The Eyes of Venice by Alessandro Barbero

Author:Alessandro Barbero
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa
Published: 2012-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

19.

By now Michele was hardened to the life of the Genoese galley, so different from the life he had known on the Loredana. It didn’t seem strange to him anymore to have a chain around his ankle, to be shackled to his bench every night, and to be woken up several times during the night by the watchmen’s inspections to verify that the chains were still fastened. He had also gotten used to almost never going ashore, except to help gather and load firewood and water, and always under the surveillance of the soldiers. Sometimes he was chosen to row the tender when the commander or some other officer had to be taken ashore. In those cases, the strongest and best looking oarsmen were chosen and in the year since his escape from Venice, Michele had become much huskier; his face, cooked by the sun, was more masculine; his arms and legs were as muscular as a wrestler’s; and to his great joy, the first signs of a blond mustache had begun to sprout on his upper lip, so that now, donning the oarsman’s red cap and red cassock, he cut a fine figure. But even if those outings were a pleasant distraction, he could just as easily do without them. He had learned from Big Prick to live each day as it comes, working when it was time to work, entertaining himself during the interminable hours of idleness by looking out at the sea or watching the seagulls fly, and enjoying intensely the sea biscuit that was distributed twice a day and the fava bean or chickpea soup on holidays.

Only his dreams came to disturb the almost animal-like passivity that had come over him. On occasion he would dream of his father and start writhing and shouting in his sleep as though he were fighting the police, so that on more than one occasion his annoyed neighbors had woken him up to the tune of punches and kicks. And it happened that he would dream of Bianca, and enjoy her in his sleep, and wake up soiled and sticky and inexplicably happy, before realizing with a pang of delusion that he was not on the mattress beside her but on the hard bench of the galley. And then, once, he dreamed distinctly of being discharged from the Aquila; the scrivener checked his accounts in the register, and began counting out in gold coins an enormous sum which had mysteriously accumulated in his account; after which, he disembarked, climbing down the ladder at the stern, with a sack of zecchini on his back, and everyone on board saluted him by doffing their caps, including the commander. When he woke up from that dream, it was tough for Michele to return to reality; all day long he kept thinking that the dream must surely have been prophetic, and that the ten thousand zecchini buried on the island were waiting for him to put an end to his odyssey. The hope of

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