I gave him a sour look. “You are jesting, old man.”
He shrugged. “One lightens the dark as best one can.”
We sat gloomy in the gloom for a while. Then I said, “You are in here for usury, are you not?”
“I am not. I am in here because a certain lady accused me of usury.”
“That is a coincidence. I am also in here—at least indirectly—because of a lady.”
“Well, I only said lady to indicate the gender. She is really”—he spat on the floor—“a shèquesa kàrove.”
“I do not understand your foreign words.”
“A gentile putana cagna,” he said, as if still spitting. “She begged a loan from me and pledged some love letters as security. When she could not pay, and I would not return the letters, she made sure I would not deliver them to anyone else.”
I shook my head sympathetically. “Yours is a sad case, but mine is more ironic. My lady begged a service from me and pledged herself as reward. The deed was done, but not by me. Nevertheless, here I am, rather differently rewarded, but my lady probably does not even know of it yet. Is that not ironic?”
“Hilarious.”
“Yes, Ilaria! Do you know the lady?”
“What?” He glared at me. “Your kàrove is named Ilaria, too?”
I glared at him. “How dare you call my lady a putana cagna?”
Then we ceased glaring at each other, and we sat down on the bed shelves and began comparing experiences, and alas, it became evident that we had both known the same Dona Ilaria. I told old Cartafilo my whole adventure, concluding:
“But you mentioned love letters. I never sent her any.”
He said, “I am sorry to be the one to tell you. They were not signed with your name.”
“Then she was in love with someone else all the time?”
“So it would seem.”
I muttered, “She seduced me only so I would play the bravo for her. I have been nothing but a dupe. I have been exceptionally stupid.”
“So it would seem.”
“And the one message that I did sign—the one the Signori now have—she must have slipped it into the snout. But why should she do that to me?”
“She has no further use for her bravo. Her husband is dead, her lover is available, you are but an encumbrance to be shed.”
“But I did not kill her husband!”
“So who did? Probably the lover. Do you expect her to denounce him, when she can offer you up instead and thereby keep him safe?” I had no answer to that. After a moment he asked, “Did you ever hear of the lamia?”
“Lamia? It means a witch.”
“Not exactly. The lamia can take the form of a very young witch, and very beautiful. She does that to entice young men to fall in love with her. When she has snared one, she makes love to him so voluptuously and industriously that he gets quite exhausted. And when he is limp and helpless, she eats him alive. It is only a myth, of course, but a curiously pervasive and persistent myth. I have encountered it in every country I have visited around the Mediterranean Sea. And I have traveled much. It is strange, how so many different peoples believe in the bloodthirstiness of beauty.”
I considered that, and said, “She did smile while she watched you flogged, old man.”
“I am not surprised. She will probably reach the very height of venereal excitement when she watches you go to the Meatmaker.”
“To the what?”
“That is what we old prison veterans call the executioner—the Meatmaker.”
I cried, distraught, “But I cannot be executed! I am innocent! I am of the Ene Aca! I should not even be shut up with a Jew!”
“Oh, excuse me, your lordship. It is that the bad light in here has dimmed my eyesight. I took you for a common prisoner in the pozzi of the Vulcano.”
“I am not common!”
“Excuse me again,” he said, and reached a hand across the space between our bed shelves. He plucked something off my tunic and regarded it closely. “Only a flea. A common flea.” He popped it between his fingernails. “It appeared as common as my own.”
I grumbled, “There is nothing wrong with your eyesight.”
“If you really are a noble, young Marco, you must do what all the noble prisoners do. Agitate for a better cell, a private one, with a window over the street or the water. Then you can let down a string, and send messages, or haul up delicacies of food. That is not supposed to be allowed, but in the case of nobility the rules are winked at.”
“You make it sound as if I will be here a long time.”
“No.” He sighed. “Probably not long.”
The import of that remark made my hair prickle. “I keep telling you, old fool. I am innocent!”
And that made him reply, just as loudly and indignantly, “Why tell me, unhappy mamzar? Tell it to the Signori della Notte! I am innocent, too, but here I sit and here I will rot!”
“Wait! I have an idea,” I said. “We are both here because of the Lady Ilaria’s wiles and lies. If together we tell that to the Signori, they ought to wonder about her veracity.”
Mordecai shook his head doubtfully. “Whom would they believe? She is the widow of an almost Doge. You are an accused murderer and I am a convicted usurer.”
“You may be right,” I said, dispirited. “It is unfortunate that you are a Jew.”
He fixed me with a not at all dim eye and said, “People are forever telling me that. Why do you?”
“Oh … only that the testimony of a Jew is naturally suspect.”
“So I have frequently noticed. I wonder why.”
“Well … you did kill our Lord Jesus … .”
He snorted and said, “I, indeed!” As if disgusted with me, he turned his back and stretched out on his shelf and drew his voluminous robe about him. He muttered to the wall, “I only spoke to the man … only two words …” and then apparently went to sleep.
When a long and dismal time had passed, and the door hole had darkened, the door was noisily unlocked and two guards crawled in dragging a large vat. Old Cartafilo stopped snoring and sat up eagerly. The guards gave him and me each a wooden shingle, onto which they spooned from the vat a lukewarm, glutinous glob. Then they left for us a feeble lamp, a bowl of fish oil in which a scrap of rag burned with much smoke and little light, and they went away and slammed the door. I looked dubiously at the food.
“Polenta gruel,” Mordecai told me, avidly scooping his up with two fingers. “A holòsh, but you had better eat it. Only meal of the day. You will get nothing else.”
“I am not hungry,” I said. “You may have mine.”
He almost snatched it, and ate both portions with much lip smacking. When he had done, he sat and sucked his teeth as if unwilling to miss a particle, and peered at me from under his fungus eyebrows, and finally said:
“What would you ordinarily be eating for supper?”
“Oh … perhaps a platter of tagiadèle with persuto … and a zabagiòn to drink …”
“Bongusto,” he said sardonically. “I cannot pretend to tempt such a refined taste, but perhaps you would like some of these.” He rummaged inside his robe. “The tolerant Venetian laws allow me some religious observance, even in prison.” I could not see how that accounted for the square white crackers he brought out and handed to me. But I ate them gratefully, though they were almost tasteless, and I thanked him.
By the next day’s suppertime, I was hungry enough not to be fastidious. I would probably have eaten the prison gruel just because it meant a break in the monotony of doing nothing but sitting, and sleeping on the coverless hard bench, and walking the two or three steps the cell permitted, and occasionally making conversation with Cartafilo. But that is how the days went on, each of them marked off only by the lightening and darkening of the door hole, and the old zudìo’s praying three times a day, and the evening arrival of the horrid food.