She’s resurrected!”
“Go to hell, you fool, she was never dead, she didn’t even smell.”
“Listen to me, you ass, it’s a well-known fact that during Carnival, corpses escape from coffins and go around playing tricks.”
The voices interrupted one another, each putting forward its theory, but the one certainty was that the virgin’s body had disappeared.
In addition to the fantastical hypotheses circulating among the people, the authorities were inclined to believe that the corpse had been purloined overnight by some criminal, through the gratings that were found uprooted, even though the reason for such an act could not yet be fathomed.
An act that, per se, was not all that serious, since the girl was a total stranger and didn’t belong to any noble family; what was unacceptable was the offence to the authorities, the obvious proof that, without respect, one could mock power and its representatives.
In addition to this, the very rumors that the display of the corpse aimed to contradict were growing: that the young woman was a demon capable of being born again, possessing supernatural powers able to deeply undermine the government of Venice, already deprived of a doge and afflicted by serious scarcity.
All this prompted the Great Council, and Tommaso Grimani was among the most adamant to order that all military forces should be used to find the virgin of the beads.
So they began to comb every district, beat the canals, check every kind of boat, and search houses and shelters.
This event also caused concern in the Grimani family: another worrying, obscure sign in addition to those that had already appeared. As a representative of the authorities, Tommaso took the outrage personally, and Magdalena couldn’t help but look for a connection between her sister Costanza’s disappearance and that of the Metamauco girl’s body.
The person who suffered most in body and mind was Edgardo, numbed as though he’d been in armed battle with a band of barbarians.
The illusion of finally having done with the past, and the hope of touching his Kallis’s beloved face one last time, had vanished.
Edgardo had built around that presence a dream of rebirth that had been dissolved in the blink of an eye. He was ashamed of himself, he, the former cleric, a skilled and learned copyist, carried away by the fantasy that the virgin of the beads had come back to life and was wandering through the streets of Venice.
Was there any truth in the age-old superstition that during Carnival some of the dead came out of their graves and walked among the living? And if that was Kallis’s body, why had she returned? Was it to see him one last time? To atone for the terrible sin that had stained her soul? To ask for forgiveness?
He could not believe his mind could indulge in such thoughts. The dead do not come back. Only Our Lord was resurrected.
Even so, while roaming near the Alexandria merchant’s house, hoping to detect any suspect goings-on, he harbored the illusion of miraculously coming across Kallis’s ghost.
Celebrations were at their height and the city was prey to all kinds of excesses.
Outside the convent of San Lorenzo, his attention was caught by a strange company that was coming forward, dancing along the bank.
A monstrous creature, half goat, half human, was leading the group, his head hidden inside the muzzle of a ram with antlers, wearing heavy hooves over his feet. He was holding a long stick at the extremities of which hung a bag full of water, which he used to strike anyone who happened to pass near him. The rest of the procession was formed of shapes wrapped in large black cloaks, their faces hidden under a thick layer of white ceruse that erased all their features. They were swaying about, dragging their feet, as though under a spell: they were like larvae, supernatural beings from the hereafter.
The procession crossed the campo outside the convent in a chilling silence. There was something gloomy and dismal about that presence.
Anxious, Edgardo stood aside and let them overtake him.
He was about to resume walking when he noticed a detail that had escaped him earlier.
He saw something shining around the neck of one of the larvae: it was a small bead necklace like the one Alvise said he’d seen on the virgin of Metamauco.
An image flashed before Edgardo’s eyes which he thought he’d forgotten: Kallis in her refuge on the abandoned island of San Lorenzo, opening her little box and pouring out a myriad of colorful beads like the ones in that necklace.
Was it her? Was that half-dead, half-living larva Kallis come back to life?
A second later, the dismal group had already moved away.
Abandoning any shame for his paradoxical, blasphemous thought, Edgardo ran after them.
It was hard to make his way through the crowd. The calli were swarming with monsters, deformed shapes, scary animal masks. It seemed that all the inhabitants of Venice had poured out of their houses, seized by a kind of frenzy that was dragging them from one bank to the other, from one campo to the other, as though in search of something that would give this folly a meaning. Everybody was pursuing excess just for the sake of breaking all the rules.
Along the canals, a few steps away from the soldiers who were checking every passing boat, Edgardo saw people sitting at makeshift tables with the little food they’d been able to find in those lean times. They were all stuffing themselves unrestrainedly with smelly leftover fish, bones of lagoon birds with the flesh stripped off, and shreds of rancid pork.
Barely had some gulped down the food with large sips of watered-down wine than they suddenly turned around and vomited in one jet everything they’d just eaten.
Edgardo was struggling to advance, risking slipping on that slimy carpet of food leftovers that irreverent stomachs had just brought back up to the light, and every kind of excrement abandoned by intestines devoid of any dignity.
Without any shame, on the contrary, with a large dose of provocative excitement, between courses, the table companions exhibited asses of various shapes and colors, and were shitting without restraint in every corner, or competing as to who could piss farther into the water. It was as though you were watching a universal blend of fluids and human matter going in and coming out of every orifice in a kind of perpetual dance.
Engulfed in that chaos, Edgardo was afraid he’d lost them, but, as though by miracle, the larvae reappeared, mingled with gnaghe, corpulent, hairy men dressed as matrons, who went about shouting obscenities or miming unnatural mating acts.
He elbowed his way to the larva with the bead necklace, who was moving in a light, slinky way, brushing against the ground like a thread of wool.
Under the thick ceruse, he thought he recognized Kallis’s oriental features, her high cheekbones, her eyes like crescent moons.
He reached out with his hand until he was nearly touching her, and even thought he could smell her amber scent.
“Kallis . . . Kallis . . . ” he called softly, but the larva was dragged away by the band and disappeared once again.
They were now all advancing in single file, down a narrow alley between houses made of rotting timber, in a kind of procession that had slowed their pace. At the end of the bottleneck, Edgardo understood the reason for the slowing down. As they reached the final hut, every member of the line had to perform the ritual of the osculum infame.
From the ground-floor window of that den was protruding not a beautiful girl’s face, but an enormous naked, shriveled behind, the only treasure of an old shrew. Every passer-by was obliged, on pain of being caned, to bend over and kiss the holy orifice.
Everybody seemed to subject themselves to this shameful kiss with much hilarity and enjoyment, but Edgardo didn’t like this ritual at all.
When his turn came, he tried to sneak away, but a broad-shouldered gnaga grabbed him by the neck and forced him back in line.
He bowed his head, held his breath, closed his eyes, and plunged his face between the two flaps of flabby, hanging flesh that stank like baked eel vomited by a dog.
Never would he have imagined that he, the first-born son of a noble family, would have to humiliate himself in such an abject act. Still, they said that the ritual heralded wealth and honor for the year to come. He certainly needed that.
He wondered if, with that act, he’d touched the pit of his abjectness.
He paid homage, the throng dissolved, and, once he’d left the narrow path, he came to a wide, green campo with trees.
They’d arrived at Santa Maria Formosa.
The place brought back sweet memories: there, with Kallis, he’d been to the Feast of the Marys, and that same day, a little later, in a scaula in the middle of the lagoon, he’d asked her to be his wife. Twelve years had since passed, and yet that moment was still so vivid in his mind that he might as well have lived it a few days earlier.
He looked around for her ghost. The campo looked very different than before. It was bursting with people, like for the Feast of the Marys, but the atmosphere had very much altered.
He was right in the middle of a bull hunt, a cruel, very violent game, one of the people’s favorites during Carnival.
At that moment the tiradori, dressed in short black velvet dresses and red jackets, were entering. They were dragging the animal into the middle of the square, among the crowd, with ropes tied around its horns. Here, other tiradori started provoking the bull with straw fires, tying them to his horns and ears. Frightened and in pain, the animal was arching its back, kicking and howling, struggling to free itself.
After a number of times when the bull was dragged along, still tied with ropes, they set the dogs on it, which had been especially trained to bite its ears.
The fierce mastiffs surrounded the animal, taking powerful leaps to attack the poor creature’s muzzle.
The crowd was laughing and encouraging them, delighted with the spectacle, while Edgardo wondered how such a cruel game could bring so much enjoyment.
The bull’s almost human laments, mixed with the growling and howling of the dogs, seemed to generate a heartfelt cry, a prayer to Our Lord.
But the ferocious ritual was only just beginning.
After repeated attacks, a mastiff managed to grab the bull’s ear. However much the bull shook his muzzle and arched his back, the dog wouldn’t let go, was tossed in every direction, until the animal finally managed to rid itself of it with a more powerful jerk. The dog rolled on the ground, the hairy ear between its teeth. The bull’s muzzle was flooded with blood.
Then, all of a sudden, the crowd fell silent, and a quietness charged with anticipation enveloped the entire campo.
A bare-chested, muscular young man slowly approached the bleeding bull. Holding a saber, he stared into the animal’s eyes. The wretched bull looked down, as though apologizing for existing.
A deep sense of grief stifled Edgardo’s chest.
The sword was raised high, the young man stood with his legs apart to take his position and remained so, accompanied only by the raucous breathing of the bull.
A sharp whistle cut through the air. The blade fell, luminous and inexorable on the blood-soaked neck. The head came away from the body.
A roar of satisfaction rose from the crowd in praise of the hero who’d detached the head with a single blow, his sword not touching the ground.
Blood flooded out, and the dogs ran to lick the delicacy, while the young man was carried off in triumph.
Defeated and repelled, Edgardo lowered his head. How could this same crowd, now drunk on violence, sing hymns full of faith to Our Lord during processions?
The campo slowly emptied, and what was left of the bull was tied by the legs to two cart horses, and dragged, like a trophy, to Rivus Altus, followed by a celebrating crowd.
The group of larvae with Kallis’s ghost had vanished. Perhaps that vision had been merely the fruit of his sick mind, burned up by opium.
He carried on wandering aimlessly, letting himself be dragged, in a daze, by groups of gnaghe and wild men.
When he heard None being rung, he went back to Ca’ Grimani, exhausted.
The hours of sleep passed in apparent calm, with a humid, sticky wind running through them, spreading a veil of fog over the soft land that peered out through the surface of the lagoon.
Venice was sunk in a surreal silence. After the celebrations and clanging of the last day of Carnival, the people had been overwhelmed by an animal sleep full of regurgitations.
Lying atop one another in campi, calli, church porticos, inside gondolas and cogs, in shelters, and storerooms, the exhausted bodies looked like corpses abandoned in a battlefield. Death, more than life, seemed to have become the mistress of these muddy lands.
Matins rang in vain, echoing from district to district, but nobody stirred. Only the monks in the monasteries scattered between Venice and the islands in the lagoon left their cells to go to church for the first prayers.
Then, gradually, a mother-of-pearl light flashed illuminated splinters on the horizon, and the expanse of water lit up with scales of silver.
The new day was approaching from the Orient with small steps, defeating with great effort the army of shadows.
Edgardo was awoken by a succession of blows that reverberated in the interior courtyard.
For a moment, he thought they were just in his head, then he came to: they were coming from the front door. He put on his breeches and ran to the ground floor. None of the servants had heard anything.
“Who’s there?” he shouted without opening.
“I’m here on the orders of the gastald. I must speak with the illustrious nobleman Tommaso Grimani . . . It’s important.”
“Wait, I’ll go call him.”
He was about to go when he saw Tommaso walking toward him.
“What’s happening?” Tommaso asked, in a state of agitation.
“A messenger of the gastald is asking for you.”
Without delay, Tommaso lifted the iron bar that blocked the door and removed the chains.
“Are you the nobleman Tommaso Grimani?” the messenger asked.
“I am, you may speak.”
“The gastald asks you to follow me to the Doge’s Palace.”
“What happened?” Tommaso asked.
“I couldn’t tell you much, Signore.” The man gave Edgardo a suspicious look. “If I might speak . . . ” Tommaso nodded. “It seems that during last night’s patrol, the body was found.”
“The body?” Grimani said, surprised. “The body of the virgin of the beads?”
“I have no other news, Signore. They just ordered me to come and call you.”
“Very well, I’ll follow you.”
Edgardo’s face had turned purple, blood had rushed to his head, triggered by powerful emotion.
She hadn’t been resurrected. She wasn’t roaming around the streets of Venice like a larva without peace. Nature had reinstated its laws. The dead shouldn’t be confused with the living.
“Edgardo, tell my wife. Let’s go,” Grimani said, leaving the palazzo.
Edgardo bowed his head. He wanted to follow him. The identity of that mysterious young woman would finally be revealed.