The Journeyer

Literally of the low popolazo. So I shall put on no false airs and graces in her behalf. When she married a prospering currier, owner of his own workshop, she did marry above her class. But no one would ever have known it, if she had not chosen to make no secret of it. There was never anything coarse or vulgar about her during all the rest of her life. She made a good wife to my father and a good mother to me.”

“I would have made wager on it,” I said.

“I think she was a credit to her higher station in life. I tell you this, Messer Marco, so that if you—if you should have any doubts about my own qualifications for moving higher yet …”

“Darling Donata, I have had no least doubt at all. Even when your mother and I were children together, I could see the promise in her. But I will not say ‘like mother, like daughter.’ Because, even if I had never known her, I should quickly have recognized your own promise. Shall I, like a mooning and courting trovatore, sing your qualities? Beauty, intelligence, good humor—”

“Please do not omit honesty,” she interrupted. “For I would have you know everything there is to know. My mother never whispered any hint of this to me, and I should certainly never breathe it in my good father’s hearing, but—but there are things a child gets to know, or at least suspect, without being told. Mind you, Messer Marco, I admire my mother for having made a good marriage. But I might be less admiring of the way she must have done it, and so might you. I have an unshakable suspicion that her marriage to my father was impelled by their having—how do I say?—their having anticipated the event to some degree. I fear that a comparison of the date written on their consenso di matrimonio and that written on my own atta di nascita might prove embarrassing.”

I smiled at young Donata’s thinking she might shock someone as inured and impervious to shock as I was. And I smiled more broadly at her innocent simplicity. She must be quite unaware, I thought, that a great many marriages among the lower classes never were solemnized by any document or ceremony or sacrament. If Doris had indeed, by the oldest of feminine ruses, exalted herself from the popolazo to the morel di mezo, it did not lessen my regard for her—or for this pretty product of her ruse. And if that was the only impediment Donata could fear as a possible interference to our marriage, it was a trifling one. I made two promises at that moment. One was only to myself, and unspoken: I took oath that never during our married lifetime would I reveal any of the secrets of my past or the skeletons in my own cupboard. The other promise I made aloud, after smoothing away my smile and assuming a very solemn face:

“I swear, dearest Donata, that I shall never hold it against you—that you were prematurely born. There is no disgrace in that.”

“Ah, you older men are so commendably tolerant of human frailty.” I may have winced at that, for she added, “You are a good man, Messer Marco.”

“And your mother was a good woman. Do not think ill of her for having been a determined woman, as well. She knew how to get her own way.” I remembered, somewhat guiltily, one instance of that. The recollection made me say, “I take it that she never mentioned having been acquainted with me.”

“Not that I recall. Should she have?”

“No, no. I was nobody worth mentioning in those days. But I should confess—” I stopped, for I had just sworn not to confess anything that had happened in my past life. And I could hardly confess that Doris Tagiabue had come to Lorenzo Loredano no virgin as a consequence of her having first practiced her wiles on me. So I merely repeated:

“Your mother knew how to get her own way. If I had not had to leave Venice, it could very well have happened that she would have married me when we were a little older.”

Donata pouted prettily. “What an ungallant thing to say, even if it is true. Now you make me seem like a second choice.”

“And now you make me seem like someone browsing in a market. I did not choose you by volition, dear girl. I had no part in it. When I first saw you, I said to myself, ‘She must have been put on this earth for me.’ And when you spoke your name, I knew it. I knew that I had been given a gift.”

And that pleased her, and made things right again.

On another occasion during our courtship, when we sat together, I put to her this question: “What of children when we are married, Donata?”

She blinked at me in perplexity, as if I had asked whether she intended to go on breathing after we were married. So I went on:

“A married couple are of course expected to have children. It is the natural thing. It is expected by their families, the Church, the Lord God, the community. But despite those expectations, there must be some people who do not wish to conform.”

“I am not among them,” she said, like a response to a catechism.

“And there are some who simply cannot.”

After a moment of silence, she said, “Are you intimating, Marco—?” She had by this time eased into addressing me informally. Now she said, choosing her words with delicacy, “Are you intimating, Marco, that perhaps you were, um, during your journeying, um, injured in some way?”

“No, no, no. I am whole and healthy, and competent to be a father. As far as I know, I mean. I was rather referring to those unfortunate women who are, for one reason or another, barren.”

She looked away from me, and blushed as she said, “I cannot protest ‘no, no, no,’ for I have no way of knowing. But I think, if you were to count the barren women you have heard of, you would find that they are mostly pale and fragile and vaporish noblewomen. I come of good, solid, redblooded peasant stock and, like any Christian woman, I hope to be the mother of multitudes. I pray to the good Lord that I will. But if He in His wisdom should somehow choose to make me barren, I would try with fortitude to bear the affliction. However, I have confidence in the Lord’s goodness.”

“It is not always of the good Lord’s doing,” I said. “In the East there are known various ways to prevent conception—”

Donata gasped and crossed herself. “Never say such a thing! Do not even speak of such a dreadful sin! Why, what would the good Pare Nardo say, if he even dreamed you had imagined such things? Oh, Marco, do assure me that you put no mention in your book of anything so criminal and sordid and un-Christian. I have not read the book, but I have heard some people call it scandalous. Was that the scandal they spoke of?”

“I really do not remember,” I said placatively. “I think that was one of the things I left out. I merely wished to tell you that such things are possible, in case—”

“Not in Christendom! It is unspeakable! Unthinkable!”

“Yes, yes, my dear. Forgive me.”

“Only if you promise me,” she said firmly. “Promise me you will forget that and all other vile practices you may have witnessed in the East. That our good Christian marriage will never be tainted by anything un-Christian you learned or saw or even heard of in those pagan lands.”

“Well, not everything pagan is vile … .”

“Promise me!”

“But, Donata, suppose I should have another opportunity or occasion to go eastward, and wished to take you with me. You would be the first Western woman, to my knowledge, ever to—”

“No. I will never go, Marco,” she said flatly, and her blush had gone now. Her face was very white and her lips set. “I should not wish you to go. There. I have said it. You are a wealthy man, Marco, with no need to increase your wealth. You are famous for your journeying already, with no need to increase that fame or to journey ever again. You have responsibilities, and will shortly have me for another, and I hope we will both have others. You are no longer—you are no longer the boy you were when you set out before. I should not have wished to marry that boy, Marco, not then or now. I want a mature and sober and dependable man, and I want him at home. I took you to be that man. If you are not, if you still harbor a restless and reckless boy inside you, I think you had better confess it now. We will have to put on a good face for our families and friends and all the gossips of Venice, when we announce the dissolution of our betrothal.”

“You are indeed very like your mother.” I sighed. “But you are young. In time to come, you might even desire to journey—”

“Not outside Christendom,” she said, still in that flat voice. “Promise me.”