The Lion of Venice. Mark FrutkinЧитать онлайн книгу.
you make my hair turn grey.” Rusticello stands before a cloudy metal mirror on the wall in their common cell. “Marco, my hair goes grey waiting for you to speak. I will be an old man before the bird flies from your mouth. Let it go, my stubborn friend. My hand will dance to your tune– but you must speak.”
Marco is thin-faced, his eyes on close inspection reveal a slight almond-shape, almost feline. Though his hair, eyes and eyebrows are a rich black, his skin is pale, yet worn with wind and weather. His hands, oddly delicate, are heavily-lined in the palms. His nose is medium-sized and straight, his lips set in such a way that a close observer might see that his teeth are clenched–with stubbornness or determination, or a combination of the two– at the back of his mouth. Somewhat taller than average, wide in the chest but thin in the hips, he carries himself in an upright manner, his eyes always seeming to look into the distance.
Marco turned, his words directed to the back of the other's head. “No one is listening.”
“I am listening.”
“You? You are nothing but an old man, half-deaf.”
“Still, I am listening.”
“No one will believe. The few who hear will scoff, call it superstition, blasphemy, lies. Who will there be to recognize the truth?”
“The truth, the truth?” Rusticello turned from the mirror to face Marco. “Who decides what is the truth? Speak to me, Venetian. You have the words in your head, I have the words in my hand– together we will make them last.”
Marco sighed. “I can see the moon out the window like a slice of melon and I hear the bells of Genoese churches. The people of the East believe there is a rabbit in the moon, they too have bells. And waterclocks. And cities that rise and fall with time. But don't waste your effort writing it down, scribe. You will end by dulling the point of my sword. I refuse to speculate on the meaning of my dreams. I would rather keep dreaming, riding and counting the leagues.”
Rusticello shuffled to his pile of straw. “There could be wide interest in certain dreams. I know you have seen things other men have not even imagined. You have told me, at times, teased me with half-revealed details. I have heard you mumbling half-coherently in your sleep. I listen with the sharpened ears of an old widow, much time on her hands, gossip her bread and wine, but I understand little– and when you wake you bite your tongue. Speak now, give it up, I am listening.”
Marco spoke as if to himself: “It was all a dream– I myself a dream figure, moving through lands I dreamt. It was a kind of fever-dream from….”
“You avoid me with your maddening non-sequiturs. Look–it is dark outside our window. I have wasted another day trying to land that fish of a tongue. Perhaps it is useless, perhaps I should let it continue to swim freely in that empty sea inside your head.”
“What?” Marco turned to stare blankly at Rusticello.
Rusticello sat brooding.
From his side of the cell, Marco muttered, “The light has gone. The room is dark but the black at the window, the perfect square window, is an altogether deeper black. It is like a dream within a dream, this perfect void of black, a perfect geometric talisman, a deep dream deep within a dream, unattainable, unrealizable, like the past within the present…that's what he told me….”
Rusticello perked up his ears, raised himself up on one elbow.
“That's what he told me…watch….”
Sucking in his breath, Rusticello listened hard…waited…then flopped onto his back, realizing Marco had fallen asleep in mid-sentence.
The next morning, sitting on his pile of straw, knees raised, feet flat on the floor, Marco said, “In any case, it matters not. I am sure my family will soon buy my freedom. I will not have enough time here to relate half the tale. Also,” Marco stood and walked to the window, his back to Rusticello, “to tell the truth, I can no longer be sure what I saw with my own eyes, what was told to me in a tale, and what I dreamt in my imagination.” He turned around and faced the Pisan.
Rusticello held a bowl of broth cupped in his hands. He gazed into it, at the few floating threads of meat, as he spoke. “Yes, the past fades…my own, too. But still, you saw much of magic, much of wonder, I am convinced of that.”
“How is that? What convinces you?” Marco moved to the door as Rusticello set aside the bowl and stood, walking to the window to look out.
Rusticello turned to stare at Marco. “Something about your look, your face, your eyes. One cannot look upon the wonders you have looked upon and not have one's eyes reflect it.”
Marco crossed in front of Rusticello and went to the mirror. He gazed into the reflection of his own eyes. “I see nothing.”
Rusticello ignored him and moved to the door, turning and looking at the floor. “Eight steps,” he said and walked back to the window as Marco crossed to his straw. Rusticello looked out the window. “Yes, you have seen magic, grand vistas of land and sea, vast panoramas, mountains, deserts, great cities, and lost villages at the end of the world.” He turned from the window and looked at Marco. “I can see it in the intensity of your gaze, those dark pools clear as melted ice. Oh, it's not in your grey-speckled ragged beard, not in your weathered skin, not in your surprisingly delicate hands. No, it's in those eyes, Marco Polo. There is a distance in them as of far-off places. I can see it there, still there, as if you are always looking beyond.” Rusticello returned to his side of the cell, squatted and picked up his bowl. “They say the eyes are like wells– all that you throw into them stays there, and can surface at a later time. I am a patient man. Be silent if you must. I will wait.”
Marco glanced up, his look hard and clear. “Remember that. Remember what you have said.”
Silk Road East of the Known World
Across the sleepy lagoon, I see tall umbrella palms on the island where my friend, Giorgio, studies at the Franciscan monastery. As my sandolo cleaves the smooth water, I hardly suspect I will not see him again for two score years– and then under quite different, less pleasant, circumstances.
From an early age Giorgio had longed to be a priest. He had entered a monastery on the island of San Francesco del Deserto, not far across the lagoons. Marco rowed his sleek sandolo out to see him one grey morning.
The island exuded a green-scented silence. Although a fetid mist lay over the lagoons, the warmth of spring thickened the air. The two friends walked about the grounds talking, then sat on a stone bench overlooking the walled garden edged by towering cypresses and umbrella palms. No breeze stirred. All was still and quiet, but for the odd bird twittering in the bushes.
In his right hand Giorgio held a scroll. “I have found the Papal Bull I mentioned to you, issued by Pope Alexander IV in 1260. You should heed its warning, Marco. You should stay here, learn to pray, like St. Francis.”
“Yes, yes. What does it say?” Marco, familiar and impatient with Giorgio's pieties, glanced at the parchment in his friend's hands.
“I will read.” Giorgio, who had a round head, stubby white hands and a delicately weak mouth, ceremoniously announced the title– “Clamat in Auribus”– and went on to read from the document, struggling over the Latin.
“And what does it mean?” Marco folded his arms over his chest.
“It says the Tartars are inhuman.”
“Where? Translate it to me.”
Giorgio translated, haltingly: There rings in the ears of all, and rouses to a…vigilant alertness those who are not…confused…by mental torpor, a terrible trumpet of dire fore-warning which…giving…evidence of events, proclaims with an unmistakable sound the wars of universal destruction. Thus the scourge of Heaven's wrath in the hands of the inhuman Tartars, erupting as it were from the secret…confines of Hell, oppresses and crushes the earth.…
“Enough.”