The Poetry of Secrets

by Cambria Gordon

  Thankfully, the weather cooperated and other than a torn sail that took a day to repair, there were no other delays.

  Beatriz successfully fended off unwanted advances from sailors who’d been at sea too long. She even held a daily Bible study group for the men. Papá befriended someone who ran the galley and told the man everything he ever wanted to know about turning grapes into wine. Mamá helped Esther with the children and Aron watched the horizon for potential storms or enemy ships. Judah charmed a crusty former sea captain from Holland who played cards with the boy.

  The crew and passengers ate biscuits, sardines, and lentils mostly, but twice a week were given beef or pork. The two Jewish families could hardly refuse the pork, as the rations were so small. So they ate what they were given. Aron said the Torah gave them permission not to starve. They drank water and wine, the grapes helping to prevent scurvy. One night they feasted on fresh bass caught en route. There was a large vat of rice to go with it.

  Washing was also rationed, as there were only enough basins and water for sponge baths once a week. Since the only women on board were Esther, Mamá, Beatriz, and Eva, they were able to wash in their own basin inside a supply closet.

  When a crew member climbed a mast and announced, “Terra ho,” everyone cheered with great gusto. Land was here.

  Judah pointed at the coastline. “It’s a castle, Mamá!”

  “That’s the Doge’s Palace,” said Esther. “Where the ruler of Venice makes the laws.”

  “And what are those skinny boats?” asked the boy.

  “Gondolas,” she answered. “People ride them around town, instead of horses and carriages.”

  Beatriz joined them at the railing. “You mean there’s even more water than meets the eye?”

  “Canals,” answered Aron. “A whole system of them.”

  It did look magical. Shiny tiled domes, imposing clock towers, matching red rooftops. Like a floating city. But when Eva stepped foot on her first patch of solid ground in twenty-five days, she was wistful. She should have been entering Italy with Diego. He was the one who first told her about the wonders of this country.

  “Today’s my eighth birthday,” said Mauricio. He was an odd boy, serious like his nobleman father, Signore Correr.

  “You had just turned seven when we started working together,” said Eva. Had it really been almost a year since she’d arrived in Venice? Her seventeenth birthday had come and gone. But Eva had chosen that day to finally tell Mamá and Papá about Diego. It felt like a present to herself. At least now they had stopped trying to find suitable Jewish husbands for her. For the time being.

  Mauricio closed his booklet. “Soon I won’t need a tutor.”

  “Well, for now, we’ll stick to our regular schedule. I’ll see you tomorrow bright and early. And enjoy your pastel de cumple, your birthday cake.” Besides working on reading and writing in Italian, Eva was also teaching him Spanish.

  Eva made her way upstairs to her attic room in the Correr mansion. Aron’s brother, Daniel, had arranged her employment with Signore Correr when he learned she was lettered. The Corrers needed a tutor and Daniel needed an infusion of ducats to float a loan for an important merchant. Gregorio Correr was more obliged to give Daniel the funds when he saw how nicely Eva got along with his son. Daniel had a good reputation in the Veneto region, having established small loan-banks in numerous cities. Of course, he could never be as rich as the non-Jewish bankers, who lent great sums of money to the Church, but he was quite comfortable. He helped her parents and Beatriz move into a small flat in the Lido district, where Papá was now working for a Jewish cheesemaker. Papá’s knowledge of grapes was helping to bring a new idea to cheese eaters: the right wine pairing. Mamá spent her days gathering with other Jewish women to share stories and sew. There weren’t nearly as many Jewish souls here as there had been in Portugal, but there were enough for Mamá to feel a sense of camaraderie. Beatriz still prayed in church every day, mostly for Eva to get married and bear children sooner rather than later. Aron and Esther, Judah, and baby Ruth, whom the Perezes still saw regularly, remained living at Daniel’s house.

  Eva liked to wander the Correr hallways, crowded with devotional paintings. There were works by da Messina and Bellini. The names meant nothing to her, but she knew Diego would have been thrilled to see them. Diego once mentioned a wealthy family in Florence who were good to the Jews and patrons of artists. But she couldn’t remember the name. The details of their conversations were getting harder and harder to recall. Every night she scoured her mind before she fell asleep, for any gesture, any expression, any spoken word of his she could conjure.

  Signora Correr poked her head out of her bedroom. “Eva? Is that you? Can you come down here, please?”

  Eva descended the stairs once more, careful not to trip. Her dresses were plainer than they had been in Trujillo, though still long. Because all Jews of the city were required to sew a distinguishing yellow circle, the size of a small round of bread, onto their clothing, Mamá felt it best not to draw too much attention to themselves with colorful fabric beneath it.

  Eva’s normally elegant employer leaned against the doorjamb, still in her sleeping gown, her hair uncombed. “I’ve just received word of my mother’s passing. I must go immediately to Ferrara. Please take Mauricio to my husband’s place of work and inform him. You can leave the boy with his father for the afternoon. Then hurry home. I know this isn’t normally your duty, but the bambinaia has gone to buy food and I’m short two staff at the moment.”

  The bambinaia was the nanny, Antonella. She and Eva were friends, though no one could take the place of Atika.

  “Death has terrible timing, I’m afraid,” added the woman.

  Indeed it did, thought Eva.

  Even after nearly a year, Eva had not gotten used to the city. One could hardly call it a city, actually, but more a maze of islands connected by bridges and canals. She was forever getting lost. Alleys cut through buildings, then ended abruptly. And always there was the smell of fish penetrating her clothes even when she sprinkled her dresses with rose water.

  Eva gripped Mauricio’s hand as they walked through the Piazza San Marco. A spice peddler called out to them in Italian, spezie, spezie. Eva had picked up the language fairly easily, since it was so similar to Spanish. But when they had first arrived, Daniel spoke to them in Portuguese and even a bit of Hebrew. Out on the streets, in addition to Italian, one could hear German, French, Greek, Dalmatian, Albanian, and Arabic. Everyone seemed to be fleeing from something. Venice felt like those soups Mamá used to make when she threw in everything that was in the larder.

  Despite her difficulty in navigating through town, Eva never tired of seeing the grand Palazzo Ducale, or Doge’s Palace. The way the sunlight reflected off the white limestone and pink marble was nearly blinding, as if God were right there with her. But those moments were the only time she felt the presence of something greater. The Perezes did sometimes accompany Daniel to one of the scuolas, or sinagogas, but her heart was not in it. Without Diego in her life, Eva felt like she was merely going through the motions.

  The Doge’s Palace was where Signore Correr could be found most afternoons. As a member of the Great Council, he was one of four hundred wealthy Venetian families who advised the chief magistrate.

  Eva and Mauricio approached the building. Wrought-iron loggias and a series of balconies dotted the imposing facade. The whole palazzo reminded Eva of a giant cake.

  Mauricio made a growling sound. “Guess who I am.”

  “The monstrous beast that’s carved into the colonnade behind you?”

  “How’d you know?” he said, stomping his foot.

  Eva giggled. The front entrance was locked, so they went around the side by a lagoon.

  “Over there.” Mauricio pointed. A door was ajar. They stepped through it and found themselves in an enormous courtyard.

  A black-robed gentleman, on his way to something in a hurry, stopped abruptly. “Who let you in?”
He craned his neck for anyone who might have made the grievous error of allowing them to pass.

  “Mi scusi,” began Eva. “There was no one by the arco.”

  “This is the back entrance,” said the man. “I must speak to the guard, lazy man.”

  Mauricio spoke up. “I’ve come to see my father. Signore Gregorio Correr.”

  The boy had already acquired the imperiousness of the wealthy. No amount of tutoring could make him unlearn it.

  The robed gentleman masked his surprise with an insincere smile. “Well, in that case, follow me.”

  Signore Correr met them outside the Senate Chamber. Once Eva had conveyed the Signora’s news and dispatched Mauricio to his father, the robed man pointed her down the hallway. “Please go this direction to exit.”

  “Of course,” mumbled Eva. The whole place was very intimidating, and she was anxious to be gone from there. But before she had walked fifty meters, a painting to her left caught her eye. She paused to admire it.

  “Fretta, signorina. Hurry!” said the robed man behind her. “I don’t have all day.”

  Despite his impatience, she continued to stare at the work of art. The painting was striking because it was the first time Eva had ever seen something on canvas that was not religious in nature. It showed two ladies in profile, gazing out at an unknown subject. They were surrounded by various animals and a servant boy. The pearls around the tops of the women’s gowns appeared wet, as if the work had been completed yesterday. Though she knew the paint was dry, Eva had to stop herself from reaching out to touch it. One woman, in rich red velvet, perhaps the mother, was playing with two dogs. While the other younger woman, in a dress with green trim, held a white kerchief—

  Eva suddenly felt weak. Could it be? That second woman. The one with auburn hair escaping the small hat she wore on her head. Her face. It was unmistakable.

  It was Eva’s.

  She could hardly form words. “Wh … who … who is the artist of this painting?”

  The black-robed man bore a disdainful expression. “How should I know such a thing? I do not procure the art here. I am the secretary for the Great Council.”

  There was no signature on the canvas, nor a plaque on the bottom of the frame. “Is there anyone else who might be able to help us?” She felt parched. Marooned on an island. Desperate for water. Like when Yuçe took back his Talmud.

  He took out a watch from the pocket of his robe. “I really must get back.”

  She grabbed his arm. “But surely a colleague of yours will know?”

  As he jerked away from her grasp, a uniformed guard appeared at the end of the corridor. “Everything all right, Signore Antonio?”

  “Escort this impertinent woman out immediately. Then get back to your post.” With that, the secretary returned to the chamber in a huff.

  The guard gripped Eva tightly beneath her elbow and led her to the front door.

  “Wait,” Eva pleaded. “You don’t know who painted that picture, do you?”

  He continued walking. “The one with the two ladies? It arrived a few months ago.”

  “From where?”

  He stopped. “Why, the studio of Carpaccio.” He seemed proud to know the answer, prove himself worthy of his post, at least in her eyes if not the secretary general’s.

  “Here in Venice?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Hand-delivered by the artist himself.”

  Eva stood befuddled in the middle of the piazza. The square was teeming with people, yet there was no one to help her. The only person she knew in Venice who might have reason to know the artist Carpaccio was Signore Correr, and she certainly could not go back inside the building and ask him for an introduction.

  She began to run, not knowing her destination. Abuela’s old admonition—your impulsivity will be the death of you—made her laugh. It was the only way she knew how to live. Her legs carried her across bridges and down alleyways, pausing only so she could ask strangers if they knew where Carpaccio’s workroom might be. After nearly thirty minutes of what felt like going in circles, a dapper gentleman directed her to a sotoportego, or underpass. She emerged, panting, in front of a tall building with brick on the bottom half and ochre-colored stucco on the top. Two Moorish-shaped windows with pointed arches flanked an open door. She pushed aside the iron grating. Linseed oil and varnish assaulted her nose. To her left was a room with half a dozen men in various states of sketching or painting. Eva didn’t bother to look at what was on the canvases. She scanned the faces of the painters. No one there she recognized.

  She hurried to the room on the right.

  A tall, broad-shouldered man, brown hair tied in a cord, stood at an easel. He held a palette in the crook of his left arm and a brush in his right hand. His back was to her.

  Her breathing ceased.

  There was no sound save for the pulsing in her temples.

  He must have smelled roses. Because he turned around before his name even fell from her lips.

  A small child, dark curls falling over his eyes, runs through the sitting room where Eva works at her writing desk. At sixty-five, she is two years younger than Abuela was when she passed away. One shoulder is slightly higher than the other, but other than the wrinkles of time and her white bun, she looks much the same as she did when she was sixteen. Her Turkish friends may be content to sit in the square, drinking kahve, but there is far too much writing to be done.

  A paper flutters down to the floor in the boy’s wake. Suppler than the parchment Eva used in Trujillo, the pages bear a watermark of the Italian paper mill Fabriano. She liked the feel of it so much, she carried a ream with her when she sailed from Venice to Constantinople. Leaving Italy and migrating a third time was not her choice, but anyone listening could hear the drumbeat of the Inquisition approaching Rome. She is finished fleeing. Besides being too old to travel, she finally lives in a country where Jews are welcome.

  But oh, how she misses Spain. Especially when she visits Beatriz’s grave. It has been many years since her sister passed, even longer since Mamá and Papá died in Venice. Beatriz remained devoted to Eva’s children until her fever returned, a remnant of the sweating sickness she contracted as a child. Though her sister is buried in a church cemetery in Constantinople, Eva always puts a rock on her headstone, the way Mamá did for Ruy in the Jewish tradition. There is no one to clean his grave now, for there are no more Jews in Spain. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella took care of that when they expelled every last one of them in 1492.

  Across from Eva, near the window of the sitting room, stands her husband, Diego. He is painting the minarets outside. They share a smile at the way their grandson, Soli, never sits still.

  The boy darts outside, passing through a gate, absentmindedly touching a tile mounted on their front post. The tile reads Benveniste, their family surname, taken from Diego’s mother, Reina, before she converted.

  When the nuns from the convent near the Juan de Carvajal bridge asked Diego his name, he told them Benveniste. During the two months he languished there, recovering from the cannon shot, they never knew the man they cared for was once an Altamirano. When he was strong enough to ride a horse, he went to Lisbon to look for Isabel. The couple living in the ben Cardoza house did not know where she was or where the Perez family had fled. His friend Paolo had volunteered to serve the Reconquista and died on the battlefield in Granada. Diego never received Eva’s note.

  He decided to sail to Florence, the city where they had planned to run away together. Perhaps she might think to look for him there. But he met the artist Vittore Carpaccio on the cargo ship. The painter had hand-delivered an altarpiece to a Portuguese church and was returning home to Venice. Diego was out of funds. He could not refuse the apprenticeship offer.

  He watches his wife as she writes. The day she appeared at his workroom under the sotoportego felt like divine intervention. Not free will at all. Perhaps the Christians had been right about God all along.

  A publisher pulls down the pressure ba
r on his new Dutch press. He is on the final page of this particular manuscript. The printing process has been slower than usual because he keeps stopping to read the pages. It is a stunning tale of the Spanish Inquisition. A Turkish merchant trader by the name of Nissim Benveniste brought it to his attention. The publisher knew at once it must be spread all over the world.

  A nine-year-old girl stands with her grandfather watching the night sky. “Mira,” she says—look—pointing to a particular pretty arrangement of stars. He swats her hand down. “Don’t do that. Ever.”

  She glances around. They are in a field. There are no people for miles. “Why not?” she asks.

  He shrugs. “My mother always told me never to point at stars. She learned it from her mother, I guess.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” says the girl, kicking a tumbleweed. Lots of things her abuelo does are strange. Like sticking rocks on the graves of their dead horses. And refusing to eat jamón at the Christmas table. He also uses funny words like te rogo instead of por favor. And sometimes he will tell her she was born kon mazal i ventura, with good luck. She knows ventura means fortune, but she has never heard anyone in school use the word mazal. She takes her grandfather’s hand. It doesn’t matter how funny his habits are. He is her favorite person in the world.

  A masterpiece of Renaissance art can now be viewed at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Feast of the Gods, by Giovanni Bellini. The large canvas is one of the few mythological subjects painted in Venice in the early 1500s. Rich color emphasizes the tension and eroticism of this gathering of Jupiter, Mercury, and others, based on a story by the Roman poet Ovid. The Duke of Ferrara, who commissioned the painting, asked for two of the gods to be clothed differently and Bellini refused. Art historians have identified an area that has been reworked by, they believe, one or more artists in Bellini’s school, possibly either Dosso Dossi or the Jew, Diego Benveniste. See if you can spot it. Exhibition runs through June 2.