I, Iago Read online

  “I understand, General,” I said gently.

  “So tonight, tonight, I was leaving the Senate chamber. I had just told them not to hire an engineer who wants to tear down the Citadel towers in Famagusta and rebuild them to be round. I thought I had escaped, I thought finally I will have one night at leisure, to wander around the city and finally see its famous beauty—and at the very last moment, that Senator Brabantio—”

  “The one with the large nostrils,” I said.

  He paused, and grinned. “Yes. This is why I require you to come with me, Iago, you will help me keep my humor. He tugged my sleeve as I was almost out the door and insisted I come to his house. “It is one senator too many. I could not say no without causing offense, but this time, I need my own people with me. You will come. And you come too,” he added to Emilia. “For just as I need Iago to retain my humor, I believe that Iago might need you.”

  “I agree,” I said at once.

  Othello laughed. “Very well, then! Meet me at the Arsenal gate at seven. And thank you, both.” He bowed with a courtier’s flourish to my wife, clapped his hand over his heart in my direction, and strode out of the little room with as much energy as he had entered.

  Emilia and I exchanged glances, and she laughed. “So I am to dine with a senator tonight,” she said, and rolled her eyes theatrically. “Good heavens, I have nothing to wear.”

  Chapter 19

  BRABANTIO RADIATED SENATORIALITY. To meet the man was to meet the very archetype of Venetian senator; it was a role he played, one he excelled at, one he loved. I do not know what he had done when he was younger to make money, or to preserve the money made by the Brabantios before him. I could not imagine him a younger man—he seemed to have been born exactly this age, and a senator. He wore—this day and every day I had ever seen him—black doublet and hose with a long-sleeved crimson robe loose over it. A black sash over his left shoulder indicated that he was not only a senator but also a member of the Council of Ten. I suspected he wore his full regalia even in his sleep. He had been my father’s wealthiest customer for as far back as I could remember, and he continued to heap business upon my brother. But I had hardly ever met the man.

  CA’BRABANTIO, SOUTH OF the Rialto Bridge on the west side of the Grand Canal, was sumptuous without being at all original. Having seen the dining rooms and great halls of other senators in my time, I could not have distinguished this one. There were murals on the walls and ceilings, inlaid marble floors with complex designs, expensive rugs on all the windows, paintings everywhere. I disliked the ostentation, but I appreciated the power and wealth behind it. It was not unpleasant to dine with fine linen napkins under elegant chandeliers while eating sumptuous foods. Emilia—the only woman at the table—shot me little looks throughout dinner that seemed to say: “Is this not precious? We must opine about it all in private later!”

  Brabantio, like every man, wanted to hear Othello’s history. The general had developed abridged versions of his adventures, the variants of which he could recite by rote. At this point in our friendship, I could nearly recite them by rote myself, having heard them repeated ad nauseam to every officer and commissioner in Rovigo. His recitations occasionally included the cannibals, but always left out his stint as a war-slave. The cannibals had not come up yet tonight, but I anticipated they soon might, as Othello looked a little tired; he tended to use the cannibal story as a way of jolting his hosts into a quick, polite, but shocked good night.

  DURING THE FIFTH course there was a movement from the ornamented door to the kitchen. All evening, such doorway movements had preceded the arrival of a new culinary invention. I hoped there would not be a sixth course; my stomach was already distended. I expected to see the majordomo of the household, or perhaps a servant, step through the door.

  Instead, a slender blonde in a pale silk gown, the neckline and sleeves decorated with lace and gold thread, backed gracefully into the room. She pulled a cart on which rattled a variety of wine jugs. She turned to face us, and even Emilia drew in a breath of admiration: this may have been the prettiest young lady in Venice. Hers was the classic Venetian beauty—pale skin, hair so pale it was almost white, a high broad forehead, softly sculptured features. She gave us all a wide-open stare, and her eyes were so blue we could see the sapphire from halfway across the dining hall.

  “Father,” she said quietly, “may I join you for the dessert wine?”

  There was something in the tone of her voice, the pause before his answer, the way he glanced at her, that made it clear: they had earlier agreed she would not dine with us, and her request now took him by surprise.

  “Of course you may,” Brabantio said, laying down his napkin and turning full to face her for a moment. “If you would like to do that, I would be very pleased.”

  Emilia and I exchanged glances, wondering.

  “Gentlemen, madam,” Senator Brabantio said, gesturing to the pale Venus by the wine cart, “this is my daughter, Desdemona.”

  Chapter 20

  SHE SMILED AT US POLITELY, a smile as beautiful for its restraint as for its sincerity. “Good evening.” Turning her eyes directly to Othello, she said, “It is an honor to meet you, General.” Her voice—strangely, for one so young and sheltered and privileged—was warm with compassion, as if she knew how tiresome such a dinner was for him, and was impressed that he had the grace to show up anyhow.

  Othello, his usual broad smile looking somehow foolish in her presence, nodded his head. “Lady,” he said, hand to his heart and bowing his head. “The honor is mine.” Then relaxing somewhat: “And here is my ensign and bosom friend, Iago, and his lady wife Emilia.”

  “Oh, is she your wife?” Brabantio said to me, with passing interest. Without looking at Emilia he said casually to Othello, “I assumed she was with you.”

  Emilia immediately laughed and took my hand reassuringly; I reddened and said nothing. Othello gracefully responded, “You honor me to think I would be deserving of the lady’s favor, but I assure she is extremely married to my ensign. And he is even more married to her.”

  Having stumbled over that obstacle, all the pleasant, proper courtesies were exchanged. Othello was at the senator’s right, and I to his left with Emilia beside me; the chair beside Othello was empty, and he gestured to it. His was not the graceful, mannered gesture of a nobleman; it was the casual, familiar gesture a soldier makes to a colleague. Desdemona stood up a little straighter, like a startled whippet, as if she had never seen such behavior before. A fleeting smile animated her face as she finally took his meaning, then she composed herself, and crossed to sit beside him primly. “Pray continue your discussion, gentlemen,” she said demurely. “I did not mean to interrupt; I will offer the wine when there is a lull in conversation.”

  “ ‘WHEN THERE IS a lull in conversation,’ ” Emilia repeated hours later in an arch tone as we were undressing for bed. “That girl is a filly straining at her halter. She does not want to be the mistress of that house, but by the brightest heaven, she is determined to play the role well, simply because she has nothing else to do. Tonight’s dinner was surely the most interesting thing that has happened to her in months.”

  “Dining with General Othello is always the most interesting thing to happen to anyone in months,” I said dismissively, slipping my nightshirt over my head. “Years, perhaps.” I got into bed.

  “She was fascinated by him,” Emilia said, combing her hair.

  “Everyone is fascinated by him,” I said, laying my head back on the pillow. “As he himself often complains, he is a most fantastic conversation piece.”

  “I think he likes Brabantio better than most,” Emilia said.

  “Do you speak from your extensive experience of joining him in his senatorial dinner gauntlets?” I said. “Since you are so obviously his mistress?”

  She ignored that, and I was grateful. “I kept expecting him to tell the story about the cannibals, but he never did.” A pause. “Do you think that really happened? About the ca
nnibals, I mean?”

  It had never occurred to me that Othello would embellish any story. The man was an open book, guileless, almost simple in a way. “Why would he do that?” I demanded.

  She shrugged and lay her comb on the table. “To shock people into leaving him alone.”

  “Oh, he definitely does that,” I agreed. “But that doesn’t mean he made it up.”

  “WELL,” OTHELLO ANNOUNCED, the following afternoon, “Brabantio has invited me to return immediately for another meal. You are both invited, and I insist on it.”

  “Whatever will you talk about on a second assignation?” I teased. “You covered your entire history quite efficiently on your first one.”

  “There is always the cannibal story, to make an early end of it.” Othello sighed. “Meet me at the Arsenal gate at seven bells.”

  THIS SECOND EVENING was a little different. Having heard most of Othello’s tales the night before, Brabantio now pressed for details: in which mountains did he seek the treasure? What battle tactics worked best against the Turks in the Levant?

  Brabantio himself held forth, somewhat pompously, about Venice’s glorious history, of its remarkable history of democratic (well, oligarchic) rule, of our supremacy for centuries of the waters. If brevity is indeed the soul of wit, his holding-forth was somewhat witless. He informed Othello that Venice had been founded by refugees, survivors from Troy; not ten minutes later, with no apparent awareness that he was contradicting himself, he announced that the city had been founded at midday on the vernal equinox in the year of our Lord 421, by a group of Paduans who were fleeing Attila the Hun. (I refrained from pointing out that Attila was, at that time, about fifteen years old.) These were tales Emilia and I had grown up on, as stimulating to us now as tired nursery rhymes. Othello listened patiently, with a pleasant expression on his face. Given his own life, I suspect the entire history of the Serene Republic did not make much of an impression on him.

  The daughter, Desdemona, supped with us this time. She remained very quiet through the meal, and often excused herself to check things in the kitchen. Given how many servants there were, this struck me as an excuse to occasionally relieve herself of our company.

  Each time she began to rise from her chair, she would hesitate for the briefest moment, with a questioning look in Othello’s direction. He never noticed. After the hesitation, she would push back her chair, stand gracefully, and excuse herself. On her return, there was an inverse: the same hesitation on her part and obliviousness on his, before she sat herself beside him again.

  FINALLY, THE DESSERT dishes were being cleared away, by servants wearing a silk print my family had been selling Brabantio since I was weaned. Brabantio settled farther back into his chair at the head of the table, clearly wanting to engage in further discourse with his chief guest, or perhaps soliloquize some more. Emilia barely squelched a yawn. Othello noticed this and shot a quick grinning glance at me.

  “Senator,” he said, “allow me to share with you a story I do not often tell, because it is so remarkable. It is of my encounter with cannibals.”

  Emilia and I exchanged knowing, grateful looks. In rapid but deftly vivid detail, the general described his encounters in Scythia with the men who tore their enemies’ heads from their bodies and wore the scalps on ropes as gruesome necklaces. As he had all evening, Othello split his attention between Brabantio at the head of the table, to his right, and Desdemona, to his immediate left. As Othello spoke, Desdemona’s pale face grew paler; as he described the killing ritual the cannibals engaged in, a fine sweat broke out on the girl’s upper lip, and I feared she might be ill.

  “General,” the senator interrupted urgently. “While I find these tales fascinating, I think they are not appropriate to be told in the hearing of ladies, and most especially my daughter.”

  “My deepest apologies,” Othello said at once, to both of them. “I did not mean to cause such a lovely young lady any distress, and I apologize if I have given offense. I see it is time for us to bid you a grateful and fond good night.”

  “Oh, on the contrary, the evening is young yet, let us merely change the subject,” Brabantio said with his senatorial authority. “I think a bit of air and a constitutional should evaporate the brimstone of these tales. Under other circumstances I would be delighted to exchange such tales of sorcery and witchcraft; Venetian history is full of sorcerers. But we should do it of an evening without ladies present, I think. Desdemona, will you show our guests the collection of Levantine tiles we have in the sitting room? They are not so exotic as your cannibals, sir, but they are more attractive for mixed company.”

  Desdemona looked chagrined. I assumed she was hoping to be rid of us as much as we were eager to be gotten rid of. But she smiled politely and said, “Certainly, Father. General, if you and your party would care to step into the sitting room . . .” As she had all evening, she pushed her chair out and gave Othello a look he did not notice; nonplussed, she moved her chair out farther and stood up.

  Sensing my wife’s exasperated impatience, I leapt up and held Emilia’s chair for her, looking pointedly at Othello, hoping he would understand what he had failed to do all evening. He did not.

  “The general is not accustomed to the niceties of Venetian table manners,” I said quietly, directing this at both father and daughter.

  “No reason he should be,” Brabantio said.

  “What have I done wrong?” Othello asked, curious but not concerned.

  “Not wrong, exactly, sir.” Brabantio laughed. “But it is considered good form, when dining beside a lady, to pull her chair back for her if she is about to rise. My daughter is courted by half the city’s youths, and the very few who ever make it to the chair you sit in now would have been hovering over her all night, pulling out her chair every time she had to leave the table, holding it for her every time she rejoined us.”

  Othello’s warm smile bypassed Brabantio and was all for Desdemona. “Pardon me, my lady, I meant no disrespect.”

  Desdemona shook her head in a forgiving gesture, but did not speak. Obviously Othello had overshot the mark by embellishing the cannibal story; she looked distressed now, the slightest crease between the brows on that alabaster face.

  “Please follow me, sir,” she managed to say, nearly in a whisper, and gestured toward one of the smaller doors on the side of the room.

  “I will be along in a moment,” Brabantio said from his chair, not looking at all as if he intended to get up from it.

  WE PASSED INTO the next room, where a servant had gone ahead to light three oil lamps. The entire room—walls, floors, and ceilings—was inlaid with highly decorated tiles, white with dazzling blue designs and dabs of red on them. It created a stunning effect, as if we had just entered into a celestial cave.

  “I have seen such tiled rooms in their homelands,” Othello said. “They are common in mosques and wealthy homes. Are they not beautiful?”

  As Emilia and I murmured assent, Desdemona reached out shyly and rested one pale finger on Othello’s dark forearm. He turned sharply toward her, as if he had received a shock. “Please forgive my father’s presumptions,” she whispered. “I would very much like to hear the rest of the cannibal story.”

  Othello blinked in surprise. “Does the lady feel she must indulge me?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” she said. “I found it riveting, and full of matter for questions. My father is overly cautious. He thinks I am as fragile as my face.”

  Othello blinked again. Emilia took my hand and squeezed it.

  “I am delighted to know you are not offended by my tale, mistress,” Othello said carefully. He smiled.

  “Might I hear the rest of the story?” she pressed.

  Othello, Emilia, and I exchanged surprised expressions. “What, now?” he said. “I think if your father entered and heard me talking to you on the subject, he would find me objectionable.”

  Desdemona dropped her eyes, as if suddenly fascinated with a particular tile in the
wall. I saw one of her hands curl into a tight fist, so tight her arm shook. “Perhaps another time,” she said vaguely. “Come, there are some particularly lovely tiles on this other wall,” and with a surprisingly long-legged stride, she led us toward the far side of the room.

  Chapter 21

  THREE NIGHTS LATER, Othello—and Emilia and myself—were summoned to the senator’s again. This time it was a dinner party for about twenty, at which Othello was the guest of honor for his defensive leadership against Ferrara. We were the only nonpatricians at the affair, and Emilia looked as if she’d spent her life around these people. I found it almost poignant that we had been drawn together in part by our dislike of Venetian superficiality, and yet we found ourselves increasingly willing to float within that sea. Not only willing, but in Emilia’s case, extremely capable. We were accepted by all these people as if we shared their birthright. I confess we were both fired up by it. I was physically stronger and at least as educated as any of these gentlemen. I need not scorn them, but I need not be sycophantic either. I deserved the company and was determined to continue in it. Especially to watch Emilia glow.

  Emilia attached herself to Desdemona, and I hardly saw her all evening; Othello was of course besieged by curious sycophants and did a fine job maintaining his cheerful composure, although I hardly saw him, either. I spent most of the evening being chattered at by minor gentility, who wanted to know what it was like to be a confidant of a Moor. I failed to give them any useful information, as I had nothing to compare it to, and no report at all of bizarre or un-Christian ways.

  Over the next several weeks, Othello was constantly feted everywhere, and brought Emilia and myself along. On more than one occasion, I had to listen to the passing comment that the general had a beautiful wife or mistress or concubine, and each time, I took a deep breath before explaining that no, he did not. There was nothing improper in Othello’s and Emilia’s behavior toward each other—I knew that, I realized it was pure presumption on the speakers’ parts. I did not begrudge my wife and my friend a public ease with each other. But I was concerned that Emilia might innocently establish a light reputation for herself. And I disliked the humiliation of setting things straight with strangers. A bigger man than I, I am sure, would have found amusement in the misapprehension; I wished I were that bigger man.