Casanova in Bolzano

News

They slept in flurries, snoring, panting, and puffing, and, as they slept, were aware that something was happening to them. They sensed that someone was walking through the house. They sensed someone was calling them and that they should answer in ways they had never answered before. The question posed by the stranger was insolent, saucy, aggressive, and, above all, frightening and sad. But by the time they awoke in the morning they had forgotten it.

While they were sleeping the news rapidly spread: he had arrived, had escaped the Leads, had managed to row away from his birthplace in broad daylight, had thumbed his nose at their graces the terrifying lords of the Inquisition, had run rings round Lawrence the militia chief, had sprung the unfrocked friar, had more or less strolled from the doges’ citadel, had been spotted in Mestre bargaining with the driver of the mail coach, been observed sipping vermouth in a coffeehouse in Treviso, and there was one peasant who swore he had seen him at the border putting a spell on his cows. The news spread through Venetian palazzos, through suburban inns, and as it did so, cardinals, their graces the senators, hangmen, secret agents, spies, cardsharps, lovers and husbands, girls at mass and women in warm beds, laughed and exclaimed, “Hoho!” Or in full throat, with deep satisfaction, laughed out loud, “Haha!” Or giggled into their pillows or handkerchiefs, “Teehee!” Everyone was delighted he had escaped. By next evening the news had been announced to the Pope, who recalled him, remembering when he had personally presented him with some minor papal award, and he couldn’t help laughing. The news spread: in Venice, gondoliers leaned on their long oars and closely analyzed all the technical details of his escape and were glad, glad because he was a Venetian, because he had outwitted the authorities, and because there was someone stronger than tyrants or stones and chains, stronger even than the Leads. They spoke quietly, spitting into the water and rubbing their palms with satisfaction. The news spread and people’s hearts grew warm on hearing it. “What crime had he committed, after all?” they asked. “He gambled, and, good God, he might not have played an entirely honest hand, he certainly ran tables in low bars and wore a mask when playing with professional gamblers! But this was Venice, after all! Who didn’t?… And yes, he roughed up a few people who betrayed him and he lured women to his rented apartment in Murano, a little way from town, but how else do you spend your youth in Venice? And of course he was impudent, had a quick tongue and talked a lot. But was anyone silent in Venice?…”

So they muttered and, every so often, laughed. Because there was something good about the news, something satisfying and heartwarming. Because everyone knew the Inquisition had its teeth in one or another piece of their own flesh, that one or another part of them was already living in the Leads, and now somebody had demonstrated that a man could overcome despotism, lead roofs, and the police, that he was stronger than the messer grande, the emissary of the hangman, and the bringer of bad news. The news spread: in police stations they were slamming files on tables, officers went round shouting, magistrates listened with reddened ears to those accused of crimes and angrily sent men to prison, into exile, to the galleys, or to the scaffold. They spoke of him in churches, preached against him after mass for having concentrated all seven deadly sins in one accursed body, which, according to the priest, would boil in its own individual cauldron, then roast in a fire especially set aside for it in hell, forever. His name was even mentioned in the confessional booth by women with heads bowed low, who beat their breasts while accepting the prescribed penance. And everyone was pleased, for something good had happened in Venice, and in every village and town of the republic he passed through.

They slept, and smiled as they dreamed. Wherever he went they took greater care than usual to close their windows and doors by night, and behind closed shutters men would spend a long time talking to their wives. It was as if every feeling that yesterday had been ashes and embers had started to smoke and spout flames. He cast no spells on cows, but cowherds swore that calves born that year were prettier and that there were more of them. Women woke, fetched water from the well in wooden buckets, kindled fires in their kitchens, warmed pans of milk, set fruit out on glazed trays, suckled their infants, fed the men, swept out the bedrooms, changed the beds, and smiled as they worked. It was a smile that took some time to disappear from Venice, Tyrol, and Lombardy. The smile spread like a highly active and harmless infection: it even spread over the borders, so that they had heard of it in Munich, and waited for it, smiling in readiness, as they did in Paris where the tale of his escape was recounted to the king while he was hunting in the deer park, and he too smiled. And it was known in Parma, and in Turin, Vienna, and Moscow. And everywhere there was smiling. And the policemen, the magistrates, the militiamen and the spies — everyone whose business it was to keep people in the grip of fear of the authorities — went about their work suspiciously and in ill temper. Because there is nothing quite as dangerous as a man who will not yield to despotism.

They knew he had nothing but a dagger to call his own, but for several weeks they doubled the guard at border posts. They knew he had no accomplices and that he did not concern himself with politics, yet the chief executive of the Inquisition drew up a complete campaign strategy to recapture him, to entice him back into the cage, dead or alive, with gold or with violence, no matter what. They explained the details of his escape to the doge, that squat figure with piercing eyes, and he beat the table with his ringed fingers and swore to send the militiamen to the galleys. Senators gripped the creases of their silk coats with delicate yellow hands and clutched them closer to their bosoms, sitting silently in their armchairs in the great hall, sniffing the air through noses yellowed with diabetes, their faces expressionless, occasionally glancing up to examine the ceiling paintings or the main joists of the council room through narrowed lids while voting for new draconian measures, shrugging their shoulders and remaining silent.

But the smile spread like influenza: the baker’s wife, the goldsmith’s sister, and the daughter of the doge all caught it. People in the privacy of their carefully locked rooms slapped their stomachs with delight and laughed fit to burst. There was something eerily consoling in the news that someone could spirit himself through walls a yard thick, past a set of vigilant guards wielding lances and pikes, and break the links of chains as fat as a child’s arm. Then they went off to their places of work, stood in the marketplace or the bar, sipping a little Veronese wine, and the usurers among them weighed out gold dust on delicately adjusted scales, the pharmacists brewed laxatives, love potions, and deadly poisons that could be ground to a fine powder and secreted in signet rings, women with ample bellies garnished low market stalls of fish, fruit, and raw meat with scented herbs, merchants of fashion items arranged newly delivered stockings from Lyon and bodices crocheted in Bruges, displaying them in calfskin boxes perfumed with potpourri, and what with all the work, the chatter, the trade, and the administration, everyone found a moment to raise hand to mouth and have a good snigger.

The women felt that the escape and all that followed may, to some degree, have served their interests. They couldn’t explain this feeling very precisely, but, being Venetian women, it was not for them to split hairs when it came to feelings, and they accepted the instinctive, half-whispered logic of heart and blood and passion. The women were glad that he had escaped. It was as if a long-shackled force contained by legends, proverbs, books, memories, dreams, and yearnings had found its way into the world at large, or as if the hidden, somewhat improper, yet terrifyingly true, alternative life of men and women had moved into the foreground, unmasked, without its powdered wig, as naked as a prisoner emerging from the solemn tête-à-tête of the torture chamber; and women glanced after him while raising hands or fans to cover mouths and eyes, their heads tipped a little to one side, without saying anything, though the veiled, misty eyes that peeked at the fugitive said, “Yes,” and again, “Yes.” That was why they smiled. And, for a few days, it seemed as though the world in which they lived overflowed with tenderness. In the evening they stopped by their windows and balconies, the lagoon below them, the lyre-shaped veils of fine lace fixed to their hair by means of a comb, their silk scarves thrown across their shoulders, and gazed down into the oily, dirty, indifferent water that supported the boats, returned a glance that they would not have returned the day before, and dropped a handkerchief that was caught far below, above the reflections in the water, by a lithe brown hand: then they raised a flower to their lips, and smiled. Having done so, they closed the window and the lights went out in the room. But there was something in their hearts and their movements, in the eyes of the women and in the glances of the men, that shone. It was as if someone had sent a secret signal to tell them that life was not simply a matter of rules, prohibitions, and chains, but of passions that were less rational, less directed, and freer than they had hitherto believed. And for a moment they understood the signal and smiled at each other.

The sense of complicity did not last long: the books of the law, with all their written and unwritten rules of behavior, ensured that their hearts should forget the memory of the escaped prisoner. Within a few weeks they had forgotten it in Venice. Only Signor Bragadin, his gentle and gracious supporter, still recalled it, and a few women to whom he had promised eternal fidelity, along with the odd moneylender or gambler to whom he owed money.