Martin Seay - The Mirror Thief

This afternoon, Contarini says, you met my young cousin.

Perina. Yes.

She had questions for you.

Yes. She did.

Contarini draws a deep breath and lets it out. For the first time today, he looks old. I had asked Perina, he says, to be delicate and respectful, in a manner befitting a young lady of her station. But I fear that her youth in this house suffered a lack of womanly paragons for such behavior, and thus her tread is often heavier than it should be. For this you have my apologies.

No apology is needed, Senator. I enjoyed speaking with—

Contarini quiets him with a raised palm. Please, he says. Grant an old diplomat a few frank words to ease his guilty conscience. Perina sought to interrogate you about the Battle of Lepanto, for reasons you have perhaps by now ascertained. I indulged her, not only by arranging today’s encounter, but also by withholding from you my knowledge of her intentions. I allowed you to be ambushed. I had imagined this to be a thing of small consequence — an amusing stratagem to disrupt your usual reserve, to encourage you to speak freely of your past deeds — but I see now that I was presumptuous.

He lays his heavy crystal down, angling a thin rainbow smear across the desktop, over the white surface of an unfinished epistle. On it, Crivano can make out a careful sketch of the Piazza, an inverted salutation written in French. The sun is dropping over the canal, lengthening Contarini’s shadow. The cast spectrum has already begun to fade.

I never went to war, Contarini says. Like many of my fellow senators, I came of age during a peaceful era in our Republic’s history. I and my colleagues should be grateful for this. Instead, we are envious. We see these younger men, our sons and our cousins, who tasted firsthand the victory at Lepanto, who can always respond to our pretense of aged wisdom by saying: But I was there! And we sigh, and we dream of the fame we might have won if only Fortune had smiled upon us as she did upon them. In short, we imagine war to be a crucible for forging glory. It is not. It is a waste and a horror — the product of the worst failures of velvety statesmen like myself — and to envy any man a brush with it is an impious folly.

Senator, Crivano says, you prosecute this suit against yourself with too much zeal. Were there no glories to be found in wars, they would have ceased long ago.

Oh, glories can indeed be found in them. And where they are lacking, there they can be placed. The installation of glory after the fact is a trade, like any other. If you have seen the new paintings in the doge’s palace — miserable Francesco himself supplied one — then you know that I have participated in this unlovely business. Simply the price of governance, as the Florentine clerk said: the maintenance of the imago urbis . But as I sat in that dark room today, listening to Signore della Porta’s absurd encomium, I realized how noxious his words must seem to one who has seen battle with his own eyes, and not through a glass, darkly. Great God, that poem! Is it not startling, the way we still laud the old blind doge after all these centuries? A crusader who made war on Christians, whose ghost has all but escorted the infidel to our gates? But our poets and our painters cut him from the tapestry of his times, they push him ever forward through our history, until he comes to signify nothing but the valor of the Republic. Thus is he emptied: a perfect surface to reflect our greatness back to us. This will happen with Bragadin, too, in time. And with Lepanto. Perhaps it is already happening.

In Bologna, Crivano says, I heard those two names fall often from thoughtless lips. But in this city they seem subjects wreathed always with silence, best not raised at all. I confess that this has been a source of confusion for me.

The senator nods. I had hoped that the city would welcome you more warmly, Vettor, he says. That they would be more overt in their expressions of gratitude. But it was difficult for me to arrange even the few paltry gestures you have seen.

I am hardly disappointed by my reception here, senator. I meant only—

That you were surprised. That is understandable. But the explanation is simple. Had your galley not been captured by the Turks — or had you somehow returned with the relics of Bragadin in hand only a year after Lepanto — then today you would probably be married into a great family, grooming your sons for their eventual dogeship. As it is, the Republic quietly made a separate peace with the sultan during your long confinement, renouncing all claims to Cyprus. Then that sultan died, and a new sultan took his place, one who is friendly to us in matters of trade. Today, the relics of valiant Bragadin that you so bravely recovered serve only to remind us that he suffered and died for nothing. Furthermore, to diplomats like myself Lepanto has become an inconvenience best abandoned to the past. So far as the history of the Republic is concerned, the battle yielded naught but glory and corpses, and may as well not have happened at all. Let the poets and the painters take care of it. You heard about Polidoro, I suppose. Do you remember Polidoro?

This is a name Crivano has not heard spoken in years, one that his sinews recall more than his brain: in the instant it takes him to place it, his limbs have already grown stiff with fear. Of course, he says. The man who stole Bragadin’s remains from the Turkish arsenal. He gave them to me, and when I escaped, I gave them to the bailo in Galata.

Polidoro also escaped. Did you know that? The Turks recaptured him, and they tortured him most foully, but some weeks later he was somehow free again. He now resides in Verona, the city of his birth. A few years ago he petitioned the senate for a monthly pension of sixteen ducats, citing his heroism in the Republic’s service. The senate granted him five.

Contarini is watching Crivano closely. Crivano shrugs. I knew Polidoro only as a pair of hands in the darkness, he says.

Just as well, Contarini says. The man is a simple thief. Thieving put him at the oars of one of our galleys. That galley was taken at sea, so he came to row for the Turks. Winter brought him to the arsenal, where Bragadin’s relics were kept. Then thieving brought him back to the Republic again. I confess my own vote was to give the man nothing. Why should the Republic reward a thief for being a thief? Last week, an asp bit my enemy. This week, it has appeared in my garden. Do I offer it food on a dish of gold? No. I reach for my stick.

Some of the silk has gone from Contarini’s voice; weariness is gathering, settling in. There will be no tour of the library today. Crivano studies the dry lines in the man’s face, the slight tremor in his strong left hand. What grand dreams must visit that snowy head, he thinks.

I have a small favor to ask, the senator says.

Of course.

Tomorrow, my family and I are to depart the city. The summer is upon us, and the warm weeks ahead are to be spent in the more pleasant air of our mainland villa. This evening, my vulgar young cousin is to return to the convent school of Santa Caterina. It would mean a great deal to me, and a great deal more to her, if you can spare a few idle hours to call on her while we are away. I suspect that she was a bit of an affliction upon you this afternoon, but I give you my word that she can at times be charming. Whether you choose to visit her or not, I hope you’ll make use of the library here while I am gone. Rigi, the porter, will grant you entry.

The sun breaks under the window’s upper arch, and the senator’s features vanish into silhouette. Crivano squints and looks down at the desktop. Of the spectrum the crystal cast only an orange sliver remains at the desk’s dentiled edge. Crivano’s chest feels as if it has shrunk and tightened, like the wrinkled skin of a dry fruit.