The Lion of Venice
by Mark Frutkin
Porcepic Books
an imprint of
Beach Holme Publishing
Vancouver
Copyright © 1997 Mark Frutkin
First Edition
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage, retrieval and transmission systems now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
This book is published by Beach Holme Publishing, #226–2040 West 12th Ave., Vancouver, BC, V6J 2G2. This is a Porcepic Book.
We acknowledge the generous assistance of The Canada Council and the BC Ministry of Small Business, Tourism and Culture.
Cover Art: The Lion of St. Mark by Vittore Carpaccio, 1516 (4 ft. 6 3/4 in. x 12 ft.), housed in the Ducal Palace, Venice. Map of Marco Polo's route from The Travels of Marco Polo, translated by John Frampton, edited by N.M. Penzer (Argonaut Press, London, 1929).
Editor: Joy Gugeler
Production and Design: Teresa Bubela, Joy Gugeler
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data:
Frutkin, Mark, 1948-
The lion of Venice
(A Porcepic Book)
ISBN 0-88878-378-7
1. Polo, Marco, 1254-1323?--Fiction. I. Title.
II. Series.
PS8561.R84L56 1997 C813'.54 C97-900648-1
PR9199.3.F776L56 1997
Prologue
In the year 1298, soon after my return from the East, the Genoese threw me in prison. I shared a filthy cell with a Pisan who called himself Rusticello. He had a bad smell and a wheedling, bothersome voice.
Marco awakens on his bed of straw, the stained wall before his eyes assembling itself out of the shards of his dreams.
He sees cracks on the wall splay out like sprigs of lightning on a map, twining across a thousand leagues, ten thousand parasang, a hundred thousand li. With his finger he absently traces his journey, winding and unpredictable as birdsong.
He supposes he is lucky to be alive.
When Marco had first returned from the East, the Doge of Venice appointed him Gentleman-Commander of a galley with a hundred oar, part of a Venetian fleet that engaged the Genoese in the Greek sea. To the boom of kettle drums and cry of horns, the Venetians sailed straight into battle and prompt defeat. Marco and seven thousand others were captured, their ships towed backwards to the port of Genoa, the banners bearing their proud lions, dragging in the waves.
He had watched with the other Venetian sailors, stunned, as they landed at Genoa under a low grey sky and the despairing commander of the Venetian fleet leapt onto the quay and beat his brains out against a stone bench.
Then Marco was thrown into a prison cell. That was three days ago.
Marco rolls over. Rusticello, sitting across the room, stares at him.
“Dream?”
Rusticello, a scribe and poet from Pisa, arrested for an unknown crime, shares the cell. A specialist in chivalry and its lore, the Pisan had garnered a smattering of fame for his Provencal romances.
Marco gazes at Rusticello without speaking. Who is this Pisan? Fifty unenviable years on his shoulders, his lank dirty hair an unseemly length, fat as a friar with thick soft hands to match, nails yellow, half his teeth broken or missing, long ears with fleshy lobes, tufts of hair growing from his nostrils. An obsessive mind, too, with penetrating eyes, round and small as peas. And a sour smell, as of grain fermenting. I suppose I will smell as bad soon enough.
Already it seems to Marco he has spent a lifetime staring at the four walls, trapped with the disputatious Pisan whose insistent, grating voice has worked at him as a knife scrapes at a mussel clinging to seaside rocks.
A salt mist drifts through the square window. Marco sniffs the air– the open sea. He fills his lungs with it.
Rusticello speaks, as if the night were but a momentary pause in their conversation of the previous evening. “So you see, Marco, I myself have penned several romance tales and I can tell you this–a work already exists. It exists in eternity; we can only hope to reveal it as it coils down out of the light and into time, where all men can see it.”
From his pile of straw, Marco scoffs. “All men? Even the great Khan from his gold-lined tomb? Pah! If I have learned anything, I have learned this: the uselessness of letters.”
“I take note of your cynicism, but one must be willing to make the attempt. Lord God of Angels, let me write the book, Marco. A description of the world. Tell me. Look here– I have paper, quill, ink. I am ready. I listen.”
Marco gazes into the brightness, stares into the empty glyph of the window. “I never went anywhere. My journey was simply a tale that appeared before my eyes as I rode into it. And as I pushed on I passed deeper and deeper into other tales and the tales within those and tales within those. I tell you, I never went anywhere.” He rubs his hand across his eyes. “So many…words. Descriptions of the world. Tell me, Rusticello, about Pisa. How is it there?”
“Much like anywhere else. Genoa. Venezia. The time passes there as it passes elsewhere. Why do you ask?”
“What does the air smell like?”
“The air? The air of Pisa? Like a swamp on a hot afternoon. But, you avoid me.” He taps the quill on the blank sheet. “Let me write the book. Now. I and all the angels in heaven are listening.”
Marco, silent, gazes into the window's brilliant white light.
Conception
Venice, 1254.
Niccolo, my father, was a practical man, a merchant. He used to say there is no such thing as magic. He used to say, “Do not talk about such things, people won't believe you.” But I have seen it, I have experienced magic. I know it exists.
The Lion of Venice, in a pose of extravagant stillness, sniffs the air from atop his column of violet Troas granite. A bizarre, freakish animal, he is half-lion, half-mythical beast. His mouth is frozen open under a cat's nose, and his ears are almost human, though it is nothing like a lion's head. The face, white eyes of faceted chalcedony, emits a kind of demonic intelligence. And wings: unreal, towering wings. He is a rude demiurge, congeries of metals fused around a hollow core, a bound fury, a monster, a beast! His moist nostrils tremble and flare open. The winged statue readies himself to pounce.
Uncanny, impossible scents seem to quicken him into life–crushed almonds, flashes of honeysuckle, lemon, gardenia, clove, as well as the fresh, clean odor of damp earth and starched cotton, stitched by an intriguing ribbon of seaweed.
The doors of the Church of San Marco ease open on a flood of morning light. Adriana stands on the threshold looking out into the blinding square. In that moment, she notices a lustrous current of air curling in from the sea. The square is silent, no one moves. Everything everywhere is still. For a fraction of an instant, all over the city, statues awake to their reflections in the canals. They gaze at themselves, for a moment, in the motionless waters.
And then it