A Trial in Venice

by Roberta Rich

  Asher’s profits were modest, while the risk he would not be repaid was great. His customers came from all classes—farmers from the countryside in need of a few ducats to get them through the winter without starving, matrons who required money to pay for a daughter’s wedding, noblewomen who had overspent at their dressmaker’s and young nobles who proved unlucky at the baccarat and roulette tables. The Church of Rome forbids Christians to lend money. The book of Leviticus says: “And if thy brother be waxen poor and fall in decay with thee; then thou shall relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Yet, take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear God, that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shall not give him thy money on usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.”

  Jewish law, as set out in the Mishnah, allowed interest to be charged on loans to non-Jews. And so the Council of Ten permitted Jews to lend money but with strict regulations. The maximum interest Asher could charge, by annual decree, was five percent, regardless of the risk of default or the demand for money. He and his family would always live in a simple room on the top floor of a rickety building in the Ghetto Nuovo. His wife, Tzipporah, would always worry about the price of their Shabbat chicken and always struggle to find the money for their sons’ Hebrew lessons. She would never put a joint of lamb on her Passover table. They would always eat bread pudding and not seed cake. Every pregnancy would be a cause for worry about another mouth at the table.

  The customer in front of Asher shifted his weight from one foot to the next, awaiting Asher’s decision on whether the stone would suffice as a pledge. Not wanting to draw attention to herself, Hannah circled the two and waited behind a pillar, standing at such an angle that she could observe both men’s faces without being seen. She need not have bothered to be so discreet. They were so engrossed in conversation they paid no attention to those around them.

  The stone in Asher’s hand—Hannah remembered his hands, butter soft in this city of callus-handed men—was a square-cut beryl. He held it up the better to study it. Asher nodded at the client, a middle-aged nobleman wearing a fox-trimmed cloak. The man was robust and well-fed and waited impatiently, patting his huge belly. He bent toward Asher and whispered something Hannah could not hear. The intimacy of their posture, Asher’s bantering reply and the man’s smile suggested a familiarity beyond moneylender and customer.

  “My tailor and butcher press me to satisfy my accounts,” the nobleman said.

  “It is not a perfect stone—there is a flaw in the middle. But because you are an old client, I will advance you two ducats. Only for thirty days, mind.” Asher waved a hand to shoo away a fly that had settled on his tiny scales.

  “Five ducats,” said the nobleman.

  Asher performed the traditional pantomime of honest outrage by bunching up his fingers, holding them to his left eye socket, twisting his wrist and pretending to pluck out his eye and place it on the table in front of him. “Do you want my right eye, as well?” He put the beryl on the velvet cushion in front of him. “I’ll give you three ducats for your audacity.”

  “Come, let us settle on an amount that will make us both wretched. What say you to four?”

  “Three,” said Asher, “but I will throw in for nothing a little something else.” He winked. The customer nodded.

  So Asher was still playing the informer. Hannah caught the glint as Asher handed the gold coins to him. The nobleman was too grand to carry his own purse. He beckoned to his manservant. After picking up the coins, the nobleman dropped them into his purse, which he handed back to his servant.

  Asher said, “Sir, here is your little nugget.”

  As her brother had once explained, all knowledge was a precious commodity if one knew the proper ear to whisper it in. The notion that ordinary household secrets and miscellaneous facts were articles of trade like silk, mace and freshwater pearls had come as a surprise to Hannah. So great was Asher’s motley collection of spies he was welcome in every palazzo in Venice without troubling himself to make an appointment, or so he claimed.

  The portly man nodded and motioned his servant to leave them. Asher passed him a folded piece of paper. The nobleman opened it, read it and then tucked it into the pocket of his shirt.

  “Interesting information, my friend.” The nobleman smiled. “You Jews have your uses. Is there anything that happens in this world you do not know?”

  “Yes,” said Asher, “as a matter of fact there is. Deep in the heart of the Circassian Mountains, beyond the Black Sea, in a deep cave on the westerly side of the mountain, lives the tribal chieftain of the Yürüks. I do not know him or the number of sons he has, or the ages of his wives, or his name or the size of his flock of sheep.”

  The nobleman laughed. “And while we are gossiping, what news of our mutual friend?”

  “A fortnight ago I lent him fifty ducats.” Asher inclined his chin toward the moneylenders down the aisle. “All the others turned him down, but for the interest rate he offered, I decided to take a chance. Sixty days only. I pray I do not regret it.”

  Tread carefully on this particular knife’s edge, my brother. Do not be too bold with your loans, or too easeful with this nobleman with a paunch as rounded as a woman nearing her confinement. Powerful, debt-ridden, money-owing noblemen are obsequious when they come, hands outstretched, for loans, but when they cannot pay, they cry for the blood of the Jewish moneylenders. When the lender dies, the debt is extinguished. It does not serve you, Asher, to gamble everything if your life is forfeit.

  “Mmm, no small amount,” said the nobleman.

  “He claimed it was for gaming debts,” Asher replied.

  “I think not. No one sees him at the casinos anymore.”

  “A woman?”

  “Is it not either one or the other?” said the nobleman. They grinned at each other in the conspiratorial manner of men.

  Once the nobleman and Asher shook hands, bidding each other farewell, Hannah moved from behind the pillar. Asher, still sitting, glanced up and looked straight at her without recognition, seeing no doubt an ordinary Jewish matron.

  How best to approach a brother carrying an old grudge and possessed of a volatile temper? As a boy, her brother had had an unforgiving nature, seeking out slights in innocent remarks, taking umbrage at nothing, holding grudges over long-forgotten trivialities. In Asher’s nature, goodness was at war with pride; kindness and generosity struggled with arrogance. The benevolent side of Asher won more often than did the wicked. This was why she had loved him as a child and had continued to love him in spite of the hurt she felt over his letter.

  Hannah walked closer to him, giving Asher a moment more to recognize her. They had both changed. It had been years since they had last seen each other. “Don’t you remember your sister Hannah?” she asked. He studied her face. Then he tried to spring to his feet, but Hannah held him in his chair with her hand on his shoulder.

  “Hannahlah!” He whispered her childhood nickname and rose to embrace her. “I cannot believe you are here.”

  Sometimes the heart responds before memory can intrude.

  “How wonderful to see you,” he said.

  A second went by as she waited for Asher to recall their ugly dispute. When he was a child, she had been able to read his thoughts, which reflected openly on his face. But now there was a shifting aspect to his expression that she could not decipher—first a look of joy; then, as he recalled their quarrel, a look of anger; then—what? Joy again?

  Asher grinned, showing his strong teeth. His fine dark eyes shone. He glanced around. “Where is Isaac?”

  “Isaac is ill. He will be joining me as soon as he can.” Hannah would not tell Asher the truth until she was sure where matters stood between them. If Asher thought it odd she had made such a long voyage on her own, he did not show it.

  He stood and hugged her. “What a sight we must be—curmudgeonly brother and prodigal sister embracing.” His beard scratched her cheek; he smelled of lemons and
baby artichokes fried in butter and garlic and last night’s soup. “What brings you back to Venice?”

  “I have come to fetch my son, Matteo.”

  “You have a son? But I thought…” He did not voice what he was thinking: that she had been barren for years.

  “He is not a child I gave birth to but a child Isaac and I have raised as though he were our own.”

  “We did hear rumours of a baby after you left.” He spoke in a low voice.

  Hannah explained she had fled the ghetto after rescuing Matteo from his uncle Niccolò. “Matteo has been taken by a woman named Francesca and the Marquis Foscari. I must find my son before he comes to harm.” The expression on Asher’s face, half startled, half alarmed, prompted her to ask, “Do you know them?”

  Asher considered her question. “Foscari, yes. Francesca? No.” He squeezed her upper arm in sympathy. “I am sorry to hear about your son’s disappearance. I am sure you love him as much as if you had birthed him yourself.”

  Hannah wanted to inquire what Asher knew of Foscari, but first she must secure shelter. “May I stay with you tonight?”

  “Now that you are in trouble you come to me?” His words were said in jest, but not far below their surface was another emotion altogether. Resentment? Anger? She was having trouble reading the mood of this brother she had once been so close to.

  “Come here a moment.” Asher pulled her deeper under the sotoportego, where the sun did not penetrate even on the brightest days. The stones gave off a clammy smell. “I have something to tell you.” Not meeting her eyes, Asher said, “Hannah, I owe you an apology. After you left for Constantinople, Rivka came over. You remember her? A squint in one eye? Sells eel pies in the market? Wife of old Emmanuel, the knife sharpener?”

  Hannah nodded.

  “It was Emmanuel who stole Papa’s violin. He was not himself, Rivka said. His mind wandered…he could not remember his own name some days. He just ambled into our house and grabbed it from the cupboard. Rivka was so ashamed she needed months to work up the courage to return it to me. By that time I had already written that letter to you. I wanted to send an apology, but, God forgive me, my pride would not allow me.”

  Accept the olive branch, she told herself; do not question the spirit in which it is offered. The old Asher, the one she remembered from long ago, would not have been so quick to apologize even when wrong. Yet it seemed his regret was heartfelt. Hannah put a hand on his arm. “Asher, I forgive you.” But did she? He had accused her of being a thief. “Do you remember that night you fought with our brother Chaim over a toy and Mama begged you to stop? She took the broom and started smacking both of you, trying to separate you, but you were worse than street mongrels and would not stop. She began to cry. Papa picked up his violin and started to play. He played and played all through the screaming and crying and snotty noses and Mama weeping and trying to get close enough to thump you with the broom.” Hannah had hated Asher for making her mother cry in such a pitiful, helpless way.

  She could tell by his face, now relaxed, that he, too, remembered that night. “He played so sweetly, better than any of the klezmorim.“

  “You stopped fighting to listen. Papa kept playing song after song. We girls danced. You danced with Mama.”

  “I miss Papa,” Asher said.

  “Not a day goes by that I do not think of him with his fiddle in one arm, his bow in the other, tapping his foot in time to ‘La Brandôlina,’ ” Hannah said. “I cannot hear a violin without tearing up.”

  “Now I have Papa’s violin back, but I do not know how to play it.”

  “One of your sons will learn.”

  “They are all savages, more interested in brandishing swords than violin bows. Besides, where would the money come from for lessons?”

  They laughed together.

  “Of course you shall stay with us,” Asher said.

  “Are you sure? I do not want to put you and Tzipporah—” She was about to say “in danger” but instead said, “I do not want to inconvenience you.” She left unsaid her thoughts: I killed a nobleman and might be arrested, bringing death to myself and danger to the ghetto. I have raised a Christian child, and not just any Christian child but the heir to the di Padovani fortune, as a Jew. That alone is enough to see me hanged.

  “Nonsense. We would be delighted.”

  Hannah let out a sigh of relief. With Asher’s words it was as though her raging fever had at last broken. Her anger toward her brother drained away, but had peace been too easily achieved?

  “Come, we must go. The sun is nearly down.” Asher gathered up the tools of his trade—scales, pincers, strongbox and purse—and the articles he had taken in pledge that day. “To arrive from such a distance in time for Shabbat is a mitzvah, a blessing.” He bid goodbye to the moneylender at the next table, a reedy-looking young man, then made to leave. “Come upstairs. The boys have grown so since you saw them last. You will not recognize them. And—” he dropped his voice “—Tzipporah has grown large again.” He rolled his eyes heavenward. “May it be a girl. I never thought I would say such a thing, but to have five boys is like living with a pack of noisy dogs.”

  Hannah said, “I can imagine.” But she could not. Matteo was a studious boy who played with his friends and excelled at his lessons. He was a chess player, a solemn walker of the tightrope, a boy who loved stories, a boy who loved his mother. From the moment they emerged from Tzipporah’s womb, Asher’s sons had been boisterous. Not fond of their Hebrew lessons, incapable of sitting still for the old Rabbi’s sermons, they tossed their kippot into the air the moment they left the class. They were fond of practising their archery skills on the occasional bird foolhardy enough to fly into the ghetto, and threatened to toss down the well little girls who ventured into their part of the campo. “Five? I don’t understand. You had…” Her voice trailed off.

  “We lost Jacob and Saul to the pestilence last year.”

  Hannah felt tears form in her eyes.

  “The plague arrived in the Ghetto Nuovo on the Day of Atonement. Like a terrible fire, it licked its way through every household and left heartbreak and misery behind. We were fortunate to lose only two children. Some families?” He shook his head. “Parents dead. The children forced to wander the streets, living on scraps. The authorities decided the epidemic was the fault of the Jews. As punishment we were forbidden to buy, sell or trade for six months. No one earned as much as a scudo. Many families survived the pestilence only to die of starvation.”

  Hannah touched Asher’s cheek. “How old were your sons?”

  Asher glanced away. “Jacob was seven. Saul, old enough to become bar mitzvah.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “So you see—” he smiled wryly “—death is thinning the ranks of our family fast enough without me helping matters along with quarrels.”

  “Not all families sing in harmony, especially quarrelsome Jewish ones. I accept your apology. Even as I read your letter, I prayed that someday we would be reconciled.”

  “We shall speak no more of the matter.” He cleared his throat and recited a passage familiar to them both: “ ‘Let melancholy and passion born of spleen and bile be banished from our hearts on the Sabbath day.’ ”

  Looking around to make sure no one was observing them, Hannah took him by the shoulders. “Now give me a kiss to welcome me back.” Asher proffered his cheek. Always he was the one who presented the cheek, never the one who gave the kiss. Would Asher have eventually written a letter of reconciliation or would they have remained forever estranged if she had not come to Venice? Would she forget his letter or was their relationship like a broken mug, whose mended crack would always be visible?

  Asher reached for her arm and steered her across the campo to the staircase leading to his loghetto. “Tzipporah has always been fond of you.”

  “I will help her with the cooking and the children.” Asher assumed his wife would welcome Hannah, but he did not spend most of his day trying to keep a dark,
musty apartment clean and the boys fed and clothed. Five boys and another baby on the way—all crammed into a space barely big enough to contain sleeping pallets and a charcoal brazier. A house guest who would stay who knows how long? No, Hannah did not expect an ecstatic welcome.

  “We can always squeeze one more pickle into the barrel.” They stopped in front of Asher’s building.

  “I hope you are right.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Villa di Padovani,

  San Lorenzo, the Veneto

  FOSCARI USED FALSE PROMISES to conceal his intentions the way grand ladies used beauty marks to hide their smallpox scars. Any remaining trust Cesca had in him vanished with Palladio’s visit. She lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, hands clenched at her side, humiliation washing over her. What a fool to have trusted him again after he had betrayed her in Constantinople.

  Cesca had fantasized about a beautiful, safe place, a villa where nothing bad could ever happen. It was now as if a loaded miller’s cart had barrelled out of nowhere without so much as a wheel creak of warning and crushed her. This is what occurs when a woman trusts a man.

  Foscari rolled over in bed, his face looking naked without the silver nose. His plague amulet of hessonite garnet and sapphire hung from a gold chain around his neck. He flung an arm over her hip. She moved away. The way he breathed! Why had she never noticed? He snorted like a spavined old canal pony pulling a barge laden with firewood. Worst of all, his tapering white fingers were unstained by ink, which signified he had still not visited the notary. If Foscari’s promises were diamonds, there would be a necklace of blinding brightness hanging from Cesca’s neck.

  Before he could awaken and grope for her, Cesca threw back the covers, rose and tugged out his velvet purse from where he, the simpleton, always hid it: under his commode.