The Pop’s Rhinoceros (37 page)

“Welcome to Rome, Salvestro,” says Don Diego.

“Turn over.”

They traveled back in silence from the church, crossing Navona, moonlit and deserted but for drunks, the back streets mostly shuttered up, a few dim lights visible, some angels stacked in a mason’s yard, nothing much. Nothing for Fiametta to catch hold of and wring out a conversation, something light and witty, to excite his mood, perhaps. The Aragonese are so wooden, she thought then, and thinks again now as she complies, rolling over on her stomach, stifling a soft belch, raising herself on all fours. She feels his hands grip her by the ankles. A little farther apart? She complies. A thumb appears in front of her face. She sucks on it.

“More.”

Fiametta arches her back experimentally—more what?—imagining how her upturned buttocks must look, yellowed ivory in the candlelight. An approving hand grips the nape of her neck. The thumb is withdrawn and presently is felt once again. She feels hot there, ready. He likes this, likes the waiting. Ambassador Vich. She squeezes on the thumb, signaling her impatience with little twitches and grunts. Her hands reach back to try and grasp him—impossible, of course. He likes this, too. He was cold to her at the Mass, preoccupied. Now he is all attention. His member brushes her lips—up, slowly, slowly—down. She pushes back, but he withdraws. Not yet.

“This afternoon …”

Ah, that game. This afternoon … What to give him? This afternoon, the two of them standing there in their shifts, little blackface still shuddering as he burst into the room. … He wants more of that. The bath? Yes, give him the bath, the rose-scented steam, the girl’s body, and the sweat running down it. He wants the girl, too, of course, her stony-faced silence, her darkness, but he dares not. … So she spins it out for him, little gasps and sighs punctuating her “And then” s and
“So I” s, her own excitement rising at the half-concocted memory, her voice now languid, now catching in her throat, as the girl does
this
to her and she does
that
to her. …

He goes into her suddenly. She catches her breath, silenced, cut off in mid-sentence. He is rigid, quite still in the moment before withdrawing—slowly and tautly, a bowstring being drawn back, a chicken eased off the spit—and she softens, drifts. She abandons him and recalls, or imagines—it is jumbled up and senseless, part of her abandonment—linen swinging in a soft breeze, two tethered horses rutting, laughter from somewhere, a tiny spoon tinkling in a silver goblet, bells ringing, Christ’s face, the smell of red and yellow roses, Colonna’s chair bobbing along and the people laughing at her, a slap on the rump, the girl’s coal black eye glued to a crack in the floor of the attic room above, watching her bend to his pleasure, grunt for him, cry out. He works steadily, his flesh slapping against hers. She feels him buck and shiver. He is done.

A draft from somewhere plays irregularly on the candle at their bedside, the flame lurching over, then righting itself, until the wax gutters and spills, pooling in the reservoir. Too late, she thinks, and turns to her lover. He has dozed, sliding in and out of sleep. She toys with her pubic hair, watching him, idly pulling out the slick strands and winding them about her little finger, his semen trickling uncomfortably between her legs. He looks back at her. She sees he is still half-erect.

“Who was the red-haired girl?” he asks, breaking the drowsy silence.

“Vitelli’s wife?”

He does not answer, simply continues looking at her. A new feature in his conversation.

“She was his brother’s ward, or his cousin’s. Vitelli married her the day she came of age.”

“People were talking about her. …”

“People are indiscreet. So is she. Vitelli indulges her.”

The questioning silence again.

“Prefers the
stufe
to her bed, the lower the better so far as she’s concerned. There are those who call her a whore, and a few who say it is the cuckold who really calls the tune.”

“Vitelli?”

“Perhaps he takes as much pleasure in her amours as she does. She’s young, he’s old. … Though I am not sure I would call them amours,” she adds artfully, catching on to his mood.

“How not?” He is wide awake now, all ears. She looks down. Stiff as a post.

“You know her nickname? In certain circles, here and in Bologna where Vitelli serves, Signora Vitelli is known as
La Cavallerizza
. Or sometimes
La Cavallerizza Sanguinosa. …”

“I do not follow.” She is stroking him, gripping him about the shaft and working him slowly up and down. I
do not follow
. … Well indeed, let me tell you, thinks Fiametta to herself. Let me tell you since you want to know so much.

“She takes her pleasure wearing spurs.” It catches her by surprise, a high strangled yelp her only warning before the sudden spurt spatters them both. Vich twists and groans. “Well, well,” she murmurs, sliding the soft slab of her tongue down his chest and belly, half-remembering a joke she heard once about Spanish horsemen, something about mounting and spending whole days in the saddle. Little molten pearls, vinegar and sugar. She licks, leaving a broad wet stripe, a hot-and-cold arrow pointing to his crotch. She blows on it softly, feels his hips shift. Her hair brushes over the head of his member, hardly softer than before.

“Spurs, my Ambassador, the spurs are one version, anyway. …”

She turns to take him in her mouth. His voice comes thickly: “One version? What do you mean?” But when she tries to rise to answer him, his hand pushes her down again. She almost gags, then resumes her labors, patiently, artfully. Somewhere outside, a churchbell chimes a late Mass. A horse clops on the cobbles outside. They have found a rhythm now, her head resting on his stomach, pumping lazily together. Then the hooves stop. And, an instant later, so does her Ambassador. She raises her head in inquiry, and this time he does not reach to push her down again. He sits up, the two of them listening. The horse snorts. They hear its rider dismount. Suddenly he is sliding out from under her, her own realization dawning, unable to suppress the note of complaint that creeps into her voice.

“Him again? Tonight?” He nods, struggling into his hose, prick stiff but forgotten. “Make him wait,” she urges.

“Impossible.”

“Then tell me—”

“I may not,” he cuts her short. “Not yet.” He is at the door. “Sleep. I will wake you when we are done.”

She hears his stockinged feet pad softly down the stairs, the bolts on the door being drawn, the scraping of the key, a murmured greeting in the hallway.

They will proceed to the scullery, that much she knows. There have been five or six such nocturnal meetings since the turn of the year. Her house is at his disposal, she has told him that. Vich has been more attentive of late, more solicitous, inquiring after her debts, even settling them on occasion. He has escorted her in public where before he would rarely be seen with her, allowed himself whole nights in her bed where before he would leap up theatrically after having her, pretending some urgent business at the embassy. Even his lovemaking has grown more urbane. Yet somehow, in some way, he has grown remote.

To begin with, she would yawn and grow conspicuously bored as he prattled freely of his work. It only encouraged him to disburden himself further: his dislike of his slippery secretary, Antonio, his anxieties at Diego, the resentful soldier biletted on him the previous year, the dishonesty of his servants, the petty humiliations visited upon him by cardinals, the other orators, apostolic bureaucrats, even their master, the Pope. Careworn, flustered, inept, he would take out his frustrations in fits of pique or sudden meaningless rages. But he was not remote.
It was new, or recent, noticeable only in the last few months and then only in the pretty turns of phrase with which he placated her. He knew she knew.

And so, stripping the sheet from the bed to wind about her, tiptoeing across to the door, it is not curiosity which drives her downstairs, for she could hardly care less what they might be discussing. Nor is it any sense of grievance that leads her past the wood stacked in the hallway, the least used pans hung high on the walls there, scrubbed and sanded to a dull sheen in the moonlight streaming through the barred transom above the door. Never, in the months leading up to this night, did she feel a slight in his reticence. Instead she recalled the unmannered petty nobles who would flood into the city from the Romagna in Easter week, bighearted red-faced simpletons whom she would escort safely through Rome’s invisible labyrinths and unspoken riddles. Signor Shit-in-the-Woods, Count Open-Purse. Greenhorns, easy prey to the Ripetta whores, their pimps, the pickpockets in Navona, or the hucksters at Saint Peter’s, she would shepherd them safely from church, to inn, to bed. Performing mightily in each, engorging soul, stomach, and prick, she would dispatch them finally as Rome’s conquerors, waving pretty farewells. They were innocents, her lovers. That Vich should know more than his mistress marked him for a fool. He has grown worldly, she tells herself. Or thinks he has.

She moves barefoot over the cool flagstones. They have been lovers for almost a year now: she was reeling still from Chigi’s petty cruelties, from Accolti’s death. At least his widow still rented her the house. Vich too was unanchored, charging about Rome like a little baron, brandishing his temper like a club, snubbed, laughed at. Fernando’s new orator was a furious clown. She knew of him long before they met. She taught him manners, Rome’s manners, the manners that he wore at first like ill-fitting armor, latterly like the smoothest clerk. And latterly the jokes about the hothead have stopped altogether. Her work. She knows him better than any of them, better even than he knows himself. He has no secrets from her. So she will press her ear to the door, fix an eye to the keyhole. She will read him like a book. He will have no secrets. … Then she starts and almost cries out, all these thoughts forgotten at the sight before her. At the end of the hallway Eusebia is kneeling at the door.

Strangely silhouetted by the slivers of light escaping through the door’s shoddy planking, the girl’s shape seems rather to collapse than turn at her mistress’s approach. She looks up quickly, then presses her face to the door once again, seemingly unperturbed at her discovery. Shocked, then suspicious, then complicit in her eavesdropping, not daring to whisper her admonishment, Fiametta drops beside her. They kneel there together, motionless and silent, peering through the cracks in the door.

“… yes, very amusing, very funny indeed,” Vich is saying sourly, poking at the embers in the hearth. The other chuckles. Fiametta wonders, irrelevantly, if he is still stiff. If the other man should see it, would he make a joke? Are they close like that? The women see him seated at the table, where Vich joins him.

“There will be plenty more such farces before we see this through. Did Venturo tell you the latest?” The other’s accents are foreign, different from Vich’s. His face is not unknown to Fiametta, but she cannot place him. A meal somewhere.

“I would rather have heard it from yourself, and wonder why I did not?”

“Your correspondence did not mention it?” The other’s voice is sharper.

“It has not yet arrived.”

“Ah.” The voice relaxes. “Well, we received word only yesterday ourselves. When your own does arrive it will contain few surprises. A second beast has been procured, or rather chanced upon. …”

“Already got? Why have I not been told of this? Venturo mentioned a notion. An intention. Now it seems the beast is all but in the Belvedere. Do they know about this at Ayamonte?”

“Calm yourself. From where else would I learn of it? Read the dispatch for yourself if you wish.” He reaches into his coat and passes a small packet across the table. Vich takes it unhurriedly, unfolding the pages one by one and flattening them on the table before him.

“‘Alfonso d’Albuquerque, Governor of the Indies, sends greetings,’” Vich reads aloud. He scans most of the first page in silence, then begins to read again. “‘And in pursuit of Your Highness’s wish that these seas be made safe for our ships, I sent an embassy north from Goa. Diego Fernandes of Beja was my Ambassador, assisted by James Teixeira and Francisco Pais and others, including Duarte Vaz, who was interpreter. With them I sent some items of silver, others of brocade, and a quantity of velvet to be given to Muzzafar, who is King of the country of Cambaia, or Gujarat, where I would build a fort at Diu. They arrived first at Surrate, then Champanel, where they were told that the King was at Man-doval.’ Something of a chase, it seems. What does this have to do with the beast?”

“As I said, the embassy was unrelated. The animal was pure fortune.”

Vich begins to read more quickly, mumbling comments to himself.

“No luck with Muzzafar … no fort at Diu … exchange of gifts … Ah, here we are. ‘The King offered my ambassadors expressions of his friendship, guarantees of safe passage, a quantity of gold plate, a richly carved chair inlaid with mother-of-pearl, many other ornaments, and
a monstrous beast.’
This is it?” The other nods. “‘It is the height of a man, with rather a low body. It stands on four legs, its head longish and elongated like a pig’s, the eyes near the front. It has the ears of a mouse, the tail of a rat, and a horn on the end of its nose. In the country of Cambay, it is called a
Ganda
. It is ill-tempered and is said to hate elephants. For nourishment it takes grass, straw, and boiled rice.’ I imagine the Governor of the Indies was unamused.”