The Gondola Maker

by Morelli, Laura

  Giuliana.

  How could I have lost track of time? How could the hours have slipped by so quickly?

  I leap from my seat, nearly overturning the table.

  “I have to go,” I report breathlessly to Alvise.

  I dash out the door of the tavern before Alvise can protest.

  Chapter 28

  I sprint as fast as my legs will carry me.

  I curse myself for not allowing the time to stop by the boardinghouse first, at least to change my clothes. I am still dressed in the same clothes I’ve worn while working on the boat all day, for God’s sake, covered in sawdust and dirt. I glance down at my hands. They are a mess, dirt caked under the nails and smudged across my palms. I am sure that I stink of beer, too. In fact, my head feels fuzzy. What was I thinking? I let Alvise distract me into a night of taverning rather than paying attention to the task ahead. I curse myself again. It’s not Alvise’s fault. I allowed myself to be distracted with the idea of approaching one of the girls in the tavern. I have no one to blame but myself.

  I feel an intense urge to urinate, but I can’t afford to stop. By the time I arrive in the piazza before the Church of San Giovanni Battista in Brágora, I am sweaty, breathless, and I’m sure I must reek of beer. I stop for a moment to catch my breath, but still walk at a steady clip toward the portal of the church where am supposed to meet Giuliana. I picture her waiting in a church pew by herself. Will she be furious with me? Will she be there at all? It is dangerous for a woman to be out walking alone in the city in the dark, and I think that the information she wants from me must be important for her to take such a risk.

  In the dark stillness of the piazza, I make out the church façade, an ominous silhouette against the night sky. I push the heavy door open with my palms. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I spot a flickering flame in a side chapel. I tiptoe, yet each step echoes off the cold stones. As I approach the chapel, I make out a cloaked figure seated in the second pew. She turns as my footsteps approach.

  “Signorina Zanchi?” I whisper.

  “Si,” she replies, and pushes the hood of her cloak away from her face. I feel my heart leap.

  “Please, signorina, forgive me. I had an errand for Master Trevisan that ran late,” I lie. “I am sorry for the delay.” I sit on the narrow bench beside her.

  “I was beginning to wonder if I was wrong to trust you.” She raises her chin, but she is almost smiling, as if taunting me. “But that’s no matter. Please, tell me, were you able to accomplish your task?”

  I recount to Giuliana exactly what I did at the party, how I located the Jew and handed off her envelope. She listens intently and at certain points in my story, she stops me to ask for more detail. When I describe the man with the silk robes and the blonde girl, Giuliana poises herself on the edge of the pew, her skirts rustling as they spread across her lap. Her dog hops out of her lap onto the pew next to me, and pushes his tiny nose into my hand. I feel warm puffs of air in my palm as the dog inhales the scent of beer and stew on my hand. I stroke a soft ear, and he gazes up at my face with eyes like tiny, black glass beads. Giuliana leans over, resting her elbows on her knees, then wearily rubs her forehead with the heels of her hands. It strikes me as out of character for this noble lady, but somehow at the same time a strangely authentic view, far from her usual façade of complete self-control.

  “Signorina Giuliana, are you alright?” I reach out to touch her arm, and the tiny dog dances back across the pew to his mistress.

  She lifts her chest and takes a deep breath, re-gathering her wits. The façade is back. “Of course,” she says and meets my gaze with a self-confident stare.

  “Signorina, who is this Jewish man? Why the secrecy?”

  “He’s a well-respected broker of second-hand goods, mostly those that come from patrician households,” she says. “But that’s none of your concern. You have told me what I needed to know, and you have delivered my envelope as instructed. Thank you for your service,” she continues.

  She fishes in her velvet purse and produces a handful of coins. She drops them into my hand one by one.

  “Now,” she says, “if you’re willing, I have another job for you.”

  “Of course, signorina.” My heart pounds.

  “Do you know the jewelry vendors near the Pescheria?” she asks.

  “Yes—well, no, not personally.” I reply. “But I’m familiar with the neighborhood.”

  “Good. I would like to see how much you can get for this,” she says dryly. From her purse, she pulls a long gold link chain with a red garnet stone that reflects the candlelight as it swings before my eyes. “You must try to get the maximum price for it that you can, paid in cash. I’ll give you ten percent of the price you are able to negotiate. However, you must not—under any circumstances—reveal who owns this necklace or how it came to pass through your hands. Of course I cannot afford to appear in a pawn-broker’s shop myself.”

  I hesitate. “Of course.”

  “You might start with the jeweler called Balbi; he buys pieces like this. Just remember: he cannot know where you got it.” She reaches to hand over the necklace. “I don’t care what kind of story you have to invent—you don’t know me. Let’s plan to meet here again one week from tonight at the same time.”

  I act impulsively. As Giuliana lets the chain pool down into my palm, I seize her hand with my own. Surprised, she searches my face. I pull her hand toward me.

  “Signorina Zanchi, have you ever seen the beach at the Lido?” I whisper.

  “Well, yes, of course,” she laughs nervously. “Who hasn’t?”

  “But have you ever seen the inlet on the south shore where the sea glass, the discarded pieces from Murano, collect in the sand when the tide falls?”

  Giuliana looks puzzled now. “Well, no...” she trails off.

  “Then go with me there—tomorrow? I want to show you something you won’t forget.” The beer has emboldened me.

  Giuliana’s eyes widen, but she maintains her composure. For a few moments, she is silent, as if thinking of her reply. I imagine that I can feel her pulse in my hand.

  “Not tomorrow,” she says finally, matter-of-factly, pulling her hand away from me. “But I’ll consider it for another time,” she says, “if you are able to arrange a profitable sale of this necklace for me.” She raises her chin again and gives me a slight smile.

  “At your service, madam.” I bow my head in an exaggerated fashion, thinking that Alvise has exerted a bad influence on me. “Consider it done.”

  She lifts her little dog under his chest and settles him carefully in her bag. His crooked ears tremble slightly, and he peers out at me with his glass-bead eyes. She rises and walks toward the church portal.

  From the pew, I address her a little too loudly. “Sigorina Giuliana?” She stops and turns. “Has your father already betrothed you to someone?”

  Although she doesn’t slow her pace, as Giuliana turns her head I perceive a smirk—whether pleased, amused, annoyed, I cannot tell.

  Her loud whisper echoes through the church. “My father is dead.”

  Then she disappears into the night.

  Chapter 29

  Valentin perches on the foredeck with his knees wide apart to help stabilize the painting propped in the gently rocking boat. The picture reaches from one side of the gondola to the other, an enormous rectangle packaged in blue wrapping paper that had required both Valentin and myself to transfer carefully out of the artist’s studio. Trevisan has returned from his excursion to the mainland, and I have resumed my primary role as the painter’s gondolier de xasada.

  “It’s not my favorite subject; nonetheless I am satisfied with the way the pigments helped render the drapery,” Trevisan tells Valentin.

  “One of your better works, Master,” says Valentin. “I have no doubt that Father Dante will be more than satisfied with
the result.”

  Trevisan nods, tight-lipped. “I trust that you are right, as he has offered a bonus for the completion of the picture by the feast of Sant’Agata so that it may be installed in the confraternity chapel in time for the feast day liturgies. With the number of preparatory pen drawings he required, I had my doubts that we would finish in time, but here we are.”

  I steer the boat out of the choppy wake in the Grand Canal caused by the passing of a cargo barge. As I weave the gondola into a narrow waterway with my master and his journeyman, I marvel at my good fortune. Somehow over the last months, I have managed to forge a new life for myself. Sometimes I must pinch myself to make sure I am not dreaming. I have a roof over my head—nothing fancy, of course, but it’s better than sleeping on the street. I have secure employment as a private gondolier, a position that few men of my limited age and credentials could manage. I have the opportunity to work with my hands, which, I have come to realize, is as vital to me as eating or breathing air. And working on the old Vianello boat has become cathartic. With each scrape of sandpaper, I transform myself into my own man, with a purpose and a plan, a new and better version of my old self. Most of all, I have the attention of Giuliana Zanchi. I need to ensure that it stays that way.

  In the months I have spent at the ferry station and in Master Trevisan’s studio, it’s as if I have forgotten my former life as a gondola maker. It feels as if it happened to someone else a long time ago. My mother’s death, the fire in the squero—it all seems like a nightmare, as if it never really happened but is only a horrible dream that I conjured in the dark corners of my mind. With each passing day, a little piece of myself transforms into Luca Fabris, and I grow into the role—more self-assured, less of a fraud. With each passing day, Luca Vianello burns down to smoldering embers, a dim flicker in my memory and imagination.

  Alongside other private boatmen, I wait for my master at the docksides of palaces, markets, churches, and civic buildings. Against a backdrop of the great façade of some elegant palace, we boatmen tie our gondolas together, and I listen to their stories. Their tales range from the outlandish to the banal: complaints about their masters, exaggerations of sexual exploits, boasts about their moonlighting jobs. Of course, I am not naive enough to believe that these men do not take advantage of their masters, but I am astonished at the audacity of some of them, both in what they steal and in that they openly brag about it with their colleagues. One man proudly opened the aft deck of his boat to show me some expensive-looking jewelry he had taken from his master’s house. Another reported that he had stolen a stack of silk garments from his master’s chests and exchanged it with a black-market merchant at Rialto. I wonder how anyone could get away with such an offense. The answer is that they cannot, not for very long, as the faces on the boats change and change again. The turnover of private boatmen seems as high as the temptations that lure them to cheat their masters.

  Most of the interchanges among us stick to ordinary topics. From one man, I learn how to recognize cloud formations that are sure predictions of fog. From another, I learn how to discern exactly how much time will pass before rain spills from a thunderhead, a tip that I find especially useful in judging how much time I have to get back to Trevisan’s boat slip before the raindrops fall. From another gondolier, I hear about the fluctuating prices of flour. From still another, I hear more than I want to know about the anatomy of a particular shoemaker’s wife in Dorsoduro.

  Day by day I become more adept at using the sign language that allows our silent communication from boat to boat. It is even more complex than I had realized when I worked at Giorgio’s traghetto. Now, using only my hands, I can indicate that I am taking a shortcut to the Grand Canal; that I will only be docked for a minute; that I am passing on the port side instead of the starboard; that I can accept or decline an invitation to the tavern for a midday meal; that I can thank another boatman who has signaled to me that my rowing technique looks especially impressive. I am astonished that these boatmen consider me one of them. I have entered a private world without even asking. No one questions me. I move freely among the pageantry of Our Most Serene City, weaving in and out like a thread in the great fabric of Venetian life.

  Following the relentless rhythm of the artist’s engagements, I wait for my master at the docksides of the city’s most elegant palaces. These noble citizens occupy a different world far from the one we boatmen inhabit, from their embroidered sleeves to their roasted pheasants, their particular manner of speaking, their hours of leisure time, their preoccupation with ostentatious displays. Tucked away as I was in my father’s boatyard my entire life, I had only viewed this world of Venetian nobility from the fringes. Now, I am immersed.

  Giuliana is one of them, of course. She travels our city in the finest clothes, transported in a finely wrought gondola powered by two men. She has never had to labor to live, never had to power a boat in the rain, varnish wood, or use her hands to fashion nails. She and I could not be further apart in life if we occupied different continents and spoke different languages. And yet, there is something between us. At least I think so. Does she feel it, too—a magnetic pull, a spark of light, a leap of the heart?

  At night, I stretch across my narrow, flea-infested mattress stuffed with matted hay and stare at a long crack in the stucco ceiling. My imagination transports me from this stark, monkish cell to a fine gondola overlooking a rose garden with a view of the sea. I close my eyes, and in my mind’s eye I imagine holding her face in my hands, smelling the musk of her hair, running my fingertips over the fine hairs at the back of her neck.

  In the light of dawn, I face the stark reality that she is simply paying me to do a job. It is only natural. People like her must pay boatmen to take care of undesirable tasks all the time. I hardly care about the money, which in any case will go toward defraying the cost of restoring the old boat.

  All that matters is finding an excuse to be with her.

  VALENTIN SEEMS IN AN uncharacteristically cheerful mood. He greets me with a silent smile as he boards the gondola, and the two of us head toward the brush market, to which Trevisan has dispatched his journeyman to pick up supplies.

  “What are we going to the market for today, Signor Valentin?” I ask, not expecting much of a reply. I begin rowing swiftly. The sun creates long streaks across the sky.

  With a dramatic gesture, Valentin produces the artist’s supply list from his breast pocket. Scanning the list, he begins to hum a tune. I recognize the melody from a popular song that is performed in the city squares every year at Easter. It is a happy, lilting strain, and I am surprised to hear that Valentin has a knack for carrying a tune. I smile and adjust my rowing to match the beat of the melody.

  Valentin begins singing Trevisan’s list to the tune of the song: “My master wants purified linseed oil, four mink brushes, a large container of lead white and a smaller one of black ink.” He begins slapping his knees to the beat, hums an interlude, then continues: “My master will have nothing less than a bag of nails, walnut oil, four rolls of canvas, the beautiful and coveted lapis lazuli, and powdered cinnabar!” At “powdered cinnabar,” Valentin spreads his arms wide and belts it like a professional singer, then collapses onto the seat, giggling. I crook the oar under my arm and applaud.

  Since I rescued the boy from the drunk who pursued him at the Giudecca, Valentin has opened up to me, or at least shows some level of trust.

  “Powdered cinnabar? What’s that for?” I inquire.

  Valentin has finished his tune and now moves to sit cross-legged on the aft deck next to me. “Master has begun mixing it with cristallo—but don’t tell anyone; it’s a secret.”

  “What for?” I ask.

  “It creates a shade of vermillion that is so lifelike and rich for replicating costume and drapery that our clients are stunned when they see the results. Word has already begun to spread about the ‘red’ from Master Trevisan’s studio. Master has decide
d to rework the Leda and the Swan he’s doing for the Greek ambassador to incorporate the color into the drapery.”

  Trevisan has already informed me that we are to stop by a grimy neighborhood near the Pescheria on our way back to the studio to pick up a woman who is to be a model for the new picture. “Trevisan is paying the woman what she must consider a small fortune to sit nude for him,” Valentin tells me. “He persuaded her after tracking her in the market. Master Trevisan judges that she has just the right combination of innocence and maturity: wide hips and a pink flush in her cheeks. Any other minor defects, like scarring from childbirth, will be easily perfected with paint.” It is more information than I have ever plied from Trevisan’s journeyman, perhaps more than I care to know.

  Valentin is still thinking about grinding paint pigments. “Trevisan has me busy experimenting with grinding other combinations of pigments with quartzite from Ticino and shards of Murano glass,” he tells me.

  “Lucky that Master Trevisan found you, then, especially since he has no sons of his own.”

  “Yes,” Valentin ponders my analysis, his index finger pressed to his chin. “It’s rare for a painter to achieve the level of success that Trevisan has without a handful of sons. It’s not that he wouldn’t like to have children,” he says. “It’s just that I don’t think he wants a wife. See you in a bit.” Valentin exits the boat at the edge of the market. He salutes me before darting into a thick crowd, narrowly missing a careening man staggering under the weight of a cart laden with cabbages.

  I moor the boat to a lilting post near the docks. I recognize the market as the place where two of the city’s best pigments-sellers operate their shops, providing painters, glass painters and enamellers with colors and supplies. I have heard that a number of pawnbrokers and jewelers cluster in the streets nearby. I exit the boat, then wend my way through a maze of narrow streets, looking back to make sure Valentin is nowhere in sight.