ONE OF THE MEN WE RESCUED IS ONLY TWENTY. HE’S called Odd, which is a very odd name for a Venetian. He says it’s because his grandfather was a Norwegian.
Odd told me that after the Doge had taken the Cross he announced that he wanted half the able-bodied men living on the Rialto to join him.
Some men were glad, but a great many more were not. They’d spent the last five hundred days boat-building, and hadn’t been properly paid, and needed to attend to their own trades.
So the Doge and his councillors decided every man in Venice should draw lots.
First, candlemakers made pairs of wax balls, and inside one ball in each pair they put a little slip of paper. They gave these balls to all the priests, and the priests blessed the balls. Then they summoned their parishioners and put the balls into the hands of all the ablebodied men, two by two. Each man who found a slip of paper inside his wax ball had to take the Cross.
“Were you chosen?” I asked Odd.
“Yes,” Odd replied. “Chosen to half-starve and half-drown. Chosen to leave my sweetheart wife. Me and her, we only married last year, and Venice is packed with wolves.”