I, Iago Part 32

"No," I said. "But I'll take more of your weight." I shifted so that his armpit was directly above my shoulder, and my right arm moved from his rib to his midriff. He groaned with pain. I relented. "All right, we'll slow down," I said. "But not by much."

"He came into the infirmary," said Gratiano, upset but clearly relishing the role of storyteller. "Montano did. He saw Ca.s.sio and spoke to him and then was going to go back to bed, because he's weak."

"But he heard the shriek before he started down the steps," Lodovico said, taking up the story. "He hadn't the energy to take the stairs alone. I helped him down to the stool, where he could rest, while I saw how Ca.s.sio was doing."

By now we were across the courtyard and inside the wing of private rooms. Voices were piling toward us in the air-especially a woman's voice. The outermost and smallest room was the one in which Emilia and I had been staying; the door was open. "Emilia?" I cried out worriedly as we went by it. "Emilia, are you in there?"

"I think she must be in Oth.e.l.lo's room," said one of the Venetians, I could not tell which one, I was far too distressed and terrified at the notion that Oth.e.l.lo had done some violence to my wife. Ahead of us I heard the woman's voice, Emilia's voice, wailing on in pain. I almost could not see straight I was so desperate to get to her.

We rushed next past the lieutenant's room, which I would or would not sleep in tonight, depending on what awaited us ahead. Then guest rooms set aside for the visiting n.o.blemen; then the corridor that ended in Oth.e.l.lo's private quarters.

A group of servants huddled before it, pounding at the door and begging to be let in. "Out of the way!" I shouted. They jumped, and entangled us in their rush to move away from the door.

With most of Montano's weight upon me, I leaned back and furiously kicked the door. It flew open, and the crowd of us rushed into the room in alarm.

I saw my wife and my general standing some five paces apart, staring at each other with bloodshot, shining eyes, each looking ready to tear the other one apart.

Chapter 51.

EMILIA'S FACE WAS whiter than I'd ever seen it. What had we interrupted? Where was Desdemona? What had I saved Emilia from by my appearance? That wh.o.r.eson lunatic!

"Emilia!" I shouted. Both of them started violently and turned to face us.

"What's happened?" Montano said as I released him. "General?"

Emilia glared at me. I had never seen such rage on that face. "Oh, are you here too, Iago?" she asked, her voice sharp with sarcasm. "What in h.e.l.l have you been up to, that men must lay their murders on your neck?"

"What murders?" I asked as Gratiano, entering behind me, demanded, "What's the matter?"

Emilia ignored the n.o.bleman, her enraged attention entirely on me. "Disprove this villain," she demanded, pointing at Oth.e.l.lo. "He claims you told him his wife was unfaithful. I know you never said such a thing. So tell me what you really told him."

A sinking feeling pulled my stomach to my ankles. I could not lie to her. If my very life depended on it, I could not do it. "I only told him what I thought," I said. "That's all I did. He demanded me to tell my thoughts. He took from that what he himself considered to be true."

"But did you ever tell him she was false?" Emilia demanded impatiently, her outstretched hand still pointing furiously toward Oth.e.l.lo.

There was no way out of it, then. She commanded, I obeyed. Please, for the love of the angels, I thought, let me get her alone somewhere to explain all this. She will understand why it was necessary, and also why it does not put Oth.e.l.lo's sins upon my shoulders.

"I did-" I said, as if I were about to add a modifying thought. But she cut me off with rising, vengeful fury: "You told a lie, Iago!" she screeched, sounding as much confused as furious. "You told an odious, d.a.m.ned, wicked lie." Her arm still limply held out toward Oth.e.l.lo, she shook her head at me. "With Ca.s.sio? Did you say with Ca.s.sio?"

Oth.e.l.lo was invisible to me; so were the men beside me and behind me; so were the walls and candles of this chamber; so was the rumpled bed. Emilia knew that I was lying; Emilia did not understand the significance, the importance, the brilliance and genius of what I had been up to. All she saw was a single, simple lie, and she was ready to condemn me for it. She would not condemn me so if she understood the bigger history here. How could I distract her until I had the chance to explain it all to her alone?

"With Ca.s.sio, yes," I said calmly. I could not lie to her. I could only beg her to stop asking questions I didn't want to answer. "Emilia, enough of this, leave now. Stop your tongue."

I thought I'd seen her rage at its worst already; I was wrong. A dozen times as much fury and the grief reddened her face. "I will not stop my tongue!" she shouted at me, spittle flying with each consonant. "I am honor bound to speak now!" She ran to the crumpled bedsheets and with a billowing gesture, she swept them all off of the bed- -to reveal Desdemona, lying utterly still upon the mattress. There were bruises on her neck and cheek; her lips were colorless. "My lady has been murdered in her bed!"

I almost vomited. I heard the men around me cry with shock; I don't know if I made any sound. I could not make sense of what I looked on. With Roderigo, there had been a fight, and blood, and dying; this was simply death, pale and sudden and silent.

Involuntarily I took a step toward the body. There was so little to her being; not enough to justify such outrageous wrath. Just some flesh and bones and hair encased within a nightgown. The spirit of Desdemona had departed from this earth. So suddenly. With so little warning.

"Iago," Emilia was still shouting at me, "Iago, he did this because of what you told him! Can you deny it?"

Now there was another cry of shock, and I realized, as if through a haze, that every person in the room was staring at me. I could not look away from Emilia. I could not speak.

"It is true." I heard Oth.e.l.lo's voice. I could not look away from my wife. I wanted to scream out, What kind of man reacts this way to words without proof? Why are you not the one to blame for this?

Gratiano and Montano were speaking over each other; I did not know if they were condemning the general or me, and I did not care. The only person in the room who seemed real to me in this endless moment was my wife, my love, the first person ever who believed wholly in my goodness, the one person who had never wavered in her faith in me, who was now staring at me as if I were a fiend.

"This is an act of villainy," she announced, sounding as if her gorge rose to think of me this way. "Villainy. How could I not have smelled it earlier-when I think back, Iago, oh my G.o.d, when I think back-" Her eyes widened and widened, filling with tears, the color draining from her face until it was almost as pale as Desdemona's. "I should have seen this, when I think about it, all the signs were right in front of me, oh my G.o.d, I could never have thought you capable of such villainy, I never suspected this was happening right under my nose because I thought you were a good man-but you are not-I'll kill myself with grief-"

I felt my pulse beating in my neck, behind my ear, within my stomach. I was trembling. I could not let myself tremble. I tried to will the trembling to stop. I trembled more. "What are you talking about, Emilia?" I said, trying to sound condescending and parental. "You're very upset about what's happened here, understandably so, but I want you to leave here, and go back to our room and wait for me."

Emilia took a moment. She looked at me in silence, and shook her head. Then she turned to face the others in the room. "Gentlemen," she said somberly, suddenly deadly calm. "Give me leave to speak."

"Go home, Emilia," I said in a low, urgent voice.

Her attention snapped back to me. "It is possible, Iago, that I will never go home to you again."

In my peripheral vision I saw Oth.e.l.lo crumple to the bed and begin to sob over the woman he had just strangled. Emilia's fury for a moment turned from me to him. "Sobbing is not enough, you wh.o.r.eson-lay down and roar at your own actions! You have killed the sweetest innocent that ever walked this earth!"

Oth.e.l.lo immediately stood again, and shouted back at Emilia, "She was not innocent! She deserved to die! Gratiano, I admit it, I killed your niece, I stopped her breath with these hands, I know this must appear horrific, but if you knew what she had done-"

Gratiano was unable even to speak. My eye had barely flickered from Emilia, and now she looked again at me, the accusation mounting in her expression. I had to get her alone, somewhere, somehow, I had to explain all of this, right away, make her understand how little I had done, and the little that I did I'd done with good cause, and the great undoing that came out of this was not an expression of my malevolence but of my misjudging how mad Oth.e.l.lo really was. I had to do it right away.

She could not read my thoughts, but she saw something going on behind my eyes. We knew each other so well, so well; she understood there was something I had to tell her, and her expression softened slightly, as if to say, You may have a chance yet to win me back.

I could do nothing but focus on getting her away from here. A man killed his wife in this room, let that be the end of it; arrest him and let the rest of us go and mourn in our own private ways. How could I make that plea without sounding suspicious?

"It broke my heart to do it, but she was sinful and required it," Oth.e.l.lo was saying, in a choked voice, to the horrified Venetians. "Iago knows that she shamed herself with Ca.s.sio, over and over again-Ca.s.sio confessed it himself!" There was no relenting in the faces of the men he addressed; suddenly on the defensive, Oth.e.l.lo pressed on, sounding less confident and almost childish, "There is proof! Proof I've seen with my own eyes! She gave Ca.s.sio a pledge of love that I had given her-an old handkerchief my father gave my mother when they married-"

"What?" Emilia shrieked. She turned back toward me and with both hands pointing at me, stammered, "Heavenly powers-"

"Come," I said warningly. "Hold your peace."

This was bad, this was very bad. She did not realize Oth.e.l.lo was a madman and had sworn to do this dreadful deed before seeing any proof at all; she thought the handkerchief had led to Desdemona's death, and now she thought I'd had a hand in it, and worse, that she did too. You cannot kill a dead woman, I wanted to tell her; Desdemona was doomed before the handkerchief came into play. Everything was still salvageable, if I could somehow communicate to her that there was a rationale to all I did. "Hold your peace," I repeated, almost pleading.

She was beyond reason. "The truth will out, Iago! It will out! I will speak if the heavens and the devils together conspired to shut me up, I'll speak, you evil creature!" she shrieked at me. Her eyes raged so full of horror, shame, and anger, I could not bear to meet her gaze. I looked down.

"Be wise, and leave here now," I growled.

"I will not," she retorted. She was breathing heavily and fast and looked disoriented. She ran toward me and slapped me hard across the face. I stood there like an idiot without responding. "You stupid man!" she said, turning back toward Oth.e.l.lo. "That handkerchief you speak of? I found it, by chance, and I gave it to my husband, because he said he wanted it for something." She gave me a disgusted look. "Now I know, now I know why you wanted it, you demon, how could you use me to accomplish so much evil? I cannot believe I'm married to such a demon!" Her hands spread out before her, shaking violently, she broke into harsh sobs. "How could you have done this? Nothing can justify this-and you are an abomination if you think otherwise."

IT WAS MORE than a slap, it was a door slamming closed. Understanding nothing, Emilia was condemning me. Not just judging, but condemning, casting out. She was wrong to do it. Emilia had never been wrong about me ever before; she knew enough to give a situation consideration before judging, especially where I was concerned; how could she so swiftly see me out of tune now? She was betraying the most vital, spiritual, profoundest aspect of our marriage vows. She was betraying me. Of course she was upset about Desdemona-even I was upset about that-but there must be something broken in her soul if she would let her emotions overrule her reason. Her reason knew I was not evil. She was rebelling against her own nature to think otherwise. She was failing herself, and therefore me.

"Wh.o.r.e," I blurted harshly, heartbroken.

"She gave it to Ca.s.sio?" Emilia said, and now turned her attention to the patricians in the room. "No, I found it. I gave it to my husband, sirs, and he-"

"You're a filthy liar!" I shouted at her, desperate to shut her up.

She turned to look at me.

Everything within her, all the rage and fear and upset, calmed. Everyone around us disappeared. Everything around us disappeared. We were in some other world. She had just ruined everything I'd undertaken-I would not be lieutenant now, no matter what befell Ca.s.sio or Oth.e.l.lo. I would probably be demoted, or cast out of the army altogether, perhaps even fined, imprisoned . . . none of that mattered in this moment. In this moment all that mattered was Emilia. I held out my hands helplessly before me, a plea for understanding.

All I could see were Emilia's eyes, and the deeper I looked into them, the more clearly I saw myself within them. I saw not a determined, deserving soldier earning his right to the lieutenancy by demonstrating his rival's unfitness for office; not a slighted confidant testing his friend's mental clarity and finding it alarmingly cloudy; not a doting husband trying to better himself to be deserving of a cherished wife. I saw only a man of a vindictive and violent nature, h.e.l.l-bent on doing whatever it took to get whatever he wanted, no matter the cost; I saw a man so twisted up with jealousy and envy that he would sacrifice and demean anyone to tear others down; worst of all, a man of tremendous capabilities who would not hesitate to let those capabilities lead to the death of innocents. All this I saw. She was wrong, of course, but she was locked in to her misperceptions; she would not be budged, no matter what I said to her. And now I would have to spend the rest of our lives knowing those beautiful eyes and that brilliant mind were judging me. It was not a judgment I could bare.

"I renounce you," she said under her breath, in a tone of absolute finality. And then she slowly, deliberately, meaningfully turned her back on me, her thoughts full of what an evil man I was.

I could not live with that. That judgment. That condemnation. That unwaveringly harsh misappraisal. Not from her. From anybody else, it would not matter. From Emilia, it was the world's end. It had to be. If only she had not condemned me, not slammed the door between our souls.

I drew the short sword with my right hand as the left one reached up to grab her shoulder from behind.

She hardly resisted, as if she knew her fate and was resigned to it. The blade went in between her lowest ribs, and I shoved upward, slicing through everything I loved, severing her from her ability to make me see my actions with her eyes.

She cried out weakly, once, and then fell slack against me, life oozing from her. I pushed her away, and she fell uncomplaining onto the bed beside Desdemona, the blood spattering and ruining Desdemona's perfect paleness.

I was free. The judging eyes would judge no more.

I fled the room, because it seemed a man should do so in such a situation.

I did not do it to escape punishment or capture.

I COULD HEAR my pursuers in the hallway, and once out in the courtyard, I felt their footsteps as if they were stampeding. I knew I was cornered; the impulse to run was animal, there was no sense or reason to my movements.

Everywhere I saw Emilia's eyes staring at me, although I'd put that light out, although she was not here to stare, still her eyes were staring at me, telling me how villainous I was. I could have made all clear to you, I wanted to scream, but the unblinking eyes were unmoved. They were on the walls of the courtyard, they were blinking at me in the dark stairwell of the keep, when I burst out onto the wall walk they held me fixated staring down at me from heaven.

That is when I realized they were not Emilia's eyes. They were my own.

Three innocents lay dead tonight, two by my own hand. No rationale under heaven could mitigate such villainy. My mangling of Oth.e.l.lo's reason paled compared to how I had suborned my own. Honest Iago had fooled everyone, but most of all himself.

I stared into the cool night sky and waited for the men pursuing me to grab me.

LODOVICO HAD COME IN during my absence. So had Ca.s.sio, looking weak, his leg bandaged, still seated in the sedan chair which two servants had lowered to the ground. The servant who had caught me was very pleased with himself, and he pushed me down to my knees in the bedroom in front of Oth.e.l.lo more harshly than he needed to.

Oth.e.l.lo looked at me, tears streaming down his face. He drew his short sword and held it up, as if I were an animal about to be slaughtered. Perhaps I was to him: a sacrifice to appease the G.o.ds for his credulity and rage. I would accept it. We were both sinners and heaven knew a sacrifice was required here.

"They say you cannot kill a devil," Oth.e.l.lo said in quiet disgust, and slashed my left arm with his sword. The pain was terrible, but so was the release; I deserved the wound, I knew it now, and to accept it offered solace.

"Take his sword!" Lodovico shouted in alarm to one of his attendants. The fellow was terrified of the a.s.signment, but Oth.e.l.lo yielded with weariness. At Lodovico's gesture, another attendant approached me and wrapped a rag around my arm to staunch the bleeding.

"I bleed, but I'm not killed," I said dully to the general.

"Good," Oth.e.l.lo said with tired anger. "I would rather you live. You do not deserve the peace of dying."

I agreed with him, so I said nothing. I gazed on the form of my wife, lying sprawled beside Desdemona's corpse. Oth.e.l.lo and I, the shamed malignants, were outsiders once again, like the day we met.

"Oth.e.l.lo." Lodovico sighed. "What can I say to such a good man who fell so far so fast?"

"It's not such a mystery," Oth.e.l.lo retorted. "I did nothing out of hate, it was all for honor."

"Did you plot Ca.s.sio's death with Iago?"

"Yes," Oth.e.l.lo said, looking down.

Ca.s.sio, weak and feverish, said, "General, I never gave you cause for it."

"I know that now," Oth.e.l.lo said, "And I ask your pardon for it."

These two men-the fearfully obsessed and jealous wife-beater, and the boozing womanizer, who had colluded together to defraud a Venetian senator of his only child-had already repaired their love.

I did not care. My soul had run aground while I still thought it was expertly navigating open water. I had not noticed the shipwreck until Emilia forced me to admit it, and I had punished her for that. I was a fiend.

Oth.e.l.lo pointed toward me without looking at me, and spoke through gritted teeth. "Ca.s.sio, will you ask this devil . . . why?"

The only person I admired was my wife, for she led always from her heart, even when it took her into danger. The rest of us-all the rest of us-deserved a whipping or a hanging. All of us. Oth.e.l.lo and Ca.s.sio were not without sin, they had no right to judge me unless they judged themselves first, and neither of them had the humility or strength to do it. Far easier to make me the single villain.

Very well. I, like them, was far from sinless. But now I understood and owned my sins, in a way I would not have done an hour earlier, before I had to see myself as Emilia did. She had given me the greatest and most terrible of gifts: unflinching honesty. Exactly the thing I'd prized myself for, before I'd abandoned the true path without noticing. Oth.e.l.lo and Ca.s.sio had both fallen off their own true paths but did not know it, and would not be forced to know it, ever. Oth.e.l.lo, maybe. Ca.s.sio, most definitely not.

I could not explain this to them. They would not understand. "Ask me nothing," I said calmly. "What you know, you know. From this time forth I will not speak another word."

"Not even to pray?" Lodovico demanded warningly. This man had no idea he was not sinless; I had nothing to say to him.

"Torment will make you open your mouth," Gratiano warned, as if he had the right to torture anyone. To him also, I did not try to explain myself.

Oth.e.l.lo, unexpectedly, squatted down to look me full in the face. He gave me a look of anguish-not only grief and anger but a soul-wrenching desperation that was very nearly envy.

He understood. He alone among them understood. "You do best not to speak," he said.

I knew then he meant to take his life. And I knew that none of them would understand why. The others argued and accused me and produced evidence-my directions to Roderigo found tucked into the corpse's belt about where the campo was that we should meet to attack Ca.s.sio, for example. The whole time, Oth.e.l.lo remained kneeling upright, gazing into my eyes with almost all the understanding of Emilia's stare. He would not survive the night. He did not want to. They might later say he killed himself for grief, or shame, but it would not be that. He had seen the truth in Emilia's look as clearly as I had; if I had not killed her, he surely would have, and for the same reason. But killing the truth-teller does not kill the truth. In that moment of understanding, as furious as he was at me, he was my brother once again. He would leave this mortal coil understood by n.o.body but me. Is that not a kind of love?

"OTh.e.l.lO." LODOVICO'S VOICE broke into our shared silence. "You are removed from office. We'll keep you imprisoned until we can present your crimes to the Venetian Senate. Ca.s.sio will rule in Cyprus. For this villain"-and of course by that he meant me-"he will be tortured for as long as he survives it." He snapped his fingers at the attendants who were warily watching all of this unfold. "Come, bring Oth.e.l.lo away."

Oth.e.l.lo glanced at me a final time. I nodded slightly, in farewell. I knew he had a dagger in his boot; I was the only one in this room who knew that-not even Ca.s.sio had inkling of it. If I really hated Oth.e.l.lo, I would have warned them that he had a weapon, I would have forced him to remain alive with me, and go out into the world, and be judged by others who would never judge themselves. I had the power to do that to him. If I hated him, I would have told them.

I did not say a word. I watched him rise, and ask them for the favor of their patience as he gave what they supposed would be his final speech before imprisonment. The words he spoke washed right over me; I did not hear them. I was saying my own silent farewell, offering and asking redemption of a soul about to be unfettered.

He startled all of them by pulling out the dagger from his boot and shoving it hard into his own breastbone. Unsurprised but heartbroken, I lowered my head with a prayer of deliverance. As the self-important men around us cried out in shock and dismay, Oth.e.l.lo fell onto the bed between the women. He kissed Desdemona's lifeless body tenderly, before falling into silence.

"I was afraid of that, but I did not think he had a weapon," said Ca.s.sio in a hollow voice. "He was too great of heart to remain a captive all his life."

That's not it at all, you stupid fool, I thought, but kept my lips sealed.