He began counting the days. According to his calculations, it would be five days before he could expect an answer from Signor Bragadin. Nevertheless he entered the vaulted shops and set about shopping. He needed a great many things, indeed he did, if he meant to establish himself and stand on his own two feet again. “I must rise from my ashes like the phoenix,” he thought, mockingly adopting a literary turn of phrase, and “What do phoenixes need?” he asked himself in the next breath. He stopped on a street corner below an oil lamp whose low, flickering flame was being snuffed out by the north wind. Throwing his coat over one shoulder, half-hiding his face with it, he gazed at passersby, his eyes flickering and sputtering with light, like the windblown flame of the oil lamp. More than anything he needed some lace-embroidered shirts, say a dozen, some white Parisian stockings, lace cuffs, two frock coats, one green with gold edging and one lilac with gray epaulettes; he needed some lacquered shoes with silver buckles, crocheted gloves for evening wear, and a thin pair of kid gloves for the day; one heavy winter coat with fur collar, a white silk Venetian mask, lorgnettes — without which he felt defenseless — a three-cornered hat, and a silver-handled cane. He totted them up silently. He had to have all this by the next night. Without the right clothes, without appropriate outfits and accessories, he felt naked, positively abject. It was imperative that he be dressed as only he knew how. Seeing a lottery shop opposite he quickly stepped inside and invested in three numbers that corresponded to his birthdate, the day of his imprisonment, and the day of his escape. He also bought two sets of playing cards.
Carefully concealing the cards in his pockets, he sought out Signor Mensch. He found him behind the church, in a single-story house, in a dark room that overlooked the courtyard, surrounded with caskets and balances. At first glance it seemed that despite the literal meaning of his name, there was little that was human about him. A short, scrawny creature, he was sitting in a dressing gown at a long narrow table, the fingernails of his delicate, yellow hands grown sharp and curling, so that he appeared to grasp things the way a bird of prey seizes its quarry, his lank gray locks hanging over his brow, and his small, bright, intelligent eyes, eyes that glowed from beneath deep, wrinkled lids, staring with burning curiosity at the stranger. He greeted Giacomo in his dirty kaftan, lisping and bowing stiffly without rising from his chair, mixing French, Italian, and German words in his speech but mumbling all the while, as if not quite taking him seriously but thinking of something else, not really listening to his guest. “Ah!” he said, once the visitor had given his name, and raised his eyebrows until they met the dirty locks above them. He blinked rapidly, like a monkey hunting for fleas. “Have these old ears heard correctly? Is an invalid to trust these poor ears of his?” He spoke of himself in the third person, with a kind of tender intimacy, as if he were his own nephew. “Mensch is a very old man,” he lisped ingratiatingly. “No one visits him nowadays, old and poor as he is,” he mumbled. “But here is a stranger come to call,” he concluded and fell silent.
“As a matter of fact you are the first person I have called on,” the stranger replied courteously.
They spoke quietly about money, the way lovers speak of their feelings. There was no preamble: they got straight to the point, passionate, full of curiosity, like two professionals meeting each other at a party, like guests who isolate themselves in some alcove so they may discuss the marvelous secrets of their common trade while the hostess is busy playing the piano or someone is reciting verses, to argue a point about masonry or the physiology of the emu. Money was the subject they talked about, their speech plain but littered with technical terms, and there was no need for a glossary since both were entirely at home in the matter. “Security,” said Mensch, and the word fizzed in his mouth like an oath. “Credit,” declared the other with some heat, convincing and natural, certain that nothing could be simpler, as if the sound of the word and its firm enunciation were sure to touch the old man’s heart. They discussed the two concepts readily and at some length. If anyone had been watching them from a distance he might have thought he was witnessing an abstruse argument between two scholars. Both of them were articulating deeply held beliefs, beliefs that corresponded to the essential inner truths and realities of their beings, beliefs so fervently adhered to they would have staked their lives on them. Because what “security” represented for the one represented “credit” for the other, and not just at this precise moment, at the specific dusk of this one evening, but at other times, too, in every circumstance of life. That which one could conceive of only in terms of security and guarantee, the other demanded in terms of credit from the world, his demand consistent and passionate beyond the material business of the present, itself an item of faith. One could experience the world only insofar as he could accept it as security, the other wanted all life on credit: happiness, beauty, youth, but above all, money, possession of which was the essential condition of life. It was ideas, not amounts, that they were discussing.
Signor Bragadin’s name clearly impressed the moneylender. “A most honorable gentleman,” he said, blinking even more rapidly than before. “A sound name. Worth its weight in gold!” There was a certain suspicion in his voice, for he was sure that the stranger was wanting to cheat him, to sell him something of dubious value, something that didn’t exist, or even that, ultimately, he wanted to sell Signor Bragadin’s own person. “A ring, perhaps!” he ventured, and raised his little finger with its long, black fingernail, crooking it to indicate that almost anything was better, more valuable, more apt for commercial purposes than a human being. “A little ring,” he wheedled in a singing, pleading voice, like a child asking for marzipan. “A little ring, with a precious stone,” he added grinning, and winked, rubbing the thumb and forefinger of his right hand together to demonstrate what a pretty, fascinating object a little ring could be, especially one with a precious stone, a ring on which one could offer some security. His myopic eyes filled with tiny teardrops thinking of it, but he kept a careful watch on his visitor, busily blinking all the time, anxious, yet striving to give an impression of cheerfulness, like a duelist who, however unwillingly, recognizes that the man he has taken on is a genuine adversary, worthy of his attentions. He would like to have been over the contest but his fingers and toes were tingling with excitement: the feeling was hot and arousing, it resembled desire. It was the excitement of knowing that the moment had arrived, that rare moment when he found himself pitched against a real opponent, a fit adversary who knew the secret ceremonies and strategies of conduct, who was, in effect, part of the meaning of his own life, the kind of opponent for whom he had always most earnestly yearned. He drew the sleeves of his kaftan further up his skeletal arms as if to say: “So now it is the two of us! Let battle commence!” They eyed each other in admiration.