As I have said, Luigi, it did us little good to omit from that narrative many things we thought too marvelous to be believed. Some of the enthusiasts seeking to meet me were seeking to meet what they properly considered a Far Journeyer, but a great many wished to meet a man they mistakenly considered Un Grand Romancier, author of an imaginative and entertaining fiction, and others clearly wished only to ogle a Prodigious Liar, as they might have flocked to watch the frusta of some eminent criminal at the piazzetta pillars. It seemed that the more I protested—“I told nothing but the truth!”—the less I was believed, and the more humorously (but fondly) I was regarded. I could hardly complain of being the cynosure of all eyes, and all those eyes warmly admiring, but I should have preferred that they admired me as something other than a fablemaker.
I earlier said that our family’s new Ca’ Polo was situated in the Corte Sabionera. It was, yes, and of course it still is, physically, and I suppose even the latest street map of Venice gives the official name of that little square as Ships-Ballast Court. But no resident of the city called it that any more. It was known to everybody as the Corte del Milione— in my honor—for I was now known as Marco Milione, man of the million lies and fictions and exaggerations. I had become both famous and notorious.
In time, I learned to live with my new and peculiar reputation, and even to disregard the troops of urchins who sometimes followed me on my walks from the Corte to the Compagnia or the Rialto. They would brandish stick swords and prance in a sort of gallop gait, and spank their own behinds while they did so, and shout things like “Come hither, great princes!” and “The orda will get you!” Such constant attention was a nuisance, and enabled even strangers to recognize me and greet me at times when I might have preferred anonymity. But it was partly on account of my being now conspicuous that another new thing occurred.
I forget where I was walking that day, but, on the street, I came face to face with the little girl Doris who had been my childhood playmate and had in those days so much adored me. I was astonished. By rights, Doris should have been nearly as old as I was—in her early forties—and probably, she being of the lower class, already a gray and wrinkled and worn-out drudge of a maràntega. But here she was, grown only to young womanhood—in her middle twenties, no more—and decently attired, not in the shapeless black of old street women, and just as golden blonde and fresh-faced and pretty as she had been when I last saw her. I was more than astonished, I was thunderstruck. I so far forgot my manners as to blurt her name, right there on the street, but at least I thought to address her respectfully:
“Damìna Doris Tagiabue!”
She might have bridled at my effrontery and swept her skirts aside and stalked on past me. But she saw my trailing retinue of urchins playing Mongols, and she had to suppress a smile, and she said amiably enough:
“You are Messer Marco of the—I mean—”
“Marco of the Millions. You can say it, Doris. Everyone does. And you used to call me worse things. Marcolfo and such.”
“Messere, I fear you have mistaken me. I assume you must once have known my mother, whose maiden name was Doris Tagiabue.”
“Your mother!” For a moment I forgot that Doris must by now be a matron, if not a crone. Perhaps because this girl was so like my memory of her, I remembered only the unformed and untamed little zuzzurrullona I had known. “But she was just a child!”
“Children grow up, Messere,” she said, and added mischievously, “Even yours will,” and she indicated my half-dozen miniature Mongols.
“Those are not mine. Beat the retreat, men!”I shouted at them, and with much rearing and wheeling of their imaginary steeds they retired to a distance.
“I was but jesting, Messere,” said the so-familiar stranger, smiling openly now, and even more resembling the merry sprite of my recollection. “Among the things well-known in Venice is that the Messer Marco Polo is still a bachelor. My mother, however, grew up and married. I am her daughter and my name is Donata.”
“A pretty name for a pretty young lady: the given one, the gift.” I bowed as if we had been formally introduced. “Dona Donata, I would be grateful if you would tell me where your mother lives now. I should like to see her again. We were once—close friends.”
“Almèi, Messere. Then I regret to tell you that she died of an influenza di febbre some years ago.”
“Gramo mi! I lament to hear it. She was a dear person. My condolences, Dona Donata.”
“Damìna, Messere,” she corrected me. “My mother was the Dona Doris Loredano. I am, like you, unmarried.”
I started to say something outrageously daring—and hesitated—and then said it:
“Somehow I cannot condole on your being unmarried.” She looked faintly surprised at my boldness, but not scandalized, so I went on, “Damìna Donata Loredano, if I sent acceptable sensàli to your father, do you think he might be persuaded to let me call at your family residence? We could talk of your late mother … of old times … .”
She cocked her head and regarded me for a moment. Then she said forthrightly, without archness, as her mother might have done:
“The famous and esteemed Messer Marco Polo surely is welcome everywhere. If your sensali will apply to the Maistro Lorenzo Loredano at his place of business in the Merceria …”
Sensàli can mean business brokers or marriage brokers, and it was the latter kind I sent, in the person of my staid and starched stepmother, together with a formidable maid or two of hers. Marègna Lisa returned from that mission to report that the Maistro Loredano had acceded most hospitably to my request for permission to pay a series of calls. She added, with a noticeable elevation of her eyebrows:
“He is an artisan of leather goods. Evidently an honest and respectable and hardworking currier. But, Marco, onlya currier. Morel di mezo. You could be paying calls on the daughters of the sangue blo. The Dandolo family, the Balbi, the Candiani …”
“Dona Lisa, I once had a Nena Zulià who likewise complained of my tastes. Even in my youth I was contrary, preferring a savory morel to one with a noble name.”
However, I did not swoop upon the Loredano household and abduct Donata. I paid court to her as properly and ritually and for as long a time as if she had been of the very bluest blood. Her father, who gave the impression of having been assembled from some of his own tanned hides, received me cordially and made no comment on the fact that I was nearly as old as he. After all, one of the accepted ways for a daughter of the “middle mushroom” class to sprout higher in the world was for her to make an advantageous May-December marriage, usually to a widower with numerous children. On that scale, I was really no older than November, and I came unencumbered with any step-brood. So the Maistro Lorenzo merely mumbled some of the phrases traditionally spoken by an unmoneyed father to a wealthy suitor, to dispel any suspicion that he was voluntarily surrendering his daughter to the diritto di signoria:
“I must make known my reluctance, Messere. A daughter should not aspire to higher station than life gave her. To the natural burden of her low birth she risks adding a heavier servitude.”