As the guild of masons passed Giorgio saw his father and shouted, “Papa! Papa!” so that his father came over to the boy, lifted him up on his shoulders and continued along with the parade.
For the next week, Marco could hear the racket of the festival far into the nights and, in the mornings, when he ran out into the square to meet Giorgio, the singing and music and dancing was starting up again. The celebrants ate mountains of food, pipes and lutes echoed from every quarter, wine ran in the gutters and spilled into the canals.
Yesterday I sat by the waters of the lagoon, my feet dangling over the side and I heard behind me, half a league away, the failing breath of my mother in her sick bed. Now I eat so my chewing drowns out the rasp of her breath. I spoon more fish, more rice into my mouth because the sound of her breath makes me want to weep, to run away, to escape.
I hear also the cut of the ships at sea, the spring caravan, returning from Byzantium.
Something is happening to me. I think my mother is dying and as she does so, my hearing reaches further and further into the distance. A sudden vast silence opens up and my mother's breath, a rattle of stones, echoes into it, and I hear voices whispering from distant rooms, crows complaining on islands over the lagoons, winds gathering across the sea.
My mother always said I had ears like fungi. She would nibble on them whispering, “Ears like crushed jewels, found under the earth or brought up from the bottom of the sea.”
But now sounds, surrounded by an empty silence, fall into them as a cataract pours from cliffs into the waves.
Last night I thought I heard my father's voice (how would I remember?) from some lost place across the world. He was still alive, still alive. I heard him.
“I heard him, Momma. I heard his voice. He's coming back to us, Momma.”
I felt her weak hand lift mine to her cheek and she smiled at me and nodded.
My mother is dying. And my father is worlds away, trying to get back to us– and I hear it all so clearly.
Marco went to his mother's room but his aunt turned him away at the door. As he left he heard music drifting in a window at the end of the hall, from a distant church or priory, the ever diminishing strains of a choir's failing diminuendo, rallentando, smorzando.…
The days go by in a dark dream. Then weeks. Then months. Spring washes in and passes. The summer burns on. I am forgetting.
Since long before I was born, Gesualdo was the oldest, most revered servant in our household. As a child, I would see him shuffling through the halls, his hair and face the colour of ashes, his fingers frightening and thin as the bones of finches. But his voice was a delight, a melodious flow pouring out of him as he hummed ancient songs, his voice a kind of mill-wheel to keep him shuffling along.
If the truth be told, old Gesualdo had done little in his later years to justify his title as servant– fetching a few jugs of water at dawn, emptying a few pails at dusk. The rest of his day was given over to rest and tireless flirting with the young servant girls who flitted about the enormous kitchen where he sat on a wooden stool in a corner near the ovens.
From his stool Gesualdo called to young Marco, in a voice still clear, his throat like the glass reed of the glassblower. Ever since Marco had been old enough to understand, Gesualdo had told him stories.
Gesualdo caressed Marco's cheek. “Soon you will be a man, Marco. How many years have you now? Twelve?”
“I have but ten. Ten I turned, two days ago.”
Gesualdo waved away a middle-aged woman servant hovering behind the boy. “I want you to have this.” He handed a small wooden box with a sliding lid to Marco. “Take it.”
The boy held the box in the palm of his left hand and stared at it.
“Si, si. Open it.”
He did so to reveal a palmful of rich soil, slightly damp, the colour of Marco's dark eyes.
“Smell it. Take some between your fingers and sniff it.”
Marco did as instructed, dipping his thumb and index finger into the box, taking up a pinch of earth and bringing it to his nostrils. A sweet, dusty, distant green perfume with a suggestion of resin blew through him.
“Where did it come from, this soil?”
“I will tell you. When I was a young man, it fell upon me to climb to the top of the column holding the great winged Lion in the piazza, there to remove the soil and weeds that had accumulated over the years under the Lion's belly and about its paws. With each step my fear rose as I ascended the rickety ladder. My heart resounded in my ears like a drum– I was sure I would tumble to my death. At the foot of the ladder my master was passing the day with one of the Doge's councillors. If I had come down from the ladder without completing my task, my master would have been sorely embarrassed. Dio mio, he would certainly have thrashed me, or worse. I forced myself up, a step at a time, growing dizzier with each moment. My master shouted up to me to move along, asking why I climbed so slowly and calling me a laggard. I was bit by his anger and forced my legs to lift one after the other. But, in truth, I also feared that huge shadow of the beast over my head, blotting out the sun. Sweat dampened my palms, low groans escaped my throat. I slapped my forehead– and continued up. Finally, by God's grace, I reached the end of the ladder, my eyes level with the weeds at the top of the column. The beast loomed above me like a dangerous cloud. I took the small shovel from my belt and removed a layer of weeds and soil, dropping them to the piazzetta below, taking care to miss my master and his acquaintance. I breathed in the smell of earth and was calmed by it, my heart eased by the simple odour. As I slid my spade under another patch of black loam, I thought– suolo di cielo, the earth of heaven– it is a contradiction, no? It struck me that the soil had flown bit by bit on the wind and collected on that high place since before my father's father's time. It seemed to me that the soil belonged to the Lion himself, was a part of him, the earth under his feet. I looked out to the nearby lagoons and the shining sea– water everywhere surrounded us– while in my hand I held a bit of soil. I placed it in my pocket and later saved it in this box.” Gesualdo motioned to the box in Marco's hand. “Si, put it away now. And keep it with you. You might need to make use of its magic.”
I didn't know what he looked like, my father, as he had left on a long journey to the East when I was very young. But then he appeared, like a ghost by the well in the corte, and I remembered. It was like looking in an ancient mirror.
Marco walks with Aunt Graziela to the well in the courtyard. They each carry a pair of wooden buckets with rope handles. Aunt Graziela is slow-moving, with a double-chin and a quick smile. Marco watches her lower the bucket into the black of the well. He hears the distant splash and gazes down into the depths.
From behind he hears a whisper and straightens up. Across the corte the dazzling light of mid-afternoon surrounds a pair of gaunt, shadowy figures standing under an arched alleyway. The two men stare at him. Graziela too turns to look at the strangers. No one moves, no one speaks. The men walk forward, ghosts coming out of the past and into the light.
One of the strangers is running towards them. “Graziela!” he shouts, his arms out. “Maffeo!” she screams, as they embrace and she covers his face with kisses. Marco stands back and watches as does the other man. Finally the man takes a step forward and