Raf bent over the shivering girl. Her thin shift was pulled up to her waist and he could see the small dark triangle of hair between her thighs. She was female, but as for her age, it was difficult to determine. She was extremely filthy, and badly bruised besides. He put his arm around her shoulders and helped her to stand.
“You’re all right now,” he said. “It’s over. Do you live around here? Where’s your home?”
She shook her head dazedly.
Raf looked up. “Hey, you people up there, who is she? Does anybody know her?”
“Never saw her before,” a woman called back in a strident voice. “One of those tramps that comes in for Carnival. She’s probably a whore. If you’re smart, you’ll just leave her and clear out. When her pimp wakes up he’ll be spoiling for a fight.”
“No, please,” the girl spoke thickly. “Please, take me away from him.” As if in answer, the fallen man began to groan.“Nero will kill me, I know he will. He is so drunk—so mean. Take me away,” she pleaded.
Raf hesitated for a moment. If he brought this girl into the ghetto he could be liable for arrest, and so could his Aunt Rebecca. But the child looked pathetic, so thin and sickly. She needed care.
“Where is your family?” he asked her. “Your mother?”
“I have no one, Signor. My mother sold me when I was small. I work for Nero. He owns me. I have no one else. We are acrobats.”
Anger burned in Raf’s brain. What kind of world did they live in, where a woman was forced to sell her child to a brute? Why? Because she was starving, because she already had too many mouths to feed and hoped her child would have a better life with a stranger. While they starved and suffered, the nobles ate off their gold-plated dinnerware and tossed their money away on amusements.
Grasping her arm firmly, Raf led her away from the grim arena and its fallen gladiator. Her feet were bare and she stumbled frequently on the rough cobblestones. Once she fell so hard that she nearly pulled him off balance, too. He saw that she was faint from hunger and exhaustion. With a resigned sigh, he lifted her in his arms and carried her. Her filthy matted head bobbed against his shoulder. Gradually her breathing deepened and the arms around his neck relaxed. She was asleep.
They reached the Old Ghetto. The big gates on the Canal Regio were closed and barred for the night, not to keep intruders out but to keep the Jews in. Raf carried his sleeping burden through the inky alleyways that twisted around the ghetto walls. In one corner of the maze stood a rundown whorehouse. Raf knew the proprietress and paid her generously for the privilege of using her house and courtyard as a means of getting into the ghetto after hours.
They went through a tunnel-like passageway. At the rear of the courtyard was a small door, half-hidden by a scraggly orange tree. The door yielded to a pressure from his shoulder. They were underneath his own house now. Feeling his way through the darkness, Raf carried the limp child up a narrow flight of stairs. He had grown up in this house, and he knew every dip and turn in the stairs as well as he knew the contours of his own body.
The door at the top of the stairs was unlocked. When they got inside he set the girl down on her feet.
“Wake up. We’re here.”
She yawned and blinked and looked around her. The room was low-ceilinged but large, and warmed by a crackling fire in the fireplace. She didn’t know anything about furnishings, but she knew poverty, and she saw how well this room compared with anything in her experience.
“Are you rich?” she asked in an awed voice.
“No, not really. We get along.”
And old women came into the room. She was wearing a woolen robe over her nightgown and her hair was covered by a mobcap.
“Rafaello, I’ve been so worried! I’ve heard—” she stopped in her tracks and stared at the girl. “But what’s this? Who is she?”
“Her owner was beating her. A drunken lout. She had nowhere else to go so I brought her here. I think she can use something to eat; I know she can use a bath.”
“But Rafaello, you can’t! She’s a Christian, surely. It’s so dangerous!”
“It’s all right, Aunt Rebecca,” Raf said. “I doubt that she has any religion at all. Don’t worry. She’s just a street urchin who doesn’t belong to anyone. She won’t be missed, and as soon as I find—”
“I don’t understand,” the girl said in a frightened voice. “What are you talking about?”
“We’re Jews,” Raf said. ‘The law says that we could be severely punished for taking you in. You’ll be safe enough here tonight—no one saw us come in—and tomorrow I’ll take you to one of the orphanages. The nuns will take good care—”
“No, no. Signor, not the nuns, I beg you!” she said anxiously. “I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to live behind walls!”
“But you can’t stay here,” Raf said reasonably. “Do you know where you are? In the Jewish ghetto. Behind walls. You’d have more freedom in a convent, and no fear—”
“Oh, hush, Rafaello,” said Aunt Rebecca impatiently. “You don’t have to fill her head with all that stuff now. She’s nearly falling down with fatigue, can’t you see that? Come along with me, child. I’ll look after you. What’s your name?” ,
“Lia,” the girl said shyly. “Just—Lia.”
A few days passed. Lia looked like a different person, scrubbed and combed, and dressed in some pretty second-hand clothes. Her bruises started to fade and she even began to put on a little weight.
She said that she was fourteen, although Rebecca would have guessed that she was at least two years older. Life on the road had matured her quickly, and hardened her. She lost her shyness and chattered freely about herself. She didn’t know where she had been born, somewhere around Naples perhaps. Her mother had been a dancer. She didn’t know who her father was. Her mother had sold her to Nero when she was only six, and she had lived with his wandering troupe of acrobats ever since. One of the older women in the troupe had been a dancer, too, like Lia’s mother, and she had taught the girl some ballet movements.
“I’m the best acrobat Nero ever had,” the girl said one night. “Everybody said so. I can tumble and jump and even sing a little, but really I want to be a dancer. Would you like me to dance for you?”
She whirled around the room, skirts and braids flying, arms opened wide. Aunt Rebecca laughed and applauded. Raf smiled.
“You’ll find ghetto life very dull, Lia,” he remarked. “You’re used to moving around a lot. You won’t be happy here, in confinement. Perhaps we ought to find you another troupe of players.”
He was only teasing, but Lia cried, “No, no, I don’t want to leave! I’m happy here! This is a real home, and you are like my family. You are my uncle and Aunt Rebecca is like my grandmother!” She flung her arms around the old woman’s waist and Aunt Rebecca stroked her head fondly. “You don’t want me to go away, do you, Aunt Rebecca?”
“No, no, child, of course not. Rafaello only wants to do what is best for you. He can’t understand why anyone would willingly stay in the ghetto when they could live in the world outside. He’s been trying to get out since he was a boy. Me, I’ve lived here all my life. I’m used to it. I wouldn’t be happy any place else. But it is still dangerous for you to be here. If you want to stay, you must pretend to be a Jew. I will teach you everything you need to know. And if anyone here asks where you came from—”
“—and they will,” Raf interjected wryly.
“—you must tell them that you are the daughter of Rafaello’s cousin in Verona, and that your parents died when the ghetto burned last year. We all heard about that fire—a terrible tragedy. They won’t ask any more questions when they hear that.”
Lia was bright, talkative, and interested in everything . Aunt Rebecca instructed her on Jewish practices and Jewish dietary laws, and she learned quickly. She was grateful for everything. For the first time in her life she had a room of her own and a real bed. She loved their cat, Jacob, and Aunt Rebecca observed that she was like a litt
le cat herself, quick and curious. She was a great help around the house. Soon Aunt Rebecca couldn’t imagine their home without her.
Lia reminded the old woman of Raf’s mother, her niece. She was small and delicate, with olive skin, black eyes, and dimpled cheeks. Her hair was black, curly and abundant, and she had heavy brows that gave her face a serious quality that her ready laughter quickly dispelled. Whatever Lia had suffered had not robbed her of her enthusiasm for life.
Raf’s business and political activities kept him away from home a good bit, but when he was home he treated Lia like a pet. He teased her and brought her little gifts like combs and hair ribbons and small mirrors, and once a kitten. She was more reticent around him than she was around Aunt Rebecca. She called him “Signor Raf,” and her eyes lit up when he came into the room. Nothing seemed to make her happier than to wait on him, to bring him coffee or wine, to put a cushion behind his back or a little stool under his feet.
Once he laughed and said lightly, “You’re too good to me, Lia. You’ll spoil me for a wife.”
She blushed and lowered her eyes. Aunt Rebecca wondered if she weren’t falling in love with Raf.
One night a delegation of rabbis and elders of the ghetto came to the house to speak to Raf. Lia and Aunt Rebecca stood quietly in a corner away from the men. Raf's friend Malachi was there, too, standing at the rear of the little knot of black-garbed men and kneading his hands worriedly.
The chief rabbi, a white-bearded scholar who was renowned throughout the city for his lucid, poetic sermons, spoke for them.
“We have heard about your speech to the Senate, Rafaello,” the old man said. “While we admire your spirit and your sentiments, we cannot condone your methods. You have brought shame and fear upon us all again.”
Raf stiffened. He had been expecting something like this. “In what way?” he demanded.
“For one thing, you wore the redhat,” another rabbi said. “The symbol of shame for generations, which has finally fallen into disuse, and you resurrected it, singled yourself out, proclaimed yourself a Jew—”
“What’s wrong with that? I am a Jew. I’m not ashamed of it. I wore the hat so that no one there could mistake me for anything else. I wanted them to know that a Jew, not just a simple sailor, was refusing their honors.”
“But you should have consulted with us first,” another man, a banker, argued. “We are all proud of your accomplishments, Raf. You have done a great deal for the pride of the community already.”
“Couldn’t you have just taken their honors and thanked them, in the name of the Jewish community?” someone else asked.
“No, I couldn’t. I didn’t want their thanks and I didn’t want their commission, especially from Alessandro Loredan’s hands. Have you forgotten what he did to us? My grandfather would be alive today if it weren’t for Loredan. He hates the Jews. He’d destroy us all, if he could.”
“You spoke out against the government,” the chief rabbi said, shaking his head. “Don’t you see how that could effect us? You have placed us all in a very uncomfortable position, a dangerous one.”
“Because I spoke the truth,” Raf said stubbornly “Everyone there knew it was truth, not reason.”
“Perhaps,” the banker said. “But our business has fallen off at least thirteen percent since you made your speech. The word ‘Jew’ is on everyone’s lips.”
“Not just ‘Jew,’ ” Malachi corrected timidly “ ‘The Jew,’ meaning Rafaello. There’s a difference.”
“We cannot permit you to go on like this, ” the chief rabbi said. “You are placing the entire ghetto in jeopardy. You will bring down serious repercussions, not only on yourself, but on all of us. There will be tighter restrictions, more laws, more unhappiness. We must ask you to stop. Please, Rafaello, confine yourself to commerce.”
“I can’t! I won’t!” Raf stormed. “What’s the matter with all of you? What are you afraid of? Purges? Pograms? This isn’t the Middle Ages. What more can they do to us than they’ve already done? You talk about being part of the community. How do you think this will happen? Turn society upside down! You don’t gain respect by being respectful. When you behave like servants, they treat you like servants. If you apologize for what you are, they’ll find something to blame you for. If you give in to them and accept their rules and restrictions without a fight, they’ll pile more and more on top of you, until you can’t even move under the weight of their laws. Aren’t you tired of living like animals, penned up in this stinking cattle yard? Don’t you want your sons to have something better than what you’ve had? I do. I want freedom for my sons, and I want it for myself. Now. Today.”
“Rafaello please!” Aunt Rebecca said beseechingly. Beside her, Lia watched the goings-on through wide eyes. She couldn’t understand what was happening, but she knew it was serious.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Rebecca,” Raf said strongly. “I can’t stop now. I won’t go back.”
“Your first duty is to God; your second to the community,” the chief rabbi reminded him.
“No! My first duty is to what I believe in. Freedom. Change. Equality under the law.”
“I thought you were going to keep him out of trouble in America, Malachi,” the banker growled. “All this talk about democracy!”
“What could I do?” Malachi wailed. “I am only one man. I couldn’t keep an eye on him every minute!”
“Don’t blame Malachi,” Raf said gruffly. “We argued politics and law all the way across the Atlantic and back again, and I still think he’s wrong. You’re all wrong.”
“Do you know what this could mean, Raf?” the younger rabbi asked. “If you will not conform to our wishes, we must disassociate ourselves from you.”
Raf nodded. “I understand. I can’t let that stop me.”
Aunt Rebecca sobbed aloud and covered her face with her apron.
“We will give you a night and a day to reconsider,” the old rabbi said.
“No. I have nothing more to reconsider. I won’t stop thinking. I won’t stop working for what I feel is a just cause. Do what you have to do.” Raf looked around the circle of pale, bearded faces. “From this moment, I am no longer one of you. I am no longer a Jew.”
The room was silent except for Aunt Rebecca’s sobbing. Lia held the old woman close. The rabbis and other elders left the house without another word. Malachi, the last to go, cast Raf a beseeching look. Raf shook his head.
When they had gone, Raf approached the women. He put his hand on his aunt’s shoulder and said, “I had to, Aunt Rebecca. I’m sorry.”
“I’m glad your grandfather is dead!” she cried. “He would never have understood this, never! I don’t understand it myself. Why must you always think of yourself and never of anyone else? Will you never consider the consequences of what you do? I am so ashamed!”
“You can go and live in another household,” Raf said gently. “I’ll understand.”
“Yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Then you wouldn’t have anyone at all to interfere in what you do. Well, I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here, where I can keep an eye on you!”
“Thank you,” he said softly.
She couldn’t speak anymore. Shaking her head, she went out of the room. Raf sank wearily into a chair. “Pour me some wine, will you, Lia?”
“I don’t understand, Signor Raf. What happened? What did it mean? Why aren’t you a Jew anymore?” “Because I’ve been excommunicated. Or I will be, by tomorrow morning. They’ll get together in the synagogue, light the candles, open the ark. Someone will sound the ram’s horn. They’ll draw lots to see which rabbi gets to read out the bans, which will be repeated later in all parts of the ghetto. By tomorrow night, everyone, even the children, will know what has happened.”
Lia filled his glass and set it down on the table in front of him. He stared straight ahead. “So many laws,” he muttered. “Divine law. Natural law. Civil law. Ghetto law. You can’t move, can’t think, can’t do anything.”
/> “But what does it mean?” Lia persisted.
“I don’t exist. They can’t throw me out of the ghetto, so they disavow any responsibility towards me. I won’t be counted in the quorum for morning prayer. I can’t take part in any activity. No one is allowed to speak to me or to do business with me. If I were married and my wife gave birth, the child wouldn’t be considered a Jew. If someone in my family dies, they can’t be buried in consecrated ground.”
“For how long?” Lia wondered. “Forever?”
He shrugged and said dully, “Until they back down. Or I do. And I won’t.” He sighed deeply and drained his wine glass. Lia refilled it. He drained the second glass as well. “No longer a Jew,” he muttered. He ran his hand over his bushy beard. “Well, if I’m no longer a Jew, I don’t have to look like one, do I?”
The next day Lia disappeared for several hours in the afternoon. Aunt Rebecca was worried and distraught. She thought that the girl had gone back to her own kind, to the theater folk. When Lia returned, just as the gates were about to close, Rebecca scolded her harshly, because she had been so afraid of losing the girl. Lia had no explanation other than that she had wanted to look at the merry-making in the Piazza. After all, it was Carnival.
Carnival. Venice had never seemed so corrupt to Raf, so hollow and shrill and decadent. Everywhere he went he saw poverty juxtaposed against scenes of the most magnificent opulence. The poorer ghetto families had barely enough bread to feed their children, and had to depend on charity. In the marble palazzos along the Grand Canal, the nobles pelted each other with fruit and buns.
Masked and anonymous, he wandered the streets. He was not a Jew or a merchant or a rabble-rouser now, but just another masquer in search of pleasure. He felt free at Carnival time, as he never could the rest of the year. When he was in his teens, he had disappeared for two whole weeks at Carnival. His frantic grandfather didn’t report his absence to the authorities because he didn’t want the boy to be prosecuted for running away from the ghetto. Raf spent those weeks in the arms of the wife of the French ambassador. She taught him above love, and about the joys of escaping confinement.
The Masquers Page 9