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“Tomorrow,” said the fool. “Over the bridge, then go right.”
The Moor walked up the stairs of the Rialto Bridge, which even in the evening was bustling with merchants, hawkers, and whores.
CHORUS: And thus was friendship formed. Two outsiders, outside a palace in the night, found fellowship in their troubles, and there one’s problems became the other’s purpose.
“Who is that?” asked the fool.
“I don’t know him,” said the Moor. “Is he following us?”
“No, he’s just yammering on about the bloody obvious to no one. A nutter, no doubt.”
“I cannot carry him, too,” said Othello.
FOUR
How Much for the Monkey?
Iago was a pillar of leather and steel among the silks and rich brocades of the Rialto merchants. They flowed like anemones in the surf—bargaining, bickering, lying politely and expansively—plucking profit from the flow of goods and services all around. You could buy anything from a pomegranate to a shipping contract on the Rialto. Notaries had set up their desks among the booths to record transactions, whores wagged their rouge-tipped tits from balconies above.
Iago stood with his hand on the hilt of his sword as commerce swirled around him, the odd merchant looking up and wincing as he passed under the soldier’s scowl. Before long, a circle cleared on the pavers around Iago, an eddy in the current.
One of the whores, looking down, said, “That one must have a right stink about him, the way they’re all movin’ away.”
When Antonio stepped out of the fray flanked by two young fops in finery too heavy for the heat, Iago did not offer his hand.
“You’re late,” said the soldier.
“Business beckoned. You didn’t give me much notice,” said Antonio. “Iago, these are my friends, Gratiano and Salarino—they have been trying to coax me from my melancholy with good cheer.”
Iago nodded in turn to each of the two, both taller and more stout than the soldier. Well fed and well kept, he thought. Soft, he thought. “Gentlemen, please do bugger off.”
“Pardon?” asked Gratiano, startled, his floppy hat falling over one eye.
“For a bit,” said Iago.
Antonio stepped between Iago and the youths. “See here, Iago, these gentlemen are—”
“Business,” interrupted Iago.
“Antonio’s affairs are our business as well,” said Salarino.
Iago shrugged. “Brabantio is dead,” he said to Antonio.
“Oh,” said Antonio. To his friends: “You two need to bugger off.”
“Just for a bit,” offered Iago, as the two backed into the crowd, looking more liberated than insulted.
Antonio took Iago by the shirt and hurried him to a nook between the booths of two spice merchants. “Brabantio is dead? When?”
“They found his overripe corpse this morning. Servants followed a foul smell to the cellar. I was brought word by my man, who was on the island. He uses one of Portia’s maids on occasion.”
“Portia has returned from Florence, then?”
“Just yesterday. The Montressor has been missing for two weeks—since the Assumption. The servants at Villa Belmont thought he’d gone to Florence to join Portia, or perhaps to Corsica to retrieve Desdemona from the Moor. They found him so deep in the cellar that the smell hadn’t even risen to the wine cellar.”
“Deep in the cellar? I wondered why I had not heard from him. Then he’s been there since that night, with the fool.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Do you think the fool awakened and attacked him?”
“No. I went to Belmont as soon as I heard, right after I sent word to you to meet. There were mason’s tools by the body, a bucket with mortar and tools hardened in it. The Montressor had built a wall shortly before he died. He must have been planning what he would do even before he brought us into his plan. I believe he walled the fool up in that deep chamber where we carried him. Left him there to die.”
“And in building the wall, Brabantio collapsed. He was very old, feeble of body, if not of mind.”
“He was eaten,” said Iago, and he smiled at the horror that crossed the merchant’s face.
“Rats?” said Antonio. “If he’d been dead that long, I’m not surprised—”
“Yes rats, after, but something ripped his head from his body, ate his hands, his liver, and his heart.”
“So not rats?”
“His arm bones were splintered. I’ve seen a man’s hand twisted off by a runaway anchor chain. The bones looked like that.” Iago reached into his belt and held forth a long, wickedly curved black tooth, half the length of his thumb. “No, Antonio, it was not rats. This was in what was left of his buttocks.”
“His arse was eaten?”
“A bite.”
“And Portia saw this?”
“The servants had warned her off. They feared what might be in the dark. I was the first to look at him. I wrapped him together in his robe before anyone came. I told them he had fallen and was eaten by rats. I secreted the mason’s tools in a deeper chamber. No one will question it.”
“Then you think the fool is still walled up in the cellar?”
“The wall was intact. You sent away that great simpleton who attended the fool, did you not?”
“I sent a forged note from the fool sending for him the next day. My protégé Bassanio arranged to put the giant and the fool’s monkey on a ship to Marseilles and paid their passage. You think the natural* could have done this?”
Iago stroked his beard. “No, he is strong enough, but what was done to the senator requires a savagery beyond that of a simpleton enraged, even if he’d had a weapon of tooth and bone. It was an animal.”
“The monkey, then?”
“Yes, Antonio. The senator’s head was torn from his body and his liver eaten by a tiny fucking monkey in fool’s motley.”
“Jeff,” said Antonio.
“What?”
“The monkey is called Jeff.”
“Forget the monkey! What is this fascination you have with the monkey? Why didn’t you just keep the monkey?”
“I needed to make the fool’s departure appear genuine, didn’t I?” said Antonio. “No one would go away without his monkey. Besides, I am a respected merchant of Venice. I cannot have a monkey, it would seem frivolous.”
“Psssst, beg pardon, signor,” said one of the spice merchants, leaning out of his booth. “But I might be able to procure a monkey for you.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said Iago.
“Very discreet, signor,” said the spice seller, affecting a conspiratorial whisper. “You can keep it, or just have it for the night, if you’d like. My man will come take it away in the morning.”
“No,” said Antonio. “I have no need—”
“How much did you hear?” Iago said to the spice man.
“I know nothing of Antonio’s desire to fuck a monkey.” Innocence blossomed on the spice seller’s face, blissful ignorance gleamed in his eye.
