and your wits about you, perhaps begin the making of a fortune of your very own. Yes, indeed, all the lands yonder are lands of opportunity.”
“I look forward to them,” I said dutifully. “But I could learn of commerce without leaving Venice. I was thinking more of … well, adventure …”
“Adventure? Why, my boy, could there ever be any more satisfying adventure than the descrying of a commercial opportunity not yet glimpsed by others? And the seizing advantage of it? And the taking of a profit from it?”
“Of course, most satisfying, those things,” I said, not to dampen his ebullience. “But what of excitement? Exotic things seen and done? Surely in all your travels there have been many such.”
“Oh, yes. Exotic things.” He scratched meditatively in his beard. “Yes, on our way back to Venice, through Cappadocia, we came upon one instance. There grows in that land a poppy, very like our common red field poppy, but of a silvery-blue color, and from the milk of its pod can be decocted a soporific oil that is a most potent medicine. I knew it would be a useful addition to the simples employed by our Western physicians, and I foresaw a good profit to our Compagnia from that. I sought to collect some of the seeds of that poppy, intending to sow them among the crocuses in our Veneto plantations. Now, that was an exotic thing, no xe vero? And a grand opportunity. Unfortunately, there was a war going on in Cappadocia at the time. The poppy fields were all devastated, and the populace in such disarray that I could find no one who could provide me with the seeds. Gramo de mi, an opportunity lost.”
I said, with some amazement, “You were in the middle of a war, and all that concerned you was poppy seeds?”
“Ah, war is a terrible thing. A disruption of commerce.”
“But, Father, you saw in it no opportunity for adventure?”
“You keep on about
“Oh,” I said. “I was rather looking forward to—well, hazards overcome … hidden things discovered … enemies bested … maidens rescued …”
“There speaks the bravo!” boomed Uncle Mafio, joining us just then. “I hope you are disabusing him of such notions, Nico.”
“I am trying,” said my father. “Adventure, Marco, never put a bagatin in anybody’s purse.”
“But is the purse the only thing a man is to fill?” I cried. “Should not he seek something else in life? What of his appetite for wonders and marvels?”
“No one ever found marvels by seeking them,” my uncle grunted. “They are like true love—or happiness— which, in fact, are marvels themselves. You cannot say: I will go out and have an adventure. The best you can do is put yourself in a place where it may occur.”
“Well, then,” I said. “We are bound for Acre, the city of the Crusaders, fabled for daring deeds and dark secrets and silken damsels and the life voluptuous. What better place?”
“The Crusaders!” snorted Uncle Mafio. “Fables, indeed! The Crusaders who survived to come home had to pretend to themselves that their futile missions had been worthwhile. So they bragged of the wonders they had seen, the marvels of the far lands. About the only thing they brought back was a case of the scolamento so painful they could hardly sit a saddle.”
I said wistfully, “Acre is not a city of beauty and temptation and mystery and luxury and—?”
My father said, “Crusaders and Saracens have been fighting over San Zuane de Acre for more than a century and a half. Imagine for yourself what it must be like. But, no, you need not. You will see it soon enough.”
So I left them, feeling rather dashed in my expectations, but not demolished. I was privately coming to the conclusion that my father had the soul of a line-ruled ledger, and my uncle was too blunt and gruff to contain any finer feelings. They would not recognize adventure if it was thrust upon them. But I would. I went and stood on the foredeck, not to miss seeing any mermaids or sea monsters that might swim by.
A sea voyage, after the first exhilarating day or so, becomes mere monotony—unless a storm enlivens it with terror, but the Mediterranean is stormy only in winter—so I occupied myself with learning all I could about the workings of a ship. In the absence of bad weather, the crew had nothing but routine work to do, so everyone from the captain to the cook willingly let me watch and ask questions and even occasionally lend a hand with the work. The men were of many different nationalities, but all spoke the Trade French—which they called Sabir—so we were able to converse.
“Do you know anything at all about sailing, boy?” one of the seamen asked me. “Do you know, for instance, which are the liveworks of a ship, and which are the deadworks?”
I thought about that, and looked up at the sails, spread out on either side of the ship like a living bird’s wings, and guessed that they must be the liveworks.
“Wrong,” said the mariner. “The liveworks are every part of a ship that is in the water. The deadworks are everything above water.”
I thought about that, and said, “But if the deadworks were to plunge under water, they could hardly then be called live. We should all be dead.”
The seaman said quickly, “Do not speak of such things!” and crossed himself.
Another said, “If you would be a seafarer, boy, you must learn the seventeen names of the seventeen winds that blow over the Mediterranean.” He began ticking them off on his fingers. “At this moment, we are sailing before the etesia, which blows from the northwest. In winter, the ostralada blows fiercely from the south, and makes storms. The gregalada is the wind that blows out of Greece, and makes the sea turbulent. From the west blows the maistral. The levante blows out of the east, out of Armeniya—”
Another seaman interrupted, “When the levante blows, you can smell the Cyclopedes.”
“Islands?” I asked.
“No. Strange people who live in Armeniya. Each of them has only one arm and one leg. It takes two of those people to use a bow and arrow. Since they cannot walk, they hop on the one leg. But if they are in a hurry, they go spinning sideways, wheeling on that hand and foot. That is why they are called the Cyclopedes, the wheel- feet.”
Besides telling me of many other marvels, the seamen also taught me to play the guessing and gambling game called venturina, which was devised by mariners to while away long and boring voyages. They must endure many such voyages, for venturina is an exceedingly long and boring game, and no player can win or lose more than a few soldi in the course of it.
When I later asked my uncle if, in his travels, he had ever encountered curiosities like the wheel-feet Armeniyans, he laughed and sneered. “Bah! No seaman ever ventures farther into a foreign port than the nearest dockside wineshop or whorehouse. So when he is asked what sights he saw abroad, he must invent things. Only a marcolfo who would believe a woman would believe a seaman!”
So from then on I listened only tolerantly, with half an ear, when the mariners told of landward wonders, but I still gave full attention when they spoke of things to do with the sea and sailing. I learned their special names for common objects—the small sooty bird called in Venice a stormbird is at sea called petrelo, “little Pietro,” because, like the saint, it seems to walk on the water—and I learned the rhymes which seamen use when talking of the weather—
Sera rosa e bianco matino:
Alegro il pelegrino
—which is to say that a red sky in the evening or a white sky in the morning foretells good weather in the offing, hence the pilgrim is pleased. And I learned how to toss the scandagio line, with its little ribbons of red and white at intervals along its length, to measure the depth of water under our keel. And I learned how to speak to other vessels we passed—which I was allowed to do two or three times, for there were many ships asea upon the Mediterranean—shouting in Sabir through the trumpet:
“A good voyage! What ship?”
