I, Iago Read online

  This was complete and unexpected madness.

  “Are you serious, General?” I demanded. Not an hour had passed since I’d last seen him. If I’d known how potent words could be, I would have used far fewer.

  His fists pounded down on both my shoulders, almost dropping me to my knees. I shouted aloud in surprised pain, my hands going protectively to my collarbones, fearing they had both been shattered. Othello grabbed my hands in his and shook them ferociously.

  “Villain!” he spat in my face. “You’d better prove she’s a whore, after tormenting me like this! Be absolutely sure of it, give me ocular proof, or I swear to all things holy, I’ll make you so miserable, you’ll wish you had been born a dog!”

  I broke his grip and then immediately grabbed his hands with mine. “Are you mad?” I demanded furiously.

  “Show me some proof !” he shouted, and tried to shake his hands free. I held tighter. “Prove this thing you’re tormenting me with, or I swear I’ll have your life.”

  “Othello—”

  “If I learn that you’ve just been slandering her—”

  “How have I slandered her?”

  “–and torturing me, you will be damned, not only by heaven but by me!” He shook his hands free from my grip and with enraged intensity, began to walk away from me; five steps out, he turned again, and then again, resuming his hysterical pacing.

  This, I had not planned: that his anger should turn on me, and not on Cassio. The stakes were changed dramatically. Othello had just made me one of the pieces in the game, and no longer the player controlling the board.

  “In the name of heaven!” I shouted at his backside when his pacing took him away from me. “Do you have one jot of common sense? Othello, you are raving!”

  Shocked that I was returning his anger with my own, he whirled around to stare at me.

  With a sour, furious glance at Othello, I spat, “So it is not safe to be honest with your best friend? Even when he has demanded honesty of you? Thank you for that lesson! Suffer on your own, I can’t risk caring for you anymore. Farewell.” I turned and stormed down the wall walk, my heart beating so fast and loud I was sure it must be audible.

  Othello ran up behind me; I readied myself to fend off a blow from behind, but his hand merely came to rest on my shoulder. “No, Iago, stay,” he said gruffly. “It’s good that you are honest with me.”

  “I’d rather be wise; being honest gets me beaten,” I huffed, coming to a stop and half-facing him.

  Othello sighed, and leaned against the low wall. In a confessional tone he said, “Iago, my brother, I am in a terrible state. I think my wife is faithful, then I think she is not. I think you’re a good man for warning me, then I think you’re not. I need to know one way or the other. This is torture, what I am feeling now, it is a physical sensation”—he began to grab at his own body, as if his clothes were biting him—“it feels like I am being knifed and poisoned and burned and drowned all at the same time. I won’t endure it, I need proof !”

  I sighed. “I wish I’d never said anything to you.”

  I almost meant that now, given how it had turned against me. But we were under way, so I had to stay in charge—or die. Othello had not, in fact, made me a game piece on the board; I had done it myself, by being too good at my enterprise. I had accidentally created for myself an extreme challenge. Seeing what I’d already accomplished, I was confident I could accomplish this as well. “You say you want proof?”

  “Want it! No, I’ll have it,” Othello replied with vicious speed. “From you.” The threat that had quieted a moment earlier lit up again in his expression.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. “But . . . how? What are you expecting? If they are having an affair—which I am not saying is the case—what do you want me to do? Arrange for you to see them, watch them, while he mounts her?”

  Othello groaned, turned away abruptly, and vomited over the parapet. I tried not to think about whatever or whoever was below us.

  “I do not know how to make that happen, General,” I pressed on. “Catching them in the act is the only absolute proof there is, and how am I to manage that? No matter how hot they may be for each other”—here Othello groaned again, weakly, his forehead resting on the parapet—“if they are hot, which I have not said they are, even if they’re rutting like animals”—another groan. I wanted to upset him now; the whoreson had attacked me—“they would not be fools enough to do the act where we might come across them in the thick of it.”

  He turned back toward me, looking ill. I continued to chatter as if I didn’t notice.

  “You are demanding me to prove something that I myself merely suspect. I cannot do that—I will not do it. If you require evidence one way or another, you must be satisfied with circumstantial evidence.”

  “Give me a solid reason to believe she’s disloyal,” he insisted sourly. “You owe me that at least, for putting this thought in my head.”

  I shook my head, grimacing. “I do not like that assignment,” I said, with absolute sincerity. “But since I am caught up in this affair now—because I was foolish enough to look out for your interests—I suppose I’m stuck with it. All right then.” I pursed my lips together and wished I were anywhere but here. A thousand thoughts flashed through my mind before I spoke again.

  His fury was too dangerous to let it remain fixed on Desdemona; I had to make this about Cassio and myself. Only one of the two of us could now come out of this well. It had begun as a battle for the lieutenant’s sash; suddenly it was a battle for our well-being, possibly our lives. I would never have wished Cassio dead, nor did I now—but if I had to pick one skin to save, naturally it would be mine.

  However, no simple hint, or implication, or manipulation of the truth could possibly deflect Othello’s astonishing and monstrous passion.

  It was time to be a real Venetian: it was time for outright lies.

  Chapter 44

  “A FEW NIGHTS AGO,” I began, “Emilia was not feeling well, and did not want me near her lest I catch her illness. So I stayed in Cassio’s room overnight. I had a terrible toothache and I could not sleep. Cassio was dead to the world, but he was also talking in his sleep.” This was not the best story to tell, since Emilia could so easily gainsay it, but nothing else came to mind. However skilled I was turning out to be at deception, I was not actually a very able liar.

  “Get to the point,” Othello said with dull misery.

  “Yes. So. In his sleep, I heard him say, Desdemona, darling, we must be wary and hide our love.” I said it without any inflection, a dutiful recitation. Othello started; I ignored him. “And then he grabbed my hand in the bed, and said, sweetheart, and then he kissed me—” Othello scrambled to his feet and stared at me, horrified. I continued, as if oblivious. “And then he put his leg over mine, and sighed, and kissed me again, and said, Damn that Moor.”

  Othello looked as if he had been stabbed. He wrapped his thick arms around his middle and turned again to vomit over the parapet. This time it was dry heaves.

  “Othello, it was but his dream,” I said. That part of me that still loved him wanted to chastise and counsel him: You fool, why do you believe so easily? When did you become so pathetically credulous?

  “I’ll tear her to pieces!” he shrieked abruptly toward the sea.

  “No, you will not,” I said, shocked. “Do not be rash. It’s just a dream—dreamers often lie. And it was his dream, General, not hers. We have seen nothing. Desdemona herself is honest, I am sure.” Could I use the handkerchief to damn Cassio but not Desdemona? I had no choice but to hazard it. “Do you recall that strawberry handkerchief you gave your wife?”

  “Of course.”

  “That handkerchief—or something very similar to it, but I’m sure it was your wife’s—I saw Cassio wipe his face with it this morning.”

  Something terrible happened to Othello then. His face went slack, and all the light went out of his eyes. He stopped breathing for a long moment, and then gas
ped, without energy, to take in air. His eyelids drooped, as if they would close without permission.

  “If it’s that handkerchief—” he said, his voice like gravel, and he could not continue.

  The miscalculation on my part had been in thinking Othello’s passion would rush through the same channels as mine. But mine was bent on Cassio, and his, on Desdemona. No matter how this enterprise might have unfurled, Desdemona would always have been Othello’s target. I could only get to Cassio through Desdemona. Well then, so be it. I sent a passing plea to the patron saint of defenseless women—but I was proving capable of anything, so I could certainly redress the damage later. Somehow. Surely.

  “If it’s that handkerchief,” I said somberly, “it speaks against her.”

  Othello stood bolt upright and shrieked toward the blue sky. “That whore! That bitch!” I looked around warily—the wind blew his words away, but the guards around the parapet could see that he was raging about something.

  “General, please,” I said, holding out a steadying arm.

  He brushed it aside furiously. “Iago, watch me! All the love I ever felt for her: gone!” He blew into the air. “Blown to heaven! That’s it, it’s gone!” He pounded the flats of his hands against his chest. “Hate! That’s all that is in here now is hate and vengeance! I will be avenged!”

  “Calm yourself, General,” I pleaded, even as I realized where this was going. A wave of dizziness almost knocked me over: that words, mere words, my words, could wreak such havoc . . . had I ever known another man with more power than I had right now?

  “I want blood!” Othello shouted to the sky. “Blood, do you hear me? Blood!”

  “I beg you, be calm,” I said. “You’ll change your mind when you are calmer.”

  “Never, Iago!” he declared furiously. “I am unbendable: no looking back, to find a love that has been mocking me from the beginning. There will be blood shed in punishment for this!”

  He dropped to his knees on the parapet, as a sudden, terrifying calm washed over him. His placed his right hand over his heart and intoned:

  “As the stars are fire, I hereby take a sacred vow to honor the words I have just spoken.”

  He began to rise as panic poked my gut. I could not believe how quickly this was happening, but it was happening, and I had to stay abreast of it. Seeing him in his full rage, I realized: the best way to steer this ship now was to make Othello captain of it. He was more engaged in it than I had ever expected either of us to be. He would not stay this angry—nobody could. And he would repent of this vow when he had calmed. But in the moment, the heady satisfaction of playing Aeolus and putting the winds into those sails . . .

  As he began to rise, I pressed down on his shoulder. “Do not rise yet,” I said solemnly. I knelt beside him, and took his hands in mine. “As the sun does move, let it witness here that Iago gives up his will, his wit, his hands, and heart, into Othello’s service. Let my general command me, and I will obey without remorse, no matter how bloody the business.” I said this looking down, as if in prayer. Now I glanced up to see him, and found tears in his eyes. He embraced me with the fervent warmth of an ally and friend. I had not felt so close to him since before Desdemona had plucked him by the sleeve in Brabantio’s tile-plated room.

  “Iago, do you mean that?” he said quietly.

  “Of course I do.”

  His voice dropped to a whisper. “Then let me hear you say, within three days, that Cassio is not alive.”

  I knew I would not do it; I knew I would not have to. I knew he would rescind the order later, and so, there was no harm in agreeing to it now—but oh, was there great satisfaction to hear him ask it.

  “My friend is dead,” I said at once. “It’s done at your request.” A hesitation, a prick of conscience. Just to be safe: “But let her live.”

  Othello stood up abruptly and spat to one side. “Damn her, the harlot! Damn her!”

  “Damn her, but don’t kill her,” I pressed.

  Othello looked back at me, and held out a hand to help me rise. “Come inside with me, help me decide how to kill her.”

  “General—” I began, fighting real panic now.

  He did not mean this, he did not really mean this, this was insanely irrational, he would calm down. But just as I had brought him so skillfully to this state, it was now my challenge to ease him back to reason—which surely I could do, as slyly as I’d led him here. I had total power over this man, and he had none at all over me.

  “General, listen to me when I say—”

  “Iago,” Othello interrupted passionately, “you are my lieutenant now.”

  “I am yours forever,” I said immediately.

  I, Iago

  Chapter 45

  I WAS HIS lieutenant. It was achieved. I had earned it—and most thrillingly, I had achieved it by the exercising of a skill even greater than my military ones. Knowing now my capabilities, I was wholly confident of applying them to any project.

  For example, and of greatest urgency: the banishing of all the chaos I’d so deftly summoned, so that the end result of this project was that I would be lieutenant, Cassio would not be, and there would be no evidence that I had made this happen. Before I could afford myself the luxury of gloating righteously, I had to put to bed the demons I had roused.

  I knew I could do it. When it came to managing Othello, I knew now I could do anything. Which meant, despite the distraction of Desdemona and the impudent protrusion of Cassio into our lives, I was still the nearest to his soul. Desdemona held his heart, but I claimed a more immortal part of him.

  And so, onward, to ensure I maintained that claim. Most importantly, I had to cover my tracks. I had said Cassio had the handkerchief; that meant Cassio had to have the handkerchief. If Othello searched his person or his room, it had to be there, or I would be known as a liar right off.

  I did have the passing thought: what if Emilia were to hear that Cassio had the handkerchief, and came to wonder why? That was an easy fix: oh, dear, I must have dropped it, and Cassio must have picked it up. As innocent a story as her own.

  Beyond that, how best to proceed? Knowing what I could get away with now, the exercise felt like a game of strategy, a living riddle, where I had the upper hand and yet had to learn the rules as I went along. There was no manual, no teacher, as there had been in the military training of my youth.

  I had not expected Othello’s savageness. He had vowed to kill his wife without having seen a shred of evidence, after repeatedly claiming that visible evidence was required to condemn her. I was certain that I could in time dissuade him; that was not what troubled me. What troubled me was how ripe he’d been for violence. I had never seen that side of him before, even in the midst of battle. It revealed an irrational, unstable quality that shocked me. Yes, I delighted in my ability to coax it from him—but that it was there to be coaxed . . . that was a new insight into him, and it troubled me. Genuinely. Troubled me. Perhaps a little as his friend, but very deeply as his officer.

  I reconsidered what he had said while raging: that he was so distracted now, he would have to leave his post. I had dismissed this as a rant. Perhaps it was not. Perhaps he knew himself well enough to see the truth before I had—and perhaps he was correct. I did not want that to be the case, but if it was . . . if he was proving himself unfit for office, well then . . .

  Given that I could will my way into a lieutenancy . . . why not a higher rank?

  I WOULD NOT, then, soothe this storm. I would roil it into a tempest. If he had the fortitude of character that I had assumed of him for years, he would emerge victorious, with me beside him as his able lieutenant. If he could not fend off his own madness, then I was doing the Venetian army, and the entire Serene Republic, a service to reveal him. In either case, Cassio was out of my life; in either case, I knew I could prevent actual harm to Desdemona.

  So now it came down to a match between my clearheaded reason and Othello’s raging passion. If I took him down, it was for the w
ider good, as one fells an oak that has just begun to rot, without waiting for it to come crashing down in nature’s course without control. But if he triumphed—as I hoped he would, and thought him capable—then he had proven his endurance and his worth, and I would once again respect him as my general and my friend.

  I went down to the chamber level, to Cassio’s fine, large room, in pretense of seeking him; finding him absent, I left the handkerchief in plain view on a chest there.

  RELIEVED OF THE BURDEN, I took in some hours of wrestling and swordsmanship with my fellow officers in the outer yard. At dinner break, I ate with them at mess. Othello usually joined us for this meal; he was not here. Nor was Cassio.

  “Is Lieutenant Cassio not eating with us?” I asked an artillery captain near me. I knew him—it was Bucello, the Brawny Lug from my Arsenal days. We had recognized each other our second day here. He looked unchanged with years; we had had very little to say to each other. As with Zanino and even Roderigo, our reunion held more weight for them than for me; for my closeness to Othello, I glowed with an aura of celebrity that made them want to emphasize their closeness to me.

  Bucello gave me a strange look. “Of course Cassio is not eating here. He lost his commission.”

  “He still has access to the barracks. He has his own room.”

  Bucello snorted. “I doubt he’s been sleeping in it much.” He gave me a meaningful, slightly leering smile.

  “Oh?” I said. “Has he been out carousing, drowning his woes in libation and lasses?”

  He grinned. “There’s just one lass, and I’m surprised she hasn’t drowned him yet, the way the talk is going.”

  Something new and unsavory. Convenient. “Which lass are you speaking of?” I asked.

  He smirked. Then his expression softened. “Oh, I’m forgetting you’re a married man, so you haven’t met the local ladies. This one is named Bianca. She’s a pretty thing, a war widow, with her own house, and she rents herself out to the highest bidder. Usually just for an hour or so, or a night at the most—but after his disgrace, Cassio spent four days there without stepping out of the house even once!”