So he stayed in town, that foreign, somewhat alien town, even after Signor Bragadin had sent the requested gold, along with a wise and virtuous letter full of noble, practical advice that was perfectly impossible to follow. Mensch was delighted that Signor Bragadin had obliged, and enthusiastically counted out the money with trembling, assured fingers, using a blend of German, French, and Italian expressions, separating interest and capital, with much mention of the terms “credit” and “security.” Signor Bragadin had in fact sent more money than his adopted son had asked for, not a lot more, just a little extra to show that an official loan was being topped up by the affections of the heart. “A noble heart,” thought the moved fugitive, and Mensch nodded: “A sound name! Fine gold!” As to Signor Bragadin’s letter, it contained all that a lonely, aged man could or might say while exploring such unconventional feelings, for all feeling is a form of exploration, and Signor Bragadin knew that this relationship would do nothing to enhance his whiter-than-white reputation and spotless respectability. No gossip or suspicion dared attach itself to the senator’s name but, when it came down to it, how far would Venice understand the deep morality underlying his affection? An ordinary Venetian would wonder whether this feeling, even in such irreproachable form, were all it seemed to be, and would not understand why a nobleman, a senator of Venice no less, should squander the affections of his old and none too healthy heart on a notorious playboy. “Why should he?” asked the Venetian public, and the more vulgar of them put their hands to their mouth, gave a wink, and whispered, “What’s in it for him?” But Signor Bragadin’s knowledge was deeper than theirs: he knew humanity’s most painful obligation is not to be ashamed of true feeling even when it is wasted on unworthy subjects. And so he sent money, more than his fugitive friend had requested, and wrote his long, wise letter. “You have made a new start in life, dear son,” he wrote in firm, angular characters, “and you will not be returning to your birthplace for some time. Think of your home with affection.” He wrote a great deal on the subject of his homeland, a page and a half. He advised Giacomo to forgive his birthplace because, in some mysterious way, one’s birthplace was always right. And a fugitive, more than anyone, especially he, who was now to be swept to the four corners of the world, should continually reflect on the fact that his birthplace remained his birthplace in perpetuity, even when it was in error. He wrote gracefully, with the certainty that only very old people with highly refined feelings can write, people who are fully aware of the meaning of every word they use, who know that it is impossible to escape our memories and that it is pointless hoping that we might pass our experiences on to others; who realize that we live alone, make mistakes alone, and die alone, and that whatever advice or wisdom we get from others is of little use. He wrote about his birthplace as he might of a relative who was part tyrant and part fairy godmother, stressing that, whatever the strains, we should never break off relations with our family. Then he wrote about money and, much more briefly and practically, about a friend in Munich who was prepared to help a traveler at certain times, up to certain amounts; he wrote of the Inquisition which was greater than the great ones of the world, or as he put it, how the “powers of Church and State were fully united in the hands of the leaders of this incomparable institution.” But he had to write this, for as the addressee recognized, a sentence to this effect could not be omitted from any Venetian letter, for even the letters of Signor Bragadin were open to the inspection of the messer grande. Then he gave his blessing for the journey, and for life itself, which he said was an adventure. Giacomo read the letter twice then tore it up and threw it on the fire. He took Mensch’s gold pieces and could have set out for Munich or elsewhere immediately. But he didn’t. It was his fifth day in Bolzano and he had got to know everyone, including the captain of police, who called on him to ask most courteously how long he intended remaining in town. He avoided answering and cursed the place after the official left. He paid off debts and gambled away the rest in the bar of The Stag and in the private apartments of the chemist whom they had earlier ejected from The Stag but who was now hosting sessions of faro at home. Without money, and with the address of Signor Bragadin’s acquaintance in Munich in his pocket, he had every reason for moving on. But now that he had paid the innkeeper and the shops, had bought a present for Teresa, and offered a handsome tip to Giuseppe; now that the gold had allowed him a few moments of Venetian brilliance, he could afford to stay. He enjoyed credit, not only with Mensch, whom he had sought out again in the last few days, not just with the shops who had been paid off once, but with a more problematic company, the gamblers. An English gentleman — who, when he wasn’t gambling, was studying the geology of the surrounding mountains — accepted his IOU address in Paris. Given such losses and gains achieved by dint of experience and light fingers, having paid off old debts and piled up new ones, the natural ties of his new situation, based on interest and a general relaxation in his circumstances, slowly established themselves. Everyone was happy to extend credit to the stranger now because they knew him, because they recognized that the odds on him winning or losing were impossible to calculate: they accepted him because the town quickly got used to him and tolerated his presence behind its walls the way any man tolerates a degree of danger.
And is that why he stayed? No, it was because of Francesca, of course, and because the duke had said he’d like to see him. He waited for the call the way a peasant youth waits at the bar of his native village when someone challenges him. He stands there with his hands on his hips, as if to say: “Here I am, come and get me!” Giacomo struck the same attitude: he waited silently. What did he want of Francesca? Her very name was disturbing, full of the regret of unfinished business. He could of course have decamped, penniless, to Munich, where the elector of Saxony had just arrived and the weeks ahead promised splendor and amusement with pageantry, first-rate theater, Europe’s most brilliant gamblers, and mounds of snow. He could have left at any time, not sneaking off at night or when it was foggy, but in broad daylight, in a fancy carriage, his head held high, because he had paid his debts to innkeeper and shopkeeper at least once and because Mensch was still sufficiently under the spell of Signor Bragadin’s credit to service him. But instead of going, he stayed because he was waiting for a message from the duke. He knew the message would come eventually, that the palazzo guarded by the solemn Swiss guard with his silver-tipped staff would send for him. He understood that the lack of communication was itself part of a secret dialogue, that there was a purpose in his arrival in Bolzano, that he had things to do. So every day had a meaning: he was waiting for something to happen. Because to live is, in some respects, to wait.
One afternoon, when the main square was full of blue-gray shadows and the wind was hooting and screeching like an owl through the flues of the fireplaces in The Stag, he was sitting idly in the fireside chair, his skin covered in goose pimples, leafing through a volume of Boethius in his lap, when the door opened and Balbi stumbled in, waving his arms.