from the well. Something of the night’s ban on careless movement touches these hours. Chained in the afternoon’s languor, Arnolfo and Emilia sprawl listlessly together in the kitchen. The fire burned itself out an hour ago. Tebaldo prefers the courtyard’s shade. Violetta has disappeared somewhere; ears boxed when she returns, although truth to tell, Emilia would prefer her gone on these occasions. Her lazy pleasures with Arnolfo—thick-chested and hairy as a goat—somehow require these summer afternoons, not to mention the accompaniment from upstairs: vague thuds and groans, a shout or two, then moans building to a series of earsplitting shrieks, then for some minutes silence. The sounds excite her in a way actual sight of the two of them never could. Succeeding them, a puzzling coda: a succession of terrific bangs. Inexplicable these, and the evidence the mistress’s overbearing Moorish whore occasionally
displays in the aftermath—a split lip, a cauliflower ear—only serve to deepen the mystery. They are her signal to shake Arnolfo free or disengage his hand from its labors beneath her skirts, to dismount, to straighten from her position bent facedown over the table, wipe her mouth, spit in the dead embers of the fire … To stay her thoughts of the girl’s dark skin against Fiametta’s body. Hmm, rocking back and forth, knees clamped firmly about Arnolfo’s thighs, who rocks in time and utters soft
“gn, gn, gn,”
sounds, “Aaah,” as she opens the front of her dress and lifts out slack breasts one at a time. “Suck,” she instructs. Arnolfo’s
“Mmmmth”
is the only sound—the pair upstairs have reached their interval of silence, a shout or two from the street beyond the courtyard, perhaps, a horse’s hooves somewhere. Emilia grinds a little more urgently. Hooves. She screws her eyes shut, sets to work with her fingers. Hurry now, yes, yes, yes … Then,
bang, bang, bang
. But now? Surely it is too soon, surely, and she is on the very point, guts boiling like jam. … Again,
bang, bang, bang
. Worse than she feared; suddenly she knows that these detonations come not from the floor above, but from the door. Hooves? A horse! And it is worse even than that, smoothing down her skirts, pushing disorderly hair behind her ears, gesturing in frantic silence at her late mount (dazed, still flopping heavily about on the floor), for at that moment, resounding through the ceiling from the bedchamber above, Fiametta’s pleasures recommence in earnest. Great thuds from above, sharp reports from below, Emilia’s feet thump up the stairs, and the house is a cacophony of banging. Tap, tap, tap, across the floor of the
sala—ee-eek
(a floorboard is loose), her single knuckle against the door,
tock,
quite lost amongst the battering from below, and as she turns the handle, an enormous
bang!
from within. The door swings open to show her the tub, the bed, the steam, her mistress’s red flesh, the girl’s black skin, two faces caught like animals. Fiametta is standing, panting, over the girl, who lies on the floor beneath her; there is a sudden silence and within that a strange complicity, as though between a predator and its prey. Emilia gasps, red-faced herself, speaks—“Your pardon, mistress”—as Fiametta’s expression of inscrutable joy is exchanged for shock at the intrusion, then anger, and then panic as the knocking from below is redoubled. Emilia’s quavering message is already written in her face, indeed is resounding through the timbers of the house.