The Venetian

by Mark Tricarico

  They were on yet another corner. Clusters of men huddled in conversation on the opposite side of the street. Lining the avenue, the buildings stood shoulder to shoulder in fighting formation. The color of the homes changed from one to the next, dark windows like hollowed out eyes. Warm breaths of sunlight scrabbled through breaks in the buildings, illuminating sections of street.

  Bercu led them to a small table just beyond the reach of the shadows cast by the buildings. Paolo’s senses were once more challenged by the exotic tang of spice, cardamom and cinnamon, cumin and turmeric mixed with the earthiness of the streets. Bercu sat with his back to the sun, his face immersed in shadow. Paolo squinted at the dark silhouette.

  “Tell me,” Bercu began, “why are you here?”

  “I told you. Simply to deliver Francesco’s message which, now that I think of it, I never…”

  “Yes, yes,” Bercu waved impatiently. “That he wishes to speak with me. I am sorry that I anticipated your message and did not give you the opportunity to deliver it. When I speak with Francesco, I will tell him that you performed admirably.” A sly smile stole across his face. “However I suspect that you do not care what I tell him.” Bercu sat back, mildly amused, and gave Paolo an appraising look.

  Paolo was unsure of how to respond—it was all very odd. The Jew was right of course, he cared little for what Francesco did or did not believe. But where was this conversation headed? Why was he sitting in a dusty café still speaking to a Jewish moneylender when the message he was sent to deliver had already been received and acknowledged? Surely this man had more important affairs to attend to than planting riddles in Paolo’s mind.

  He was about to ask Bercu exactly that when there appeared a delightfully scented and steaming dish of food. Paolo didn’t remember the old man ordering anything, and he certainly hadn’t. He would not have known what to ask for.

  “Thank you Cham,” Bercu said with a smile. He gestured toward the food. “Please.”

  Paolo eyed the moneylender. “Do people always give you food without your asking for it?”

  Bercu smiled. “I am known here. Cham is a friend.”

  “Dolma?”

  “Yes, and quite good.” Paolo realized he was hungry, the aroma something he couldn’t place but inviting all the same. The grape leaves stuffed with rice, onion, and minced lamb was a favorite dish of his.

  “Please,” Bercu said again, gesturing to the plate. “You will enjoy the seasoning I think.”

  It was delicious. “Ah,” said Bercu, “I can see that you like it.”

  “I have made it myself. But not quite like this.”

  “No,” Bercu said in mock surprise. “You are not a cook as well?”

  “I dabble.”

  “Very good. However, perhaps you dabble differently than we do. The rice, onion and meat mixture is seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley and,” he held up a finger, “cinnamon.”

  “Yes, the cinnamon is new. It is delicious. I must say that when I saw the food arrive, I was expecting something…different.”

  “Ha! Our reputation in the kitchen precedes us,” laughed Bercu, slapping his hand down on the small table. “Yes, as Sephardic Jews in the Mediterranean, our cuisine is greatly influenced by the ingredients and flavors of the Orient and North Africa. A fact I see that you as an Italian find pleasing.”

  “The spice trade.”

  “Precisely! It is what Venice exists for, is it not so?”

  “I am beginning to realize that.” Paolo was becoming more comfortable, the moneylender an amiable sort. “So tell me, now that you have received the message I had come to deliver, why is it that I am still sitting here with you, enjoying dolma, and talking about nothing in particular on a typical day when you would otherwise be engaged in important matters of business?”

  Bercu smiled. “I told you Signore Avesari. You intrigue me.”

  “Is it I that intrigue you or the murder of my brother?” It came unbidden, an accusation.

  Bercu’s face darkened. “I am truly sorry. I meant no offense. It is a horrible thing.”

  His own emotions, Paolo was coming to realize, while not as wildly fluctuating as those of his father, were still somewhat unreliable. “No, it is I that am sorry. Yes, it is a horrible thing as you say. I am not myself lately as you might imagine.”

  “Of course.” Bercu cocked his head, peered at Paolo across the table. “Tell me though signore, why do you associate with that buffoon? Your father is known throughout Italy as a master of his craft. Surely he wishes for you to follow him.”

  “He does. I, however, do not wish it.”

  “Ah.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by a woman’s voice, sweet and honeyed, but firm underneath. “Father?”

  Paolo turned to see a young woman of 19 or so approach quickly, a full mane of ink black hair glistening as though wet. She had sharp green eyes and a delicate chin. Her nose was that of her father’s, so that some may have thought it prevented her from being truly beautiful. She wore a simple linen shift that fell to her ankles. As shapeless as the garment was, it could not hide the sinuous body beneath moving with an effortless grace.

  “Yes my darling?”

  “It is Yosef. He needs to speak with you.” She glanced curiously at Paolo before turning back to her father. She leaned forward, lowering her voice as though conveying the deepest of secrets. “He says it is quite urgent.”

  Bercu chuckled. Paolo was coming to find that this was a man of good humor, quite unlike the shrewd and deceptive sort Francesco had described. “With Yosef it is always urgent,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. Paolo had the impression that the moneylender could be quite indulgent with those he cared for.

  He rose from the table, as did Paolo. “I will see him.” He looked at Paolo. “Now I must take my leave Signore Aversari, but before I go, may I present my daughter Chaya.” Paolo smiled and bowed. Bercu’s daughter responded with a suspicious nod. “Her name means life and she is mine.”

  “Father…”

  “Yes, yes,” he waved at her, “I know. You are my only child however and therefore must indulge me.” They turned to go before Bercu turned back. “You know the way back signore?”

  “Yes, thank you,” although he didn’t.

  “Until we meet again then,” said Bercu with a smile, and they strode off.

  Paolo watched them leave, once more bemused by his new circumstances. The woman seemed more the type Francesco had described than her father. Chaya. It was a lovely name. And unfortunately, she was also the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  “It was a pleasure signorina,” he called after them. If she heard him, she gave no indication.

  Nine

  The church was quiet this time of morning. Tomaso sat motionless in the front pew, nothing moving save his hands wringing one another with greater and greater vigor. He glanced down, forced them apart like unruly siblings. The sunlight streamed in through high windows on either side of the building, angling down toward his inert form, meeting at the shoulders, heating the place at the base of his neck—Tomaso, the anointed one. It was a cruel jest.

  Now, as when Donatella had died, this place gave him little solace. Yet he came, wishing, perhaps even praying, that he could receive just a small portion of the peace that others so clearly found here amidst the flickering flames and kindly saints. They gazed down, saddened stone eyes upon parishioners seeking some vague forgiveness, doomed from the start by their original sin, with little need to know the particulars of their crimes. They had faith, and that was enough.

  He had been slipping away, could feel it, as surely as he could feel the cooling glass cradled in his hands each day. He had gone to the Arsenale full of pain and fear and anger, sought out Paolo to…what? To see him again? To avenge Ciro? Which or neither he did not know. Now he was just full of nothing. The emptiness had mass, weight. It filled his insides, stretching him out, suffocating whatever it was that gave a man life. Now all he wanted was
to rest, to rest beside his beautiful Donatella. She was the blessed one amongst them, they had all known it, had always known it. Once she was gone, it was only a matter of time. Glass is strong, but once there is a crack, the rupture cannot be stopped. The split may be slowed, forestalled, but the glass will always break. He smiled grimly—always the glass.

  He had come here to Santa Maria e San Donato to see if there was any wonder left in him, anything to banish the emptiness. He had come to see the griffons. The church had a beautiful Byzantine mosaic floor. Venice had grown as a subject of the Greek-speaking emperors in Constantinople and drew its art and ceremonials from the Byzantine world. So Tomaso would come here, not to ponder the mysteries of faith, but when he required inspiration. He would come, pretending to worship, promising to stay for just twenty minutes but inevitably would remain, staring at the floor for three times that. He would stare at the griffons, their ochre bellies with five white stripes, checkered necks and hindquarters, their unfurled wings, majestic in their breadth, sharp talons, and snapping beaks. When he looked upon them, he was filled with hope and amazement at the capacity of man to create meaning and celebrate beauty. He did not see God when he looked up at the cross. He saw God when he looked down at the floor. They were magnificent. But today, they were only stones.

  As glorious as the griffons were, the church was known more for its bones; the bones of Saint Donatus of Arezzo, and even more famously, the bones of the dragon he supposedly had slain in Greece, each over a meter long, hanging by wire behind the stone altar. Bones—Donatella’s bones, Ciro’s bones. There would be no peace here.

  Tomaso rose to go. He hadn’t opened the workshop since the day Ciro was killed. He couldn’t. Ciro had looked upon it with his dying eyes, every corner, every wall, every piece of metal. He could not stand before his workbench. Was this the last thing he saw? They were all covered in blood. The glass that had so inspired Tomaso, had filled him with such joy, served now only to focus his horror. He would never work there again.

  He had not spoken to Paolo since the interview with the deputy at the Palazzo Ducale. He could barely remember the incident, had already begun his descent by then, each moment more like a dream, there but not. He could see that Paolo did not understand, could not understand. He no longer had the words, or the will, to explain.

  Tomaso walked from the church, out toward Murano’s Grand Canal, a scaled down version of the great Venetian waterway. He heard the soft lapping of the water and longed to be enveloped by its brine, to fill his lungs with brackish water, sucking at death greedily as an infant sucks at life. Tomaso would never visit the church again. There was nothing there for him, nothing but bones.

  Ten

  Paolo read the note for the third time. He wasn’t sure why, it was all of twelve words. He would not glean any additional meaning from reading it more than once. My father would like you to dine with us today. Three o’clock. Chaya.

  Chaya. The thought of seeing her again caused him to stir with anticipation—and apprehension. Fool. He was acting like an idiot boy. Think Paolo. He hadn’t been thinking much lately. If he were at all honest with himself, he might admit that he hadn’t been thinking for quite some time. He had rejected his father and his trade, causing a rift that had devastated his family and, according to Tomaso, killed his mother. Of course his father would say that, but wasn’t it true? They both bore the responsibility, but who bore the greater share? And why? Why did he leave? Because he was the future and his father was the past? Because the Arsenale held wonders that couldn’t be ignored, and it was his duty to explore them? That’s what he’d been telling himself all these years. Was it not a father’s duty, his sacred obligation, to steer the child down his path? Not the father’s path, the right path. There was much of the self-righteous in the philosophical conversations he held in his head, when he chose to have them, which had been more and more infrequent over the years. He no longer felt the need to justify his actions. In truth, he no longer wished to think of those days at all.

  Paolo sighed. Maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe it was simply because he was a child, and it was in a child’s nature to rebel. He didn’t know. Too many questions without answers. He had always been told that with time came clarity. A lie, however well meaning. With time the questions may have become clearer, but the answers proved as elusive as ever. He had loved his father, had wanted to please him the way Ciro had. And he had been able to, at least for a time. It didn’t last however. It couldn’t. What else could he have done save be himself? Why could his father never see that?

  And here he was now trying to picture the supple curves of a woman he didn’t know, attempting to recall the pout of her lips rather than the hate in his heart when he had heard of how Ciro had died, like an animal. He was being swept along in a dark current, the freedom and control he had so eagerly sought as a young man proving once more to be just an illusion. Had his life ever been his own?

  Think Paolo. Why was the moneylender inviting him to dine? He was a former Canever at the Arsenale now running petty errands for a man Bercu found loathsome. He was nothing. And yet, being nothing, he held the invitation in his hands, the note smelling sweetly of lemon and promise.

  ***

  SURPRISINGLY PAOLO FOUND his way back through the winding streets of the Cannaregio with little difficulty, arriving some minutes early. Again he felt the heaviness of eyes upon him, dismissed it as nothing more than the discomfort of being in an unfamiliar place, and knew he was wrong.

  He examined the narrow street more closely now. It was Venice, but not. Venice was a place where things were done in their own time. It was an old city that lived and breathed according to the natural rhythms of sea and season, the changing moods of nature. Yet this, the oldest sestieri, seemed to have been constructed with haste. He noticed again the cramped buildings, like books crammed on a shelf. Up and down, up and down they went; two stories, five stories, four stories, seven. There was no room to build out, so they built up. How high could one building go straight up? At what point would it topple from the weight of too much ambition? Twenty stories, thirty, a hundred? From what he had seen in the Arsenale, he believed anything was possible.

  “Signore? Signore Avesari?”

  Paolo turned to find Chaya emerging from the shabby orange structure behind him.

  “I’m sorry” she said. “I called to you, but you did not seem to hear me.”

  Again Paolo was struck by her beauty. Even his imagination, woefully lacking he now realized, had failed to capture its splendor.

  “I…was admiring your street.”

  Chaya swept the length of the narrow avenue with her eyes. “There is little to admire I know,” she said with a rueful smile, “but it is our home.”

  Paolo reddened. “Signorina,” he stammered, “I assure you, I meant noth…”

  “Ah, Signore Avesari!” said Bercu, clapping his hands together as he emerged from his home. “So nice of you to accept my invitation.” Paolo welcomed the interruption. He would have to be more careful about what he said to Chaya. He would not want to be misinterpreted again. Bercu was smiling broadly. He seemed genuinely pleased to see him.

  “I would invite you into my home,” Bercu said apologetically as he gestured back to the house, “but it is not in a state to receive guests I fear, so we will have to make due once more with the café.” He smiled with a nod toward his daughter. “I admit I am rather indulgent when it comes to Chaya’s other…interests, and so on occasion the housework suffers.” Chaya shot her father an annoyed glance. He ignored it, gesturing down the street to the café where they had eaten at their first meeting. “I hope you do not mind? You seemed to find the fare agreeable.” Another smile, not expecting an answer. Paolo wondered what Chaya’s other interests were. “Please, come.”

  They walked in silence, Paolo, Bercu, and Chaya, Paolo wondering what they were thinking. Once again, he could make little sense of their fellowship. They found a small table swallowed by sun, and
sat. Paolo set his forearms down on the table, feeling the warmth emanating from its surface. Heat from above, heat from below, rising temperatures from all directions he mused. He felt that he stood at the middle of something, something just on the periphery of his vision. He only hoped that once it came into focus, it wouldn’t be too late.

  “I seem to recall that you are something of a cook,” said Bercu, a wink in his voice. “So,” he began, rubbing his hands together, “I have taken the liberty to have ordered, only moments ago,” he held up a finger to emphasize the point, “Sarde in Saor. You know it well I imagine.”

  “Of course,” said Paolo with a smile, warming to the topic. It was one of his favorite dishes—marinated sardines. “A man could not claim to be a Venetian should he deny love for such a gift.”

  “Ha!” Bercu clapped loudly. “Well said my friend.”

  Chaya rolled her eyes. Paolo sensed that she had little patience for the ritual banter men found necessary before speaking of more serious matters.

  “Do you cook this yourself?” Bercu asked.

  “I do. It was one of the first dishes I learned after Risi e Bisi.” Rice and peas, the most common of Venetian soups, Bercu knew. It was said the Doge himself would always eat it on the feast day of Saint Mark.

  “Yes, and what better meal to represent the Republic.” Bercu smiled again. Sarde in Saor was a centuries-old dish favored by Venetian sailors. “Frying the fish and marinating it in olive oil and vinegar would make it last for weeks,” he lectured, “and the onions protected sailors against scurvy. Very important when your very livelihood depends on the benevolence of the sea, no?”

  Chaya snorted. Bercu lovingly patted her arm, pretending not to notice.

  “Why do you waste your time with such things?” she asked, no attempt to hide the irritation in her voice.