A week later, Arseny and Ambrogio boarded the ship Saint Mark. During that week, Brother Hugo was able, through the monastery prior, to solicit traveling papers for them from the Venetian doge, signor Giovanni Mocenigo. This letter had the purpose of protecting them throughout the Venetian Republic, which extended along both sides of the Adriatic Sea. Arseny and Ambrogio had to sell their horses during those same days. A long sea journey lay ahead and nobody knew how the animals might withstand it. Besides, transporting horses was not cheap.
Arseny and Ambrogio had orders to be on the ship by midnight. Brother Hugo saw them off to the dock. He left Venice the next day, too, and headed for Rome. The Franciscan brothers had given him another donkey, but he did not consider it a worthy replacement. After giving it a meticulous inspection and chucking it on the withers, Brother Hugo said:
This animal lacks real character and I fear it will not keep me humble.
Fear not, Brother Hugo, replied the Franciscans. Leave your worries behind, for this animal will keep you humble. He has an attitude, and that explains, to a certain degree, our desire to part with him.
Wishing as he did to help Arseny and Ambrogio bring their luggage to the dock, Brother Hugo loaded their bags on his new donkey. Essentially, the load was not that large but the donkey did not want to carry even that. He angrily bucked the whole way, trying to throw off the leather bags that had been tossed over the saddle. He rubbed the bags against walls and caught them on the stirrups of horsemen riding past. Brother Hugo calmed a bit when he saw that. He realized he still had a chance of being kept humble.
Brother Hugo embraced the sea travelers at the dock. He wept and said:
Sometimes you wonder if it is worth getting attached to people if it will be this difficult to part with them later.
Arseny slapped Brother Hugo on the back as he embraced him:
You know, O friend, any meeting is surely more than parting. There is emptiness before meeting someone, just nothing, but there is no longer emptiness after parting. After having met someone once, it is impossible to part completely. A person remains in the memory, as a part of the memory. The person created that part and that part lives, sometimes coming into contact with its creator. Otherwise, how would we sense those dear to us from a distance?
After boarding, Arseny and Ambrogio asked Brother Hugo not to wait for them on the dock, since nobody knew exactly when the vessel would set sail. The Franciscan nodded but did not leave. In the weak lights of the ship, it was not immediately obvious that the rope kept pulling in Brother Hugo’s hands or that the donkey resisted desperately because he did not want to leave the dock. The animal observed the embarkation of 120 infantrymen the Venetian doge was sending for service in Crete. They arrived in full uniform and the women accompanying them were doubly sad to let them go when they were looking so smart. This, thought the women, is the first time we have seen them like this. And perhaps the last, too.
The vessel raised anchor at four o’clock in the morning, just before dawn. It slowly left port; the contours of San Marco’s Basilica could already be divined against the backdrop of a brightening sky. Even as all the other travelers slept below in hammocks, Arseny did not leave the deck for several hours. He listened with delight to the mast creaking and the sails flapping: this was the sweet music of wayfaring. Arseny observed as the water gradually turned from black to pink and from pink to emerald.
It seemed to Arseny that—compared to the water he had seen previously in his life—sea water was a liquid with a completely different composition. He tasted the salinity of the waves’ spray when he licked it off his hands. Seawater was another color, and it smelled different and even behaved in another way. It did not have fine river ripples. It varied from river and even lake water as much as a crane varies from a sparrow. In reaching that comparison, Arseny did not mean to imply size so much as the character of the respective motions. Seawater rolled in large billows and its motions were grand and smooth.
The ship’s captain, a puffy man with large lips, approached Arseny when he saw his interest in seawater. The captain had heard Arseny’s conversation with Brother Hugo and so began speaking with him in German:
Sea and river water are two different elements. I would never agree to do this work on fresh water, signor.
Arseny lowered his head as a sign of respect for the captain’s point of view. Drawn by the discussion of water, two pilgrims from Brandenburg drew closer to Arseny and the captain.
It is completely obvious, the captain was continuing, that fresh water is weaker than salt water. If anyone doubts that, then let them explain to me why, for example, seawater is capable of pushing back a powerful flow of fresh water, like the Seine in Rouen, and forcing it to flow in the reverse direction for three days.
It is possible, said pilgrim Wilhelm, that fresh water thinks salt water is disgusting and so retreats when faced with it.
But I think, objected pilgrim Friedrich, that a river expresses its deference to its father—the sea—by yielding the road to it. And when the tide begins to go out, the river follows him just as deferentially.
In speaking of fatherhood, are you, foreigner, presuming there is a kinship between such differing elements? asked the surprised captain.
Of course, said pilgrim Friedrich. After all, the sea is the source of all rivers and springs, just as the Lord Jesus Christ is the source of all virtue and knowledge. Do not all pure aspirations, every last one of them, stream from one and the same source? And just as spiritual streams rush to their source, all waters return to the sea.
What do you think about the circumrotation of waters? pilgrim Wilhelm asked Arseny.
Our earth is reminiscent of the human body, replied Arseny, with canals running all through the inside, just as blood vessels run through the body. No matter where a person starts to dig up the earth, he will certainly strike water. That is what my grandfather Christofer said, and he felt water under the earth.
I had two grandfathers but never saw either one, sighed the captain. Both were sailors and both drowned.
Everyone was quiet for a while after the captain said that.
The flow of fresh water into salt water, the pilgrim Friedrich softly said, is something I liken to how the sweetness of this earth ends up turning to salt and bitterness.
A day and a half after setting sail from Venice, the Saint Mark had crossed the Adriatic Sea and cast anchor a quarter-mile from the city of Parenzo. Cliffs prevented approaching the city any closer, but there was no possibility of moving further anyway: the sea was dead calm. Numerous travelers were on deck.