Martin Seay - The Mirror Thief

He saunters forward, giving the mirrormaker an empty stare. Verzelin goes silent, his febrile eyes returning Crivano’s gaze, his lean bearded face a riot of tics and twitches. Then Crivano walks past him, carrying on down the fondamenta, the iron ferrule of his stick clicking sharply on the pavement.

Confounded, Verzelin discharges a spate of rapid gibberish, unintelligible and bestial, and Crivano picks up his pace. There’s an opening on the right: the Street of the Potters. He makes the turn. Another glassworks here, along with two osterie and a lusterware factory; the other shops are dark and shuttered. Halfway down the block, Crivano steps into the recessed doorway of a mercer and waits.

Verzelin isn’t far behind. With each step, his body angles left; he corrects himself like a ship beating to windward. The few people on the street hasten from his path. He murmurs as he comes. The peacock , he says, he’s a holy bird, a holy bird, a holy bird .

Crivano steps into the open; the moonlight catches him. Verzelin, he says.

Verzelin blinks, squints. Dottore? he says. Dottore Crivano?

Yes. I’m here.

I conjured you, Verzelin says. I called you from the glass.

We must go, Verzelin. Do you understand? We must leave Murano tonight.

Verzelin stares without comprehension, then squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, like a child who’s tasted raw onion.

Listen to me. The guild and the Council of Ten have learned of our intentions. The sbirri are looking for you right now. There’s a boat nearby waiting to take us to Chioggia, but we must hurry.

Verzelin grimaces, stares at his shuffling feet. In his expression Crivano can see an army of fleeting impulses being enveloped by profound weariness. I will follow, Verzelin mutters. I have looked. In the glass. What I have seen. And I will follow.

Crivano finds a dry spot on Verzelin’s upper sleeve and tugs it to urge him along. There’s a wide square ahead — early-rising merchants’ wives filling pails at the well — and they angle away from it, following the curve of the street until they’re parallel to the glassmakers’ canal. Potters are at work nearby, singing a maudlin song about a drowned sailor, but he and Verzelin have the pavement to themselves.

Crivano speaks softly and rapidly, reminding Verzelin of what they’re doing and why. From Chioggia we’ll sail to Ragusa, he whispers. In Ragusa an English cog will be waiting to take us to Amsterdam. We’ll be there in three weeks, God willing. And the guild’s prayers to Saint Anthony will be very fervent this year, I think.

Don’t want, Verzelin says, don’t want to go to Amsterdam. Heretics! Full of heretics, it is.

Well, you’ll have to convert them all, won’t you, Alegreto?

Verzelin’s tremors have faded, but his feet are dragging, and his voice is blunted by his dripping mouth. Can’t work, he says. Lift the glass. Not anymore. My hands , dottore! My hands!

Crivano wraps his fingers around Verzelin’s arm, glances ahead. He can see the lagoon now, and the quiet fondamenta where Obizzo is to have moored the boat. You won’t have to work the glass in Amsterdam, Crivano says, pulling him forward. They’ve found good workers for you there. Experienced men. You need only teach them to apply the silvering.

I am afflicted, Verzelin moans. I have seen! There is no time, no time. Have you? Do you follow?

Of course, maestro, Crivano says. Of course I do.

Shutters open on a shop to the left, but Crivano doesn’t look back. I have caught him! Verzelin whispers, clutching Crivano’s hand. In my glass! I have , I have caught. Hold a mirror up to Christ, dottore! Is that not the Second Coming? Have you seen, dottore? Have you? What good is it to witness, if you never tell?

They’ve reached the fondamenta. The lagoon is before them, black and limitless, with a scattering of lanterns across its surface, a careful thread of light that joins the mainland to the Grand Canal. From nearby buildings issue snores, muffled voices, the sound of a couple fucking, but no one is afoot. A hundred yards south along the quay is a stand of holly-oaks; Crivano spots a white rag draped over one of the lower limbs. Come on, he whispers, pulling Verzelin’s arm. Quickly.

I worked so hard, Verzelin says. So hard. Now I see. The peacock, he’s a holy bird, dottore. Just count the eyes on his tail.

Crivano takes a moment to scan windows and balconies, but no one seems to be watching them. They’re almost to the trees. On the quay before them, two kittens are picking at the discarded head of a shad; aside from them and the water, nothing moves. Crivano lets Verzelin step ahead, then puts a gentle hand on his back.

The draped branch points to a palina where Obizzo’s small black sandolo is moored. Obizzo has removed the passengers’ chairs from his boat; there’s a wadded sheet of sackcloth in the bare hull, partly covering a coil of hemp cord and an irregular block of limestone. Obizzo himself is hunched in the stern, hidden under a broad-brimmed hat and a shabby greatcoat. As Crivano and Verzelin draw even with the bow, he stands and scrambles forward.

Verzelin gasps, stops in his tracks. Even in his blighted state he recognizes Obizzo at once. You , he says.

Crivano lifts his walkingstick crosswise in both hands and drives it against the base of Verzelin’s skull. Verzelin’s head pops forward, he staggers, and Crivano slips the stick under his chin, laying it across his neck just above the thyroid cartilage. Then he tucks the right end of the stick behind his own head, levers it back with his left arm, and crushes Verzelin’s larynx.

Verzelin struggles, clawing the air, and Crivano catches his right wrist with his free hand to wrench it immobile. Obizzo has Verzelin’s legs; he twists them, grimacing fiercely, as if Verzelin is a forked green sapling he’s trying to snap in two. Held off the ground, Verzelin writhes, grasping at nothing with his unbound left arm. There’s a dull pop — a femoral head dislocating from an acetabulum — and Verzelin’s body goes heavy and slack.

Like Antaeus, Crivano thinks. He holds on awhile longer, certain that the stick is tight across the carotid artery. Many years have passed since he last did this. He thinks about those other men — the touch and the smell of them, the sound of their interrupted breath — as he waits for Verzelin to die.

Come on, come on, damn it! Obizzo whispers. His hat has fallen; he retrieves it, puts it on backward, turns it around, watching the lights in the nearby buildings with stray-dog eyes. Every soul in Murano would know him at a glance.

All right, Crivano says. Take his legs.

They put Verzelin’s body in the bottom of the hull and hide it with sackcloth. Crivano wraps the cord around the torso — both legs, both shoulders, a double-loop at the waist — and ties it with a surgeon’s knot.

Obizzo is in the stern, his long oar at the ready. That’s enough, dottore, he says. Get out and cast me off.

Crivano springs to the quay and plucks at the dockline. Be certain to put him in the water at San Nicolò, he says. Sink him in the channel. If the cord breaks, he should float out to sea.

When will I hear from you?

Crivano loops the line and drops it into the sandolo’s bow. I’ll find you in the Rialto, he says.

When?

Crivano doesn’t answer. He watches Obizzo bring the small boat about. The sleeves of Obizzo’s coat slide back when he lifts his oar, baring his thick forearms, and Crivano wonders what wild canards he tells his passengers to explain the burns that mottle his furnace-roasted skin. After a few long strokes and an angry backward glare, Obizzo fades into the dark.