Empiric, chapter 1, part 2

[Continued from the previous post:]

They had a gondola waiting. There was less opportunity to escape if you went by water. They tried to push him inside the cabin, but he resisted. After a momentary struggle, in which he stumbled and the boat bucked, they let him be. He concentrated on identifying the oarsman from the rhythm of the stroke and the breathing. Domenico knew them all much better than he did.

The Aristotelians insisted that eye and ear yielded different kinds of knowledge, and that the former was always superior to the latter, but Vano had found that the two senses could not be easily separated. They were linked, just as land and water flowed into one another in the city. You might argue that water was inferior to land because it was less solid and treacherous in its fluidity, but no Venetian would ever agree with you. If you prepared and you remained alert, the movement from one sense to the other was seamless. Only in a crisis was it experienced as an interruption, a risky leap from the bank to the boat. To be trapped in one element or the other was the worst fate: adrift without an oar or standing in the stern with a muffled head. If you were lost, or out of your depth, the trick was not to struggle; to float in sound and let it buoy you up. There. It was easy. Now he had the man’s name.

Vano: How’re the wife and kids, Marco?

Marco: The youngest died, captain. Fever. The others are fine.

Ongarin [to Marco]: He’s not a captain. [To Vano] Shut up.

Thinking about floating reminded Vano of Sigismondo, who had followed him doggedly during the second half of 1621. Or Vano had followed Sigismondo. The question of seniority was not always entirely clear, because they stayed in the same boarding house, and they kept running into each other accidentally on the stairs or in the street. Sigismondo was a buffoon, and his presence was a calculated insult. Vano had often opened his door one day to find the man hovering outside – as Ongarin had waited this morning, but Sigismondo entirely lacked Ongarin’s authoritative presence, and was unable to stare Vano down. He lacked Vano’s mastery of the evil eye, a fact that Vano liked to reinforce by following him ostentatiously for an hour or so after each encounter, so close that he almost bruised the man’s heels. His goal, never quite achieved, was to force Sigismondo into a run, but merely humiliating him would not send the correct message to his employers, whoever they might be.

One night in December, when the Inquisitors had their hands full with the business of the fort, Vano had come across Sigismondo unexpectedly in the fog near the embassy. It lay too thick to see beyond a few feet, and none of his informants had come out to play that evening, so he had decided to call it a night. On his way home, Sigismondo loomed through the mist like a gargoyle, his forehead abruptly foreshortened. He was probably waiting for the Spanish secretary, but at that moment he too was alone. When he saw Vano, Sigismondo made a guttural noise, a primitive acknowledgement or challenge. Then he interleaved his fingers, and folded his hands back on each other until the knuckles cracked; a memorable action whose meaning was nonetheless unclear. Perhaps Sigismondo was attempting to clarify his point when he reached for the pistol hooked to his belt.

Vano: It’s not cocked, fool.

He spoke with genuine outrage at the man’s presumption, and gave him a push for emphasis. Sigismondo stumbled into the canal, where he churned and foamed invisibly for a while, scrabbling at the stone bank.

Vano: Don’t struggle. Float.

After a while, the body in the water complied.

And that was that. Just like disposing of a bag of cats. In the general crisis, no one missed Sigismondo, and the only traces he left behind were a few dirty splashes on the new white stockings Vano had unadvisedly worn that night. They were a gift from Domenico, to celebrate exposing the Spanish plot against the fort. If Sigismondo’s body had turned up later, then no one had identified it. Vano imagined the necrologist drawing a series of wavy lines to indicate drowning next to an anonymous entry in the register of deaths. His own name would have a sketch of the two columns of San Marco, with a scaffold between them. The clerk would enjoy drawing that.

The Spaniards assumed that Sigismondo had been arrested, but since he was not formally employed at the embassy, they made no official complaint. In the coming months, Vano occasionally inserted references to this pseudo-event into his reports. ‘After Sigismondo was imprisoned’, he would begin, always vague on the precise date of this chronological watershed, but somehow implying that he deserved credit for it. Then he would detail Spanish attempts to locate Sigismondo at unnecessary length. Eventually Padavin asked him to stop.

He had little time now to savour the memory, since the boat had already reached the palace. He could hear the pitch and volume of the water change as the waves slapped against the gondola hulls moored along the Piazza’s edge. They stopped on the left before they reached the lagoon, at the New Prisons. They took him up to ‘The Four’ on the first floor in the block close to the bridge, before removing the blindfold and ushering him through the door of the cell called ‘The Little Mirror’. Inside, Domenico was waiting, weeping.

Vano: Menego, Menego, don’t worry. I’m here now.

He opened his arms as the key turned in the lock.