“Shall Simon ben Reuben let the jewel out of his hands until the parchment is delivered to him? Business would be done slowly at that rate. You may examine one and he the other. He’ll not make way with the paper. Even if he were a scoundrel he wouldn’t dare, knowing not how many folk have seen it. I’ve known Simon slightly many years. His word is better than his bond, because he himself must guard the honor of the first while the law enforces the second according only to what is written down. But since the Christians claim the right to drive them from their precincts, Jews return the compliment by driving hard bargains. With the more noble Jews, this does not permit dissembling and sharp practice. Others draw the line only at outright lies. No few will steal and shed blood—the same as no few Christians.”
In a moment a grizzled gaffer, thin and frail-looking, and wearing a gaberdine and a skullcap, came through the door. Behind him strode a handsome bold-looking Jew of about twenty-five, with large flashing gray eyes and a fine black beard, and in much finer garb. I had often seen the latter on the Rialto and knew him for Saul ben Simon—that is, the son of Simon—a moneylender for the jewelry trade. He stood back modestly while his father greeted Mustapha Sheik. It almost brought tears to my eyes to see those two old men, both aliens in Venice, both exiles from their ancestral deserts, touch hands to heart and forehead and bow so nobly.
Simon introduced his son to Mustapha. I thought that Saul might not pay proper respect to the old Arab and was as fixed for anger as tinder for lighting. On the contrary, he evinced what I could not doubt was sincere reverence. It was in greeting me—after his father had received me most cordially—that I detected barely veiled contempt. Possibly he had heard of my disinheritance by my father, a dreadful disgrace in Jewish eyes, made worse by my being his oldest son. Perhaps he looked down on all Christians.
“It’s my father’s birthday,” Saul told Mustapha Sheik, “and if you have business with him, I pray to stand in his stead.”
“My young friend Marco Polo has business with him,” Mustapha answered, “and I doubt not he’ll accept you as his voice.”
I handed Saul the paper. He read it without the twitch of an eyebrow.
“I fear, noble youth, that Haran-din’s brain has become maggoty from his malady,” he said slowly and calmly. “He made a disposition of the pearl years ago.”
I did not fly into rage. I ached to, it seemed, but dared not. Whether by the guidance of my saints, or by some inward monitor, I strove to keep my head as clear as when computing the course of planets under Mustapha’s tutoring.
“So?” I answered, marking time.
“He gave us a paper, saying that at his death we were to sell the pearl, and devote the funds to certain uses pleasing to Allah, his God,” Saul went on. “It was the finer pearl of two—the less fine we delivered only a few days ago to another party——”
“Marco, he refers to the gentleman who left the gate open,” Mustapha told me in Arabic. But I knew by the gleam in his eyes that he was merely waiting, as I was, to hear what Saul had to say, and that he had no intention of yielding our prize without a last-ditch fight.
Perhaps Saul knew it too.
“Truly, it would take a Daniel to sit upon this case,” Saul went on, smiling with great charm, “and since none’s about, let’s judge it for ourselves.”
“Pray instruct us,” I said.
Saul looked up with a startled look, as well he might. One of Mustapha’s maxims was that there was no tool in all controversy as potent as courtesy. He had said that it not only shields its user’s passions and intentions, but suggests power. Evidently it had become pounded into my head, because I had employed it without thinking.
“That I can’t do, so I suggest we put our heads together. Mark you, he begins the document by his injunction to count him as one of the dead. In that case, isn’t it my father’s bounden duty to sell the jewel as he had previously enjoined him? Doesn’t this end the business? But reading on, I see that our supposedly dead man has changed his mind, which according to a fundamental principle of Christian, Arabic, and Mosaic law, is ex delicto. Who ever heard of a will written by a ghost, in contradiction to his living will, coming to probate?”
“I relish your wit, Saul ben Simon,” Mustapha Sheik intoned.
“But may a man declare his own death?” Saul asked me, stroking his beard. “No, it takes an officer of the Crown. Therefore, let’s take the stand that Haran-din was a living man when he penned these lines, and they constitute a revocation of his previous testament. Thus I’ve no choice but to deliver a pearl to his creditor herein named.”
“Excuse me, your Honor,” Mustapha broke in when I was breathless with relief. “Not a pearl, but the pearl.”
“I stand corrected, and before we go any further, let us all be satisfied as to the particular pearl involved. Is that agreeable to all?” And he looked with a bright smile first to Mustapha, then to me.
When we had both responded, Saul unlocked and opened a heavy wooden door. Revealed was a kind of inner closet, made of polished wood and banded with iron. A heavy brass lock of a style I had never seen gave to the turn of a delicate ivory key, and a portal half a foot thick swung wide. From this he took a foot-square box of wrought iron, which sprang open without a visible key. His strong hairy hands went into the box and brought forth a small ivory cabinet. Smiling, he took out a pearl of the size of my thumbnail and put it in my hand.
Of the thousands of pearls I had seen in and about the ships, this was one of the finest. Its shape was spherical, its skin was of very delicate texture and utterly flawless, and its orient, as the pearl dealers say, could hardly be surpassed. Although I had never heard of a “male” and “female” classification of pearls, the terms were commonly used in regard to turquoises, and I thought that describing this pearl as female was very apt. It was so white as to be almost translucent, and its iridescence was so soft that I thought of it as comparable to the radiation of the flesh of a modest virgin.
However, it was not as large as I expected and I could not believe it would bring more than six hundred pieces of gold.
“Noble youth, will you show the pearl to my father and ask him to identify it?” Saul asked.
I did so. Simon ben Reuben took the jewel in his long, thin fingers, held it close to his velvety old eyes, and returned it to me.
“This is the larger and finer of two pearls put in my charge by Haran-din,” he answered in his soft voice. “The other was disposed of some days ago according to his instruction.”
I handed the pearl to Mustapha Sheik. He gave it a quick inspection, then spoke in a tone of deep anxiety.
“Saul ben Simon, this pearl is not worth a thousand bezants.”
“I never maintained that it was.”
“But Haran-din did so, and in writing. He was not one to lie to me or to be deceived. Why, half that amount would be a fair price in the jewel mart.”
“Saul”—and it was Simon’s deep, soft voice—“hand me the parchment.”
“It’s some other writing that Mustapha refers to, my father. This one mentions no sum.”
“I’ll read it, just the same.”
Again Saul’s face was still as a stone, and it seemed to me he stood as still as one while Simon’s eyes moved down the page. He handed it back without comment.