The Journeyer

“Behold your son!” bellowed my uncle. “Your arcistupendonazzisimo son! Behold the namesake of our brother and our patron saint! Is this not a wretched and puny meschin, to have caused so much ado?”
“Father?” I said timorously to the other man.
“My boy?” he said, almost as hesitantly, but opening his arms.
I had expected someone even more overwhelming than my uncle, since my father was the elder of the two. But he was actually pale alongside his brother; not nearly so big and burly, and much softer of voice. Like my uncle, he wore a journeyer’s beard, but his was neatly trimmed. His beard and hair were not of a fearsome raven black, but a decorous mouse color, like my own hair.
“My son. My poor orphan boy,” said my father. He embraced me, but quickly put me away at arm’s length, and said worriedly, “Do you always smell like that?”
“No, Father. I have been locked up for—”
“You forget, Nico, that this is a bravo and a bonvivan and a gambler between the pillars,” boomed my uncle. “A champion of ill-married matrons, a lurker in the night, a wielder of the sword, a liberator of Jews!”
“Ah, well,” said my father indulgently. “A chick must stretch his wings farther than the nest. Come, let us go home.”
12
THE house servants were all moving with more alacrity and more cheerful demeanor than they had shown since my mother died. They even seemed glad to see me home again. The maid hastened to heat water when I asked, and Maistro Attilio, at my polite request, lent me his razor. I bathed several times over, inexpertly scraped the fuzz off my face, dressed in clean tunic and hose, and joined my father and uncle in the main room, where the tile stove was.
“Now,” I said, “I want to hear about your travels. All about everywhere you have been.”
“Dear God, not again,” Uncle Mafio groaned. “We have been let talk of nothing else.”
“Time enough for that later, Marco,” said my father. “All things in their time. Let us speak now of your own adventures.”
“They are over now,” I said hastily. “I would rather hear of new things.”
But they would not relent. So I told them, fully and frankly, everything that had happened since my first glimpse of Ilaria in San Marco’s—only omitting the amatory afternoon she and I had spent together. Thus I made it seem that mere mooncalf chivalry had impelled me to make my calamitous try at bravura.
When I was done, my father sighed. “Any woman could give pointers to the devil. Ah, well, you did what seemed best to you. And he who does all he can, does much. But the consequences have been tragic indeed. I had to agree to the Doge’s stipulation that you leave Venice, my son. He could, however, have been much harder on you.”
“I know,” I said contritely. “Where shall I go, Father? Should I go seeking a Land of Cockaigne?”
“Mafio and I have business in Rome. You will go with us.”
“Do I spend the rest of my life in Rome, then? The sentence was banishment forever.”
My uncle said what old Mordecai had said, “The laws of Venice are obeyed … for a week. A Doge’s forever is a Doge’s lifetime. When Tiepolo dies, his successor will hardly prevent your returning. Still, that could be a good while from now.”
My father said, “Your uncle and I are bearing to Rome a letter from the Khakhan of Kithai—”
I had never heard either of those harsh-sounding words before, and I interrupted to say so.
“The Khan of All Khans of the Mongols,” my father explained. “You may have heard him titled the Great Khan of what is here miscalled Cathay.”
I stared at him. “You met the Mongols? And you survived?”
“Met and made friends among them. The most powerful friend possible—the Khan Kubilai, who rules the world’s widest empire. He asked us to carry a request to Pope Clement … .”
He went on explaining, but I was not hearing. I was still staring at him in awe and admiration, and thinking—this was my father, whom I had believed long dead, and this very ordinary-looking man claimed to be a confidant of barbarian Khans and holy Popes!
He concluded, “ … And then, if the Pope lends us the hundred priests requested by Kubilai, we will lead them east. We will go again to Kithai.”
“When do we depart for Rome?” I asked.
My father said bashfully, “Well …”
“After your father marries your new mother,” said my uncle. “And that must wait for the proclamation of the bandi.”
“Oh, I think not, Mafio,” said my father. “Since Fiordelisa and I are hardly youngsters, both of us widowed, Pare Nunziata will probably dispense with all three cryings of the bandi.”
“Who is Fiordelisa?” I asked. “And is this not rather abrupt, Father?”
“You know her,” he said. “Fiordelisa Trevan, mistress of the house three doors down the canal.”
“Yes. She is a nice woman. She was Mother’s best friend among all our neighbors.”
“If you are implying what I think you are, Marco, I remind you that your mother is in her grave, where there is no jealousy or envy or recrimination.”
“Yes,” I said. And I added impertinently, “But you are not wearing the luto vedovile.”
“Your mother has been eight years in her grave. I should wear black now, and for another twelvemonth? I am not young enough to sequester myself in mourning for a year. Neither is the Dona Lisa any bambina.”
“Have you proposed to her yet, Father?”
“Yes, and she has accepted. We go tomorrow for our pastoral interview with Pare Nunziata.”
“Is she aware that you are going away immediately after you marry her?”
My uncle burst out, “What is this inquisition, you saputelo?”
My father said patiently, “I am marrying her, Marco, because I am going away. Needs must when the devil drives. I came home expecting to find your mother still alive and still head of the house of Polo. She is not. And now—through your own fault—I cannot leave you entrusted with the business. Old Doro is a good man, and needs no one peering over his shoulder. Nevertheless, I prefer to have someone of the name of Polo standing as the figurehead of the company, if nothing more. Dona Fiordelisa will serve in that capacity, and willingly. Also, she has no children to compete for your inheritance, if that is what concerns you.”
“It does not,” I said. And again I spoke impertinently, “I am only concerned for the seeming disrespect to my own mother—and to the Dona Trevan as well—in your haste to marry solely for mercenary reasons. She must know that all Venice will be whispering and snickering.”
My father said mildly, but with finality, “I am a merchant and she is the widow of a merchant and Venice is a merchant city, where all know that there is no better reason for doing anything than a mercenary reason. To a Venetian, money is the second blood, and you are a Venetian. Now, I have heard your objections, Marco, and I have dismissed them. I wish to hear no more. Remember, a closed mouth says nothing wrong.”
So I kept my mouth closed and said nothing more on the subject, wrong or otherwise, and on the day my father married the Dona Lisa I stood in the confino church of San Felice with my uncle and all the free servants of both households and numerous neighbors and merchant nobles and their families, while the ancient Pare Nunziata tremblingly conducted the nuptial mass. But when the ceremony was over and the Pare pronounced them Messere e Madona and it was time for my father to lead his bride to her new dwelling, together with all the reception guests, I slipped away from the happy procession.
Although I was dressed in my best, I let my feet take me to the neighborhood of the boat people. I had only infrequently and briefly visited the children since my release from prison. Now that I was an ex-convict, the boys all seemed to regard me as a grown man, or maybe even a person of celebrity; anyway, there had come a sort of distance between us that had not existed before. However, on that day I found no one at the barge except Doris. She was kneeling on the planking inside its hull, wearing only a skimpy shift, and lifting wet wads of cloth from one pail to another.