Free Casanova in Bolzano by Sándor Marai Page B

criminal, of Turk or Moor, in games with the children of street sweepers and patricians! Venice is a city of miracles where everyone, even the street waif larking among pigeon droppings by the campanile, can aspire to be an aristocrat. Mark my words, Balbi: every Venetian is indeed an aristocrat, and you should address me with due reverence! The milk that a Venetian sucks with the first hungry movement of his lips from his mother’s breast tastes of the sea and the lagoon: it tastes and smells of Venice, that is to say it is a touch salty, lukewarm and terrifyingly familiar. Wherever I go and smell the sea it is always Venice that comes to mind, Venice and my mother. Things were always best in Venice. I was three years old when I learned to walk on water like the Savior. We were filthy and ragged, and everything belonged to us. The marble palaces, the gateways with their stone arches that looked like fine lace, and the harbor, where, from morning to night, they were loading and unloading cargoes, ferrying gold and ivory and silver and amber and pearls and rose oil and cloth and silk and velvet and canvas, everything that could be bought in the bazaars of Constantinople or was manufactured by the studios of Crete, by the fashion houses of France or by English armament factories: everything was disgorged here, in the harbor in Venice, and everything was ours and, because I was a Venetian, it was mine too. Even when I was a child at play I was aware that I was a Venetian. And when I grew up, stood on the Rialto, and watched the world’s nations bringing their wares and throwing them at Venice’s feet, I saw that the gold, frankincense, and myrrh they were bringing was in adoration of Venice. His Merciful Highness, the first secretary, that bureaucratic bloodhound of the Inquisition, accused me of the false use of a noble surname! But who in the world is more properly entitled to be aware of his nobility than I, who am Venetian born? . . . Show me the pope, the emperor, the king, or the princeling who is better fitted to bestow nobility on a man than the Queen of all the World, my birthplace, Venice? . . . My mother and father were both Venetians, I and my siblings were all born there: could there be a more genuine
grandezza
or nobility than ours? . . . Are you beginning to understand? You will not curse Venice!”
    He stood pale, with circles round his eyes: he looked to be in a kind of trance. Balbi kept feeling his neck and breathed with difficulty after the fright he had suffered. He mumbled through his cracked and gritted teeth.
    “I understand, Giacomo. I understand now, the devil take you. I recognize the fact that you are a Venetian. But if you lay your hands on my neck again I’ll bite your nose off.”
    “I wasn’t going to hurt you,” replied Giacomo, laughing. “You can run and play now if you want. We shall spend a few days in Bolzano because I have things to do here: first, I must write a letter to Bragadin and wait for his answer, and while we are waiting we should get some new clothes because, without finery, even a Venetian nobleman looks like a beggar. Yes, there are things to do here in Bolzano, but by the end of the week we can be on the road again. I shall take you to Munich, so you may visit the order of which you are, alas, no longer a member. My destiny as a writer calls me further afield. Revenge can wait. The thought of it is deep in my heart, though, and will never fade. You must nurture revenge as you would a captive lion, by feeding it daily with a little raw flesh, the bloody remnants of your remembered insults, so as not to blunt its taste for blood. Because I will return to Venice one day! But in the meantime, no one but me will be allowed to curse her. The fires of revenge will continue burning, but that is a matter between the two of us: between myself and the Inquisition, between myself and the first secretary, myself and the Venetians. If you value your life at all, you’ll