The eyes of venice, p.1
The Eyes of Venice, page 1
Europa Editions
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2011 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore
First publication 2012 by Europa Editions
Translation by Gregory Conti
Original Title: Gli occhi di Venezia
Translation copyright © 2012 by Europa Editions
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco
www.mekkanografici.com
ISBN 9781609458515
Alessandro Barbero
THE EYES OF VENICE
Translated from the Italian
by Gregory Conti
Notice to the Reader
Foreign words and unfamiliar technical terms are explained briefly in the glossary in the back of the book.
1.
The sun had been shining all day, but now the breeze off the lagoon had turned cold and the sky over Venice was growing turbulent. Matteo, standing on the main scaffold of the building under construction, wiped away the sweat with his sopping shirtsleeve for the hundredth time. In the summer the work day started early and never seemed to end. He looked at the sun to see how long it would be till sunset. None of the churches had sounded vespers yet, not even the Frari, which for a while now, because of some obsession or other of the bell-ringer, had taken to sounding it before all the others. Then he looked down at his men as they worked, pausing a moment over each one. Anybody else standing where he was, 65 feet above ground, would have avoided looking down for fear of vertigo, but Matteo had been a mason his whole life and was equally at ease on a scaffold as he was on the ground.
Beneath him, at the height of the second floor, three laborers were working quickly, unloading bricks from a nearly empty basket. Down on the ground, in the little square now covered in shade, a barefoot boy was stirring a tub of cement with a wooden stick, waiting for them to tell him to bring it up to them. Big and husky, used to thinking calmly about his business and staying on top of things, Matteo wondered if he shouldn’t hire another laborer, or maybe two. If the owner really wanted the job done in a year, with the crew he had now he might not be able to deliver on time. But the mason wasn’t sure if Senator Lippomano, despite his sumptuous garments and the proud crest with the rampant lion emblazoned on the cabin of his gondola, had enough cash to pay for the entire job. The hassle he had given him before paying for last month’s work bothered him. No need to rush, Matteo thought, there’s plenty of time to hire more workers, and relying on the rich is always risky business.
Making his way down to the lower level of the scaffold, the planks vibrating perilously under his weight, he told one of the laborers to go down and get another basket of bricks, gave a pat on the back to the last of the three, his son Michele, and then went down a few more steps before jumping directly into the court. The building was coming along nicely; even the architect who’d designed it on commission from the senator would have to admit that—and God knows Matteo had spent most of his working life fighting with architects. If they’d taken a brick in hand just once, instead of spending all their time sitting at a desk with a ruler and a quill pen, they wouldn’t make such impractical demands! Among his fellow masons, it was common knowledge that once, a long, long time ago, buildings and churches were built by master craftsmen, without all the drawings and no need for a diploma, and, take a look around, all the buildings that were built back then are still standing. But as everybody knows, the world gets crazier all the time.
Sighing, because at the end of a day’s work even a giant like himself began to feel tired, Matteo went to take a sip of wine from the flask they kept cool in the well bucket, right in the center of the square. The boy who’d been mixing the cement had left the tub and was now helping the laborer carry up the bricks, carefully piled in the wicker basket. Matteo had hired him the week before, when the other boy had quit; the pay was too low, he said, I can make more somewhere else, and if not I’ll go to sea. The master mason shrugged, he knew it was hard to live on today’s wages but he had a family to support. One ducat a month was all he could afford to pay, along with meals and a place to sleep on the floor in the entryway to his house. But at least there was always plenty to eat, thank God, nobody who worked for him ever had to climb up on the scaffold on an empty stomach. But he couldn’t work without an apprentice and luckily he’d happened upon this lost Albanian. There were a lot of them in the city, and they worked hard and you had to pay them as much as anyone else, but this one here was still a kid, just arrived in Venice, and alone, as far as he could tell. Matteo liked him right off the bat, and so did his wife. Well yes, keep him, Zanetta had told him. They’d made an agreement: room and board until the end of the year, and that’s it, just like a shop apprentice. Then, if you learn the job, you’ll get paid. In the hope that Lippomano keeps paying every month, because if he doesn’t cough up the zecchini the rest of us will starve to death. Now the boy was there on the job, climbing the scaffold, struggling to keep his hold on the handle of the overloaded basket. Zorze, his name was. He’s going to make a good mason, Matteo thought, gazing at his skinny legs that now, however, were starting to thicken at the calves.
Then all of sudden the kid slipped. The heavy basket turned over on him, and he fell off the scaffold with a piercing scream. Bricks came pouring down after and on top of him, and a second later he was sprawled motionless on the pavement. “Virgin Mary!” everyone cried out. Matteo ran and in a minute he was kneeling next to him, while Michele and the other mason came scrambling down, making the scaffold tremble. Only the last laborer, the one who’d been carrying the basket together with Zorze, was still frozen in his tracks with his hands over his mouth. They could see right away there was nothing to do. The boy’s bones were broken internally, and a lot of the bricks had come crashing down on him, hitting him in the chest and the head. Blood was seeping through his blond hair, his head was moving slowly, his glassy eyes rolling back, like the eyes of a cat that’s just been clubbed to death. “Virgin Mary,” Matteo said again, afraid to touch him with his oversized hands. They all looked at each other.
“Should we take him home?” Michele said, in shock.
“I don’t know,” murmured Matteo. As always happened to him when things went wrong, the pain he felt inside was muffled by a smoldering rage. Why me? Damn work—and damn life . . .
“By now there’s no use, look at him,” said the last laborer, who meanwhile had come down off the scaffold, white as a sheet. And then everybody realized it was useless, the boy’s eyes had turned into opaque glass, and his body had stopped moving. Michele knelt over him, touching him awkwardly, his pulse, his chest. He couldn’t feel anything.
“He’s gone, poor lad,” he mumbled, and made the sign of the cross.
All the others did the same.
“What do we do now?” Michele asked. He hadn’t yet turned twenty, and although his father had let him get married, he was still used to obeying him in everything. This time, however, even the master mason seemed baffled.
“Poor lad,” he said again, tears welling in his eyes. Just then, the bell tower of the Frari began ringing out vespers, and Matteo pulled himself together. “The first thing we need to do is tell the owner. Then we’ll take him home. By now it’s late, we’ll think about the burial tomorrow.”
While Michele ran home to tell the women, one of the two laborers was sent to look for Senator Lippomano. Matteo staggered back over to the well, grabbed the flask and took another long swig, then he noticed the remaining laborer staring at him, curled up under the scaffold, and he motioned for him to come and take a drink. This is the last thing we needed, he thought, and he felt as though his head were spinning more than it should have been. What the hell, he thought, it’s not my fault. I treated him good.
Just then Michele came back, with his mother and his wife. Their house was nearby, on a little square identical to the one where they were working, looking out on the Giudecca Canal. The two women knelt next to the dead boy, crying uncontrollably. Even though he’d only been living with them for a few days, everyone liked Zorze, so blond the way he was, and with that funny way of talking, the half-mastered Venetian dialect that sounded so strange with his hard pronunciation.
“Fate!” Zanetta declared finally, after the two of them had wailed for a while, as was the custom. And both of them turned to thinking about practical things. In such cases it was the women who took the situation in hand, heaven forbid that they should have to wait for the men. Michele, who was clinging to his wife Bianca and trembling a little, was sent off with one of the laborers to look for a stretcher to transport the body, and a sheet to cover it. Then Zanetta went over to Matteo, looked with a sigh at the empty flask left on the ground next to the bucket, and shot him a glance of disapproval. Her husband, embarrassed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“How did it happen?” the woman asked, breaking the silence.
“I don’t know!” the mason exclaimed. “He was climbing up the scaffold with a load of bricks, together with Teta. I don’t know, he slipped. And . . . ”
The woman didn’t speak. Only she knew that ever since her son had started getting up on the s caffold with his father, she waited every evening with a foreboding disquiet for them to return home, expecting each time that instead of the two of them a boy would appear at the door, sent to call her because there had been an accident. For some reason, as long as it was only her husband who went off to work she’d never been afraid. But now that her son was working too, she shuddered to think of it. He was the only child she had left, the other two boys had been taken from her by the plague of 1576, the one everybody remembered with dread, because it had killed half of Venice. He was the only one left, the youngest, and after that she hadn’t had any more. In the meantime, how many years had gone by? Twelve? Yes, twelve, her baby boy had become an adult, and gone off to the building sites with his father. Oh life, Zanetta thought.
The sound of hurrying footsteps gave her a start. A man dressed in black velvet with a shiny gold chain around his neck came rushing into the square: his magnificence, Sir Girolamo Lippomano. Bianca, who was standing closer to him, had already launched into an embarrassed curtsey, and Zanetta hurried to do the same, as Matteo went over to him and bowed awkwardly. The Senator ignored the two women, nodded abruptly to the mason and planted himself before the corpse of the young boy, still lying on the ground. He winced and then looked up at the scaffolding on the side of the building under construction. Girolamo Lippomano looked to be around fifty. He had a high, hairless forehead grooved with wrinkles, a few gray hairs cut very short and a well-trimmed beard that was beginning to turn white. A longtime member of the Senate, elected several times to the office of Savio Grande and recently named Procurator of Saint Mark, he was one of the Republic’s most highly respected diplomats. He’d begun his diplomatic career as ambassador to Turin and to Naples, and then rose to ever more important posts, as ambassador to the King of Poland and even to the King of France. From these prestigious courts he sent back reports with top-secret information that only he knew how to procure. His colleagues, who governed Venice with an iron fist and were never surprised by anything, held him in the highest esteem. After taking a long look at the unfinished building, Sir Girolamo turned to look at the corpse, taking a step backwards, and winced again. He didn’t even think to doff his beret; but he did make a quick sign of the cross, and then ordered Matteo to come closer.
“Who was he?” he asked brusquely. Matteo shrugged.
“An apprentice. I’d only just taken him on.”
“And where was he from?”
“From Albania,” he said.
Lippomano winced again.
“We’ll have to find one of their priests,” Matteo said. The Senator gave him a cold look.
“What for? He’s already dead; he doesn’t need to go to confession anymore. Take him under the portico of the Ducal Palace and leave him there, the city gravediggers will bury him.”
Matteo hesitated. He wasn’t accustomed to disobeying his superiors, but this time he couldn’t keep quiet.
“Illustrious Sir, that’s not good enough. He has to be blessed by one of their priests. Otherwise his soul will never rest in peace.”
Lippomano stared at him with sudden attention, then shrugged.
“Do what you want. Just don’t come asking me for any money.”
Michele and the laborer arrived with the stretcher. On seeing the Senator they both bowed, then they set the stretcher down next to the dead body and, grabbing him by the armpits and knees, loaded him onto it. He wasn’t very heavy. The laborer had a bundle tied around his neck that, unraveled, turned out to be an old sheet from the house. They covered the boy with it, making the sign of the cross on his forehead.
“Where will you take him?” the Senator asked.
“I thought we’d take him back to my house,” Matteo said.
“Bravo,” replied Sir Girolamo, disinterested.
Matteo turned to the others.
“Okay, take him home. I’ll be there soon.”
The two laborers lifted the stretcher and set it on their shoulders. Michele, Bianca, and Zanetta bowed one more time and then headed off behind the body. Lippomano waited until he was alone with Matteo, then he pulled an embroidered handkerchief out of his cuff and dried the sweat from his high forehead. The sky had partly clouded over, but the wind had died down, and the air was heavy with humidity. Matteo, in shirtsleeves and canvas shoes, with no socks and his beret in hand, figured the Senator was feeling the heat. Too bad for him that the laws of the Republic are so severe and so rigorous with regard to the decorum of the nobles, who aren’t allowed to go out dressed as they wish, but always in black, or in purple if they are magistrates in the exercise of their official duties, because all of them, from the first to the last, represent the Serene Republic. But the rest of us, Matteo thought, can go around barefoot with rags on our backs, and it doesn’t matter at all to anyone, not even if we die in a corner of the street.
“Listen, Matteo, I’ve got something to tell you,” Lippomano said.
“At your orders.”
“Tell me, how far along are you with the work?”
The tone with which the Senator had posed the question put Matteo on guard.
“As I told you, your Excellency,” he began prudently, “it’ll take all of a year and a half, but I’ll be able to hand over the completed building next year in time for the holidays. If you’d rather I finished sooner then . . .”
Matteo interrupted himself; something told him that this was not the right time to be asking Lippomano for more money. In fact, Sir Girolamo was staring at him with an unpleasant look, playing with the gold chain he wore on his chest. He had thin fingers, with manicured nails.
“No,” he said abruptly. “Instead, let’s suspend the work. I’m going away, I don’t know yet when, maybe as early as this winter. I’ll be away for at least two years. And I don’t want the work going forward when I’m not here to be in charge.”
Matteo already felt a little dizzy and this unexpected blow knocked him back.
“But Illustrious Sir . . . ” was all he could muster.
“No buts!” Lippomano cut him off, with the tone of someone who is used to being in command and not being contradicted. “Even as it is I can’t understand how this building is costing me so much. Imagine if I weren’t here to keep an eye on things. I know what you people are like.”
Disheartened, Matteo didn’t answer.
“So we’re agreed then,” the Senator concluded. “You’ll come to my house tomorrow and we’ll settle the accounts. Good-bye, Matteo.”
“Your servant, Excellency,” the mason muttered. As the other man walked off, Matteo stood there with his cap in hand, so confused he didn’t know if it was morning or evening. Then he remembered the flask and looked over toward the well, but Zanetta, who never left anything out of place, must have taken it home with her. Matteo spit and after taking a good look around, he cursed, but under his breath. Even the walls had ears, and if they got an anonymous complaint about his behavior, the Holy Office of the Inquisition wouldn’t think twice about hauling in some poor guy for a couple of lashes. Matteo remembered full well that it had not always been that way. When he was young people were not so afraid, and no one thought there was anything terrible about a curse spoken in anger. But times had changed and not so much for the better. We don’t even have the satisfaction of cursing anymore. What a world, he thought bitterly, as he went on his way home.
When he got there he discovered they’d been waiting for him to eat dinner. He washed his hands in the bucket, sat down at the table on the only good chair, with arms; Michele sat in the other chair, at his right side. The laborers took their places on two stools. By contract, the workers ate with them and Matteo deducted the meals from their pay. Zanetta and Bianca served the soup, then Zanetta sat down on the edge of the fireplace with her bowl on her knees, while Bianca went on working, stoking the fire, fetching a bucket of cool water from the well. Finally, she served herself a bowl of soup, took her place standing next to her mother-in-law, and started eating. When he finished his first bowl of soup, Matteo had her serve him another ladleful, grabbed the big loaf of stale bread and cut off a slice with the knife he carried in his belt, dipped it in the soup and started chewing. Nobody talked. The dead body had been laid on the floor in one of the two bedrooms, the one where the younger couple slept.
