Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

In Which I Inexplicably Appear In the Wrong Time And Place

“Sing about me…”

-       Homer, roughly

If there were a good explanation for my sudden appearance in Renaissance Italy, here is where I would put it. If there were some relevant piece of information regarding the eyepatch on my face and the ominous-looking black letter in my canvas sack, then here is where I would list it. In fact, if there were any small piece of exposition for this story, I would not hesitate to make you privy to it, dear reader.

But I do not have such things. I do not expect you to understand what surprise time-travel might feel like, so I will draw an analogy.

Imagine you are sitting in front of a computer, trying to compose an important email to a local university regarding your eligibility as a student, and you have no idea where to begin. You've just moved back in with your parents after a year of trying to "make it" as an actor in New York, which is to say, you bussed an awful lot of tables and nearly sat in an awful lot of subway piss. On top of this disappointment, your two-year relationship is now long distance and deteriorating by the day. You try to shake these feelings off. You're back home for a reason, you think to yourself. You've got things to do. “Dear Reader,” you write. Finding that to be too patronizing, you replace it with “Sir and/or Madame”. Realizing that “and/or” is maybe a bit too mathematical in this context—not to mention your moral aversion to aristocratic titles—you decide to revert to the classic standby: “To Whom It May Concern.” Now that you’ve written your header, you sit back, close your eyes, and try to imagine the perfect opening. When you open your eyes, you’re wearing an eyepatch and staring at a ridge of mountains in the distance.

That is the best analogy I can imagine, for precisely the reason that it is not an analogy. If you find it to be unrepresentative of your time-travel experiences, please do not hesitate to correct me. I can be reached by email, regular mail, phone call, and text. I can also be reached by thrown objects, shouted words—even kidnapping, if all else fails. I'm open to criticism, is what I'm trying to get at.

~~

To Whom It May Concern,

I cannot pretend to tell you how my adventure began, except by saying this: one day, I found myself standing on the deck of a docked ship with only a canvass bag and a vague sense of purpose.

~~

My first reaction was to blink excessively in an effort to return to my desk at home.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Nothing.

My second reaction was to feel my face and look at my hands, although I’m not sure what this was supposed to accomplish. I definitely had one face and two hands, an unsurprising but mildly comforting conclusion. There was an ancillary conclusion that was both more surprising and less comforting, however. I was wearing an eyepatch. This still didn’t surprise me as much as it should have. In fact, nothing about my appearance surprised me as much as it should have. I probably should have grabbed the nearest man and frantically asked him what was happening and where we were. I should have seen the ridiculous cloak and hose I was wearing and promptly lost consciousness. There were any number of reactions that would have been more suitable than grabbing my face and inspecting my hands.

But there was also, as I have said, a vague sense of purpose looming over me, something that felt like comfort or control: a sense I had been here before (and I had been here before, in a sense). I noticed one of the sailors watching me watching my hands. If I had materialized from nothingness, this didn’t seem to bother them. As anyone who has read Kafka knows, when weird metaphysical shit starts happening, it’s best not to press the issue. I picked up the bag at my feet and began to move.

~~

I sauntered down the gangplank and onto the ceaselessly creaking docks, tossed the small canvass bag over my shoulder, and attempted to run my hand through my hair, although I quickly discovered it to be irredeemably knotted and full of salty residue. I took this as a sign that I had been on quite a lengthy voyage and continued on. The men behind me, on the caravel that I had mysteriously appeared upon, were busy hauling various crates of spices and casks of alcohol to the deck of the ship. I entertained the idea of helping them with their labor, but ultimately felt little remorse in leaving them to do their job. I sensed that I had more pressing matters to attend to.

I spied our captain—how did I know it was our captain?—further down the quay speaking to a man who appeared to be the harbormaster. I hoisted my sack a bit farther up my back in an attempt to forestall its inevitable surrender to gravity. The seagulls were screeching above my head as I approached them.

“How many barrels of wine?”

“Forty, at last count. What’s the going price for silk in Florence, nowadays?”

I interrupted the harbormaster’s answer with a small cough and something along the lines of, “You said twenty florins for the crossing?”

“Hm? Oh yes, twenty’ll be fine,” he said, seemingly unconcerned. I suddenly remembered that he was a nice enough man, that he was always fair to me and hardly temperamental. Modern literature has made a habit of making sea-captains a group of eccentric and tortured souls, but I seemed to remember that he was not one of that group. (And really, this shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, if every captain were an Ahab, I’m quite certain the maritime economy would collapse overnight.) I extended my hand and gave him the money, thanked him for his kindness, and apologized to the harbormaster for interrupting. I judged that he was a less patient man than the captain, due to the fact that a small grunt was his only response.

The constant calls of sailors and foremen nicely complemented the lapping of waves against the docks. I listened contentedly as I made my way toward the town. And what town was it, you ask? Why, dear reader, it was none other than Viareggio. (But why should you be overly familiar with Italian geography? The word Viareggio means nothing to you, probably.) I lifted my eyepatch to discover that both my eyes were perfectly healthy. I still didn’t know what was happening to me, but at least I knew I still had depth perception.

What a relief.

~~

I put the eyepatch back on my right eye under the pretense that piratical extravagance was somehow closely linked to my credibility as an adventurer. Everybody has a gimmick, I thought, and an eyepatch is a good one, if a bit too Escape From New York for some people. I then decided to open my canvass sack in search for some clue as to where to go next. Amid an extra pair of clothes I found a black letter with a blood red seal. It did not say to whom it was addressed, but I instantly knew it was a message to Lorenzo De Medici, the Duke of Florence.

How did I know that?

~~

I tossed the letter back into the sack and asked a nearby man how far Florence was from my current location. He informed me that it would be half a day’s ride and that the weather looked fair. Indeed, there were only a few tufts of white drifting aimlessly across the sky, and a gentle breeze attempted the impossible task of moving the mass of knotted hair on my head.  I suddenly knew the year; it was 1477, Anno Domini. Again, I questioned myself: how did I know where and when I was if I was in the wrong where and when?

~~

The coast of Viareggio was smooth and infinite compared to the steep hills rising just to the northeast. Much of the town was built into this coastal valley, with the exception of a few villas built on the foothills, marking out a constellation on the craggy green. The dome of a small church was visible just over the houses lining the shore.

I found a stocky fish merchant at the local inn who, after some prodding, allowed me the honor of riding along side of him into the city. Five florins was the price of passage, which I gladly agreed to after searching my pockets for change. He told me to be ready within the hour. Seeing as I had no short-term business to attend to, I went for a walk about the town.

As I walked through the cobbled streets, taking in the small tableaus—the woman hanging her laundry from a nearby window, the carts full of produce lurching past one another, the greetings of dozens of men and women passing one another in well-choreographed complication—I suddenly understood the mystery of my predicament.

I had written myself into a story.

~~

Now everything made sense: the letter was a flimsy invention in order to drive the story on, a plot device. How else could I have known who it was for? How else could I have been so unshaken by appearing in a wholly unfamiliar place? And how else could this situation make sense if I hadn’t created it myself?

Here is an example which I think will pass for proof of my theory: everyone I talked with in Viareggio spoke perfect English, not Italian. Here is more proof: only an idiot would wear an eyepatch despite having two perfectly functional eyes. (And I was already quite sure of my own idiocy, because having a front-row seat to all your worst moments tends to lower your self-esteem.)

I am the author, after all. What choice do you have but to trust me? (Don’t answer that.)

So that was one mystery solved. I had imagined an adventure for myself, but I still had yet to figure out why.

~~

I suppose I could be called an adventurer, by virtue of the fact that I am never satisfied with my current standing or situation. This isn’t to say that I was unhappy with arriving in Viareggio—or with my arrival in any new place, for that matter; it simply means that I have little problem packing my bag and leaving where I am. I reinvent myself with relative ease. A short list of the things I have tried to be: a musician, an actor, a video game designer, a pharmaceutical scientist, a friend, taller, a good listener, a bird, an author.

But I also suppose I am not an adventurer, by virtue of the fact that I am inexperienced with foreign travel and only mildly self-sufficient, which is to say, by the only metrics that count.

I lifted my eyepatch to inspect the cobblestone beneath my feet. Yup, that's cobblestone alright, I thought. I still wasn’t sure why I was headed to Florence, just as I wasn’t entirely sure of why I moved to New York. I suppose I had reasons.

I wanted to make a name for myself in New York and I needed to deliver a letter in Florence, but to say these were the reasons why I journeyed would be untruthful. I move because I can, because the alternative is too discomforting. What a wonder that I may travel so far and still feel so unmoved.

~~

After I had paced the same winding street for what I estimated to be half an hour, I headed back to the inn to find my chauffeur. No such luck. The barkeep instructed me to meet the fishmonger near the church a few blocks to the east. I thanked him and made my way to the dome peeking from above the rooftops.

Although I usually hate to make people wait, I did not attempt to walk any faster than normal as I crossed through the town square. I justified my rudeness by reasoning that time was a much looser concept before the invention of the atomic clock, and that therefor Rodolfo would be more amenable to waiting than an Uber driver. The more selfish truth was that I was enjoying my walk. I looked above me to find another flock of screeching gulls buoyed by the gentle breeze. My hair, as usual, resisted all forms of outside stimuli.

~~

(Are you ready for this, dear reader? You can still turn back. You're so early on in the book, after all. Maybe you haven't even bought it yet, but decided to read a few pages as a preview: so much the better. Put it back on the shelf. Slowly, now. You don't want to be known as the person who throws books around in the book store, or the library, or the airport, or wherever you are. I hear that new book by James Patterson is passable. It'll do in a pinch, is what I'm saying.

And in the unlikely event you've already purchased the book: have you thought about dumping it on a friend? Tell them it's a surprise gift. That you think they'd like it. Tell them you know the author. Send me a line using one of the above methods, if you'd like. I'll vouch for you.

And if you've received the book as a gift, don't be too quick to get angry. Maybe they actually liked it very much. Or maybe they didn't read this at all and it's just a friendly mistake. Put it next to the other books people have bought for you that you never intend to read. They really fill out the bookshelf, anyway. They aren't totally useless.

You won't hurt my feelings, is what I'm saying. I don't want you to waste your time, if you've got things to attend to. And, let's face it, you've got things to attend to: the sink still leaks unless you wiggle it just right, the dog needs to be walked, there are at least five emails that need to be replied to, the political situation has probably taken a dramatic turn while you weren’t looking, and—most pressing of all—the limited allotment of time you’ve been given on this silly planet has been shortening for as long as you’ve known about the concept of finiteness, which is to say forever, which is to say only a few tens of years.

And if, after all this prevarication, you still want to continue… then by all means, do. There will be time later to set the book down and forget about it. You are not my captive.

Now, let’s get back to it...)

~~

The stocky fish merchant was not annoyed with me for being late; he was too busy being annoyed with his implacable horses. His name was Rodolfo.

“Would you stand still, goddammit!” he shouted loudly enough to interrupt the homily in the nearby church. The message was focused on the Ten Commandments; the priest had just begun explaining the meaning of the third when he was interrupted by Rodolfo’s obscenity.

“Fucking horses. What a bunch of miserable creatures… throw them off a damned cliff if I didn’t need them…” He continued to mutter until he saw me in the corner of his eye.

“Oh! There you are, one-eye!” Rodolfo tightened the bridle on his second horse and clapped me on the back in one jerky motion. His face glistened bright red in the early morning sun. “Are you ready for our ride?”

I was ready enough for anything, I supposed.