Rebecca sat close, watching my face avidly as I scanned this holy temple, wondering what it meant to me. I wore a plain white shirt, the neck open. It disclosed the Star of David she had given me. She reached forward, took it with her hand, and was flattered, I think, that I wore it.
“Do you think God’s here, Lorenzo?” she asked. “Do you think He is hiding behind the Torah, His face like thunder, all because two hapless mortals happened to walk where other men said they shouldn’t?”
“No,” I said honestly. She was right, of course. My grief had eaten into my mind. Lucia was dead because of some accident of fate, not the actions of her foolish brother. “But God is with us, I think. Not your God or my God, but something more simple, and more complicated. I don’t believe we are like the animals, Rebecca. When I listened to my sister sing to me in my bed, when I watch you play in La Pietà… Whatever Jacopo says, I don’t believe our lives can be written down as numbers on a page. I don’t think love is an affliction of the blood, like palsy. We are more than we seem, and we build these places to try to explain our bewilderment at our imperfect state.”
“Jacopo,” she murmured with a gentle laugh. “He is my brother, and I love him dearly. My impetuousness mirrors his caution. But one day a woman will trap his heart, and then his pretty theories will fall down like bricks in a child’s toy castle.”
I felt well, I felt whole. Rebecca had healed me. And why not? The Levis were a family of physicians.
“Thank you,” I said, and gingerly, with the soft, remote tenderness of a brother, I kissed her pale, warm cheek. She did not move. The temple was silent save for the erratic sputtering of the lamps below.
“Here is another piece of God,” she said, and quickly, with not a moment’s hesitation, unfastened the back of her dress, letting the black fabric fall open to expose, in the half light that came through the shutter, the fullness of her breasts, the colour of a marble statue in a rich man’s palace, and as smooth and perfect too. “Here.”
She took my hand and pulled it towards her, splaying the fingers. They came to rest upon this warm and lovely place. I felt her life pulsing beneath my touch. I felt the tightening of the tender rosebud trapped lightly in my grasp, heard the sudden short, halting breaths sucked between her teeth.
I brought my hand to her hair and, slowly, wishing that we might both record every moment of this for eternity, kissed her open mouth, our lips pressed firm together, our breathing as one.
She broke away, an urgent look on her lovely face, then stood up and, in one swift movement, pulled her dress over her head, clutched it modestly to her chest for a moment, then bent down to lay it carefully on the bare wooden floor as if to make a bed for us. I swear that at that instant I felt as if I could die. My lungs were starved of breath, my blood refused to course its natural path.
“Lorenzo,” she said, and tugged at my shirt, twisting open the buttons with a flick of the hand. “Lie with me now and I will remain yours always.”
I started to babble ridiculous sweet nothings, and she laughed, silenced me, and bade action. I threw an arm around her naked back, feeling the gracious form of its curves. Her body pressed urgently against mine. I disrobed and, wrapped around each other, we wound slowly to the floor. Thus, in the narrow corridor on the first floor of the Ashkenazi synagogue, on the island ghetto of Venice, I left my childhood behind and entered, willingly and with much joy, the adult world.
Afterwards, in the most unforeseen of locations, while setting a line of type or walking alone across the Rialto, a detail of that encounter would appear in my head out of nothing. This act is a blur of passion, a string of confused images and sensations. I recall the shock of feeling Rebecca’s tongue probing my mouth. I remember the sudden alarm and just as sudden passion that followed when, with her guiding hand, I found that secret part of her and discovered, beneath the luxuriant locks, the unexpected well of heat and dampness within.
That night shall live with me always, whatever the future holds for the two of us. Rebecca threw open the shutters of the world for me, and I can never remain the same hereafter. But one image remains uppermost in my mind. Ecstasy and agony walk hand in hand in this act, much as they do in life itself. At that point when our two bodies moved in such tight rhythm that we might have been a single creature, I opened my eyes, anxious to see her face in the moment of rapture. It remains an image I find both hypnotic and shocking. Eyes tight shut, mouth half-open, she had the look of the dead upon her. The long moan that issued from her throat might have been her last breath upon this earth. The French call this the little death, with much justification. I watched her so and found my own cries rising to mingle with hers in that narrow, ill-lit corridor, on the clumsy pile of clothes that scarce hid the hardness of the boards beneath.
I saw my love at this instant of rapture, and her face made me think of Lucia, distant Lucia, dead Lucia. Here was Rebecca’s most important lesson. That when life is as ephemeral as the beat of a butterfly’s wing, these moments of wonder give us reason to exist. And that, in itself, might be a gift from God.
33
The eel contest
Piero introduced his visitors to the estate slowly. He showed them the small vineyard and let them taste his homemade wine, which was brash and young, but very drinkable. There were fields of artichokes and broad beans. In a corner of the plot sat a patch of Treviso chicory sown for the winter, solid red hearts growing fat on the rich island soil.
They ate and drank, perhaps a little too well. Then Piero announced the “entertainment” and, bucket in hand, lurched to the small channel that ran inland from the lagoon. They watched him busy himself there, then walk to the cottage. In a few minutes he returned with the bucket, which was now full to the brim with what looked like black water. Beneath the surface, creatures moved, long, sinuous bodies circling, half-hidden.
“Squid ink!” Piero declared. “You see how it blackens the water. I caught them myself! And the eels too!”
Amy gave them all a worried look. “Before we go any further, let me say, here and now, I am not eating that.”
Piero stared into the murky bucket. “No, no, no! This is not about eating. This is the gara del bisato!”
Daniel saw the growing bewilderment on Amy’s face and translated. “The eel contest?”
“Sì! You come back in October, after we harvest the grapes. That’s when we do it proper. But now I show you. Watch!”
Piero walked forward, knelt, took a deep breath, then thrust his head almost completely into the bucket. The black water boiled with frantic bodies squirming around his scalp. Bubbles frothed on the dark, inky surface. Xerxes sat patiently by his master’s side, watching the show as if it were the most natural act on earth.
After an unconscionable period with his face in the water, Piero finally emerged. Gripped tightly between his teeth, wriggling to break free, was a large eel. Piero’s jaws had it firmly by the middle. With a bizarre, fixed grin on his face, he turned his head slowly so that everyone in the party might see. They spoke not a single word. Then he went back to the bucket, opened his mouth, and let the stunned eel fall back below the churning black surface of the water. Piero wiped his mouth with his sleeve, took a long gulp of wine, then beamed at Amy and said, “Now you.”