But the smile spread like influenza: the baker’s wife, the goldsmith’s sister, and the daughter of the doge all caught it. People in the privacy of their carefully locked rooms slapped their stomachs with delight and laughed fit to burst. There was something eerily consoling in the news that someone could spirit himself through walls a yard thick, past a set of vigilant guards wielding lances and pikes, and break the links of chains as fat as a child’s arm. Then they went off to their places of work, stood in the marketplace or the bar, sipping a little Veronese wine, and the usurers among them weighed out gold dust on delicately adjusted scales, the pharmacists brewed laxatives, love potions, and deadly poisons that could be ground to a fine powder and secreted in signet rings, women with ample bellies garnished low market stalls of fish, fruit, and raw meat with scented herbs, merchants of fashion items arranged newly delivered stockings from Lyon and bodices crocheted in Bruges, displaying them in calfskin boxes perfumed with potpourri, and what with all the work, the chatter, the trade, and the administration, everyone found a moment to raise hand to mouth and have a good snigger.
The women felt that the escape and all that followed may, to some degree, have served their interests. They couldn’t explain this feeling very precisely, but, being Venetian women, it was not for them to split hairs when it came to feelings, and they accepted the instinctive, half-whispered logic of heart and blood and passion. The women were glad that he had escaped. It was as if a long-shackled force contained by legends, proverbs, books, memories, dreams, and yearnings had found its way into the world at large, or as if the hidden, somewhat improper, yet terrifyingly true, alternative life of men and women had moved into the foreground, unmasked, without its powdered wig, as naked as a prisoner emerging from the solemn tête-à-tête of the torture chamber; and women glanced after him while raising hands or fans to cover mouths and eyes, their heads tipped a little to one side, without saying anything, though the veiled, misty eyes that peeked at the fugitive said, “Yes,” and again, “Yes.” That was why they smiled. And, for a few days, it seemed as though the world in which they lived overflowed with tenderness. In the evening they stopped by their windows and balconies, the lagoon below them, the lyre-shaped veils of fine lace fixed to their hair by means of a comb, their silk scarves thrown across their shoulders, and gazed down into the oily, dirty, indifferent water that supported the boats, returned a glance that they would not have returned the day before, and dropped a handkerchief that was caught far below, above the reflections in the water, by a lithe brown hand: then they raised a flower to their lips, and smiled. Having done so, they closed the window and the lights went out in the room. But there was something in their hearts and their movements, in the eyes of the women and in the glances of the men, that shone. It was as if someone had sent a secret signal to tell them that life was not simply a matter of rules, prohibitions, and chains, but of passions that were less rational, less directed, and freer than they had hitherto believed. And for a moment they understood the signal and smiled at each other.
The sense of complicity did not last long: the books of the law, with all their written and unwritten rules of behavior, ensured that their hearts should forget the memory of the escaped prisoner. Within a few weeks they had forgotten it in Venice. Only Signor Bragadin, his gentle and gracious supporter, still recalled it, and a few women to whom he had promised eternal fidelity, along with the odd moneylender or gambler to whom he owed money.
“A Man”
This is how he escaped, how the news preceded him, and how they remembered him, for a while at least, in Venice. But the town soon found something else to worry about and forgot its rebellious son. By the middle of the festival season everyone was talking about a certain Count B. whose body had been discovered — masked and wearing a domino cloak — hanging at dawn before the house of the French ambassador. Because, we should not forget, Venice is a cruel city.
But for now he slept, in Bolzano, in a room of The Stag Inn, behind closed shutters; and because this was the first time in sixteen months that he had slept in a properly secure, clean, and comfortable bed, he surrendered himself to the blissful underworld of dreams. He slept as if crucified, his head bathed in sweat, his legs and arms spread-eagled, lost in a passion of sleep, without a thought but with a tired and scornful smile playing on his lips, as if aware that he was being observed through the keyhole.
And indeed he was being observed, and this is how; first by Teresa, the girl the innkeeper referred to as his own child, who played the role of servant to distant relatives in the house. The girl was well developed and, according to relatives, of an even and pleasant temper, if a little simple. They tended not to speak about this. Teresa, relative and servant, did not say very much either. She is simple, they said, and gave no reasons for their opinion, since it was not thought worthwhile, indeed not fitting, to bother about her, for the girl counted for less in The Stag than did the white mule they harnessed each morning to drive to market. Teresa, to them, was a kind of phantom relative, a figure who in some ways belonged a little to everyone and was therefore not worth bothering about or even tipping. She is simple, they said, and traveling salesmen and temporarily billeted soldiers would pinch her cheeks and arms in the dark corridors. But there was a kind of gentleness in her face and something a little severe about her mouth; her hand, too, which was always red from washing, gave off a certain nobility, and a kind of question hung about her eyes, a quiet and devout sort of question, so that one could neither address it nor forget it. Despite all that, for all her heart-shaped face and questioning eyes, she was a person of no consequence. It was a shame to waste your breath on her.
But there she was now, kneeling by the keyhole and watching the sleeping man, which might well be the reason that we ourselves are wasting breath on her. She had raised her hands to her temples so she could see better, and even her gently sloping back and strong hips were wholly given over to the task: it was as if her whole body were glued to the keyhole. What she was seeing was, in fact, of no particular interest. Teresa had observed a good many things through keyholes: she had been serving at The Stag for four years, since she was twelve years old, had kept her mouth shut, taken breakfasts into rooms, and had regularly changed the beds in which strange men and women slept, some singly, some together. She had seen much and wondered at nothing. She understood that people were as they were: that women spent a long time before the mirror, that men — even soldiers — powdered their wigs, clipped and polished their nails, then grunted or laughed or wept or beat the wall with their fists; that sometimes they would bring forth a letter or an item of clothing and soak these indifferent objects with their tears. This is what people were like when they were alone in their rooms, observed through keyholes. But this man was different. He lay sleeping, his arms extended, as though he had been murdered. His face was serious and ugly. It was a masculine face, lacking beauty and grace, the nose large and fleshy, the lips narrow and severe, the chin sharp and forceful and the whole figure small-framed and a little tubby, for in sixteen months in jail, without air or exercise, he had put on some weight. I don’t understand it at all, thought Teresa. Her thoughts were slow, hesitant, and naïve. It’s beyond understanding, she thought, her ears reddening with excitement: what do women see in him? For all night in the bar and all morning in the market, everywhere in town, in shops and in taprooms, he was the sole topic of conversation: the way he arrived, in rags, without money, with that other jailbird, his secretary. Best not even mention his name. But mention it they did, and most frequently, both women and men, for they wanted to know everything about him, how old he was, whether blond or dark, the sound of his voice. They talked about him as they would have some famous visiting singer or strongman, or a great castrato actor who played women’s roles in the theater and sang. What is his secret? wondered the girl, and pushed her nose harder against the door and her eyes closer to the keyhole.