Mensch knew that he would eventually give the man money because there was no alternative, and the visitor knew he would eventually receive money even in the unlikely event that Signor Bragadin failed to send him the gold he had pleaded for in such convincing literary manner. “Mensch will give me money,” he had thought even in the Leads when he was planning the details of his escape, when the name itself had been enough to rouse his imagination, so that he could almost see him, as in a vision; and now that he stood face to face with the usurer he noted with satisfaction that the vision was pretty close to the truth, that reality did not disappoint him. It was this same mysterious instinct that had whispered to him that Mensch, whose name he had heard but once from a Dutch trader in raw cloth, would be a proper adversary and an appropriate business partner, that their fates were linked, and that, one day, he would have to appear before him, and that however Mensch might snigger and squeal, he would do him no real harm. Here’s his address, people said, there you are, take it down; but what value did an address have? What did it mean?… A great deal, as he well knew: an address was practically a person, an event, an action, you only had to breathe on it, warm it, bring it to life with the breath of imagination and desire, and the address would tentatively assume independent existence, become a reality, and finally take a form that, however it ground its teeth, would eventually hand over the money. He knew of such addresses in Lyon, in Paris, in Vienna, and in Manchester, too. Such addresses were passed on by oral tradition, like the legends that animate a nation’s life: in Naples, for instance, there lived a moneylender to whom all you had to say was, “May Charon come knocking for you!” and he’d immediately begin to weep and agree to the deal. So he regarded Mensch calmly, marveling only that reality and fantasy could so completely agree: he was so calm that the calm was verging on tenderness. And Mensch looked at him in the same way, blinking and blinking in the frightening yet exciting con- sciousness that fate had brought this man to him.
So Mensch finally gave him some money — not a lot, but just enough to cut a proper figure in Bolzano, where, Giacomo felt, his audience must be waiting impatiently for him to appear. Mensch gave him thirty ducats, which he counted out in gold at the lacquered table, his hands trembling with astonishment, without ring or forfeit, as advance against nothing more than a piece of paper assuring him of the credit of Signor Bragadin, a gentleman who might have lived on the moon as far as he was concerned, or at least a considerable distance off, as did all money that did not actually lie on the table in front of him. When he had wrapped the gold in parchment and handed it over he rose from the table, and bowing with the religious reverence of a high priest, ushered his guest to the door. He watched him for some time from the threshold until his customer disappeared in the fog.
The man to whom he had so trustingly advanced the money hastened down the twilit street while Mensch continued bowing and mumbling Italian, German, and French words under his breath. By now he was racing, practically running toward the lights of the main square. He arrived near the church just in time to see a carriage with two lackeys in the backseat holding torches. Behind the glass he caught sight of a pale face he recognized.
“Francesca!” he cried.
Suddenly it began to snow. He stood alone in the square, under the snow, as the carriage drove by him. He was stricken with the pain one always feels when desire becomes reality. Then he returned to The Stag, his hands clasped behind him, his head bowed, his body weighed down by his thoughts. He felt lonelier here and now than he had in the underworld, under the Leads.
The Consultation
That evening he sat in the restaurant of The Stag drinking mulled wine, waiting for the card party to arrive. They appeared cautiously: the chemist whom Balbi brought along, the dean who had visited Naples, a veteran actor, and an army officer who had deserted the day before at Bologna. They played for low stakes, going through the motions, getting to know one another. The chemist was caught cheating and was asked to leave. The soldier pursued the fat, foolish-looking man to the door and threw him out into the street where the snow was still falling. By midnight Giacomo was bored. He and Balbi went upstairs to his room where they lit candles and, with elbows propped on the table, set about marking the pack of cards he had bought that afternoon and which the engraver and printer had decorated with the legend STAMPATORI DE NAIBI immediately below an image of Death and The Hanged Man. The friar was surprisingly skilled at the work: they labored in silence, waxing the corners of the most important cards and using their nails to carve identifying symbols into the wax.
“Are you not worried this might get us into trouble?” asked the friar in passing, absorbed in his task.
“No,” he replied, holding an ace of diamonds up to the light and examining it through half-closed eyes before winking and painstakingly marking it. “What is there to be worried about? A gentleman is never worried.”
“A gentleman?” queried Balbi, sticking his tongue through his pursed lips, as he tended to do when expressing astonishment. “And which gentleman might that be?”
“I,” he said and touched the marked card gently with his fingertip. “Who else could I mean?” he stiffly remarked. “There are only two of us in the room, and it is certainly not you.”
“Do gentlemen cheat?” asked the friar and yawned.
“Of course,” he replied, throwing the cards away and stretching his limbs so his bones cracked. “It is very difficult to win otherwise. It is the nature of cards to be fickle. There are very few people who can win without the aid of some device. In any case,” he went on in a matter-of-fact voice, “everyone cheats. At Versailles the most respectable people cheat: even generals and priests.”
“Does the king cheat too?” asked Balbi, somewhat awestruck.
“No,” he answered solemnly. “He simply gets cross when he loses.”
They considered the nature of the king’s anger. Soon enough Giacomo was alone, and eventually he, too, sighed, yawned, and went to bed. For three days he continued in this deeply solitary fashion with only Balbi, Giuseppe, and little Teresa for company. He played faro with messenger boys and oil salesmen in the bar of The Stag, frequently winning, thanks to the waxed cards which certainly helped, though he occasionally lost because everyone else cheated at the time, especially in the taverns of London, Rome, Vienna, and Paris, where professional itinerant gamblers offered banque ouverte to all and sundry. He remembered one occasion when he had fought a Greek whose remarkable dexterity enabled him to produce ace after ace from his sleeve, but he felt no anger at the time, it was only to keep in practice.
He didn’t see Francesca nor did he make any special effort to look for her just yet.
It was as if life itself were slumbering in thin air below mountain peaks.
Then there came three days of raging winds when the windows of The Stag were plastered over in snow. The sky was thick with gray woolly clouds as dirty as the cotton in Mensch’s ears. The suits, the shirts, the coats, the shoes, the white silk Venetian mask, the walking stick, and the lorgnette were delivered, and he had a coat for Balbi too, if only for the sake of cleanliness and respectability, because the friar was running round town in a robe that might have been worn by a corpse freshly cut down at a public hanging. But most of the time he just sat in his room alone in front of the fire, in the apathetic, melancholy frame of mind that, despite a lively curiosity and an acquaintance with music, action, lights, and the thrill of the chase, he, of all people, had been ever more frequently afflicted by these last few years. It was as if everything he had planned and dreamed about in jail — life, pleasure, and entertainment — now that he was back in the world and had only to stretch out his hand to grab it, had lost something of its attraction. He was seriously considering returning to Rome, going down on his knees to his generous friend, the cardinal, and asking for forgiveness: he would beg to join the priesthood or plead for a position as a librarian in the papal offices. He thought of towns where nothing awaited him but inns, cold beds, women’s arms from which he would sleepily have to disentangle himself, the corridors of theaters where he’d hang about and tell lies, and salons and bars where his carefully prepared cards might provide him with a modest haul of gold: he thought of all this and yawned. He was acquainted with this mood of his and was afraid of it. “It’ll end in flight and a bloody nose,” he thought and drew together the nightgown covering his chest because he was shivering. This condition had begun in childhood and it was accompanied by a fear and disgust that, without warning, would suddenly come over him and end in nosebleeds that only Nonna, his strong, virtuous grandmother, could cure with herbs and lint. He thought of Nonna a lot these days, never of his mother or his siblings, but of this strong woman who had brought up three generations in Venice and had been particularly fond of Giacomo; she kept appearing in his sad and somewhat disturbing dreams. Nonna used to place an icy piece of lint on his neck and cook him beetroots because she believed that beetroots were effective against all sorts of bleeding, and eventually both the bleeding and the sadness would pass away. “Nonna!” he thought now, with an intense yearning that was keener than anything he had felt for other women.