Avoiding Italy because they had nothing to sell, and because there were more customs vessels on that side, they kept in sight of the limestone windings of the Adriatic coast, which were already bright with vineyards, grey with olive trees and green with palms; it was almost as if Cirtovich intended to trade there as usual, but they passed Spaleto, Ragusa, Zadar and Rijeka, sailing close-hauled to the wind. The sky was yellow. There was a tiny islet in the channel between Maun and Pag off which a certain chest had been sunk; their captain had once promised that its contents belonged to all of them, and now they demanded it. — Straight on, he told the helmsman, and now they were already level with Škrda. Embittered, they whispered for the first time of murdering him, but even now feared his luck, being uncertain whether it could not flare back after this waning. And the weather was so strange; the bora failed to blow. Two swabbies muttered when he set them to oiling the strakes, and he nearly punished them, but no blood for violence remained in him, and he could not have said why because he no longer understood himself, if indeed he ever had. They could have had their chest, for all he cared; merely for his own safety had he denied it to them, since they had asked so insolently, with their eyes like candles. They all disgusted him; when had they ever dreamed anything worthwhile? Once he had studied such men, and quickly mastered the study; perhaps if he had repeated the course he might have learned something new to distract himself, such as, how can men live rightly and perhaps even happily without seeking but the merest perpetuation of life? Or would this study merely have ruined him further? Curiously ashamed, as if blood marked the leech of their foresail, they sailed west by northwest, then northwest until they gained Pula to the starboard. And so they drew into the Golfo di Trieste, or, as he called it when he was young, the Tržaški zaliv. To him it all seemed dark and dirty, as if sky, sea and land alike had been smeared with lead. In his mouth dwelled a poisonous taste.
The Lazar came in on one of those calm days when the harbor was blue almost like Egyptian faience, and for a moment he imagined how lonely it used to be outside the walls of Trieste — a century ago, that was; now the walls were all muddled. It was near about Easter when they shortened sail. Seaweed fouled their ground tackle, and the canvas needed cutching. The mariners’ families stood silhouetted on the Ponterosso, waiting for their men. Jovo Cirtovich longed for the old marble font he had installed in his garden, and for that quiet daughter of his, so meek and obedient toward her mother, so understanding of him. But when she’d peeped into his weary eyes, how would she feel? Better, perhaps, if he never came home! Doubtless Marija would be disappointed, since he’d failed to make them any richer—
Anchoring among the ranks of high-masted ships outside the Canal Grande, he set the crew to transferring the seal-hides and certain other items, I suspect of a contraband nature, to a Venetian vessel whose captain he knew, then posted a light guard, led his sailors ashore and paid them off; as you might imagine, they were more perplexed than satisfied. In every tavern spread the news that he had grown unlucky. It was good that Vasojevic had not married; no one dependent would be impoverished by his death. But where was Petar? Why were his sons and brothers all absent? Cirtovich feared that some evil had befallen his house. Or had they somehow learned of his doings, and so forsaken him? But Tanyotchka would never do that, nor even Marija, no matter that she regarded him with the sad eyes of a silver deer; it wasn’t as if he’d abjured God! By now he shrank from everybody, believing that they recoiled from him. And so, as if fearing that misfortune might sniff him out, he passed the night alone in his countinghouse, locked in, sleepless, lighting no lamp; but a sharp-eyed busybody who spied into the upstairs windows late that night (for instance, Luca Morelli) might have seen the palest flicker behind the shutter: Cirtovich was burning a candle to Saint George, and another to Prince Lazar, with his eyes lowered over the ducats which his hands were counting: yes, still enough for Marija, Tanya and the rest if they grew more careful. All the same, he’d now return to importing Ragusan salt into Serbia and gold and silver threads from Constantinople. This had brought good money when he was young. He pulled off his sheepskin stockings; he opened his shirt. He groped at his throat, then remembered that he had no dark-glass anymore. Once upon a time he had gone adventuring into the private courtyards of Mostar and Sarajevo where the rich Turks raised roses and lovely young women. Now it was eerie enough merely to come home. Why had he avoided the Orthodox church, which was almost directly across the canal? He’d always been a wise avoider of law-courts, but never before had he declined an opportunity to whisper to his saints. Some years ago Vasojevic had ceased attending services except for high masses, because the main candelabrum hung as straight in the darkness as one of those squids who dangle their arms in a tight vertical cluster as they troll. Cirtovich had never been thus affected. But at every loud sea-swish he flinched nowadays. He sat over his ledgers and invoices, discovering that Massimo had as usual left receipts lying all in a muddle like a rotten heap of cast-off sails, that the Beograd was in late from Bergen and that the Cincar traders had overcharged him for wool. Nothing had altered; he could have been silently awaiting delivery of some new folio. Unlocking his secret coffers, he found untouched his separate bags of money, each ready for expected and unexpected deposits. He remembered a spring afternoon thirteen years ago now when he had stood inside the cathedral with Marija and the children, the many votive candles burning on their iron tree, and he raised baby Tanyotchka in his arms; she stretched out her hand at the rose-window, which glowed with rain-light like a chambered nautilus. Just last spring, for Saint Lazar’s Day, he had endowed the church with thirty-one thousand five hundred florins; even the Vojnoviches had been impressed.
And once again his thoughts turned and turned round the bygone enigma of his father, which had sunk so far down into the darkness of years that he could scarce glimpse something twirling, like a weighted corpse going feetfirst under the sea; he felt desolate at its going, and yet horrified at the thought that he might see it again.
At dawn he came out, half expecting to see arrayed against him the crosses of black tar which certain Serbs paint upon their doors, to keep away vampires. But the piazza was free of these. On the horizon a twin-masted Austrian warship, evidently of Venetian make, was shortening sail. He saw in the doorway of the “Heaven’s Key” an unknown Triestina, fifteen or sixteen years of age, with the small firm breasts of a Maenad on a Greek vase; she stood sweeping, and behind her, drunk, his old enemy Captain Robert. Not long prior to this latest voyage, Vasojevic had proposed to open up the fellow with a bronze-winged harpoon. But Jovo Cirtovich had always hoped to interpose smoothness between himself and brutality. And so he trod the blood-red iron of the Ponterosso, with ships groaning and ropes hissing on either side, again avoiding the church; he could have hired a coach; he scarcely knew why he continued on foot; it was as if something wicked might see him and follow him home if he rode too high. Of course everyone did know this bowed old man, no matter how he hid his head or hastened away.