Bllod and Gold Page 33

  "Yes, like Botticelli," she said, smiling as if I'd spoken it.

  Again, I could say nothing. I was the one who read minds, and yet this child, this woman of nineteen pr twenty years seemed tp have read mine. But did she know how much I loved Botticelli? That she could not know.

  She went on gaily, reaching out for my hand with both of hers.

  "Everyone says it," she said, "and I'm honored. You plight say I dress my hair this way on account of Botticelli. You know I was born in Florence, but that's not worth talking about here in Venice, is it? You're Marius de Romanus. I was wondering how long it would be before you came."

  "Thank you for receiving me," I said. "I fear I come with nothing." I was still shocked by her beauty, shocked by the sound of her voice. "What have I to offer you?" I asked. "I have no poems, nor clever stories about the state of things. Tomorrow, I shall have my servants bring you the best wine I have in my house. But what is that to you?"

  "Wine?" she repeated. "I don't want gifts of wine from you, Marius.

  Paint my picture. Paint the pearls interwound in my hair, I should love it."

  There was soft laughter all around the room. I gazed musingly at the others. The candlelight was dim even for me. How rich it all seemed, these naive poets and students of the classics, this indescribably beautiful woman, and the room itself with all the usual splendid trappings, and time passing slowly as though the moments had some meaning and were not a sentence of penitence and grief.

  I was in my glory. I realized it quite suddenly and then something else struck me.

  This young woman was in her glory too.

  Something sordid and evil lay behind her recent fortunes here, yet she displayed nothing of the desperation she must surely feel.

  I tried to read her mind and then I chose not to do it! I didn't want anything but this moment.

  I wanted to see this woman as she wanted me to see her—young, infinitely kind, yet utterly well defended—a companion for the night's cheerful gatherings, mysterious mistress of her own house.

  Indeed, I saw another great drawing room adjacent to this one, and beyond it a marvelously decorated bedroom with a bed made of golden swans and gold-threaded silk.

  Why this display if not to tell everyone that in that bed, this woman slept alone? No one was ever to presume to cross that threshold, but all might see where the maiden retired of her own accord.

  "Why do you stare at me?" she asked me. "Why do you look about yourself as if this is a strange place to you when surely it's not? "

  "All of Venice is lovely to me," I answered, making my voice soft and confidential so that it would not be for the whole room.

  "Yes, isn't it?" she said, smiling exquisitely. "I too love it. I'll never return to Florence. But will you paint a picture of me?"

  "Perhaps I will," I answered. "I don't know your name."

  "You're not serious," she said, smiling again. I realized suddenly how very worldly she was. "You didn't come here not knowing my name. How could you want me to believe such a thing?"

  "Oh, but I don't know it," I said, because I had never asked her name, and had learnt of her through vague images and impressions and fragments of conversation overheard by me as a blood drinker, and I stood at a loss because I wouldn't read her mind.

  "Bianca," she said. "And my rooms are always open to you. And if you paint my picture, I'll be in your debt."

  There were more guests coming. I knew that she meant to receive them. I backed away from her and took a station, so to speak, in the shadows well away from the candles, and from there I watched her, watched her infallibly graceful movements and heard her clever, ringing voice.

  Over the years, I had beheld a thousand mortals who meant nothing

  to me, and now, gazing at this one creature I felt my heart tripping as it had when I had entered Botticelli's workshop, when I had seen his paintings and seen him, Botticelli, the man. Oh, yes, the man.

  I stayed in her rooms only for a short time that night.

  But I returned within the week with a portrait of her. I had painted it on a small panel and had it framed with gold and jewels.

  I saw her shock when she received it. She had not expected something so exact. But then I feared she might see something wrong.

  When she looked at me, I felt her gratitude and her affection and something greater collecting inside her, an emotion she denied in dealing with others.

  "Who are you ... really?" she asked me in a soft, lilting whisper.

  "Who are you ... really?" I repeated, and I smiled.

  She looked at me gravely. Then she smiled too but she didn't answer, and all her secrets folded inside her—the sordid things, things to do with blood and gold.

  For a moment, I thought my powerful self-control would be lost. I would embrace her, whether or not she would have it, and take her rapidly by force from the veiy middle of her warm and safe rooms to die cold and fatal domain of my soul.

  I saw her, positively saw her as if the Christian Satan were giving me visions once more—I saw her transformed by the Dark Blood. I saw her as if she were mine, and all her youth burnt out in sacrifice to immortality, and the only warmth or riches known to her those which came from me.

  I left her rooms. I couldn't remain there. For nights, no, months I did not return. In that time a letter came to me from her. I was quite astonished to receive it and I read it over and over and then put it in a poqket inside my tunic next to my heart.

  My dear Marius,

  Why leave me with only a brilliant painting when I would have your companionship as well? We are always seeking for amusement here, and there is much kind talk of you. Do come back to me. Your painting occupies a position of honor on the wall of my salon so that I might share the pleasure of it with all who come.

  How had this happened, this craving to make a mortal my companion?

  After so many centuries, what had I done to bring it on?

  I had thought that, with Botticelli, it had to do with his remarkable talent, and that I, with eyes so sharp and heart so hungry, had wanted to mingle the Blood with his inexplicable gift.

  But this child, Bianca, was no such seeming miracle, no matter how precious I found her to be. Oh, yes, she was to my taste as if I'd made her—the daughter of Pandora—it was as if Botticelli had created her, even to the somewhat dreamy expression of her face. And she did have a seemingly impossible mingling of fire and poise.

  But I had in rny long miserable years seen many beautiful humans, rich and poor, younger and older, and I had not felt this sharp, near uncontrollable desire to bring her to me, to take her to the shrine with me, to spill out to her whatever wisdom I possessed.

  What was I to do with this pain? How should I be rid of it? How long would it torment me right here in the city of Venice where I had chosen to seek comfort from mortals and give back to the world in secret payment my blessed and well-educated boys?

  On rising, I found myself shaking loose light dreams of Bianca, dreams in which she and I were sitting in my bedroom and talking together as I told her of all the long lonely paths I'd trod, talking together as she told me of how she had drawn from common and filthy pain her immeasurable strength.

  Even as I attended the feast with my students I couldn't shake off these dreams. They broke in on me as if I were falling asleep over the wine and meats. The boys vied for my attention. They thought they had failed the Master.

  When I went to my rooms to paint, I was equally confused. I painted a large picture of Bianca as the Virgin Mary with a chubby Infant Jesus. I laid down the brushes. I wasn't content. I couldn't be content.

  I went out of Venice into the countryside. I searched for the Evil Doer. I drank blood until I was glutted. And then I returned to my rooms, and I lay down on my bed and I dreamt of Bianca again.

  At last before dawn I wrote my admonitions down in my diary:

  This desire to make an immortal companion is no more justified

  here than it was in Flore
nce. You have survived all your long life without ever taking this evil step, though you know well how to do it—the Druid priest taught you how to do it—and not doing it, you will continue to survive. You cannot bring over this child to you, no matter how you envision it. Imagine her to be a statue. Imagine your evil to be a force that would shatter that statue. See her then in fragments. Know that that is what you would do.

  I went back to her rooms.

  It was as if I'd never seen her before, so great was her impression upon me, so soft and compelling her voice, so radiant her face and her worldly eyes. It was an agony and also an immeasurable consolation to be near her.

  For months I came to her rooms, pretending to listen to the poems recited, sometimes forced to answer in the gentle discussions regarding the theories of aesthetics or philosophy, but all the while simply wanting to be near her, studying the minutia of her beauty, closing my eyes now and then as I listened to the song of her voice.

  Visitors came and went from her famous gatherings. No one dared question her supremacy within her own domain. But as I sat, as I observed, as I let myself dream in the candlelight, there came to my observation something subtle and dreadful as ever I had beheld.

  Certain men who came into these rooms were marked for a dark and specific purpose. Certain men, well known to the divinely alluring mistress, received in their wine a poison which would follow them as they left the genial company and soon accomplish their"deaths!

  At first, when I with my preternatural senses had smelled this subtle but certain poison I thought I had imagined such a thing. But then with the Mind Gift, I saw into the heart of this enchantress, and how she lured those whom she must poison, knowing little or nothing of why they had been condemned to death.

  This was the sordid lie I had first perceived in her. A kinsman, a Florentine banker, kept her in terror. Indeed it was he who had brought her here, provided her with her nest of lovely chambers and ever playing music. It was he who demanded of her that the poison be placed in the proper cup to do away with those he chose.

  HOW calmly her blue eyes passed over those who drank the fatal potion. How calmly she watched as the poetry was read to her. How calmly she smiled at me when her eyes happened to fall upon the tall blond-haired man who observed her from the corner. And how deep her despair!

  Armed with this new knowledge, no, driven to distraction by it, I went out into the night roaming, for now I had the proof on her of guilt immeasurable! Was this not sufficient to bring her over, to force the Dark Blood upon her, and then say, "No, my darling, I haven't taken your life, I've given you eternity with me!"

  Beyond the city I walked the country roads for hours, sometimes pounding my forehead with the heels of my palms.

  I want her, I want her, I want her. But I could not bring myself to do it. At last I went home to paint her portrait. And night after night, I painted her portrait again. I painted her as the Virgin of the Annunciation, and the Virgin with Child. I painted her as the Virgin in the Lamentation. I painted her as Venus, as Flora, I painted her on small panels that I brought to her. 1 painted her until I could endure it no longer. I slumped on the floor of rny painting room, and when the apprentices came to me in the dark hours of the dawn, they thought me sick and cried out.

  But I couldn't bring harm to her. I couldn't bring my Evil Blood to her. I couldn't take her over to me, and now a most great and grotesque quality attached itself to her in my eyes.

  She was evil as I was evil, and when I watched her from the corner of her room, I fancied that I studied a thing which was like unto myself.

  For her life, she dispatched her victims. For my life, I drank human blood.

  And so this tender girl, in her costly gowns with her long blond locks and soft cheeks, took on a dark majesty for me; and I was fascinated by her more than ever before.

  One night, so great was my pain, so dire was my need to separate myself from this young woman, that I went alone in my gondola, telling my oarsman to row back and forth through the smallest canals of the city and not bring me back to the palazzo until I gave the command.

  What did I seek? The smell of death and rats in the blackest waters, The occasional merciful flashes of the moon.

  I lay down in the boat, my head on my pillow. I listened to the voices of the city so that I would not hear my own.

  And quite suddenly, as we came into the wider canals again, as. we came into a certain district of Venice, there came a voice quite different from all the others, for it was speaking from a desperate and deranged mind.

  In a flash I saw an image behind the cry of this voice, the image of a painted face. Indeed, I saw the paint laid on in marvelous strokes. I knew the painted face. It was the face of Christ!

  What did this mean? In a solemn silence, I listened. No other voice mattered to me. I banished a city full of whispers.

  It was a woeful crying. It was the voice of a child behind thick walls who on account of the recent cruelties done him could not remember his native language or even his name.

  Yet in that forgotten language he prayed to be delivered from those who had cast him down in darkness, those who had tormented him and jabbered at him in a tongue he didn't know.

  Once again there came that image, the painted Christ staring forward. The painted Christ in a time-honored and Greek style. Oh, how well I knew this fashion of painting; oh, how well I knew this countenance.

  Had I not seen it a thousand times in Byzantium, and in all those places East and West to which its power had reached?

  What did this mean, this mingled voice and imagery? What did it mean that the child thought again and again of an ikon and did riot know that he prayed?

  Once again there came the plea from one who thought himself to be utterly silent.

  And I knew the language in which he prayed. It was no matter to me to disentangle it, to put the words in order, having as I did such a knowledge of languages the world wide. Yes, I knew his tongue and I knew his prayer. "Dear God, deliver me. Dear God, let me die."

  A frail child, a hungry child, a child who was alone.

  Sitting up in the gondola, I listened. I delved for the images locked away inside the child's most wordless thoughts.

  He had once been a painter, this bruised and young one. The face of Christ had been his work. He had once mixed the egg yolk and the pigment just as I mixed them. He had once painted the face of Christ, again and again!

  Whence came this voice? I had to discover the source of it. I listened with all my skill.

  Somewhere very near, this child was imprisoned. Somewhere very near, he offered up his prayer with his last breath.

  He had painted his precious ikons in the far country of snowy Russia.

  Indeed, this child had been supremely gifted in the painting of ikons. But he could not remember that now. That was the mystery. That was the complexity! He could not even see the images which I was seeing, so broken was his heart.

  I could understand what he himself could not understand. And he was pleading silently with Heaven in a Russian dialect to be delivered from those who had made him a slave in Venice and sought to make him serve others in a brothel through acts which to him were sins of the flesh which he could not abide!

  I told my oarsman to stop.

  I listened until I had found the exact source. I directed the boat to go back only a few doors until I found the precise place.

  The torches were burning brightly before the entrance. I could hear the music inside.

  The voice of the child was persistent, and yet there came that clear understanding on my part that the child did not know his own prayers, his own history, his own tongue.

  I was greeted by the owners of the house with great fanfare. They knew of me. I must come in. I could have whatever I wanted under their roof. Just beyond the door lay paradise. Listen to the laughter, and the singing.

  "What do you desire, Master?" a pleasant-voiced man asked of me. "You can tell me. We have no secrets here."
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  I stood listening. How reticent I must have seemed—this tall, blond-haired man with such a chilly manner, who cocked his head to one side and looked away wifh his thoughtful blue eyes.

  I tried to see the boy, but I could not. The boy was locked away where no one saw him. How would I proceed? Ask to see all of the boys of the house? That would not do it, for this one was in a chamber of punishment, cold arid quite alone.

  Then suddenly the answer came to me as though angels had spoken it, or was it the Devil? It came swiftly and completely.