University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 1994 Widdershins and annotations Richard Lunn University of Wollongong Recommended Citation Lunn, Richard, Widdershins and annotations, Doctor of Creative Arts thesis, University of Wollongong. School of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, 1994. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/962 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact Manager Repository Services: [email protected]. WIDDERSHINS AND ANNOTATIONS A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree DOCTOR OF CREATIVE ARTS Please see print copy from for article UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG by RICHARD LUNN, B.A., DIP.ED. SCHOOL OF CREATIVE ARTS 1994 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my supervisor, Ron Pretty, for his perceptive and helpful suggestions concerning the various drafts of this thesis. I also wish to thank the University of Wollongong for its generosity in awarding me a postgraduate scholarship. WIDDERSHINS PART ONE: FLOTSAM 1 In which Tuccio di Piero Landucci encounters a monster The monster lay breathing beneath the walls of the town. It was huge and black, with a tail that could swat an armoured knight clean off his horse with the most casual of flicks. Topomagro's idlers were already jostling on the walls for a better view, though no-one had yet ventured from the parapet, through the Porta del Mare and onto the beach. The monster was far too monstrous, almost y thirty braccia in length, and looked capable, had the mood taken it, of swallowing the town's largest fishing boat at a gulp. And yet, against the vast pewter plain of the evening sea, it had a shrunken look, like any fish out of water, while its great rolling eye, the plumpness of its barnacled belly, and above all, the sardonic twist of its curious clownsmile, made it look almost comical. From the walls they listened to the bubbling hiss that issued from the slits in its back, saw the little crabs go scuttling like sinners in the nave of its shadow, while they watched and waited, shuffled and sighed, and felt boredom growing in the depths of their wonder. Then some spoke of marvels abroad in the land, strange happenings, bad harvests, omens and auguries. And one, with bright, wild eyes and heavy limbs, carrying a sickle in his hand for no apparent reason in that blighted countryside, threw out a challenge to his fellows, cajoling and chiding, waving his sickle and goading them down from the wall to the gates. 2 Yet the monster appeared unmoved, unaware. The twittering sounds that it made - so small in the midst of its massive frame - seemed not to respond at all to the changes about it, as if governed only by obscure inner urgings. There were occasional, sudden mouse-squeaks, which the priest of San Stefano would later liken to the gibbering of infernal apes, as if the beast were spewed from some side-gate of Hell in the watery deep to the y west of Topomagro. But the seamless sheets of its teeth still held their ambiguous smile, and its shoreward eye betrayed no feeling, only movement. Yet even this - apart from the momentary avalanche of its eyelid - was the movement, not of a living eye, but of a mirror, a giant version of those convex reflectors used in merchants' shops to cast light on account books and abacus. Reflected here, however, was the town itself, its walls transmuted into the cliffs of alien harbours, its belltowers the tips of a sunken city, and there, upon the walls, a weird horde too strange to be imagined. But now this army bellied forth, its sickles and rakes, its blades and axes, reflected in that living mirror like a host of aqueous stars. * Tuccio di Piero Landucci sat in the office at the top of his house. He liked to think of it as his library, though he wasn't reading now. Far from it. He was sitting, pen 3 in hand, the ink of his greeting already dry, trying to think out the right form of words in which to chastise Sandro dei Fiumi. He'd had such hopes for the boy, such good reports from his fattore in Pisa. He'd rarely heard crusty old Bartolomeo wax so lyrical on any subject, except perhaps a good wine - "A natural fattore, young Sandro; not only can he do the books without supervision, but he's got a nose for good product, and what a way with people!" - as if they'd been trying to off-load the boy. y But no, they wouldn't have dared, not once they'd realised that Tuccio himself was taking him under his wing to train him for Ibiza. Indeed, Sandro was his own mistake, though an understandable one, of course. The boy had talent and seemed old beyond his years, but once away from the steadying influence of his homeland, alone amongst slaves and sly traders, his youth had held sway. It was Ibiza that was to blame. It grieves me, Sandro, to find how ill you are faring in the Job I entrusted to you, he wrote, growing angrier as he went. I can barely believe that you could place our cargo with Cristo Bedoya. The man is notorious. He borrows money as I breathe air, and like all such captains, borrows on the surety of his cargo, preferring to let his ship sink than pay up his debts. You can pray to Messer Domeneddio that our bales and sheepskins arrive safely in port, though I fear that even God will not see fit to mitigate such folly. 4 He stopped, suddenly hot at the thought of all that Catalonian wool, all those bright florins - like the golden fleece itself - lying useless on the bottom of the sea. Then the story he'd recently heard of three young Florentine fattori invaded his thoughts - of how they'd been playing zara in Venice with letters of credit drawn on their companies, losing thousands of florins and destroying their masters. He scribbled more furiously still, as if shouting with his quill, reminding Sandro of y a cargo he'd failed to insure, of yet another that had arrived in Pisa without any evidence of a bill of lading having been written. If you are hellbent on ruining the company, he concluded, let me assure you that my notaries will draw up a contract that will leave you liable, so that you will ruin only yourself. I mean what I say, and well you know it. Yet he could not harden his heart totally toward the boy. He himself had been the San Matteo agent for the Pecora company in his early years, and knew how lonely and lost a youth of twenty could feel in such outposts. It had been hard to keep up his spirits till God and Giulio Pecora had seen fit to make him fattore in Barcelona, something which would never have happened had he been as imprudent as Sandro. Still, there was no point in trying to demoralise the boy. I know it is not easy work, he added, but that is why I have chosen you, Sandro. Nor am I unaware of how alone 5 one can feel in such places. Yet remember that God in His mercy and wisdom is everywhere, and that we who turn the fleece of sheep into cloth are also His flock. He paused, hesitant, then scrawled, And let me remind you that I do not disapprove of my fattori seeking comfort from a pretty slave or two, though I would frown upon bastards being kept on company property. Tuccio signed the letter and sealed it, suddenly tired of y the business with Sandro. In fact, he felt a bit tired of business in general. It had been a long day, and he'd go down shortly and have some wine. Writing to the boy had made him think of his youth, of San Matteo, and better still, of Barcelona. He got up, stretched, tried unsuccessfully to stamp the stiffness from his legs, and wandered over to the wide Venetian windows pushed open to the night. Topomagro lay shadowed in the dusk, falling away to the sea where flocks of gulls went wheeling, while larger birds, buzzards perhaps, came circling out of blood-red cloudbanks. Tuccio leaned against the wooden frame and let his gaze skim smoothly over terracotta tiles, following the inclination of the hillside to the east, where the Torre del Colombo rose before the walls. And then he let his eyes glide back toward the north, settling on the belltower of the Duomo, where flights of swallows went tumbling through the turquoise air. He sighed and, for a moment, even as he watched those little 6 birds below him on the slope, seemed to see them also from the cool arcade upon the courtyard of the trading post in Barcelona. For a moment he smelt the moist leaves of mint and rosemary, the sharp Castillian wine, the heavy scent of herbs in Netta's hair, and, in that same instant, felt her smooth black arms about him, her laughter warm against his ear. Again he sighed, swept with a sudden envy of Sandro's y youth, of his own youth, of Netta, his Moorish slave, and that other girl - the Berber - whose name he had forgotten, and the world's uncertainty, its strangeness and the sense of possibility... But how ridiculous, he thought, to be jealous of yourself.