Secret Stories of Love and Blood by Oscar Luis Rigiroli

Author:Oscar Luis Rigiroli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical thriller, romantic suspense, action an adventure, suspense anthology
Publisher: Oscar Luis Rigiroli
Published: 2017-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

ANDREA BEMBO STORMED into the room and, seeing the spectacle, wondered whether he should burst with fury or a laugh. Cosimo was completely naked chasing the Persian dancer barely covered by a veil while another Chinese prostitute tugged at his leg trying to drag him to the bed. The boy was alarmed as he saw his uncle and was perplexed for some moments not knowing what to do. The older man regretted having introduced the young man to the brothels of Bukara at his previous stage a month earlier, but he had done so by feeling responsible for his sex education in the absence of the father and friends. The problem was that since then Cosimo had not been able to get rid of those experiences with the sensual Oriental women and when they arrived in Samarkanda his uncle had had to agree to allow them to repeat them in danger of his nephew escaping. All precautions and advice to take precautions against venereal diseases had been useless and the merchant could only hope for the best. Two days after they had to continue on their way to Kokand and needed the young man in one piece.

Up to that moment the Venetians had found excellent business opportunities and had been able to place most of their goods among their customers- many of them old acquaintances of Andrea of other trips- all the porcelain and glass products manufactured in Venice and its zone of influence, which was suitable since they were the most fragile pieces and that they could suffer the avatars of ruder stages of the trip ahead. In exchange for them they had obtained pearls from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, rubies and coral. Now they had only the delicate textile products in wool and linen of Italian manufacture with the expectation of exchanging them for silk fabrics, spices, jade and ivory manufactures from the Celestial Empire.

The Italians were traveling on the so-called Silk Road, a network of commercial roads that started at the latitude of Damascus to the east of Syria, and passing through Persia, Aria, Bactriana, contoured the Pamir massif and the Taklamakan desert moving into northern China. Innumerable secondary routes started in Italy and Constantinople, Africa, Arabia, India, Korea and Japan, so that the Silk Road connected Europe with the Far East, providing to the worldwide wealthy classes of the time all the best products that their world and their time could offer them, and creating opportunities of making fortune for the merchants of all the zones involved and of Venice in particular.

Andrea did not deceive him. He knew that from Kokand and especially from Kaschgar they would enter the most turbulent area of their journey since instead of tribes more or less controlled by the local chiefs they would be crossing the confines of the Celestial Empire, populated with bandits of all kinds in permanent conflict with the Chinese with whom the Venetians wanted to trade.

Resignedly Andrea returned to the room where Cosimo was.

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