From the outset Captain Vasojevic served him faithfully; the fellow was as honest as Marija, as bravely dogged as a hajduk, as ready to liberate Serbia as Cirtovich himself, even if they must sail straight up into empty air! Impressed into serfdom on one of the immense Turkish farms, he had escaped only to see his youngest sister Aida hauled off to Abdul Bey’s harem. Unable to kill this Turk, he waylaid a wandering scholar from Travnik and cut his throat. Then he fled to Bar, and presently to Trieste. Perhaps what he and his master shared above all was the desire to tempt fate.
Mindful of Porphyry’s claim that Plotinus had achieved oneness with the Godhead four times, Vasojevic used to propose, in those days when the two of them still discussed a voyage to the Sphere of Fixed Stars, that they plumb the Enneads for the secret of celestial travel. Cirtovich knew Plotinus well enough, and believed him to be wanting in quantities and procedures: in short, no secret lay there. Besides, his destination had already begun to alter. What if Prince Lazar were not yet in heaven, but remained captive in some other realm? This would explain why he had not come back for these four centuries. The Sphere of Fixed Stars was known; one saw it every clear night. But since religion and even the best science of the Novum Organum failed to describe the treasure which his father had left him, thus his duty. So he studied death. Marija was in the storehouse counting bales of fiber. Massimo had brought him a case of plum brandy from the old country; once the Cincar traders were all paid off, he called Vasojevic up from the dock, locked the door, opened the first bottle, and they sat drinking toasts to Serbia, their dear home so blighted and lawless, while Cirtovich elucidated the qualities he read into Death the Huntsman, who must be as terrifying as had been his own father in anger; but Vasojevic, who in those first years remained naïve enough to eat fried squid without getting nauseated, could not yet comprehend him. Well, neither could anyone else. (A certain Captain Bijelic from Montenegro sometimes sailed to Trieste, where a merchant who purchased bales of tea from him inquired into the doings of Captain Cirtovich. — Bijelic said: He keeps to himself.)
Cirtovich began his tertiary researches with the fact that death cannot be said to be either cold or hot, liquid or solid; therefore it, like the soul, must not be embodied; and by means of certain more detailed proofs in this vein (the lemma conceded only by force, as it were), it grew apparent to Cirtovich that death is itself a spirit or active principle. Although the corollaries to this were unpleasant, he reminded himself that if the most precious thing is truth, then realities are treasures, never mind that they often seem to be excrements and bloody cinders. Sometimes he wanted no more than did Marija — a better life. Wasn’t that what she prayed for when her oval face shone gold in the cathedral torchlight? In truth, she brought gold light with her! She had wide dark eyes; the right was larger than the left. Her lips were rich red like the borders of icons. He never forgot how the whites of her eyes glowed in the dark church. When he lay down beside her, her eyes grew even larger, as if she were searching for something in him. But it was his fate to see a certain idea, his father’s, silhouetted every night. The enlargement of understanding, for which he possessed so high an aptitude, requires tranquillity, if it is to be more than a fighter’s ruthlessly expedient knowledge of good and evil — and Cirtovich’s peace was getting eaten away. Closing his eyes, he remembered the pine trees looking down on old walled towns.
Having buried his handful of Serbian earth in the garden, he now begot his children. Their Italian was better than his, of course. They were never morose as they might have been in Serbia. Indeed, they were active and optimistic. As for his daughters, each one veiled herself, as did her mother, like any good Serbkina in a city ruled by Turks. Without his knowing it he became ever more a man of Istria or at least Dalmatia, hoarding up islands in his mind. Thank God he had declined to be renowned for creeping through the mountains and stealing cows like some middling hajduk! He was going to be a savior. Before Tanya was born he had charted a plausible course. Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler had not, as the ignorant supposed, destroyed Ptolemaic cosmology. If anything, they had brought the Spheres within reach. The almost entirely uncentered earth (for only the Lunar Sphere revolved around it) conveniently intersected the Sphere of Jupiter at certain periods. This would facilitate the voyage. Praying to Saint Paul, who protects wine and wheat, he filled, then doubled his family granary. Wasn’t that the touch of proof? From this period he often recollected a certain autumn afternoon after his first wine-peddling voyage to Muscovy, Marija’s doves murmuring in the garden, Srdjana off to market, his wife sitting very still in that high-backed chair holding Nicola, who must have been less than two years old; he was clinging to his mother’s neck, peeking sidelong at his father. Suddenly the little boy stretched out his hand. He desired the mysterious thing which his father always wore around his neck. Marija watched huge-eyed and unsmiling. The child began to cry. Turning away, Jovo Cirtovich funded uskoks and befriended priests whose cassocks had secret pockets, his understanding harshening year by year, although not into what he would have termed dissatisfaction; he had not grown bitter like his brothers, whose dearest dream was to rip the Turks’ beards out and skin them like lambs. Hence his secret noble thoughts prepared him for knowledge rather than for hatred. Late at night he went to the garden, mapped stars and listened. He knew what he wanted, his ambition swinging brightly like a forecastle lantern in bad seas, and and although his good angel fixed its blue eye on him and opened its dark brown beak, he succeeded. — Oh, he’s as brave as a dragon! they said. — Moreover, it was known of him that unlike the Turks he never blinded or tortured anybody, even when on the trail of money. He was mostly kind to beggars. Even his competitors he treated with wary good humor, as if he were among the feathertopped masqueraders in a Venetian aquatic parade. — As for his face… well, such faces belong, for instance, to hardened adulterers who find themselves in difficulties — if they can only pull themselves out of this pit, in order to dive ravenously into the next, all will be well! — and so they gaze far away, clenching their lips in order not to get any more grave-dirt between their teeth; pressing their fists against their chests, they await the next pang of dread, grief or guilt.