The Gondola Maker (25 page)

Chapter
41

The official charge is attempted rape, but that is not what excites my prison mates the most. Soon enough they get word that I stand charged for the attempted rape of one of Our Most Serene Republic’s most inaccessible patrician women. The prison guards have done their job—chiding me, demeaning me, wearing down my resolve hour by hour. With every insult they hurl at me through the iron grate, the more titillated they become. Soon my fellow inmates in the neighboring cells have been stirred into a frenzy.

“Out with it,
sior
!” One of the bailiffs demands, his sour breath reeking through the air. “We want to hear all the details.”

I do not respond.

“Come, now is not the time to be bashful! Tell us what magic words you used to make the lady jump into your boat!” He flashes a twisted grin, and his colleague emits an evil chuckle.

“
Tùxi
, have you already forgotten about me? I am accused of rape, too!” A small man with a high-pitched voice presses his dirty face against an iron grate.

A prisoner two cells away answers. “Bonaldo, you screwed the baker’s wife behind some straw bales in the hay market. Where is the
xixolàda
in that? Lieutenant Grimaldi there lured one of Our Most Serene City’s most celebrated virgins into his boat. He cannot be called a criminal, only a hero!”

The adjoining cells erupt into cheers and howls. Two men in a cell across from me collapse from laughter, their loud cackling echoing down the dank hallway. Only my cellmate, usually talkative, abstains from commenting. Instead, Padia sits on his wooden plank and hugs his knees to his chin, rocking aggressively forward and back, seemingly oblivious to the carnival of jeers around him.

From the relentless heckling, I learn that there will be no trial, no questioning. At any moment, I could be taken to the upper floors of the Doge’s Palace, where I will be hoisted onto a platform and hung by my wrists on the rope, writhing in pain until my hands turn purple, my breath comes in ragged bursts, and I confess. If I admit to the charges, I may be left on the rope and branded with fire, then eventually returned to my cell. If I deny it, well, surely there is something worse to come.

That is nothing, though, compared to what they tell me will happen to my grandfather’s gondola, my gondola, the boat I returned to the water through the labor of my own heart and hands. My jailers have left nothing out of the story. It took seven servants of the state, they tell me, to build the great pyre on which the gondola will burn, and a sizable crowd has already assembled to watch the spectacle. In my mind’s eye, I see the flames lick the fresh varnish I slicked along the bottom of the gondola with my own hands.

I struggle to imagine if Giuliana Zanchi is there to witness the burning. I wonder if she herself is the one who has accused me, whispering in the ear of her black-eyed patron, her future lover, the man whose money will pay for her freedom in exchange for her innocence and her likeness in paint. With some hope I cling to the idea that we are both victims of the Councillor’s passions, and that she is somewhere out there wishing for my deliverance as much as for her own.

Then I face the truth that I do not know Giuliana Zanchi well enough to anticipate her thoughts or her actions. In fact I hardly know her at all, and I cannot begin to imagine what is coursing through her head. All I know is that I was a fool to believe that I held her heart, a fool to risk my own, a fool to imagine that I would have a sliver of a chance in this world with such a woman as she.

Only one thing is certain. I have ruined my life completely, not only once but two times. I deserve the fate that awaits me now. Whatever my destiny, I am resigned to it.

Chapter
42

From the viewing platform erected across the square from the pyre, the Councillor scans the crowd. So far, so good, he thinks to himself, nothing out of the ordinary. All that matters is that this public burning proceed as smoothly and normally as any public act of justice. There must be no reason for one of his colleagues to go digging into this matter in greater detail. It would get too personal, too fast.

In the crowd, people whisper to one another that the criminal is named Luca Fabris,
gondolier de xasada
to the painter Gianluca Trevisan. The impudent boatman had the gall to attempt to rob the innocence of one of the city’s most upstanding patrician women and disrupt the order of Our Most Serene Republic. Justifiably, he has been thrown into the pozzi, where he is awaiting transport to the slave galleys. The boat in which the crime was committed will burn.

The whole affair has become too complicated, too confusing, the Councillor observes. First, there is the matter of the identity of the boatman. Two witnesses have already attested that the man held in quarantine in the pozzi is not Trevisan’s boatman at all, but the son of a gondola maker from Cannaregio. With two witnesses, under Venetian law the Councillor sees no way to pursue the matter further without involving his colleagues on the Council of Ten, and at all costs, he cannot afford to call any more attention to this case. Let the gondola burn and let everyone think Trevisan’s boatman was exiled to the slave galleys; who will know the difference?

And as for Signorina Zanchi, quite simply it is time to forget about her, the Councillor thinks. As great as his obsession had grown—and it had grown to uncharted heights for this young woman—she is no longer what he originally perceived. She is no longer the beautiful heiress of one of the richest banking families in Venice. She is no longer an innocent girl. She is probably no longer even a virgin, thanks to that boatman, whoever he is. The Councillor now realizes that he should have trusted his instincts when she first approached him with her proposal; something was bound to go wrong. As he observes the crowd, the Councillor vows never to negotiate directly with a woman again, especially one without a father.

Moreover, the Councillor decides, he will not accept delivery of the portrait that the artist Trevisan has completed. The artist will not receive payment in exchange for the hours he spent observing the woman’s flesh and replicating it in paint. Instead, the sum the Councillor secretly pays Trevisan will serve as compensation for the artist’s gondola, which must be sacrificed in order to provide a semblance of public justice.

The Councillor sighs. Yes, the neater this act of justice appears, the sooner the whole affair will disappear from public view. As soon as he returns to his chambers, he must summon the court scribe. The Councillor will dictate an account of today’s act of justice, using a particular type of language he uses for such matters, a sanitized recounting of the facts, no more. The scribe will record the dictated words in a graceful and immaculate script, and the case will be recorded for posterity in the Doge’s archive. After that the matter will be put to rest.

The Councillor watches a servant approach the boat with a torch. The crowd grows still, and the servant ignites the tender tucked into the bottom of the pyre. With a roar, the wood catches fire, and the flames reach upward toward the keel of the shiny boat. The fire casts the elegant curve of the gondola into silhouette, and dark curls of smoke begin to rise into the air.

Chapter
43

Eventually, I lose track of time.

Has it been days since my arrest? Weeks? My mind struggles to make sense of the seemingly endless cycle of singing, arguing, jeering, moaning, cursing. Water drips relentlessly down one wall of our cell, collecting and slurping into the floor drain. One of the large jailers pushes two bowls of tepid soup through a small opening in the door. I take a spoonful then spit out the disgusting liquid as the bowl rattles to the floor. My stomach rumbles. The relentless nothingness is interrupted only by the serving of inedible food and weak beer diluted with fishy-tasting water, which could only have been drawn from the canal.

I lie on my wooden plank, my eyes closed. I drift in and out of sleep—what else am I to do—while my mind torments me with visions. I see my mother laughing, my baby brother’s transparent skin. I feel the chisel in my hand as I work in my family boatyard overlooking the canal. I imagine myself loading crates onto a gondola at Giorgio’s
traghetto
. I see myself sanding the prow of my grandfather’s gondola, varnishing the keel, carving and smoothing the new oarlock. I see Trevisan sitting in his chair with his feet before the fire, contemplating the stream of unreliable boatmen that have darkened his doorway over decades.

Over and over, I see the image of Giuliana Zanchi in my boat. My mind shuffles through images of her straight teeth, of her walk, of her laughing in a church pew. I imagine burying my face in her neck, feeling her breath against my face, sitting with her in the sand at the Lido. What is real and what is imagined? I no longer know the difference.

Around me, my fellow inmates chat aimlessly, cursing and annoying one another. They talk about the only thing they share in common: whatever infraction has landed them in the
pozzi
. A man in the cell next to us says that he is guilty as charged for stealing a small collection of silver implements from the master of the house where he was employed. His master had beaten him repeatedly, he tells us; he would rather stay here in prison than return. His cellmate stands accused of poisoning his parish priest. A man everyone calls Little Lion says he was arrested for allowing the clockmaker’s apprentice into his master’s house for a series of clandestine meetings with the master’s young daughter. When he insists that he’s innocent, his neighbors collapse from laughter.

My insane cellmate Padia launches into unexpected outbursts, most directed at me: “Don’t you understand, Grimaldi? They are coming after us, those cowards! It’s a conspiracy, don’t you see? Our compatriots—all held for ransom! Upon my life, I swear to you that you and I will be vindicated!”

Not only do I not wish to participate in these interactions; I no longer care at all. I stare blankly into the darkness, or close my eyes and pray for the abyss of slumber.

No sooner does the mercy of sleep overtake me that I am haunted by the same dream that has appeared again and again since I landed in prison. In the dream I am a small boy, bracing myself between my father’s knees and reaching my hand high above my head for the oar. From our post on the aft deck of the gondola, I feel my father propel the boat forward, the wind in our faces. The muscles of his thighs tighten and release as he rows, right leg forward, left leg back. I feel the polished wood of the oar slip in my palms as it works hard at the beginning then becomes effortless as the craft gains speed. When the waves chop in the widest part of the canal and the boat bucks, I let go of the oar with my left hand and squeeze my father’s thigh. Even though I lead with my left hand, from my father’s rhythmic rowing I intuit how to push with my right. He places his right hand over my small one, and I feel the callouses on his palm as he presses my hand to steer the boat.

I awake with a start, drenched in sweat. My linen shirt sticks to my back and turns the wooden planks under my body dark. I open my eyes to see the shiny, reflective eyes of Padia, his face just a finger’s length from my own. I peer into the bottomless pits of his dark irises and notice the ashy lines that streak his teeth.

“Grimaldi...” His rancid breath spreads across my face as he emits a long, slow hiss. “They have come for you.”

THE SOUND OF SCRAPING metal rouses me out of my stupor, and someone fumbles with the great lock of our cell. The door opens, and the figures of two hulking men fill the doorway. Unceremoniously, the men enter. Each man grasps me under each arm and thrusts me through the doorway of the cell.

I know that my punishment is near, and I feel an incongruous sense of relief as I accept my fate. The men drag me down a long hallway past a dozen cells. From them come a stream of catcalls, cursing, and cheering. I do not see their faces because my head hangs so low that I cannot see anything beyond my bound feet. I stumble forward in my shackles, barely able to keep pace with the long strides of the two guards.

At the end of the hallway, the larger bailiff steps forward to unlock a large wooden door, and we fumble up a short flight of stone stairs. Then, the two, each with a hand under my arms, cast me forward with all their might. I feel myself airborne for a moment, then I crash onto the pavement, my shackles rattling on the great cobblestones outside the prison. My cheek scrapes against their cold, hard dampness. Stark sunlight blinds me, and all I see are the hulking shadows of the men against the white light.

“What in God’s name?” I gasp, incredulously.

“You got a second witness—your pass out of here. Now disappear.”

One of the bailiffs pushes me roughly onto my stomach and unlocks my ankle shackles with an iron key. The man spits a wad of saliva at me, then turns back to the prisons and locks the great wooden door behind him.

There is silence.

For a moment, I lie still, face down on the cold stones, stunned.

I turn my head to the side. As my eyes began to adjust to the light, a pair of leather shoes comes into focus within an arm’s reach of my nose. I scramble to a standing position as quickly as I can manage on shaky legs, which feel strangely uncontrollable after being freed from their shackles.

For the first time nearly a year, I find myself standing face to face with the oarmaker.