The Lion of Venice. Mark Frutkin
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Название: The Lion of Venice
Автор: Mark Frutkin
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Контркультура
isbn: 9781459716803
isbn:
A flourish of long silver horns sounded as the doors of the Church of San Marco swung wide and out marched, in a fog of incense, sixteen standard-bearers carrying double-pointed banners bearing the image of the winged lion. The wind coming off the lagoon whipped the flags on the square and a spontaneous cheer went through the crowd in the piazza to be joined by those from hundreds of boats crowding the lagoon. Marco and Giorgio held their ears. The lions seemed alive, leaping and flying in unison high above the voices, claiming for Venice not only the land and sea, but the sky itself.
Heralds, musicians and young pages were followed by a phalanx of squires in puffed sleeves and round hats. Canons in long robes, a boy with a crucifix and finally the Patriarch of Venice, the city's highest clergyman, ushered ceremoniously from the doors of the Church. These were pursued by three young boys, ballotini, bearing the Doge's pillow, his chair and his hat. And, finally the Doge himself appeared, the majestic Serenissima, wearing a white Phrygian cap, and an official mantle draped over his shoulders. He was an ordinary man, an old man, and his nose was too long. But Marco soon forgot his surprise when the men in the crowd doffed their round hats and bowed as the Doge passed before them. The long line of the parade snaked about the piazza as the people cheered and whooped, “Viva San Marco! Viva San Marco!”
With a shout, the parade of guilds started across the piazza to present themselves to the Doge, now taking his seat in front of the palace: dyers, sailmakers, tanners, clothing makers (dressed in gold), barber-surgeons (in circlets of pearls), the pattenori who worked in horn or ivory, apothecaries and spicers, charcoal makers, furriers (in robes of ermine and squirrel), pepperers, perfumers, glovers and glassmakers.
As the guild of masons passed Giorgio saw his father and shouted, “Papa! Papa!” so that his father came over to the boy, lifted him up on his shoulders and continued along with the parade.
For the next week, Marco could hear the racket of the festival far into the nights and, in the mornings, when he ran out into the square to meet Giorgio, the singing and music and dancing was starting up again. The celebrants ate mountains of food, pipes and lutes echoed from every quarter, wine ran in the gutters and spilled into the canals.
Yesterday I sat by the waters of the lagoon, my feet dangling over the side and I heard behind me, half a league away, the failing breath of my mother in her sick bed. Now I eat so my chewing drowns out the rasp of her breath. I spoon more fish, more rice into my mouth because the sound of her breath makes me want to weep, to run away, to escape.
I hear also the cut of the ships at sea, the spring caravan, returning from Byzantium.
Something is happening to me. I think my mother is dying and as she does so, my hearing reaches further and further into the distance. A sudden vast silence opens up and my mother's breath, a rattle of stones, echoes into it, and I hear voices whispering from distant rooms, crows complaining on islands over the lagoons, winds gathering across the sea.
My mother always said I had ears like fungi. She would nibble on them whispering, “Ears like crushed jewels, found under the earth or brought up from the bottom of the sea.”
But now sounds, surrounded by an empty silence, fall into them as a cataract pours from cliffs into the waves.
Last night I thought I heard my father's voice (how would I remember?) from some lost place across the world. He was still alive, still alive. I heard him.
“I heard him, Momma. I heard his voice. He's coming back to us, Momma.”
I felt her weak hand lift mine to her cheek and she smiled at me and nodded.
My mother is dying. And my father is worlds away, trying to get back to us– and I hear it all so clearly.
Marco went to his mother's room but his aunt turned him away at the door. As he left he heard music drifting in a window at the end of the hall, from a distant church or priory, the ever diminishing strains of a choir's failing diminuendo, rallentando, smorzando.…
The days go by in a dark dream. Then weeks. Then months. Spring washes in and passes. The summer burns on. I am forgetting.
Since long before I was born, Gesualdo was the oldest, most revered servant in our household. As a child, I would see him shuffling through the halls, his hair and face the colour of ashes, his fingers frightening and thin as the bones of finches. But his voice was a delight, a melodious flow pouring out of him as he hummed ancient songs, his voice a kind of mill-wheel to keep him shuffling along.
If the truth be told, old Gesualdo had done little in his later years to justify his title as servant– fetching a few jugs of water at dawn, emptying a few pails at dusk. The rest of his day was given over to rest and tireless flirting with the young servant girls who flitted about the enormous kitchen where he sat on a wooden stool in a corner near the ovens.
From his stool Gesualdo called to young Marco, in a voice still clear, his throat like the glass reed of the glassblower. Ever since Marco had been old enough to understand, Gesualdo had told him stories.
Gesualdo caressed Marco's cheek. “Soon you will be a man, Marco. How many years have you now? Twelve?”
“I have but ten. Ten I turned, two days ago.”
Gesualdo waved away a middle-aged woman servant hovering behind the boy. “I want you to have this.” He handed a small wooden box with a sliding lid to Marco. “Take it.”
The boy held the box in the palm of his left hand and stared at it.
“Si, si. Open it.”
He did so to reveal a palmful of rich soil, slightly damp, the colour of Marco's dark eyes.
“Smell it. Take some between your fingers and sniff it.”
Marco did as instructed, dipping his thumb and index finger into the box, taking up a pinch of earth and bringing it to his nostrils. A sweet, dusty, distant green perfume with a suggestion of resin blew through him.
“Where did it come from, this soil?”
“I will tell you. When I was a young man, it fell upon me to climb to the top of the column holding the great winged Lion in the piazza, there to remove the soil and weeds that had accumulated over the years under the Lion's belly and about its paws. With each step my fear rose as I ascended the rickety ladder. My heart resounded in my ears like a drum– I was sure I would tumble to my death. At the foot of the ladder my master was passing the day with one of the Doge's councillors. If I had come down from the ladder without completing my task, my master would have been sorely embarrassed. Dio mio, he would certainly have thrashed me, or worse. I forced myself up, a step at a time, growing dizzier with each moment. My master shouted up to me to move along, asking why I climbed so slowly and calling me a laggard. I was bit by his anger and forced my legs to lift one after the other. But, in truth, I also feared that huge shadow of the beast over my head, blotting out the sun. Sweat dampened my palms, low groans escaped my throat. I slapped my forehead– and continued up. Finally, by God's grace, I reached the end of the ladder, my eyes level with the weeds at the top of СКАЧАТЬ