Chapter 2

"Just the better," said the woman, walking up the stairs again, ahead of her guest. "It's better to be unharmed than to be mourned, one eye on the cat, the other on the pan, and it's more useful to be afraid than to suffer the loss. Oh, those times we live in, Signore Andrea! One shouldn't think about it. Thinking shortens one's life, but worry unlocks the heart. There, look," and she opened a large room, "isn't it pretty in here, isn't it homely? There, the bed, I've sown it with my own hands, when I was young, but in the morning one wouldn't know the day. And there's the window going out to the canal, which isn't wide as you can see, but runs just the more deeply, and the other window over there is going out to the little alley, but you'll have to keep it shut, for the bats are getting more and more of a pest. Look there, on the other side of the canal, you can almost reach it with your hand, it's the palace of Countess Amidei, who's as blond as gold, and is just as frequently handed from one man to another. But here I'm standing and chatting, and you've neither any light nor water, and you'd also be hungry."

The stranger had inspected the room throughly with one swift look, as soon as he had entered; he had gone from one window to the other, and then, he threw his portmanteau onto an armchair. "Everything's perfect," he said. "We'll surely agree on the price. Just bring me a bite to eat and, if you should have any, a small glass of wine. Afterwards, I want to sleep."

There was something strangely commanding about his gesture, in spite of the mild sound of his words. Hastily, the woman obeyed and left him alone for a short time. Now, he instantly stepped back up to the window, leant out, and looked down at the very narrow canal, which showed no movement of its black waters, and thus by no means revealed that it had its share in liveliness of the great sea, in the breaking waves of the ancient Adriatic Sea. The palace on the other side rose before him as a heavy mass, all windows were dark, since the front was not facing the canal; only a narrow door opened to this side, down below, closely above the face of the waters, and a black gondola had been chained to a pole before its threshold.

All of this seemed to conform very well to the wishes of the new arrival, who also did not seem less pleased with the fact that through the other window, facing the blind alley, nobody would be able to look into his room. For on the other side ran a windowless wall without any other interruptions than a few ledges, cracks, and cellar-holes, and only cats, martens, and owls would have regarded these gloomy nooks as pleasant and habitable.

A ray of light shone into his chamber from the corridor, the door was opened and, holding a candle in her hand, the small widow entered again, followed by her daughter, who hurriedly had to get out of bed again, to assist her in welcoming the guest. The girl's stature was almost even smaller than her mother's, but nevertheless seemed, due to her most extreme daintiness and the hardly matured slenderness of all shapes, taller and as if she was gliding along on the tips of her toes, while in her face the resemblance, except for the differences accounted for by her age, was recognisable at the first sight. Only the expression on both faces seemed to be incapable of ever taking on any similarity. Between the dense eyebrows of Signora Giovanna, there was a tense trait, as if she was sorrowfully waiting for something, which even all experiences of growing older would not be able to place permanently on Marietta's clear brow. These eyes always had to be smiling, this mouth always had to be a bit open, to release any humorous remark without delay. It was infinitely cute to see how now, in this pretty face, cunningness, surprise, curiosity, and wantonness fought with one another. Upon entering, she tilted her head, the loose braids of which where wrapped in a scarf, to the side, to see the new fellow inhabitant of their house. Even his serious demeanour and his gray hair did not reduce her high spirits. "Mother," she whispered, while putting a large plate with ham, bread, and fresh figs onto the table, "he has a strange face, like a new house in winter, when the snow has fallen onto the roof."

"Be quiet, you evil witch!" the mother said swiftly. "White hair gives false testimony. He's ill, you know, and you ought to be respectful, because illness arrives on horseback, but leaves on foot, and may God protect you and me, for the ill eat little, but the illness devours everything. Just get a little bit of water, as much as we've still got. Tomorrow, we'll have to get up early and buy more. Look, there he's sitting, as if he was asleep. He's tired from his journey, and you're tired from sitting still. This is how different things are in this world."

During this quiet conversation, the stranger had been sitting by the window, holding his head in his hand. Even after he had looked up, he hardly seemed to notice the presence of the dainty girl, who was bowing to him.

"Come on, and eat something, Signore Andrea," said the widow. "He who doesn't eat his supper will suffer hunger in his dreams. Look, the figs are fresh, and the ham is tender, and this is wine from Cyprus, just as good as what the doge would drink. His cellarer has sold it to us himself, an old acquaintance of my husband. You've travelled, sir. Didn't you happen to meet him some time, my Orso, Orso Danieli?"

"Kind woman," said the stranger, pouring a few drops of wine into the glass and cracking open one of the figs, "I have never travelled beyond Brescia and don't know anyone by this name."

Marietta left the room, and she could be heard singing a song to herself in her clear voice, while rushing down the stairs.

"Do you hear the child?" asked Signora Giovanna. "One might think that she wasn't my daughter, though even a black hen might lay a white egg. Always singing and jumping about, as if this wasn't Venice, where it's a good thing that the fish can't talk, for otherwise they'd tell thing, which would make your hair stand on end. But her father was just the same, Orso Danieli, the foreman of Murano, where they make these colourful glasses, like nowhere else in the entire world. `A joyful heart gives red cheeks,' this was what he always used to say. And therefore, he said to me one day, `Giovannina,' he said, `I can't stand it here any more, the air of Venice is choking me, just yesterday, another one has been strangled and hung up on the gallows by his feet, because he's been speaking out freely against the inquisition and the Council of Ten. Everyone knows where he's been born, but not where he'll die, and there are many who think they'd be riding high on their horses, though they're sitting on the ground. So, Giovannina,' he said, `I want to go to France, my craft will win me favours, and petty cash chases the big money. I know my trade, and once I'll have made it out there, you'll join me with our child.' - She was eight years old then, Signore Andrea. She laughed, when she kissed her father for the last time; this made him laugh, too. But I cried, so he had to cry along, though he left quite happily in the gondola, I even still heard him whistling, after he had already turned around the corner. One year passed. And what happened? The signoria asked where he was; nobody from Murano was allowed to practice his craft abroad, so that the tricks of the trade wouldn't be copied; I was told to write him, that he should return or face the death penalty. He laughed about the letter; but the gentlemen of the tribunal didn't think that this was funny. One morning, when we were still in bed, they came for me, and the child as well, they've dragged us up to the cells under the lead roofs, and I had to write him again where I was, I and our child, and that I would stay there, until he came personally to Venice to get me out. It didn't take long, until I received his answer, he didn't feel like laughing any more, and he'd follow the letter as fast as his feet would carry him. Well, I hoped daily that he'd make it true. But weeks and months passed, and the pain in my heart as well as the sickness in my head grew more and more, for it's hell up there, Signore Andrea, my only comfort was the child I had with me, who didn't comprehend any part of this misery, except that she ate little, and felt hot during the day; but nevertheless, she sang, to cheer me up, so that I was utterly overwhelmed to hold back the tears. Only after three months, we were released; they said the glass-blower Orso Danieli had died in Milan from a fever, and we could go home. I've heard others say so, too - but he who'd believe this, doesn't know the signoria. Dead? Would a man die when he has a wife and a child sitting under the lead roofs and is supposed to get them out?"

"And what do you think, happened to your husband?" asked the stranger.

She gave him a look, which reminded him that the poor woman had lived under the lead roofs for several long weeks. "It isn't right," she said. "There are many who are alive and still don't return, and many are dead, but do return. But let's not talk about that. Indeed, if I'd tell you, who'd give me the guarantee that you wouldn't go ahead and tell the tribunal all about it? You look like a galantuomo; but who's still trustworthy, nowadays? One in a thousand, none in a hundred. No offence, Signore Andrea, but you might know what we say here in Venice:

"With lies and tricks you will not die, With tricks and lies you will get by."

There was a pause in the conversation. A while ago, the stranger had already pushed the plate aside and had eagerly listened to the widow.

"I can understand," he said, "that you don't want to confide your secrets in me. Furthermore, they are none of my business, and I wouldn't know how to help you anyhow. But why, good woman, do you nevertheless put up with this tribunal, under which you have suffered so much, you and the entire people of Venice? For I do know little about the local situation - I never took a deep interest in political matters - but still I've heard that much that just last year, there was an rebellion in this town, which sought to abolish the secret tribunal, that even one of the aristocrats spoke out against it, and that the Great Council elected a commission to deliberate the matter, and that everyone was very excitedly arguing for and against it. Even in my office in Brescia, I've heard about it. And when, in the end, everything remained the same and the power of the secret tribunal came out stronger than ever, why did the people light bonfires then in all of the squares and mocked those aristocrats, who had voted against the tribunal and now had to fear its revenge? Why was there no one to prevent the inquisition from banishing its bold enemy to Verona? And who can tell whether they'll let him stay alive there, or whether the daggers have already been sharpened to silence him forever? I - as I've already said - know only little about this; I also don't know this man, and I feel very indifferent about everything which happens here, because I'm ill and probably won't stay in this colourful world for much longer. But I'm nevertheless astonished to see these fickle people, which one day call those three men their tyrants and rejoice the next day, when those perish who wanted to put an end to this tyranny."

"The way you talk, sir!" said the widow and shook her head. "You've never seen him, that Signore Avogadore Angelo Querini, who has been banished for declaring war against the secret justice? Well so, sir, but I've seen him, and the other poor people have so, too, and they all say that he was an honest gentleman and a very learned man, who has studied the old stories of Venice, day and night, and knows the law like a fox knows the pigeonry. But whoever had seen him cross the street or standing in the Broglio with his friends, leaning against a column with his eyes half closed, knew that he was a nobile from the feather on his hat down to the buckles on his shoes, and whatever he said and did against the tribunal, he didn't do for the people, but for the high and mighty gentlemen. But the sheep don't care, Signore Delfin, whether they are slaughtered or devoured by the wolf, and

"When the hawk fights with the kite, The chickens can be free tonight.

"You see, my dear, that's why there was so much joy at their failure, when all of the tribunal's rights were confirmed and it wouldn't have to answer to anybody, just as before, except for God Almighty on judgement day and their own conscience every day of their lives. In Canale Orfano, there lie, out of the hundreds who have prayed their last Ave there, ten poor men next to ninety noble gentlemen. But supposed, aristocratic criminals and common ones would be sentenced and executed in public by the Great Council - misericordia! - we'd have eight hundred hangmen instead of three, and the big thief would hang the little one."

It seemed as if he wanted to reply, but uttered nothing more than a short laugh, which the landlady interpreted as an affirmation. At this moment, Marietta entered again, carrying a pitcher of water and a fumigating pan, on which pungently smelling herbs were smoldering and blowing their fumes into her face, so that, as she coughed, cursed, and rubbed her eyes, she made the cutest gestures. With small steps, she carried the fumigant closely by all four walls, which were covered by a huge number of flies and gnats.

"Get yourself away from there, you scoundrels," she said, "you bloodsuckers, worse than lawyers and doctors! Would you also like to eat figs before bedtime and enjoy a sip of Cypriot wine? You might as well laugh if you did and afterwards show your gratitude by stinging this gentleman all over his face, when he's asleep, you sneaky murderers! Just wait, I'll feed you with something which shall put you to sleep without supper."

"Do you always have to babble on, you godless creature?" said the mother, who was following every movement of her darling with overjoyed looks. "Don't you know that an empty barrel makes the loudest sound, and that she who talks much, says little?" - "Mother," the girl said laughingly, "I have to sing a lullaby for the gnats, and look how it works! Here, they are already dropping off the wall. Good night, you loafers, you worst of all company, not paying any rent and yet peeking into all pots. I'll take care of you tomorrow again, if you didn't get enough today."

She once again swung the almost burnt out herbs over her head as if she was casting a spell and poured the ashes into the canal; then, she made a quick bow towards the stranger and rushed out of the room as swiftly as the wind.

"Isn't she a witch, an ugly, naughty creature?" said Signora Giovanna, while getting up and starting to leave as well. "And yet, every female monkey likes her little monkey. And besides, however little and useless she may be, to the same extent she's also eager to help out, and it has also been said about her:

"Before the mother bends her back, The herb is plucked, in the girl's sack.

"If I hadn't the child, Signore Andrea! But you want to sleep, and I'm still standing here, chatting away like a soup, cooking noisily over a hot fire. Sleep well, and welcome to Venice!"

Unemotionally, he returned her greeting and did not seem to notice that she was obviously still expecting him to make a kind remark about her daughter. When he was finally alone, he continued sitting at the table for some time, and his face grew more and more gloomy and pain-stricken. The light burnt on a long wick, those flies which had managed to evade Marietta's witchcraft, besieged the overripe figs in black clusters; outside, in the blind alley, the bats were flying against the window and collided with the bars - the lonely stranger seemed to be dead to everything around him, and only his eyes were alive.

Only after the clock in the tower of a nearby church had struck eleven, he rose mechanically and looked around. The pungent fumes of the fumigating herbs moved along the ceiling of his low chamber in gray strands and the smoke from the candle joined the cloud above. Andrea opened the window going out to the canal, to cleanse the air. In doing so, he saw a light on the other side, coming from a window, which was only half covered by a white curtain, and through the gap, he could clearly observe a girl, sitting at a table with a bowl and hastily devouring the remains of a large pie, putting the pieces into her mouth with her fingers, and drinking once and again from a small crystal bottle. Her face had a frivolous, but not enticing expression, being no longer in her earliest youth. Her negligent clothing and partially undone hair had something calculating and intentional about it, which was nevertheless not an unpleasant sight. She must have noticed already a while ago that the room on the other side had got a new inhabitant; but though she now saw him at the window, she calmly continued her feast, and only when she drank, she first swung the little bottle in front of herself, as if she was greeting someone who would drink with her. When she was finished, she put the empty bowl aside, pushed the table with the lamp on it against the wall, so that all of the light now fell on a wide mirror in the back of the room, and began to try on one costume after another from a colourful pile of clothes for a masquerade, which lay on an armchair, standing in front of the mirror, so that the stranger, to whom she had turned her back, had to see her reflection just the more clearly. She seemed to like herself rather much, wearing those disguises. At least, she most approvingly nodded to her reflection, smiling at herself, showing her brightly gleaming teeth and lips, frowning to act out a tragic or longing expression of her face, and secretly looking sideways towards her observer during all of this, also keeping an eye on him in the mirror. When the dark figure remained motionless and kept her waiting for the desired signs of applause, she became irritated and prepared her main assault. She tied a large, red turban around her temples, from which, attached to a shiny brooch, a heron's feather stuck out. The red colour actually complemented her yellow taint very well, and she gave herself a deep bow of appreciation. But when, even now, everything continued to remain quiet on the other side, she could not keep her patience any longer, and hastily, still wearing the turban on her head, she stepped to the window, pushing the curtain all the way back.

"Good day, Monsù," she said politely. "You're my neighbour now, as I can see. I only hope that you don't play the flute like your predecessor, who kept me awake half of the night."

"Beautiful neighbour," said the stranger, "I won't bother you with any kind of music. I'm an ill man, who also prefers not to be disturbed in his sleep."

"So!" - the girl replied in a stretched out tone of voice. "You're ill? But are you at least rich?"

"No! Why do you ask?"

"Because it's so terrible to be ill and poor at the same time. Who are you, anyway?"

"Andrea Delfin is my name. I used to be a clerk at the court in Brescia and am looking for a quiet job with a notary, here."

This answer seemed to completely disappoint all of her hopes for the new acquaintance. Lost in thought, she played with a golden necklace, she wore around her neck.

"And who are you, beautiful neighbour?" asked Andrea in a tender tone, which completely contradicted the motionless expression of his face. "To have your charming sight so close to me, will comfort me in my sufferings."

She apparently felt satisfied, since he now turned to that tone which she had a right to expect.

"To you," she said, "I'm Princess Smeraldina, who is granting you the permission to long for her favour from afar. Whenever you'll see me putting on this turban, this shall be a sign for you that I'm inclined to chat with you. For I'm more bored than I could bear, considering my youth and my charms. You must know," she continued, suddenly dropping out of character, "that my mistress, the countess, won't permit me at all to have even the slightest love affair, though she herself changes her lovers more frequently than her shirts. She says that she had always thrown her confidante and chamber-maid out of her services as soon as she would have attempted to serve two masters, her and the little winged god. I now have to suffer under her prejudice, and if I wouldn't find some other satisfaction here, and if there wasn't, from time to time, a kind stranger living over there in your room, who'd fall just a little bit in love with me..."

"Who's the current lover of your mistress?" Andrea interrupted her in an unemotional tone. "Does she receive the high aristocracy of Venice? Are the foreign ambassadors among her regular guests?"

"They usually come wearing masks," Smeraldina replied. "But I know that much that young Gritti is her favourite, she likes him more than any other before for as long as I've been in her service; even more than the Austrian ambassador, who courts her so ridiculously much. Do you know my countess, too? She's beautiful."

"I'm a stranger here, dear girl. I don't know her."

"You should know," the girl said with a clever face, "she wears a lot of make-up, though she isn't even thirty, yet. If you'd like to see her some time, nothing's easier than that. A board can bridge the distance between your window and mine. You'll climb across, and I'll lead you to a place where you'll be able to observe her quite clandestinely. The things I'd do for a neighbour! - But for now, it's good night. I'm being summoned."

"Good night, Smeraldina!"

She closed the window. "Poor - and ill," she said to herself, while pulling the curtains completely shut. "Oh well, still good enough to kill the boredom."

He had also closed the window and was now pacing up and down his room in slow strides. "It's good," he said, "it fits well into my plans. If it should come to the worst, I'll be able to use it to my advantage as well."

The expression of his face proved that a love-affair was the furthest thing from his mind.

Now, he unpacked the portmanteau, which contained only little laundry and a few prayer-books, and put everything into the cupboard, standing by the wall. One of the books fell to the floor, and the stone plate made a hollow sound. Instantly, he put out the light, locked the door, and started to examine the floor more closely in the dusk created by the distant shimmer of Smeraldina's lamp. After some work, he succeeded in lifting the stone plate, which had been lodged into place to fit precisely, but without the use of any mortar, and he discovered a rather spacious hole underneath, as deep as the size of a hand and one foot wide in both directions. Swiftly, he threw off his outer garments and removed a heavy belt with several pockets, which he had worn around his waist. He had already placed it inside the hole, when he suddenly stopped to think. "No," he said, "it could be a trap. It wouldn't be the first time for the police to have such hiding places in rented apartments, to know later on, when searching the premises, where they'd have to poke at. This is just too enticingly arranged to be trustworthy."