DESDEMONA LOOKED IMPLORINGLY at her father. I could not see Brabantio’s face from where I stood as he drew near them.
“I have one thing to say to you, Moor,” Brabantio said, his voice dripping contempt. “She deceived me. She may deceive you just as easily.”
Desdemona’s face fell.
“I trust her with my life,” Othello answered evenly.
Brabantio turned and walked heavily out of the room. When he had disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell, Othello and Desdemona both heaved sighs, and turning to each other, kissed. I looked away.
“Iago, my friend,” Othello said. I made myself look back. “I’m leaving this beautiful woman in your care, and Emilia’s. Bring her with you as soon as you can.”
“Of course I will,” I said evenly. Emilia made a joyful noise from the corner.
Othello took Desdemona’s hands. “I have one hour of freedom to spend with you, chuck.” He smiled suggestively. “Let’s use it well.” Allowing himself an almost gleeful bass rumble of a laugh, he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, her long pale hair cascading nearly to his ankles. She laughed, a sound I’d never heard before. She had a lovely laugh, almost as lovely as Emilia’s.
But hearing Emilia’s laughter near the door did not endear her to me at that moment. “Iago!” she gushed, “isn’t this remarkable! And best of all is that I will come with you to Cyprus!”
I did like that, and I managed a smile to show her so. “It’s very late, Emilia. Take a gondola home, and I’ll be there as soon as I can. I have one bit of unfinished business here.”
She beamed at me and put her hand over her heart like a soldier. “Yes, sir, Lieutenant Iago.” She grinned.
My stomach sank into my legs. She did not know yet. I would have to tell her. Later. That would happen later. Right now I had a mission of compassion.
“Good night, love,” I said, returning the salute halfheartedly. “Don’t wait up for me this time. But I’ll be along as soon as possible.”
When she was gone, I turned to face the shadows.
“Well,” I said, “that did not go as planned. I apologize, Roderigo.”
Roderigo stepped out of the shadows. I’d rarely seen that handsome face look so despondent. “Iago.” He sighed.
He was going to want succoring, and I did not have the energy for it. “What is it, my friend?” I said, forcing a sympathetic smile.
“Iago, what should I do?”
I looked at the poor man. I did not regret trying to undo Othello’s marriage, but I did regret, a little, that I’d brought Roderigo into my scheme. The mooning fool would have heard the news eventually, but he would have heard about it far from me. “Go home, Roderigo,” I said, as kindly as I could. “Go home and get some sleep.”
He responded with an insulted expression, and then suddenly, most unexpectedly, he drew himself up tall and erect, almost cocky. “I,” he announced, suddenly a tragic hero, “am going to drown myself.”
With an unexpected intensity of purpose, he marched out the door and started down the stairs.
I followed after him, barely suppressing a snort of laughter in the dark. “What? If you do that, Roderigo, I will remember you without an ounce of affection, as the silliest man who ever lived.”
Without looking back at me, he challenged me, his voice resonant and echoing in the stone stairwell: “Do you think it’s silly to stay alive when life hurts so much and I can oppose the hurt by ending it?”
“Oh, please, stop your poetic nonsense,” I scolded.
At the bottom of the stairs, a boy opened the outer door for us, and Roderigo exited into the Piazzetta. I followed on his heels.
Roderigo began sprinting.
Toward the lagoon.
“Roderigo!” I hollered and broke into a run, overtaking him in three quick strides beneath the column of the winged lion. I grabbed his wrist and jerked him to a standstill. He glared at me, his face red and tear streaked. “Good God, don’t drown yourself! In all our shared twenty-eight years upon this world, I have never heard of one sensible man dying for love. Men die, and worms eat them, but not for love, Roderigo, never really for love.”
“Then what do I do?” he demanded furiously, pulling his wrist free. “I know it’s a weakness to be so obsessively fond of someone, but I haven’t the virtue or the character to rise above it.”
“Must we delve into moral analysis at three in the morning?” I asked. He gave me a look of superior disgust and began heading again—at a brisk walk this time—toward the dark water.
I walked alongside him. His legs were longer than mine and I had to take five strides for every four of his. “Listen to me. You can recover from her, it’s just a matter of willpower, Roderigo. Set your will to achieve something, stick with it, and you will achieve it.” He huffed dismissively and sped up. “There’s nothing fated or mysterious about it,” I insisted. “Life works like that, all the time, every day. Your career is splendid proof that you can do that.”
He kept walking.
I was tempted to just turn away. I hadn’t the energy to console myself tonight, let alone another. But his sudden firmness of purpose unnerved me, and I would never forgive myself if he did himself harm. There were no gondoliers here—there was a night watch, but they would do nothing until someone was actually drowning. If then. So I continued jabbering: “We’d all of us spend all our time eating and drinking and chasing women if we hadn’t the will to resist those impulses. If you can will yourself not to spend the whole day in debauchery, surely you can will yourself to forget about one pretty little virgin.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Roderigo lamented at the waterside. “You don’t understand the depths of my passion.”
He pushed me away as he crouched, preparing to leap into the greasy water; I lost my balance and grabbed his arm, pulling him back onto me as I fell. We collapsed in a scuffling heap on the paving stones.
“Roderigo, what are you doing?” I snarled as he scrambled to his feet. “Be a man, for the love of God! Drown yourself? Over a girl? Don’t be ridiculous!”
He was red-faced. To distract him from turning back to the water, I held up my arm; he took it and helped me to my feet, abashed.
For the first time in our lives, I admired him. He was as upset as I was, for different reasons and in different ways, but by the brightest heaven, he had the courage of his convictions! He had become a man of action: he really would have killed himself. I loved him for that simple, if misguided, courage. In his timorous way, he had more integrity than General Othello; Othello would never have drowned himself if he’d been robbed of Desdemona. Suddenly between the two of them—the two-faced warrior or the wealthy sap—the wealthy sap seemed the more honorable companion.
And the perfect means for undermining Othello’s dishonorable intentions.
I took Roderigo’s hand. “Listen to me. I am your oldest friend, yes?” He nodded. “And no tie binds closer than the ties of childhood friendship, yes?” He nodded but gave me a questioning look. “Then trust me, Roderigo. Perhaps I can get you Desdemona after all.” The questioning look shifted to something between desperation and disbelief. “She won’t stay with him. He won’t stay with her. They hardly know each other. They are each fascinated with the other because they are so different. But familiarity breeds contempt, and before long he will cease to treat her as if she were a princess, and she’ll regret her choice. The trick is to make sure that you, Roderigo, are right there under her nose when she renounces him, and that you appear to be the perfect suitor to replace him.”
I could almost hear gears working in his head as he contemplated this. “How do I do that?” he asked.
“Come with the army to Cyprus.”
“What?”
“Disguise yourself as a soldier—I can easily get you on the rolls of the enlisted men.”
Roderigo thought. Then: “How can I impress her if she thinks I am a common soldier?”
I knew Roderigo so well; I was merely telling him to do something he would have done on his own, if only he’d had the imagination to think of it. “Is winning Desdemona truly the most important thing in your life?” I asked.
He met my eye, put his hand over his heart, and nodded. He was so earnestly sincere, how could I not exert him to see it through?
“Then sell everything you have—your business, your farms on Terraferma, your summer homes, all of it—put money and jewels in your purse and bring it all to Cyprus. Woo her with it there. Let her know you’re really a brilliant, wealthy gentleman in disguise.”
He blinked. “How? As a soldier I’ll never have access to her.”
I smiled. “But I will,” I said. “She has a proven weakness for intrigue. If I see to it that she receives mysterious packages of jewels and love letters from you, I’ll wager she’ll fall for you. That is how Othello won her over—and he did not even use jewels. Imagine what some fine pearls and rubies will accomplish. I know this much for a fact: she loves intrigue.”
The color rose in his cheeks; I could see it in the lamplight. His breathing grew quick and shallow as his imagination sketched out for him how this could really happen. Suddenly I understood Emilia’s fascination with the secret romance—there is something powerfully seductive in the prospect of helping to make a friend’s fantasy come true.
“Do you really think that this could happen?” he whispered, eyes beaming.
“Attempt it and find out. That is certainly better than drowning yourself, no?” I said.
“And if I do all this, Iago—if I sell everything and come to Cyprus with the army—I can count on you to help me?”
“Roderigo. Have I ever in our lives disappointed you or let you down? I stood up for you against that bully Tasso, I protected you whenever we got into trouble as children. I will look out for you now.”
“But this is much bigger than any of that. You would be in collusion with me against Othello’s interests—you’re his ensign and his confidant—”
“But not his lieutenant, as I should be,” I amended. “Didn’t you hear me ranting against him before? I bear a grudge, Roderigo. I want to see him get his just deserts. If it happens by your cuckolding him, frankly I’d enjoy that almost as much as you would. If we work together, we can accomplish it. Are you with me?”
He nodded, mouth slightly slack.
“Good man. I must get home to Emilia. We’ll talk more tomorrow. Come to the Arsenal. No, my inn, the southern end of the terrace before the gate. Good night.”
“I’ll be there,” Roderigo said, with an awkward attempt at a salute.
“Excellent. Good night.” Suddenly exhausted by the events of this past day and night, I patted him on the arm and began to cross the Piazzetta back toward the Doge’s Palace. I stopped myself and looked back at him. “And Roderigo?”
“Yes?”
“No more talk of drowning, do you hear?”
He grinned. “I swear it,” he said. “I am a changed man.” He turned his back on the murky waters and ran toward the grand Piazza of San Marco. I watched him disappear into the darkness, hugely relieved he would not hurt himself.
My conscience was uneasy, though. Even if Desdemona forsook Othello, she would never take up with Roderigo. I knew that. But it gave him such joy to believe it, and the romance of secretly wooing her gave him more pleasure than his estates or money ever had. He did not need the expensive trinkets he was about to entrust to me. And Desdemona would not want them. I would be doing him a service, in fact affording him great pleasure, by taking them from him. Better his wealth rest in my brotherly custody than wasted recklessly.