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I LOOK AT MY HANDS I think of the phrase "not h every time I ever heard the phrase said with emotion it had to do hat had come from my hands

I’d like to paint now, to pick up a brush and try it the way I did it then, in a trance, furiously, once and for only, every line and , each decision final

Ah, I’anized, so browbeaten by what I rein

Constantinople-newly under the Turks, by that I ht there, a slave boy, captured in the wild lands of his country for which he barely knew the proper name: the Golden Horde

Mee, or any capacity to reason in a consistent way I remember the squalid rooms that must have been Constantinople because other people talked, and for the first time in forever, since I’d been ripped out of what I couldn’t remember, I could understand what people said

They spoke Greek, of course, these traders who dealt in slaves for brothels in Europe They knew no religious allegiance, which was all I knew, pitifully devoid of detail

I was thron on a thick Turkey carpet, the fancified rich floor covering one saw in a palace, a display rug for high-priced goods

My hair et and long; soh to hurt s that were mine had been stripped from me and froold cloth It was hot and da no hope of food, I knew this to be a pain that would spike and then, of its own, die away The tunic lory, the shi bell sleeves and caot to my feet, which were bare of course, I saw these men and knehat they wanted, that this was vice, and despicable, and the price of it was Hell Curses of vanished elders echoed down on me: too pretty, too soft, too pale, eyes far too full of the Devil, ah, the devilish su How they looked atinto s here were being done so hastily Those who had delivered me had left me Those who had scrubbed me had never left the tubs I was a bundle thron on the carpet

For one ued once and cynical, and keenly aware of the nature of ht I was a girl

I waited, listening, catching these bits and pieces of talk

We were in a broad roo, the silk of it seith tiny mirrors and the curlicues so loved by the Turks, and the lah smoky, were scented and filled the air with a dusky hazy soot that burned my eyes

The men in their turbans and caftans weren’t unfaht dashes of what they said My eyes looked for an escape There was none There were heavy, broodingnear the entrances AHe had piles and piles of gold coins

One of the men, a tall lean one, all cheekbones and jaith rotted-out teeth, came towards me and felt of my shoulders and my neck Then he lifted up the tunic I stood stock-still, not enraged or consciously fearful, merely paralyzed This was the land of the Turks, and I knehat they did to boys Only I had never seen a picture, nor heard a real story of it, or known anyone who had ever really lived in it, penetrated it and come back hoet who I was I must have Shame must have made it mandatory But at thatthe merchants and slave traders, I strained to re a map in myself, I could follow it out of here and back to where I belonged

I did recollect the grasslands, the wild lands, lands where you don’t go, except for- But that was a blank I’d been in the grasslands, defying fate, stupidly but not unwillingly I’d been carrying soot offbundle loose froainst my chest

"The trees!" he shouted, but as he?

I knehat he had meant, however, that I had to reach the copse and put this treasure there, this splendid andthat was inside the bundle, "not ot that far When they grabbed hold of o after it, at least not as I saw I thought, as I was hoisted into the air: It isn’t supposed to be found like that, wrapped in cloth like that It has to be placed in the trees

They must have rapedto Constantinople I don’t reed or afraid

Now here for the first tirease, the squabbling, the curses over the ruin of the lamb I felt a hideous unsupportable powerlessness

Loathsoainst nature

I made a roar like an animal at the turbaned merchant, and he struck round I lay still looking up at hiaze I didn’t get up, even when he kicked me I wouldn’t speak

Thrown over his shoulder I was carried out, taken through a crowded courtyard, past wondrous stinking camels and donkeys and heaps of filth, out by the harbor where the ships waited, over the gangplank and into the ship’s hold

It was filth again, the s of the rats on board I was thrown on a pallet of rough cloth Once again, I looked for the escape and saw only the ladder by which we’d descended and above heard the voices of too an to move Within an hour I was so sick, I wanted simply to die I curled up on the floor and lay as still as possible, hidingfabric of the old tunic I slept for the longest time

When I awoke an old htening to me than that of the turbaned Turks, and his eyes were kindly He bent near e which was uncommonly soft and sweet, but I couldn’t understand hi Greek told hirowled like a beast

Tiain, but I was too sick

The same Greek told the old h price

The old estures as he shook his head and talked a song in the new speech He laid his hands on ently coaxed h a doorway into a small chamber, draped all in red silk

I spent the rest of the voyage in this chaht-and I can’t place it in ter him asleep beside me, this old man who never touched me except to pat or consoleti up at the stars

We were at anchor in a port, and a city of dark blue-black buildings with domed roofs and bell towers tumbled down the cliffs to the harbor where the torches turned beneath the ornamented arches of an arcade

All this, the civilized shore, looked probable to ht that I could juet free Men wandered beneath the archways Beneath the arch nearest tobroad sword dangling on his hip, stood guard against the branching fretted column, carved so marvelously to look like a tree as it supported the cloister, like the remnant of a palace into which this channel for ships had been rudely dug

I didn’t look at the shore limpse I looked up at Heaven and her court of mythical creatures fixed forever in the all powerful and inscrutable stars Ink black was the night beyond them, and they so like jewels that old poetry ca only by men

As I recall it, hours passed before I was caught, beaten fiercely with a leather thong and dragged back down in the hold I knew the beating would stop when the old athered ain He was too old to ask anything of me

I didn’t love hiarded hi quite valuable, to be preserved for sale But I needed him and he wiped my tears I slept as h Sometimes the heat alone sickened me I didn’t know real heat Thekept by him like a fatted calf to be sold for food

When we reached Venice, it was late in the day I had no hint of the beauty of Italy I’d been locked away fro taken up into the city I soon saw that ht

In a dark roo couldcouldto ed hands The oldback

They tried to teach e was all around me Boys came, sat beside me, tried to coax me with soft kisses and embraces They pinched the nipples on my chest and tried to touch the private parts which I’d been taught not even to look at on account of the bitter occasion of sin

Several times I resolved to pray But I discovered I couldn’t rehts had gone out forever which had guided ht, someone struck me or yanked at my hair

They always came with ointments after they hit me They were careful to treat the abraded skin Once, when a rabbed his upraised hand before he could land the second blow

I refused food and drink They couldn’t make me take it I couldn’t take it I didn’t choose to starve I si to keephoo hoe I would have cried if I’d been alone But I was never alone I’d have to die in front of people I hadn’t seen real daylight in forever Even the lamps hurt my eyes because I was so much in unbroken darkness But people were always there

The larimy little faces and quick pawlike hands that wiped my hair out of my face or shook me by the shoulder I turned my face to the wall

A sound kept me company This was to be the end of my life The sound was the sound of water outside I could hear it against the wall I could tell when a boat passed and I could hear the wood pylons creaking, and I lay ainst the stone and felt the house sway in the water as if ere not beside it but planted in it, which of course ere

Once I dreamed of home, but I don’t remember what it was like I woke, I cried, and there ca, sentiht I wanted to be alone I didn’t When they locked hts in a black rooan to scream and pound on the walls No one came

After a while, I fell into a stupor It was a violent jolt when the door was opened I sat up, covering my eyes The lamp was a menace My head throbbed

But there ca perfu winter and that of crushed flowers and pungent oil

I was touched by so anic At last I opened s, these things that felt so like stone or brass, were his white fingers, and he looked at entle blue eyes

"Amadeo," he said

He was dressed all in red velvet and splendidly tall His blond hair was parted in the middle in a saintly fashion and combed richly down to his shoulders where it broke over his cloak in lustrous curls He had a solden eyebrows dark enough to give his face a clear, deterolden threads from his eyelids And when he smiled, his lips were flushed suddenly with a pale immediate color that made their full careful shape all the more visible

I knew him I spoke to him I could have never seen such miracles in the face of anyone else

He smiled so kindly at me His upper lip and chin were all clean shaven I couldn’t even see the scantest hair on hih to be in proportion to the other netic features of his face

"Not the Christ, my child," he said "But one who comes with his own salvation Co, Master" What was e? I can’t say even nohat it was But he understoodYou’re co now into my protection, and perhaps if the stars are with us, if they are kind to us, you’ll never die at all"

"But you are the Christ I know you!"

He shook his head, and in the most common huenerous lips parted, and I saw only a human’s white teeth He put his hands beneath my arms, lifted me and kissed my throat, and the shivers paralyzed ers on top of them, and heard him say into my ear, "Sleep as I take you hoe bath No Venetian ever had such a bath as this, I can tell you that now fros I saw later, but what did I know of the conventions of this place? This was a palace truly; I had seen palaces

I cli of velvet in which I lay-his red cloak if I’ht and, beyond, the deep oval basin of the bath itself Water poured froels into the basin, and steam rose from the broad surface, and in the steam my Master stood His white chest was naked and the nipples faintly pink, and his hair, pushed back froht forehead, looked even thicker and more beautifully blond than it had before

He beckoned to e and put race, he reached forback ain I looked up at hily vivid angels with giant white feathery wings I had never seen such brilliant and curly angels, leaping as they did, out of all restraint and style, to flaunt their hu locks It seeures, this riot of celestial play above ht

I looked at ain, yes, do it, that shiver, kiss- But he was of the sas, one of thean place of Soldiers’ gods where all is wine, and fruit, and flesh I had co place

He threw back his head He gave way to ringing laughter He lifted a handful of water again and let it spill down my chest He opened hisand dangerous, teeth such as a wolf one, and only his lips sucked at my throat, then at ht too late to cover it

I groaned for all this I sank against him in the ater, and his lips went down my chest toup the salt and the heat frosensations I put my aro off as if an arrow had been shot froo, this arrow, this thrust, and I cried out

He let ainst hiathered cloth hich he wiped my face He dipped ht I had rested enough, we began the kisses again

Before dawn, I woke against his pillow I sat up and saw hi cloak and covered his head The rooain, but these were not the sad, emaciated tutors of the brothel These boys were handsoathered around the bed

They wore brightly colored tunics of effervescent colors, with fabrics carefully pleated and tight belts that gave the luxuriant hair

My Master looked at ue I knew, I knew perfectly, he said that I was his only child, and he would coht, and by such time as that I would have seen a neorld

"A neorld!" I cried out "No, don’t leave me, Master I don’t want the whole world I want you!"

"A over the bed, his hair dry now and beautifully brushed, his hands softened with powder "You haveto me, to Marius Roave thee

And you would have thought froold

"Aathered around me They held me so that I couldn’t follow him They spoke Greek to me, fast and easily, and Greek for me was not so easy But I understood

Coood to you, we are to be especially good to you They dressedwith one another about s, well, it was only for now! Put on the slippers; here, a jacket that was too ss

"We love you," said Albinus, the second in command to Riccardo, and a dramatic contrast to the black-haired Riccardo, for his blond hair and pale green eyes The other boys, I couldn’t quite distinguish, but these tere easy to watch

"Yes, we love you," said Riccardo, pushing back his black hair and winking at me, his skin so smooth and dark compared to the others His eyes were fiercely black He clutched ers Here everyone had thin fingers, fine fingers They had fingers likemy brethren But I couldn’t think of this

And eerie possibility suggested itself to me, that I, the pale one, the one who ers, had been spirited away to the good land where I belonged But that was altogether too fabulous to believe My head ached I saordless flashes of the stubby horse hold of the ship in which I’d been brought to Constantinople, flashes of gaunt, busyas they had handled me there

Dear God, why did anyone love me? What for? Marius Romanus, why do you love me?

The Master smiled as he waved from the door The hood was up around his head, a cri lips

My eyes filled with tears

A white mist swirled around the Master as the door closed behind hi But the candles still burned

We cae room, and I saw that it was full of paints and pots of color and brushes standing in earthen jars ready to be used Great white squares of cloth-canvas-waited for the paint

These boys didn’tin the tiobs of color awaited ave it to me I looked at the stretched white cloth on which I was to paint

"Not from human hands," I said But what did these words an to paint him, this blond-haired man who had rescued me from darkness and squalor I threw out the hand with the brush, dipping the bristles into the jars of crea these colors onto the curiously resilient canvas But I couldn’t make a picture No picture came!

"Not by human hands!" I whispered I dropped the brush I put my hands over my face

I searched for the words in Greek When I said therasp theHow could I explain to theers What had become of- There all recollection burnt up and I was left suddenly with Amadeo

"I can’t do it" I stared at the canvas, at the mess of colors "Maybe if it ood, not cloth, I could do it"

What had it been that I could do? They didn’t understand

He was not the Living Lord, my Master, the blond one, the blond one with the icy blue eyes

But he wasthat was meant to be done

To comfort me, to distract me, the boys took up their brushes and quickly astonished me with pictures that ran like a stream out of their quick applications of the brush

A boy’s face, cheeks, lips, eyes, yes, and reddish-golden hair in profusion Good Lord, it was I it was not a canvas but a mirror It was this Amadeo Riccardo took over to refine the expression, to deepen the eyes and work a sorcery on the tongue so I seeic that , le, with knitted brows and streaks of unkempt hair over his ear?

It seemed both blaspheure

Riccardo spelled the letters out in Greek as he wrote them Then he threw the brush down He cried:

"A very different picture is what our Master has in s

They pulled h the house, the "palazzo" as they called it, teaching me the ith relish

The entire place was filled with such paintings-on its walls, its ceilings, on panels and canvases stacked against each other-towering pictures full of ruined buildings, broken colureenery, distant mountains and an endless stream of busy people with flushed faces, their luxuriant hair and gorgeous clothing always ru platters of fruit and ht out and set before reat drench of colors and shapes It was like the wine, too sweet and light

IT WAS LIKE the city belohen they threw open the s, and I saw the sht coursing through the greenish waters, when I saw thethe quays

Into our gondolas we piled, a troop of us, and suddenly we traveled in graceful darting silence anificent as a Cathedral, with its narrow pointed arches, its lotus s, its covering of glea white stone

Even the older, sorrier dwellings, not too ornate but nevertheless monstrous in size, were plastered in colors, a rose so deep it seereen so thick it seemed to have been mixed from the opaque water itself

Out into the Piazza San Marco we caular arcades on both sides

It see place of Heaven as I stared at the hundreds olden domes of the church

Golden domes Golden doolden do picture, had I not? Sacred domes, lost domes, domes in flames, a church violated, as I had been violated Ah, ruin, ruin was gone, laid waste by the sudden eruption all around me of as vital and whole! How had all this been born out of wintry ashes? How had I died a fires and co sun?

Its warars and tradeses to carry their ornate velvet trains behind them, on the booksellers who spread their books beneath scarlet canopies, lute players who vied for small coins

The wares of the wide diabolical world were displayed in the shops andgoblets of all possible colors, not toani trinkets There were ht and beautifully turned beads for rosaries;even snohite pictures of actual church towers and little houses s and doors; great feathery plumes fro and screeching in gilt cages; and the finest and nificently worked multicolored carpets only too reminiscent of the powerful Turks and their capital from which I’d come Nevertheless, who resists such carpets? Forbidden by law to render hus, Moslems rendered flowers, arabesques, labyrinthian curlicues and other such designs with bold dyes and awe-inspiring exactitude There were oils for lalistering jewels of indescribable beauty and the oldsmiths and silversmiths, in plate and ornamental items both newly made and old There were shops that sold only spices There were shops that sold medicines and cures There were bronze statues, lion heads, lanterns and weapons There were cloth merchants with the silks of the East, the finest woven wools dyed in miraculous tints, cotton and linen and fine specialore

Men and wo casually on freshclear red wine and eating sweet cakes full of crea the new printed books, of which the other apprentices toldpress, which had only lately made it possible for men far and wide to acquire not only books of letters and words but books of drawn pictures as well

Venice already had dozens of small print shops and publishers where the presses were hard at work producing books in Greek as well as Latin, and in the vernacular tongue-the soft singing tongue- which the apprentices spoke alut es for books

But they did have their chores, Riccardo and the others-they were to scoop up the prints and engravings of the Ger presses of old wonders by Me, Van Eyck, or Hieronymus Bosch Our Master was always in the ht the north to the south Our Master was a champion of such wonders Our Master was pleased that over one hundred printing presses filled our city, that he could throay his coarse inaccurate copies of Livy and Virgil and have now corrected printed texts

Oh, it was such a load of information

And no less is of the universe was the et the tailors to stop everything to dress s which the Master had made

Handwritten letters of credit had to be taken to the banks I was to have money Everyone was to haveas old or silver, Gerroschens, fancy old coins es, exotic coins froiven a little sack ofmoney We tied our "purses" to our belts

One of the boys boughtwatch I couldn’t grasp the theory of it, this tiny ticking thing, all encrusted with jewels, and not all the hands pointed at the sky would teach ree and paint, its strange glass and bejeweled frame, a tiny clock!

I closed my hand on it and felt dizzy I had never known clocks to be anything but great venerable things in bell towers or on walls

"I carry ti to my friends

"Amadeo," said Riccardo "Count the hours for ious discovery e to otten world Time was not time anyht the night I couldn’t articulate it, not in Greek, nor any tongue, nor even in hts I wiped the sweat from my forehead I squinted into the brilliant sun of Italy My eyes clapped upon the birds who flew in great flocks across the sky, like tiny pen strokes made to flap in unison I think I whispered foolishly, "We are in the world"

"We are in the center of it, the greatest city of it!" Riccardo cried, urging et locked up in the tailor’s, that’s for damned sure"

But first it was tiar, for syrupy concoctions of unnaht red and yelloeets

One of the boys showed toprinted pictures, men and women embraced in carnality It was the stories of Boccaccio Riccardo said he would read them to me, that it was in fact an excellent book to teach me Italian And that he would teach me Dante too

Boccaccio and Dante were Florentines, said one of the other boys, but all in all the teren’t so bad

Our Master loved all kinds of books, I was told, you couldn’t go wrong spending your money on them, he was always pleased with that I’d come to see that the teachers who came to the house would drive me crazy with their lessons It was the studia hurammar, rhetoric, philosophy and ancient authorsall of this soto me as it was often repeated and demonstrated in the days to coood for our Master either, that was another lesson I must learn Gold and silver chains, necklaces with ht for s We had to bargain fiercely with the jewelers for these, and I ca a real es carved with silver inscriptions which I couldn’t read

I couldn’t get over the sight of ht of my life, some five hundred years after, you see, I have a weakness for jeweled rings Only during those centuries in Paris when I was a penitent, one of Satan’s discalced Children of the Night, during that long slus But we’ll coh

For now, this was Venice, I was Marius’s child and romped with his other children in a manner that would be repeated for years ahead

On to the tailor

As I was measured and pinned and dressed, the boys told me stories of all those rich Venetians who ca to have even the s that he was too wretched, sold al but occasionally did a portrait of a woman or man who struck his eye These portraits alods, goddesses, angels, saints Names I knew and naues It sees were swept up in a new tide

Meods, they were one and the same? Wasn’t there a code to which I should remain faithful that soet it clear in my head, and all around me was such happiness, yes, happiness It see faces could mask wickedness I didn’t believe it Yet all pleasure to ive in, and overcome when I did surrender, and as the days followed I surrendered with ever greater ease all the time

This day of initiation was only one of hundreds, nay, thousands that were to follow, and I don’t knohen I started to understand with any preciseness what my boy companions said That ti the naive one very long

On this first excursion, it was h above the sky was the perfect blue of cobalt, and the breeze from the sea was fresh andclouds I had seen so wondrously rendered in the paintings of the palazzo, and there cas of my Master were no lie

Indeed e entered, by special perht by the throat by its splendor-its walls of gleaold But another shock followed hard upon ht and in riches Here were stark, soures of saints I knew

These were no mystery to me, the almond-eyed tenants of these haht careful drapery, their hands infallibly folded in prayer I knew their halos, I knew the tiny holes ically I knew the judgazed io on

I slumped to the stone floor I was sick

I had to be taken from the church The noise of the piazza rose overto some awful denouement I wanted to tell my friends it was inevitable, not their fault

The boys were in a fluster I couldn’t explain it Stunned, sweating all over and lying limp at the base of a column, I listened dully as they explained to me in Greek that this church was only part of all I had seen Why should it frighten me so? Yes, it was old, yes, it was Byzantine, as so much in Venice was "Our ships have traded with Byzantiurasp it

What came clear in ment upon ht into it The sweet-voiced boys with the gentle hands who surrounded me, who offered ht recover, they did not hold this place in any terrible dread

Turning to the left of limpsed the quays, the harbor I ran towards it, thunderstruck by the sight of the wooden ships They stood at anchor four and five deep, but beyond thealleons of deep ballooning wood, their sails collecting the breeze, their graceful oars chopping the water as they moved out to sea

Back and forth the traffic erously close to one another, slipping in and out of the raceful and ioods

Leadingto the Arsenale,built by ordinaryabout at the Arsenale for hours, watching the ingenious process by which huhtly sink

Now and then in snatches I saw ies and flatboats, of coarseof anied tidbits of the winter world from which I’d come faded

Perhaps had this not been Venice, it would have been a different tale

In allthe ships being built I had no proble access by ht to watch these fantastical structures being constructed of bowed ribs, bent wood and piercing h this yard of h