Faces Under Water Read online

  FURIAN’S PRESENT ROOMS lay in the Carpenters Quarter, behind Silvia, the smallest and most ominous of the three lagoons. Out of it, or her, at her sea-most end, the island of San Fumo rose like a black hump, curtained by funeral smokes. And under Silvia, as beneath Aquila, lay drowned places.

  He had walked until no longer tired, then taken a wanderer to the water steps by the Carpenters’ Bridge, crooked as a screw, where a small Neptune stood in a niche, with a votary lamp lit for him. Someone had left a dead crab, too. No one, or few, would rob the gods, and nature took its course with the crab, which had been there ten days, and now stank.

  The houses pressed together, most, like his own building, now sheltering several tenants. Washing hung in banners across the alley, and birds twittered above in cages. Some children, quite dirty and seemingly happy, all masked—as cherubs, demons, sprites—were playing by the door.

  They called him names when he wanted to get by. Inside, the passage ran down deep, damp and phosphorescent from the canal under which it went. It came up in a courtyard with more washing, more children, more birds, pots of herbs, a pig in a pen, women at their wash-tubs. Two or three of these bowed to him. He was thought to be a gentleman, but God knew why. He had deliberately lost his accent years before, taking it out only to soothe old ladies like the books Signora. And he lived like a pig. Worse, for pigs, such as the one the Amari family kept, were clean and tidy if well treated.

  The climb up from the court was a long one. The attics were reached by four flights of stairs, (Shaachen had christened his rooms the Apartment of the Sixty-Seven steps.)

  Once in he shut the door, and poured some water from the stale jug. His appetite had lessened. There was only a slight gnawing now.

  Furian wrenched the sheets from his bed, slung them aside for the attention of the washerwoman, dragged the mattress to the window and hung it forth, like thirty others, to air.

  He swept the floor. He pushed the two chairs into two new positions. He did not dust off the forty or fifty books. A dead rose crumbled in a crock. Last month, a girl had given it to him on the street, hoping presumably to be followed. But he had only come home and put the rose in water. Where he left it.

  When he had finished with the two rooms, he went to get fresh water from the caretaker in the cellar. He lugged the buckets up, mopped the floor, stripped and washed himself. Finally, he took off his mask, to shave.

  The mirror was small, but a fine one. If they had known, worth someone’s while to steal. He had stolen it from his mother. He did not know why. A silvered glass, with a freckling in the upper circle, like little creatures trapped behind. The frame was knotted bronze, with gilding, and a silver lily. He had taken it up, this hand mirror, while she lay on her sofa weeping, screaming, and his father ranted, and the dogs barked below, stirred by the general din to add to it.

  When he walked out, he had the mirror in his grasp.

  Now he saw his lean body, his lean-boned face in it.

  What a fall it had had. The carefully-kept, powdered, smooth countenance of his mother, and a room rich with brocades. Now the rat’s nest, and Furian. The eyes, long-lidded, dark but not black, the features long and finely cut. The mouth with its edge of bitterness. So easy to sneer with such a mouth.

  When he had finished shaving, he wiped his face, put on the mask again with the pointed nose—his old mask, worn at Carnival for years, generally known like his face, by now, as Furian.

  He combed his hair and re-tied it, and put on a clean shirt for the Signora, who would notice.

  “HAVE ANOTHER LITTLE CAKE, Signore Furian. Geletta made them just for you.”

  Since his hunger had abated he had eaten a cake, but he did not like them, they were very sweet. So he ate another, (His mask had been taken off; she was old-fashioned.)

  Today the Signora wanted only to talk about her past, when she had been young. About five o’clock she would grow exhausted by her former triumphs, perhaps jealous of her younger self. Then she would go, and he would start to copy the latest volume into her vellum book. Her tastes were many. He had copied for her frivolous novels and archaic treatises, in Latin, by former princes of religion, when the City’s name was written Ve Nera.

  But she liked him gone by six, for then, quite often, she would dress for a dinner at seven with her elderly acquaintances. She was of the most minor nobility. She took it all seriously, in a way he partly recognized.

  Suddenly she said, “A terrible thing. A most wonderful young man has disappeared. Did you hear, Signore Furian?”

  “No, Signorissima.” He added politely, “Who would that be?”

  “A marvelous musician. He is the son of a ducca.

  But his musical talent led him to give concerts. And sometimes to compose.”

  “I see.” It sounded embarrassing. Perhaps someone had taken the opportunity of Carnival to kill this bore, as often happened, when all the world was in disguise. One threw off one’s self with one’s face. It was easier then to do what you really wanted.

  “Cloudio del Nero. Ah, from his name one tells his Veneran ancestry. To a scholar like yourself—”

  “You flatter me, Signorissima.”

  “He was so handsome and accomplished. They say,” she lowered her voice—no one had spoken of such a thing other wise in her youth—“he had gone to visit a woman. A very mysterious woman… And he was to meet with other musicians at the Equus Gardens—but he never came.”

  “How unfortunate.”

  “Hope hasn’t been given up. He was famous, you see, for his good taste. His beautiful clothing couldn’t be thieved—it would be identified at once. And the mask—oh, his mask, of the most exquisite. Apollo, half-face, done in white and black, with brazen sequins about the eyes. It was one of the finest masks to be had, modeled on the Apollo at Aquila—”

  Furian said, courteously, “And was the young man known to you?”

  “Only by word of mouth, Signore Furian. A lovely example of youth, which all too often now, disappoints.” After this exchange, the Signora became exhausted early—it was only four. She went away and left him to his copying. And on the stroke of six the maid came in and told him he must go.

  It was as he was walking down the steps to the waiting boat, getting into it, feeling the familiar rhythm of the water, which seemed to rock all Ve-Nera-Venus, that he saw, in his inner vision, the slashed mask floating upon the twilight canal.

  Yes, it had been modeled upon a classic Apollo. Yes, it was a half-mask, ending at the upper lip. It was white with black, and sequined. It was, of its kind, impressive.

  That then the victim who lay under the water—if he did—Cloudio del Nero.

  Would it be worth while telling Shaachen? Having the canal dragged. Someone might pay to have up the corpse.

  But Furian found this disgusting. To hunt for corpses for scientific Shaachen’s pittance, yes perhaps. But to crawl to some great house, to make a pimp of oneself for death, To wrest away money (I know where), and feed off grief. To become for those Great Ones what they expected: rubbish. And Shaachen anyway had no care for cash. He had plenty, it would seem. And the corpse would by now be far too drowned to take his tinctures and sewings.

  Let it lie.

  2

  THE BLISSFUL MELODY WOKE HIM, but before he woke, he thought of heaven, so perfect, so unknown it was.

  Then, coming up from the comfortless doze, he identified a coarse voice singing in the street, the tune distorted, lost—for a second it had sounded like an angel, not a drunk.

  New songs came and went like days in Venus. They were sung to death, in rooms, in alleys, on the canals.

  Until this evening, it had been that dirge the boatman—Juseppi?—had maundered out—Oh I loved you better, better.

  Now it would be this one.

  Furian shook himself. He had fallen asleep for ten or twenty minutes in his straight chair. From the wine, probably.

  There had been a time he enjoyed drinking, and had kept to abstemious
drinking customs. Now he hated the taste of it—vinegar, wormwood—He poured another glass.

  But the glass itself was fair. The smoky greenness of it, like some cleaner water in winter.

  That song, it rang on in his head. No words, but the luminous melody, so slow; a largo. Even warbled by a drunk.

  The clock struck from the church of Santa Lala across the lagoon. It was ten, here, and not much more by the Primo, for all clocks told different times. The sun was gone three hours. Oh God, the pointless melancholy of night.

  Furian put on his coat—the mask stayed fixed to his face, its parted lips still moist from the wine.

  He went out, and down the sixty seven stairs. He had had his sleep, all twenty-three minutes of it, and would get no more. He would go instead about the City, and later maybe again search for corpses for Shaachen. He would need to find a ruffian, too, for the Revel of Diana.

  IT WAS TRUE. They were playing the song about the City. He heard snatches of it—unintelligibly at the drinking shop two streets from his apartment, on the Silvia Lagoon, as he was rowed towards Santa Lala—a passing boat with lamplit cabin, where thin high voices fluted and chimed.

  “That’s a nice song,” said the wanderlier who rowed him. “I’ll learn it tomorrow. It’s about love, don’t you think.”

  “I would guess so,” said Furian.

  The boatman was masked as a water-rat. Did his wife fear him? Make him sleep in the boat?

  As he walked through the byways towards Aquila, revelers passed Furian. They were masked as gods and goddesses, nymphs and satyrs. Not only faces, but wigs and bizarre clothes, horns. Their rustic garments were of silk, and men with torches and clubs escorted them.

  Furian stopped to drink at a bar that spread along the arches by the Equus Gardens, and here he heard again the song, and some of the words. They seemed strange. But the melody was piercing-sweet, like pain. A man came by, selling song-sheets.

  “I’ll take one.”

  Furian gave him a bronze ducca, and the man said,

  “The last he’ll write.”

  “Who?”

  “Some dead man.”

  “A dead man wrote this?”

  “Dead now.”

  The seller shambled on and Furian scanned the sheet. It was badly written and eccentrically spelled. Very likely it was inaccurate. But the song seemed to have a story. A princess who would not smile. Her lovers must win her by bringing an expression of happiness to her face. None could do it.

  It was some old tale, transposed for music. Furian seemed to recall it—surely the lovers, or suitors, had been beheaded or hanged when their efforts failed. And indeed, the last line read, or seemed to: And he can only die. As had the composer, presumably.

  Something moved in the canal-depths of Furian’s brain, like the giant serpent supposed to haunt the water ways of Venus. But he was into his third bottle, and did not attend to it.

  He ate, without appetite, a bowl of soup at a restaurant he knew, then walked on, up the streets. It was a boisterous night. The houses were all lighted up, huge flakes of brilliance falling from the latticed windows, out of the opened doors. Lanterns burned. Rose-sellers came to him, insinuating he went to a tryst, and trying to trade with him their flowers, which in the dark and light looked black, and smelled stagnantly perfumed as the canals. He bought one or two. He always did. From the most wretched.

  Finally, there was the square before the Primo. An amazing religious procession was going over to the great church by firefly candlelight, little boys in white, and the galleons of the orthodox priests of the Virgin, in their magenta, the jeweled crosses raised up on a sea of flames, an icon of Beautiful Maria held before, veiled in the same blue sheen that flashed from the wings of a magpie

  Furian watched. He felt lonely as a child. What had the song said: Before her darkness ruled me.

  But all men were children alone, and in the dark.

  The priests glided into the Primo, the crowd halted to make way like a vast glittering flood, dammed up by God, crossing their hearts, bowing.

  A wanderer had come stealthily to the fence of gilded poles below the steps.

  “Signore—do you want the boat again tonight?”

  Furian turned. It was not the other—Juseppi?—but the man masked as a lion—with one visible squashed ear. Furian recognized the ear. The boatman was also excellent to have on hand in trouble, and would be worth sounding for Shaachen’s Revel.

  “Yes. The long ride we took before,” said Furian.

  “Up and down the canals? That’s fine for me, Signore. The same rate?”

  “Yes.”

  Furian got into the boat. He was no sooner in than across the enormous night looking-glass of the lagoon, into which all the topaz window-stars had trickled, the Song came drifting like a breeze. There was someone on another wanderer, a mandolin, a strong, clear tenor.

  It cut to Furian through the layers of clothes and flesh and wine. It clutched his heart. Christ, the Song was so beautiful. It was a wonder, a gem. And the composer had died.

  “That’s a good tune,” he said idly, to his ruffian boatman.

  “Yes, Signore. It’s surely caught on. They say it’s played in the Archbishop’s palace. Del Nero wrote it, but they think he’s dead.”

  Furian thought, The man who wrote this music—I reckoned him a boor, an effete poseur, a fool, likely to be killed and better for it. But he was touched by God.

  THE BLACK ROSES LAY on the floor of the boat.

  Twelve had long since struck. They had found nothing. However, he had put to Squashed Ear the notion of attending Shaachen as a bodyguard, and the boatman had gladly agreed.

  There was no moon. Stars slit the canals like knives.

  Was it one, now? Morning? The lights were growing dim here, away from the great lagoons. So many black windows, or windows with just a faint bloom. So many lives, burning up or down, put out.

  “Go that way.”

  “That canal? It’s a bad place, there.”

  “You know it?”

  “My cousin, he told me.”

  “Of course. But, just this once.”

  “You may be thankful I’m with you, Signore.”

  They went under the leaning houses, balconies.

  Here and there, an almost solitary lamp. The smell of the water was intense and horrible, a putrid tang under the accustomed foulness. He recalled the smell, which at the time he had not noticed. And there, the pinkish lantern on its hook.

  He must have directed Squashed Ear indirectly, all this way, round and round, and in to this center. Unless he had mistaken. Certain parts of the City looked alike, even to one born here. Furian said, “Are we near to Fulvia?”

  “No, no, Signore.”

  He was wrong then. Yet surely not. For there, exactly as it had been, over the wider pool of the canal, just before the narrowing of the way, that lighted window—The lattice of intricate small designs, like lace in the water.

  A large house, one of the minor palaces, with high iron gates, and above the wall, the heads of old acacia trees, lending now an acid, resinous, autumnal odor.

  They drifted by, and as they did, another boat, larger, came from some unnoted slip between the buildings, precisely into their wake.

  Furian looked back. The second boat was mooring at the steps below the house, directly where the window reflected, The light fell clear on it, illuminating a fringed dark awning, brass fitments. There were six rowers. Furian heard the vague silky jangle of keys or bangles or chains.

  “Get on, into the narrower canal,” Furian said quickly. “Once we’re out of the light, put down your oar.”

  Squashed Ear took this order without demur.

  Clearly he thought they were now after all on business. Perhaps they were. Just there, beyond the window, here now where the oar was going down to stay them in the mud, Juseppi had hooked the drowning mask out of the shadows.

  Darkness enclosed the wanderer.

  The water slop-s
lopped against the hull.

  The gates of the house with the window were also catching light, opening. A servant came out with a lamp on a pole, like a melon-green moon hung halfway to the sky. And in its glow, his livery gleamed.

  Then a woman’s figure stepped between the gates and poised an instant above the water steps.

  From his shadow, Furian watched. She was only thirty five or forty feet away, lit as if on a stage by the prow-lamp of the waiting boat, the moon-lamp by the garden gate.

  Like the magpie Madonna, her gown was of that same, alien blue. Her skin, the tops of her breasts, were like white alabaster with yet one more lamp inside. Her hair looked the color of polished pewter, perhaps a wig, or metal powder. Her mask was a butterfly that covered all the face, its pin of body stretched from chin to hair-line, the wide outspread wings scattered with blue-eye markings, one pair of which would form the eyeholes for her own. There was something. What was it?

  The wine buzzed angrily as bees in Furian’s head.

  Impossible, stupid…

  She was like the Song…

  Piercing, the needle, sweet to pain. The colors, the textures, the way the lamp caressed her. Her graceful descent now into her boat.

  And the oars started forward.

  “They’re coming up here, Signore.”

  “All right. Turn your mask away. We’re waiting for someone else.”

  As the larger boat was rowed nearer, Furian partly turned his own head. He put his hand over the long, pointing nose of his mask, to conceal it.

  The six-oared boat slipped by with the remotest tremor of the thick, mercurine water.

  The most unnerving thing occurred. As the seated woman passed, some fluke of their light lit up a brilliant blue spark, as it seemed to be, from her eye inside the eye hole of the butterfly. It must have been a spangle. But for three seconds, she was near enough to touch. He had the impulse to pick up the roses from the wanderer’s floor and cast them over into her lap.

  There were albino sapphires, two or three, fashioned like stars, netted in the metallic hair.

  Her left hand, resting on the rail, was white and young. It had no rings.