In that room I had nothing to do but look down upon the city of my birth, for ages, until it burned my eyes. The busy coming and going of ships was accompanied by shouts from longshoremen and the barking of dogs. The wind stirred the laundry that hung from the windows; the gusts struck the sheets, making them crack like gunfire. Observing and deducing were part of my job. I imagined those people’s lives. On that white linen men and women had slept, the old and the sick had died, children had come into the world.
Inevitably, I ended up thinking of my mother, her black eyes, the old Spanish lullabies she sang to put me to sleep. From there my memory slipped as if in a puddle of grease, and I found myself in a November dawn, in the bed of my childhood, woken without patience or affection by the shrill voice of Old Abecassi.
Once again, everything exactly the same as before. She throws open the door and drags me from sleep, always with the same stupid phrase on her lips, one of the many Sephardic proverbs that I have learned to hate.
“Wake up! If you want to marry a moza, don’t wait till you’re old.”
I give a start that shatters my beautiful dreams, try to grasp the tail end of them lest I forget them, but they vanish in a flash. By the time I’ve washed my face, there’s nothing left of them. It’s dark outside, the water is cold, my heart is thumping in my throat. I’m just seven years old.
Proverbs. Even on the point of death, as she entrusted me to Abecassi, my mother told me one with her very last breath.
“Ke darse mi ijo, ke seyga en Teshabeav.”
May my son preach in the temple, even if it’s for Tisha b’Av, the Day of Conflict. Even in these dire circumstances, make sure my son grows up as a good Jew, in the observance of our rules, at the rabbi’s school. So I, who until that moment lived close to the port, have been moved to the ghetto, to Jew Street, to the house of an old witch, a friend of my grandmother’s since the days of Spain — or so she says, although it’s impossible. When they left Toledo, my grandmother was still in swaddling clothes.
The Cardosos had fled from Spain in 1492. Wife and husband, Aganbena and Baltazar, with a newborn daughter, Raquel, who would be my grandmother. The exact date had been etched in my mind, because Sarah did nothing but repeat it: the fifteenth day of Adar, 5252, the day after Purim.
On their way eastward, the Cardosos stopped in Ragusa, where a little community of Jews was starting to form. They never left. Baltazar began dealing in wool and fabrics. Their daughter was impregnated by the shop boy, a Romaniot Jew who died of bad blood even before the birth of her daughter, my mother, Sarah. It was 1515. Sarah was born, and was given the surname of her mother and grandfather.
Sarah’s life, by a quirk of fate, began with an exile. That year the Jews were expelled from Ragusa, all of them, apart from the ones who had converted to the Holy Roman Church, or who let it be known that they had. The Cardosos moved to Spalato. By the time the Jews were able to return to the Good Venice, Sarah was seventeen and carrying a child. No one knew who the father was, and the child was born dead anyway. The big sister I never had.
Five years later it was my turn, another child of an unknown father. I was born alive and stayed that way. The surname of Baltazar, Raquel and Sarah became mine too. They called me Manuel.
In the evening, Tuota came looking for me in my attic refuge. I was mid-doze, and the sound of the trap door closing made me jump, my hand reaching for my stiletto. Tuota threw down his own so that it stuck in the floor. The thump shook the last residues of sleep from me.
“The difference between the sleep of the just and the sleep of the idiot is that the idiot doesn’t wake up.” The voice was the scrape of a ship’s hull on rocks, but his mood was jollier. He clearly had good news.
I muttered something. I thought this rude awakening was worthy of Old Abecassi, but I wasn’t a little boy anymore. I was a condemned man on the run. I got up, went over to the washbasin and tipped the jug of water over my head. When I took the towel off my face, Tuone Jurman was leaning against the table, arms folded.
“In Venice I was rich,” I said. “I had a servant, and lived in a beautiful house.”
“I told you before, I don’t want to know what you’ve done. I’m not getting involved; don’t tell me anything.”
I rubbed my eyes. I didn’t want to talk. A sea and ten years had interposed themselves between us, and I couldn’t fill that distance.
“You’ll be leaving soon. A ship is sailing for Durrës in a week. I’ve called in an old favor, and you’ll have a place on board. From Durrës you’ll be able to take the Via Egnatia, and stop wherever you feel like it. Maybe in Salonika, where there are lots of your people.
I gave a sort of grunt. “My people? You’re hard of hearing; I’m not a Jew anymore.”
He gave one of his snorts and smiled. “As you wish. In the meantime, don’t champ at the bit too much. Go out as little as possible. Don’t look for women, whether alive or dead.”
Having said that, he pulled the stiletto from the floor and put it back in his belt.
The Via Egnatia. Across the Balkans, eastward. All the way to Constantinople, if I liked.
I remembered the angel with the severe expression in the Consigliere’s courtyard. I imagined it saying, “Clear off.”
To spend weeks penetrating the empire I had opposed, whose agents I had had arrested, whose plans I had foiled, whose interests I had thwarted. I had dedicated ten years of my life to that opposition. There was something wrong about my escape plan, something obscene. Venice accused me of serving the Turks, and I was seeking refuge among them. It was like admitting I was a traitor. On the other hand, hadn’t I perhaps betrayed them? I had deceived them. I and my father, old De Zante, had kept quiet, had hidden the truth, had erected an edifice of lies. Lies told to the Republic, and above all to the Consigliere. At what point had Nordio started to suspect me, to seek information about me? What could have put him on his guard? And how much truth had he managed to discover? I told myself it was no longer important, but I was lying. I was the umpteenth Venetian I had lied to. The wound was too recent, the suffering flesh still belonged to Venice, and Venice would reclaim it.
Hide out for a week, sit there like a stewing codfish, then board another ship, only to disembark and set off once more on my journey. By what means of transport, in whose company, heading where and living how? And money? I would have to sell the gold medal. I would do that in Durrës. No, I had to do it right away, the next day. Sell it, and later allow myself a glass of rakia. Go down, find the right shop, the right person. But not a Jew: There was a risk of them recognizing me. Go to the port, find a buyer among the commercial agents. No, too risky. The port was swarming with guards and informers. A week still lay between me and my journey, more than enough time for them to find out about me, trap me, sell me to Venice. The rumors about the traitor who had burned the Arsenal, the arrest warrant, all of that must have reached as far as Ragusa. That meant leaving immediately! Selling the gold and using part of the money to pay someone with a ship, a boat, to head elsewhere. Yes, and where could I go? I was surrounded by Ottoman lands, Christian Europe had spewed me out, and the Jews were the people I hated. I was nothing now. I was sweating and breathless, and sleep was out of the question.