“Behold your son!” bellowed my uncle. “Your arcistupendonazzisimo son! Behold the namesake of our brother and our patron saint! Is this not a wretched and puny meschin, to have caused so much ado?”
“Father?” I said timorously to the other man.
“My boy?” he said, almost as hesitantly, but opening his arms.
I had expected someone even more overwhelming than my uncle, since my father was the elder of the two. But he was actually pale alongside his brother; not nearly so big and burly, and much softer of voice. Like my uncle, he wore a journeyer’s beard, but his was neatly trimmed. His beard and hair were not of a fearsome raven black, but a decorous mouse color, like my own hair.
“My son. My poor orphan boy,” said my father. He embraced me, but quickly put me away at arm’s length, and said worriedly, “Do you always smell like that?”
“No, Father. I have been locked up for—”
“You forget, Nico, that this is a bravo and a bonvivan and a gambler between the pillars,” boomed my uncle. “A champion of ill-married matrons, a lurker in the night, a wielder of the sword, a liberator of Jews!”
“Ah, well,” said my father indulgently. “A chick must stretch his wings farther than the nest. Come, let us go home.”
“Now,” I said, “I want to hear about your travels. All about everywhere you have been.”
“Dear God, not again,” Uncle Mafio groaned. “We have been let talk of nothing else.”
“Time enough for that later, Marco,” said my father. “All things in their time. Let us speak now of your own adventures.”
“They are over now,” I said hastily. “I would rather hear of new things.”
But they would not relent. So I told them, fully and frankly, everything that had happened since my first glimpse of Ilaria in San Marco’s—only omitting the amatory afternoon she and I had spent together. Thus I made it seem that mere mooncalf chivalry had impelled me to make my calamitous try at bravura.
When I was done, my father sighed. “Any woman could give pointers to the devil. Ah, well, you did what seemed best to you. And he who does all he can, does much. But the consequences have been tragic indeed. I had to agree to the Doge’s stipulation that you leave Venice, my son. He could, however, have been much harder on you.”
“I know,” I said contritely. “Where shall I go, Father? Should I go seeking a Land of Cockaigne?”
“Mafio and I have business in Rome. You will go with us.”
“Do I spend the rest of my life in Rome, then? The sentence was banishment forever.”
My uncle said what old Mordecai had said, “The laws of Venice are obeyed … for a week. A Doge’s forever is a Doge’s lifetime. When Tiepolo dies, his successor will hardly prevent your returning. Still, that could be a good while from now.”
My father said, “Your uncle and I are bearing to Rome a letter from the Khakhan of Kithai—”
I had never heard either of those harsh-sounding words before, and I interrupted to say so.
“The Khan of All Khans of the Mongols,” my father explained. “You may have heard him titled the Great Khan of what is here miscalled Cathay.”
I stared at him. “You met the Mongols? And you survived?”
“Met and made friends among them. The most powerful friend possible—the Khan Kubilai, who rules the world’s widest empire. He asked us to carry a request to Pope Clement … .”
He went on explaining, but I was not hearing. I was still staring at him in awe and admiration, and thinking—this was my father, whom I had believed long dead, and this very ordinary-looking man claimed to be a confidant of barbarian Khans and holy Popes!
He concluded, “ … And then, if the Pope lends us the hundred priests requested by Kubilai, we will lead them east. We will go again to Kithai.”
“When do we depart for Rome?” I asked.
My father said bashfully, “Well …”
“After your father marries your new mother,” said my uncle. “And that must wait for the proclamation of the bandi.”
“Oh, I think not, Mafio,” said my father. “Since Fiordelisa and I are hardly youngsters, both of us widowed, Pare Nunziata will probably dispense with all three cryings of the bandi.”
“Who is Fiordelisa?” I asked. “And is this not rather abrupt, Father?”
“You know her,” he said. “Fiordelisa Trevan, mistress of the house three doors down the canal.”
“Yes. She is a nice woman. She was Mother’s best friend among all our neighbors.”
“If you are implying what I think you are, Marco, I remind you that your mother is in her grave, where there is no jealousy or envy or recrimination.”
“Yes,” I said. And I added impertinently, “But you are not wearing the luto vedovile.”
“Your mother has been
“Yes, and she has accepted. We go tomorrow for our pastoral interview with Pare Nunziata.”
“Is she aware that you are going away immediately after you marry her?”
My uncle burst out, “What is this inquisition, you saputelo?”
My father said patiently, “I am marrying her, Marco,
“It does not,” I said. And again I spoke impertinently, “I am only concerned for the seeming disrespect to my own mother—and to the Dona Trevan as well—in your haste to marry solely for mercenary reasons. She must know that all Venice will be whispering and snickering.”
My father said mildly, but with finality, “I am a merchant and she is the widow of a merchant and Venice is a merchant city, where all know that there is no better reason for doing
Although I was dressed in my best, I let my feet take me to the neighborhood of the boat people. I had only infrequently and briefly visited the children since my release from prison. Now that I was an ex-convict, the boys all seemed to regard me as a grown man, or maybe even a person of celebrity; anyway, there had come a sort of distance between us that had not existed before. However, on that day I found no one at the barge except Doris. She was kneeling on the planking inside its hull, wearing only a skimpy shift, and lifting wet wads of cloth from one pail to another.
“Boldo and the others begged a ride on a garbage scow going out to Torcello,” she told me. “They will be gone all day, so I am taking the opportunity to wash everything not being worn by somebody.”
“May I keep you company?” I asked. “And sleep here again in the barge tonight?”
“Your clothes will also need laundering, if you do,” she said, eyeing them critically.
“I have had worse accommodations,” I said. “And I own other clothes.”
“What are you running away from this time, Marco?”
“This is my father’s wedding day. He is bringing home a maregna for me, and I do not particularly want one. I have already had a real mother.”
“I must have had one, too, but I would not mind having a maregna.” She added, sighing like an exasperated grown woman, “Sometimes I feel I am one, to all this crowd of orphans.”
“This Dona Fiordelisa is a nice enough woman,” I said, sitting down with my back against the hull. “But I somehow do not wish to be under the same roof on my father’s wedding night.”
Doris looked at me with evident surmise, dropped what she was doing, and came to sit beside me.
“Very well,” she whispered into my ear. “Stay here. And pretend that it is your own wedding night.”
“Oh, Doris, are you starting that again?”
“I do not know why you should refuse. I am accustomed now to keeping myself clean, as you told me a lady ought to do. I keep myself clean all over. Look.”
Before I could protest, she stripped off her one garment in one lithe movement. She was certainly clean, even to being totally hairless of body. The Lady Ilaria had not been quite so smooth and glossy all over. Of course, Doris was also lacking in feminine curves and rotundities. Her breasts were only just beginning to be distinct from her chest, and their nipples were only a faintly darker pink than her skin, and her flanks and buttocks were but lightly padded with womanly flesh.
“You are still a zuzzurullona,” I said, trying to sound bored and uninterested. “You have a long way to go to become a woman.”
That was true, but her very youth and smallness and immaturity had their own sort of appeal. Though all boys are lecherous, they usually lust for real women. Any girl of their own age, they tend to regard as only another playmate, a tomboy among the boys, a zuzzurullona. However, I was somewhat more advanced in that respect than most boys; I had already had the experience of a real woman. It had given me a taste for musical duets—and I had for some time been without that music—and here was a pretty novice pleading to be introduced to it.
“It would be dishonorable of me,” I said, “even to pretend a wedding night.” I was arguing with myself more than with her. “I have told you that I am going far away to Rome in a few days.”
“So is your father. But it has not prevented his getting
“And so would I be. For now, let us pretend, Marco, and afterward I will wait, and you will come back. You said so—when there is another change of Doge.”
“You look ridiculous, little Doris. Sitting here naked and talking of Doges and such.” But she did not look ridiculous; she looked like one of the pert nymphs of old legend. I truly tried to argue. “Your brother always talks of what a good girl his sister—”
“Boldo will not be back until tonight, and he will know nothing of what happens between now and then.”
“He would be furious,” I went on, as if she had not interrupted. “We should have to fight again, the way we fought after he threw that fish so long ago.”
Doris pouted. “You do not appreciate my generosity. It is a pleasure I offer you at the cost of pain to myself.”
“Pain? How so?”
“The first time is always painful for a virgin. And unsatisfying. Every girl knows that. Every woman tells us so.”
I said reflectively, “I do not know why it should be painful. Not if it is done the way my—” I decided it would be maladroit of me to mention my Lady Ilaria at this moment. “I mean, the way I have learned to do it.”
“If that is true,” said Doris, “you could earn the adoration of many virgins in your lifetime. Do show me this way you have learned.”
“One begins by doing—certain preliminary things. Like this.” I touched one of her diminutive nipples.
“The zizza? That only tickles.”
“I believe the tickling changes to another sensation very soon.”
Very soon she said, “Yes. You are right.”
“The zizza likes it, too. See, it lifts to ask for more.”
“Yes. Yes, it does.” She slowly lay back, supine on the deck, and I followed her down.
I said, “A zizza likes even more to be kissed.”
“Yes.” Like a lazing cat, she stretched her whole little body, voluptuously.
“Then there is this,” I said.
“That tickles, too.”
“It also gets better than tickling.”
“Yes. Truly it does. I feel …”
“Not pained, surely.”
She shook her head, her eyes now closed.
“These things do not even require the presence of a man. It is called the hymn of the convent, because girls can do this for themselves.” I was being scrupulously fair, giving her the opportunity to send me away.
But she said only, and breathlessly, “I had no idea … I do not even know what I
“You make it feel like lips being kissed,” she said, as if talking in her sleep. Her eyes were closed again and her small body was moving in a slow squirm.
“Kissed, yes,” I said.
From the slow squirm, her body seemed to clench briefly, then to relax, and she made a whimpering noise of delight. As I continued to play musically upon her, she made that slight convulsion again and again, each time lasting longer, as if she was learning through practice to prolong the enjoyment. Not ceasing my attentions to her, but using only my mouth, I had my hands free to strip off my own clothes. When I was naked against her, she appeared to enjoy her gentle spasms all the more, and her hands fluttered eagerly over my body. So I went on for quite a while, making the music of the convent, as Ilaria had taught me. When finally Doris was shiny with perspiration, I stopped and let her rest.
Her breathing slowed from its rapid pace, and she opened her eyes, looking dazed. Then she frowned, because she felt me hard against her, and she shamelessly moved a hand to take hold of me, and she said with surprise, “You did all that … or you made me do all that … and you never …”
“No, not yet.”
“I did not know.” She laughed in great good humor. “I could not have known. I was far away. In the clouds somewhere.” Still holding me in one hand, she felt herself with the other. “All that … and I am still a virgin. It is miraculous. Do you suppose, Marco, that is how Our Blessed Virgin Lady—?”
“We are already sinning, Doris,” I said quickly. “Let us not add blasphemy.”
“No. Let us sin some more.”
And we did, and I soon had Doris cooing and quivering again—in the clouds somewhere, as she had said—enjoying the hymn of the nuns. And finally I did what no nun can do, and that happened not roughly or forcibly, but easily and naturally. Doris, sleek with perspiration, moved without friction in my arms, and that part of her was even more moist. So she felt no violation, but only a more intense sensation among the many new ones she had been experiencing. She opened her eyes when that happened, and her eyes were brimming with pleasure, and the whimper she gave was merely in a different musical register from the previous ones.