Silvio the Jester

Oriela was amazed that anyone could keep their mind on dinner while Silvio was swooping and darting around the candlelit dining room like a particolored hoopoe bird. He hid under the table, popping out from the long cloth to sit on someone’s lap and snatch some of their food. He might eat the food, or he might juggle it, talk to it, or dance it like a puppet. He carried on a long, poignant conversation with a roast suckling pig. Oriela was so fascinated that the entire third course came and went without her touching a bite.

A short way up the table, Michela Gritti and her friends kept looking at Oriela and giggling. Oriela had heard Michela on the stairs, knew the girls were laughing at her, but watching Silvio’s antics made it seem like a fine thing to have other people laugh at you.

In fact, she noticed that the Fool's performance had a transforming effect on the whole party. Everywhere hostility got a foothold, Silvio tripped it up and pounded it into peace with the sheer force of his lunacy. When a cross-looking, one-armed man started shouting at Michela’s husband about the Spaniards, Silvio sat on the table between the two and picked up a spoon.

He told the spoon, “It was entirely your fault!” The strong Vèneto accent coming out of Silvio’s mouth startled Oriela’s ears, and she realized that this was the voice of the famous Salvàn Mandragora she’d been hearing about.

Silvio—Salvàn—held the spoon to his ear for a moment, saying, “The fork did it?” He held it out at arm’s length. “How dare you accuse the fork! The fork defended the bowl with all its might! What’s that?” He listened to the spoon again. “Well, you can’t blame the fork for the knife switching sides. You know knives can’t be trusted.” Then he leapt lightly onto the table in front of them and began to dance the Volta with a roasted peacock.

When a little girl suddenly burst into tears, saying her brother had hit her, el Mandragora sat down at the children’s table and started to weep even more loudly. This so astonished the child that she stopped crying and offered the Fool her handkerchief.

Salvàn said, “My brother calls me diàvolo and throws me in the fountain.” He was struck in the head with an Epiphany fig cake thrown by Piero, who was also at the children's table with Smeraldina. The pinza cakes had not been served yet. “And he steals cakes,” Salvàn said with a sniffle, taking a bite. He broke the rest and gave half to the girl, half to her brother, and then dashed away to intervene in a scuffle that was brewing between Antonio and one of the youths in the red stockings.