But then he thought of the candlelight dancing on piles of gold sequins, the dizzying ecstasy in the moment the card turned and revealed its secrets. Aryeh swallowed hard. The pleasure of the thought was so great he could taste it at the back of his throat. He stepped forward and into the youths’ noisy wake. Be bold, he thought. He threw an arm over the shoulder of the nearest youth and attempted to feign a laugh that came out in a strange, nervous falsetto.
“Help me, young sir. My legs are gone from too much drink and I don’t wish to draw the attention of the guards.” The youth’s eyes, through the crescent slots of an Arlecchino mask, were unintelligent as a cow’s. “Awright, uncle, on we go,” he slurred. His breath, Aryeh thought, could have fueled a lamp.
It was just an instant, passing under the lit gate, but Aryeh felt sure his pounding heart—how could they not hear it?—would give him away. But then he was through and on the narrow bridge. Three steps up, three steps down, into the Gentiles’ Venice. As he left the bridge, he reclaimed his arm from the youth’s shoulder and melted away toward a shadowed overhang. He rested his head against a rough stone wall and tried to breathe. It was some minutes before he was able to go on.
As he turned back into the canaletto, the crowd swept him up into itself. The dark brought no rest in Venice during Carnivale. At sunset, torches and chandeliers shed light on a continuum of celebration. The city was mobbed; its main thoroughfares more crowded, for once, than those of the Geto. The costumed nobles drew pickpockets and mountebanks who hoped to prey on them; jugglers, acrobats, and bear baiters who hoped to entertain them. Class, for the moment, was expunged. The tall man in the long-nosed Zanni mask bearing down upon Aryeh might well be a servant or a porter, like his character, or he might be one of the Ten. “Good evening, Mr. Mask,” was all the greeting required.
Aryeh touched his hat as he sidled by the tall Zanni and merged again into the throng, allowing it to carry him along toward a ridotto, which lay no great distance from the bridge. He entered, one masked nobleman among so many abroad in the night. He climbed to the second floor and passed into the room of sighs. The salon was fitted up in a gaudy taste, the light from many chandeliers too bright to flatter the wrinkled necks of the masked women who lolled listlessly upon sofas, comforting their losing partners. There were husbands with mistresses, wives with the cicisbeos meant be their chaperones but often, in fact, their lovers. There were also prostitutes, panderers, and police spies. All wore masks to equalize their condition. All, that is, except the bankers. These men, all of them members of the aristocratic Barnabot family, were the only Venetians approbated to fill this role. Each Barnabot, dressed alike in long black robe and flowing white wig, stood behind his own table in the next salon. Their bare faces proclaimed their identity for all to know.
There were more than a dozen tables from which to choose. Aryeh watched as the bankers shuffled and dealt hands of basset and panfil. He ordered wine and ambled over to observe a high-stakes game of treize. There was just a single player, matching his luck with the bank. The deal passed back and forth between them several times before the player scraped his sequins into a small purse and went off, laughing, to his friends. Aryeh stepped into his place, and two other men joined him. The banker stood between tall candles, shuffling the cards as the players laid out their piles of sequins, each of them betting against the luck of the dealer. It was a simple game: the dealer had to name the cards from one to thirteen—ace to king—as he dealt. If the card fell as he named it, he collected the wagers and retained the deal. If he reached the king without matching a call to the dealt card, he had to pay the wagers and relinquish the deal to the player on his right.
His voice, when he commenced the deal, was low and even. “Uno,” he said, as the five of spades hit the table. “Due,” as the nine of hearts appeared. “Tre,” and luck was still against him as the eight of spades appeared. The count had risen to “nove” and still the dealer had not dealt the card he was naming. Just four more chances, and Aryeh’s gold sequin would be doubled.
“Fante,” the banker called. But the card that he dealt was a seven of diamonds, not a jack. Just two more chances. Aryeh eyed his sequin.
“Re.” The last card, the king. But the dealer had turned up an ace. The dealer’s long white fingers reached for the pile of sequins beside him. He placed one before Aryeh, four before a man in a lion mask, and, with a slight bow, seven before the high-wagering man in the Brighella mask. The dealer, having lost the hand, surrendered the deal to the Brighella. Aryeh loosened his mask to mop his brow. He reached into Doña Reyna’s purse and placed two more sequins on the table beside his original wager and his winnings from the first hand. His wager was now four gold pieces. He thought he noticed the men on either side of him give small nods of approval.
“Uno.” The voice from behind the Brighella mask was deep and resonant. The card he turned over was a nine of clubs. “Due.” A jack, much too soon to be of use to him. “Tre, quattro, cinque, sei…fante, cavallo…” The Brighella’s voice seemed to get deeper on each card, as none matched the number he cried out. Aryeh felt his own heart beating faster. He was about to win another four sequins. At this rate he would double Doña Reyna’s purse in no time. “Re!” cried the Brighella. But the card he turned was a seven of spades. The Brighella reached into his purse and placed sequins on each player’s pile. His eyes glittered through the half-moon slits above the mask’s bulbous cheeks.
The deal passed to Aryeh. He watched as the lion, the Brighella, and the impassive-faced noble of the Barnabot family placed their piles of sequins. The Brighella, chasing his losses, placed twenty gold sequins on the table. The Barnabot wagered a modest two sequins. The lion played four, as he had each hand.
Aryeh’s hands were deft and steady as he shuffled the deck. He felt exhilaration rather than dread, even with twenty-six sequins at stake. “Uno!” he cried exultantly, and, as if he had the power to summon the card from the deck, the single, vivid red blot of the ace of diamonds gleamed in the candle glow.
Aryeh scooped the winnings toward himself. As winner, the deal remained with him. Once again, the players laid their bets; the Brighella chancing another twenty sequins, the Barnadot two, the lion four.
“Uno!” Aryeh’s voice lilted, even though the card he turned over was a nine. “Due! Tre! Quattro!” It wasn’t until he reached fante, the jack, that his throat began to tighten at the prospect of loss. But the secret to Aryeh’s gambling compulsion was contained in that moment, when the dread began to spread through him like ink in a glass of clear water. For he welcomed the feeling, that dark, terrifying sensation of risk. To teeter on the edge of loss, or to win the hand, the point was the intensity of the sensation. He never felt so alive as he did in those moments, poised between the one outcome and the other.
“Cavallo!” he cried, and the card was an ace of diamonds—the same ace that had brought him fortune on the last hand had betrayed him on this one. He had only one chance more. His flesh tingled.
“Re!” he cried out, and the king he had named stared back at him from the table. The others shuffled uneasily. This man in the plague doctor mask had uncanny luck. To win one hand on the first card, and then to win another on the last card. A strange chance, indeed.
Aryeh watched the candlelight dance on the Barnabot’s ruby ring as the Barnabot slowly drew out two more sequins, and then, slowly, added two more. The nobleman was betting that the plague doctor’s luck must turn.
The Brighella gazed at him, his eyes glassy now, as he laid forty sequins upon the table. Only the lion held his ground, placing the same four sequins at risk.
For just under an hour, Aryeh’s fortune waxed, and he basked in the pleasure of his mounting pile. He had more than doubled the value of Doña Reyna’s first purse. The lion mask left the table and made an unsteady way to the room of sighs. He was replaced by a Pulcinella who seemed intoxicated and played with a reckless flourish, crying out ostentatiously at every ill turn in his fortunes.
The Barnabot nobleman maintained his aloof and dignified demeanor, but his bare face began to show some lines of strain. The Brighella, the biggest loser, grasped the table. His knuckles had turned quite white. A small gallery of the curious had gathered on the edge of their circle.
Finally, inevitably, Aryeh reached the king without naming a card correctly. The Pulcinella gave a raucous cry of glee. Aryeh bowed and paid out the wagers—eighty sequins to the Brighella, ten to the Pulcinella, four to the Barnabot. He passed the deal to the Brighella and considered his next wager.
It had been a magical hour. He felt as light as one of the colored balloons that rose above the city during Carnivale. Truly, the large pile of winnings could do much for the poor in his congregation. He stood there, his hand hesitating over the gold. Perhaps Satan had lured him here, but God had given him this moment of choice. He would listen to the voice of reason in his head. He would take these winnings and leave the ridotto. He had fed his beast, had felt the blood rise in terror and exhilaration. It was enough. He swept the pile toward the mouth of his purse.
A hard hand, the Brighella’s, landed on his own. Aryeh looked up, startled. The eyes behind the other man’s mask were black, the pupils dilated. “No gentleman quits the game after having the advantage of the deal.”
“Quite right,” slurred the Pulcinella. “Not done, making off with a man’s money. Think more of gold, do you, than of having a good time? Not the spirit of Carnivale. Not a gentleman. Not even a Venetian, I’ll wager.”
Aryeh flushed deeply beneath his mask. Did they know? Had they guessed? By raising the issue of “otherness,” the drunken Pulcinella probed very close to the vein. He withdrew his hand from under the Brighella’s and placed it over his heart. He stepped back from the table and made a deep bow. “Gentlemen,” he said, in his soft, lilting, unmistakably Venetian accent. “Forgive me. A momentary lapse, merely. Truly I do not know what I was thinking. By all means, let us go on.”
For the next hour, the game continued, each man winning and losing in his turn. Aryeh judged that enough time had passed, and once again made to leave the table. Once again, the Brighella stayed his hand as he reached for his still-significant winnings. “Why such a hurry?” the low voice said. “Do you have a tryst?” And then his voice dropped even lower, and the bulbous mask loomed closer. “Or do you have a curfew you must keep?”
He knows, Aryeh thought. Beneath his cloak, he began to sweat.
“Give us one hand more, at decent stakes, Mr. Plague Doctor! A hand in friendship, eh?” The Brighella reached beneath his cloak then and laid a full purse upon the table. Aryeh, his hand shaking now, pushed all of his winnings forward. The fear of loss—intense, delicious—overwhelmed him.
The Barnabot nobleman had the deal again. “Uno. Due. Tre…”
Aryeh’s head felt light.
“…Otto. Nove…”
He was finding it hard to breathe through the mask. His heart thumped and banged in his chest. He was about to win again.
“…Fante. Cavallo…”
The exhilaration and the terror held him in their delicious, equal grip. And then, the terror won, pulling him down, smothering him, as the Barnabot turned over a king. The roar in Aryeh’s head muffled the sound of the syllable slowly forming on the noble’s lips. “Re!”
The Barnabot reached for the pile of gold and swept it to himself, bowing slightly in the direction of the Brighella.
“Now, dear Doctor. Now you may leave us, if you are so very tired of our company.”
Aryeh shook his head. He could not leave. Not now. He had lost not only his winnings, but a full half of his stake. One of Doña Reyna’s purses lay flaccid and empty at his side. He had been determined to wager one purse only. Half to gamble, half to spend on the needs of his flock. That was what he had told himself. But now he fumbled at his other hip for the second purse. As his fingers closed on its reassuring bulk, Aryeh felt as if he were bathed in radiance. He felt complete conviction that the magical luck of the early evening was with him again. Not his own hand, but the very hand of the divine will directed him as he pushed the full purse forward upon the table.
For once, even the impassive face of the Barnabot registered emotion. The eyebrows rose to the edge of his frosted wig, and he gave an almost imperceptible bow toward Aryeh. Then he began to deal.
Aryeh had just a few seconds to feel the exquisite pleasure-pain to which he was enslaved. The card that cost him the purse was an eight. The round vowels of the word otto seemed to fall from the Barnabot’s lips and merge with the curved infinity symbol of the number itself, elongating into a tunnel that seemed to suck the soul from the rabbi.
He stared in disbelief at all that gold, pushed into gleaming towers on the dealers’ side of the table. He raised a hand and called for a quill. He shook as he wrote a note for another hundred sequins. The Barnabot nobleman took the note between two fingers, glanced at it, and shook his head in silence. Aryeh felt the blood rise, scalding, to his scalp.
“But I have seen you play with a loser upon his word to the value of ten thousand ducats!”
“The word of a Venetian is one thing. Why don’t you go to a Jew bloodsucker if you want credit.” He let the note fall to the floor.
There was a sudden silence at the nearby tables. Masked faces turned in unison, a flock of buzzards sensing carrion.
“A Jew!” the Pulcinella slurred. “’Splains it. I knew he was no Venetian!”
Aryeh turned, knocking over his wine goblet, and stumbled from the salon. In the room of sighs, a whore reached out a fleshy arm, attempting to pull him down upon her couch. “What’s the rush?” she said, her voice low and seductive. “Everyone loses sometimes. Sit with me and I’ll make you feel better.” Then she raised her voice. “I’ve always wanted to taste a circumcised one!” He shrugged her off and staggered down the stairs to the street, humiliated by laughter closing behind him like water.
In the gray light of the sanctuary, Judah Aryeh pulled his tallis over his head and bowed low before God. “I have trespassed, I have dealt treacherously, I have robbed….” Tears wet his cheeks as he rocked forward and back, reciting the familiar words of the prayer of atonement. “I have acted perversely, and I have wrought wickedness, I have been presumptuous, I have framed lies and I have spoken falsely…I have committed iniquity and I have transgressed…. I have turned away from your commandments and judgments that are good, and it has profited me naught. What shall I say before you, who dwellest on high, and what shall I declare before you, thou who abidest in the heavens? Dost thou not know all things, hidden and revealed? May it therefore be thy will, O Lord, our God and God of our fathers, to forgive me, to pardon my iniquity, and to grant atonement for my transgressions….”
He sank down upon a bench, exhausted and heartsick. God might forgive sins against his laws, but Aryeh knew—he had preached it often enough—that forgiveness also must be sought from, and atonement made to, those who had been damaged by sinful acts. He thought with despair of returning to Reyna de Serena to confess his deception. And of the humiliation he must face before his own congregation. He would have to admit to taking the bread from the mouths of the hungriest, the medicines from the dying. And then he, poor man that he was, would have to make good the sum he had stolen. This would require the most stringent economies. He would have to pawn his books, perhaps even move the family to cheaper quarters. With six persons in two small rooms, their home was hardly lavish, yet one of the rooms had a window, and both high ceilings. Aryeh thought about the cheaper alternatives: the shochet had shown him a lightless, one-room place hard by his butchery that he had on offer for very fair terms. Privately, Judah had called the place the cave of Makhpelah, but he had promised to keep it in mind if any in his congregation was in need of housing. Rooms were in such short supply in the Geto that even such grim quarters at a fair rent would find many takers. But how could he ask Sarai to move to such a gloomy place? And his daughter, Ester, who worked at home, how would she
have space for her bolts of cloth and seamstress bench? How could she sew without daylight? The sin was his, not his family’s. How could he make them suffer so?
Aryeh rubbed his hands over his cheeks. His flesh, in the growing light, was gray and haggard. Soon, the minyan would begin to gather. He would have to prepare a face to greet them.
He left the sanctuary and descended to his rooms. The aroma of frying told him that Sarai was already up. Usually, Aryeh loved the crisped frittatas she made, hot and golden brown. He would sit at the crowded table with his three sons and his beloved daughter, and let their babble and banter flow around him. But this morning the scent of the hot oil assailed him. He felt ill.
He steadied himself against a chair. Sarai was working with her back to him, her hair caught up modestly in a fine wool scarf she had knotted fetchingly at the nape of her neck. “Good morning,” she said. “You were up before the birds….” She turned to glance at him over her shoulder, and the smile on her lips turned to a concerned frown. “Are you ill, husband? You look so pale….”
“Sarai,” he said. But he could not go on. His oldest sons stood together in the corner, making their morning prayers. The youngest, who had completed his, was already at the table with his sister, enjoying their frittatas. He could not speak of his shame before them, even though soon enough the whole Geto must know of it.
“It is nothing. I could not sleep.” That last, at least, was true.
“Well, you must rest, later. You need to be refreshed to greet the Bride Shabbat.” She smiled. For a husband and wife to make love on the Sabbath was a commandment, and it was one requirement of the faith that both of them observed with joy. He gave a weak smile back, and then turned to pour a basin of water. He splashed his face and wet his hair, then replaced his kippah and climbed the stairs to the sanctuary.
People of the Book Page 18