If they live and thrive, children must grow, just as surely as fig-roots will split the old stone walls of Trieste; thus Tanya bloomed up out of what she had imagined that she understood. Of course one only grows up so far; Tanya would never comprehend, as we can for her, that her entire life remained confined within those sad days before Serbia finally cast off the Turks — which were also the good days when the Ponterosso could still swivel open for the ships; yes, they were the young days of Trieste before Our Lady of the Flowers had blood on her forehead; those were the days of Tanya, who could still remember her mother carrying her inside the cathedral and along that awful glistening space where God could see her, then entering beneath the canopy, crossing herself, kissing the center icon, crossing herself and kissing the rightmost one, then repeating with the leftmost; now that she was grown, she understood that God could see her wherever she hid. Her perception of other matters grew meanwhile. She realized that her parents were not happy together. At least they were not poor. She took joy and comfort in the good sound of ducats pouring out onto the table whenever her father came home.
When an old Florentine lady with snow-white braids and a sea-tanned face knocked on their gate in hope of alms, her father, peering through the tiny window, told Srdjana not to admit her. — But, master, we have some slops… — Foolish woman, can’t you smell the plague on her? — A week later some neighbors were dead from the pest. — This too gave her comfort of a sort; her father could protect her.
Like her brothers, she learned to communicate in the runic bone-scratching of the old Lingua Venetica, but she had no one to trade messages with; her sisters being ignorant, and her mother, even admitting the inconsiderable possibility of her literacy in that language, lacking the time for nonsense. So Tanya began to memorize swatches of the Gospels, in order to recite them in church. Just before her First Communion she proved her knowledge, and the priest said, not entirely approvingly (not that her father cared what he thought), that he had never heard of so learned a girl.
Smiling sadly, her mother presented her with a necklace of silver coins on a golden chain; every coin bore the same profiled portrait of an unknown king. Tanyotchka’s hopes became as rich as the ivy on the walls.
Whenever her father and Captain Vasojevic went out, murmuring together, Tanyotchka, peeping out between the curtains of the highest window, saw other men grow as open-eyed as the painted saints of the Trecento period. This made her all the more inclined to remain indoors like her mother and sisters, especially since she had learned how to help her father balance his accounts. Occasionally now that she was older she was permitted to accompany Srdjana to the market by the Ponterosso; her mother rarely went. There Tanya discovered how poor most people are. She dreaded becoming a beggar. This she never dared to confess to her father, for what if this would insult him who was undefeatable? So, like all of us, she continued to bind and conceal her thoughts, sharpening her deductions the more. The way that her mother turned her back now when she found Tanya studying astronomy, the way her sisters so often wove and spun her share without complaint, and that steady sad alertness with which her father gazed at her, all proved again that some task would be laid on her. Whatever it was, she prayed it would relieve her father. Since he stood so superior to all fears, she now commenced to wonder whether that look of misery might derive from the body; for of course even he was mortal. But this thought she uprooted wherever it sprouted. Was it reassuring or the reverse that her father’s friend now seemed likewise weighed down? She could remember when Captain Vasojevic had been cheerfuller, which is to say not merely younger but more like unto other men. When she was much smaller, he scarcely came around. But once he had achieved her father’s confidence, with which their common nationality had much to do, he began to stay for supper, or at times overnight; and as the household warmed to him, he might occasionally chuck the nearest daughter under the chin, and with gruff shyness present her with some small and peculiar thing of appropriately moderate commercial value: a copper coin engraved with a pretty mermaid, a medallion of Prince Lazar, or a set of tiny animal-headed trade-weights picked out of some shipwreck or marketplace. By the time that Tanyotchka was twelve or thirteen, of course, such physical familiarities were out of the question, and he contented himself with bowing to her, or at most kissing her hand, before he gave her any pretty trifle.
Her mother used to wonder why he never married. Here she exposed an almost comical blindness, for it was into his hands that that Cincar wax trader had conveyed her so many years ago. Leading her into a private cabin, in company with her maidservant, Vasojevic promised the two women that they would be secure, and offered them whichever refreshments or conveniences they might wish. Reassured by the portrait of Prince Lazar, the maidservant removed her veil first. Her beauty was such that it superseded one of Vasojevic’s most beloved memories, which derived from a window-glimpse he had once obtained in Sarajevo of a woman, evidently Turkish, of immense elegance, who, it being winter, was wrapped in a sable coat whose soft hues were a rainbow of coffee, honey and milk, with sweet black shadows which matched her own black hair. Although he had as yet taken in no more of her than her outline, Vasojevic was already stricken. A ring lived on every one of her pale fingers, which ceaselessly stroked one another for warmth. The rest of her, however, remained perfectly still. She leaned forward, resting her fur-sleeved arms on her fur-sheltered knees, staring far away in boredom or sadness. After half an hour she lit a long pipe, which she then allowed to suffocate between her fingers. Then after another long pause she turned her head in his direction. Perhaps she had not realized that he was watching her. He saw a pale face, with dark, generous yet cruel lips. The longer he looked, the more she fascinated him. Her eyelashes upcurled, almost supplicatingly. She held a tiny black leather pouch which gleamed scratchlessly. Her hair was parted across her face, transforming her white forehead into a pagoda roof. She had a triangular chin. He thought her the most irresistible lady he had ever seen. Her long hair accompanied her throat down into the hot darkness of her fur collar. Her expression never changed. A slave rushed to shutter the window.
As she was to all other women he had seen before, so was the maidservant of his master’s bride to her, and thus the mistress to the maidservant. Bowing, Vasojevic asked them to send to him for anything they needed. Then he left them there, with a sailor outside the door to protect them, and that was how it went, all the way to Trieste.
Had her father seen fit to wed him to one of the many Cirtovich belles, no one in the family would have minded, in spite of the disparity in age; perhaps her mother had even once suspected some interest on his part, Tanyotchka being most definitely his favorite, for although she had not entirely achieved her mother’s former beauty, her heart was kinder, her intellect was as great as her father’s, and her eyes expressed such beautiful awareness, almost like the Virgin Marija herself; all the same, Vasojevic never came anywhere near marriage. Whenever he entered the Sultan’s dominions he made do with leering slave-girls playing peekaboo behind their fans, flashing their bangles, whistling, snapping their fingers and singing obscene songs in charming voices. Now that he was in on his master’s secret, he got a cash allowance for such sports. He paid with a silver coin issued by the ancient city of Panemuteichus, or with last year’s ducats; to the Turks it was all the same, for they knew how to weigh money as well as Jovo Cirtovich. Sometimes Vasojevic used to ask after a particular Aida, whom he never found; of late he had given that up. A certain Gypsy-looking girl, nicely laced into her pastel-colored corset, wriggled her gold hoop-earrings at him and leaped on him with the alacrity of a hungry corpse. The other women sprawled sniggering over the bowl of grapes they fed into each other’s mouths. Vasojevic did not care. Knowing what he did, he wished for neither wife nor children.