The Nature of Blood

by Caryl Phillips

  The grandparents of Portobuffole's principal Jewish moneylenders, Servadio and Moses, had begun to practise usury in Germany. Jews were unable to practise in either the arts or trades, no matter how skilled, for the various guilds had been deliberately established with religious affiliations to Christianity. Usury, however, because it was forbidden to Christians, remained a professional outlet for the Jews. The work was risky, and therefore profitable, but it was not physically demanding and it left time for both reading and studying. The Jews paid an excessive amount of tax on their profits, but plenty remained for them to live on. There was, however, little for them to invest in, so their money remained liquid, which further drove home the notion of the Jews maintaining a sybaritic lifestyle.

  The Jewish moneylender offered to the public an indispensable service. In Portobuffole there was not a single working family who, every now and then, did not have to take out a loan in order to survive periods of poverty. However, a dependency upon the Jews was not confined to any one section of society. After the war with the Turks, the economy of the Most Serene Republic of Venice began to falter as the opportunity for expansion in the Orient appeared to have been blocked. This led young Venetian aristocrats to begin to explore the commercial and economic prospects inland, but only with the understanding that the Jews would be able to provide large-scale capital investment. However, despite their central role in Venetian society, Jews were ever-mindful that every debtor was a potential enemy, and that the goodwill of the usurer often fed the greediness of the borrower. It remained both easy and convenient for individuals habitually to accuse the Jews of wicked doing, and subsequently to confiscate their profits, but the doge and his Council of Ten realized that they could not afford to alienate these Jews completely.

  The 'Contract of Moses' was the means by which the Jews were allowed 'freedom' to practise usury, but under strict controls. Whenever a town such as Portobuffole decided to grant a usurer's licence to a Jew, the contract between them, which was generally valid for five years and was renewable, had to be submitted to the Venetian Grand Council for ratification. The contract clearly listed the rights of the Jew proprietors and their collaborators:

  – The Jews have usury rights (sometimes exclusively) in the town for the period valid in the contract.

  – The Jews can live the way that they please and erect a synagogue.

  – The Jews are not obliged to keep the banks open on Saturdays, or during other Jewish holidays.

  – The Jews can refuse to lend to foreigners.

  – The Jews can sell securities that have not been claimed for more than one year.

  – The Jews are not held responsible for securities that are lost during fire, war, looting or robberies, or for securities that are gnawed by moths or rats (provided they keep cats in their houses).

  – The Jews have the right to receive, from the butcher, living animals for the same price paid by Christians.

  With as much care and precision, the 'Contract of Moses' listed the duties of the Jew proprietors and their collaborators:

  – The Jews cannot keep banks open on Sundays, or on Christmas, Easter or Corpus Christi Day, or during any of the four feast days set aside for Mary.

  – The Jews cannot refuse to lend money on securities with a value of less than ten ducati.

  – If the Jews refuse to do this for more than ten consecutive workdays, then they have to pay a fine of ten ducati.

  – The interest on their Jewish loans cannot exceed two and a half Venetian lire each month.

  – In the case of loans given without securities, or, in other words, written loans, the monthly interest can rise to four lire.

  – The Jews have to give loans up to one hundred ducati to the municipal government without interest.

  – It is prohibited to take sacred furniture as a security; loans for weapons are given at the discretion of the Jew.

  – A half of any fine is to be given to the town council.

  For every object received as security, the usurer was obliged to write up a receipt in Italian, which indicated the place and date of the loan, the nature of the object offered as security, the weight of it, and whether it contained any gold or silver. In addition, each usurer generally kept a personal book in which he recorded confidential information. This private record book was usually written in Hebrew characters.

  Whereas the state reluctantly admitted their need for the Jews, the church required no such diplomacy. The Franciscans, in particular, preached vehemently against the Jews, and urged that their avaricious monopoly of credit and usury be taken from them and given to a devout Christian group, who might operate without the base objective of profit. One among these Franciscan priests, a seventeen-year-old boy named Martin Tomitano of Feltre, gained much fame for his vigorous rhetoric. He was a small novice of less than one and a half metres, who, when he preached, barely reached the parapet of the pulpit. However, like many small men, he was driven by a desire to achieve great feats in the world. As a young boy, Martin Tomitano had twice witnessed his father travel to Venice to protest in vain to the Grand Council against the Jews who wished to open a bank in Feltre. Martin Tomitano was in no doubt as to the primary source of evil in the world in which he lived.

  Eventually, the boy took the name of Bernard, after a renowned Franciscan predecessor from Siena, and he began to travel from city to city, preaching in a clear, strong voice. He pronounced the language distinctly, slowing down and speeding up to good effect, accentuating the right words, making comparisons, relating pious anecdotes, techniques that he painstakingly designed, then practised, in order that he might keep the people's attention. He burnt with a love for God, and for God's people, whom he wished to help escape from the influence of the Jews, who were little more than merchants of tears and drinkers of human blood. During Lent, many cities recruited him to preach in town squares, because the churches could never hold all who wished to listen. As soon as he was done he would hurry away, for people would pull at his clothes to try to claim a relic for themselves. After his departure, people would light fires to burn what he had called the 'instruments of sin': playing cards, decorative ornaments, and even the emblems of enemy factions, were all cast into the flames. It was only after the feverishly righteous Bernard, formerly known as Martin Tomitano of Feltre, had left that the Jews would dare to show their faces once more, and they always did so cautiously and with the knowledge that the heated passions stirred up by this small man would take some time to die down.

  The night of Saturday 25 March 480 was the occasion of the first full moon of Spring. In Portobuffole the atmosphere was merry, as many husbands had now returned from the Venetian army. The recently arrived men were happy in the arms of their loved ones, while those wives who still lived in anxious expectation of their husbands' return eventually tore their eyes from the streets and found solace in the company of their children. These highly spirited Christians were joyfully celebrating the Feast of the Annunciation and looking forward to the following day, Palm Sunday.

  The Jews of Portobuffole had gathered in the house of Servadio to begin to celebrate the night of the fourteenth day of the month of Nissan in the year 5240 since the creation of their world. In common with all their holidays, this Jewish celebration began after sunset, with the men and children seated around a large table. In front of each person was a large illustrated Hebrew book of stories, which these Jews read from right to left. The men sat with their heads covered and with their elbows leaning against the table, and they read from their history about the night of the fleeing Jews.

  At this time of the year, Jewish law called for these people to rid their homes of all fermented foods, and, beginning that night and for the next eight days, these Jews could not eat bread or anything leavened, for they were remembering when they had had to flee Egypt so quickly that their bread did not have time to rise. In place of bread, they ate unleavened crackers that had been carefully sheltered from any fermentation or external contaminatio
n. These crackers were placed at the centre of the table on a huge tray that also contained a hard-boiled egg, a thin leg of lamb, herbs, a small cup of vinegar, wine, and various other objects necessary to their Jewish rituals.

  For many weeks, Servadio's youngest son had prepared with his tutor to ask in a high and confident voice, and in the Hebrew language, why this night was different from any other. And then suddenly the moment arrived for the boy to ask his first question, and then three further questions, and his mother, and the other women, left the kitchen with damp eyes and came to listen to this small boy who stood in front of the assembly of men. Servadio responded to his son's questions by reading from the Hebrew book of stories, occasionally interrupting his reading to make comments, and then stopping to listen to statements from those more learned than himself. Eventually everybody had a chance first to read from the books and then chant, 'This year, slaves; next year in the land of Israel, free', and the storytelling and chanting continued as the Jewish spirit moved each of them in turn.

  For almost three thousand years the Jews had celebrated this holiday by reciting the same prayers, abstaining from the same foods, and reading the same stories as if reading them for the first time. This was the source of their safety, and the basis of their relative confidence and happiness. They repeatedly told each other about how the waters of the Red Sea were opened for the fleeing slaves and how, immediately after, they closed on the ranks of the Egyptians who followed them. Servadio watched his son carefully, and smiled as he recognized himself in the inquisitive young boy. And then Servadio was shaken from his proud contemplation as the hungry children shouted the last words of a prayer, which was the sign for the food and wine to be served. Jewish songs would continue to be sung and Jewish stories would be joyfully recited, but most would now concentrate upon their feasting and the eager wolfing of Hebrew food.

  The innocent beggar child with blond hair and a sack on his shoulder, who had appeared in Portobuffole at this time of Christian and Jewish festivities, was never seen again. Once Easter had passed, those who thought they had seen him began to talk about him. Those who had definitely not seen him also began to talk about him, and eventually the details of the stories became less conflicting. There was no doubt that the boy had entered the house of Servadio. Someone had noted an unusual number of Jews gathered in the house, and someone else had distinctly heard the sound of a boy sobbing and then suffocating cries, and yet someone else had seen a Jew walking the streets, dragging a sack behind him, at three in the morning. Nearly everyone remembered seeing smoke coming from the chimney of the house of Moses, but no one could remember the name of the boy. The image of the poor boy was clear, but the name was missing, and then one old woman retrieved his name from the corner of her mind. His name was Sebastian. The Jews had killed a beggar boy named Sebastian, and the precise details of this monstrous crime were on everyone's lips. The Jews had killed an innocent Christian boy named Sebastian New. They had dared to make a sacrifice in the Christian town of Portobuffole.

  I REMEMBER the afternoon when I first saw the woman. Mama and Papa were out in the streets looking for food, and, as usual, they had left me in my room, with my books, in the small apartment that we shared with the woman. The door to my room was firmly closed, the understanding being that it would remain so. In the past, Mama and Papa used to lock the door when they went out, but I hated this because I could never decide whether they were locking me in, or the woman out. Either way, I would spend most of the day crying. Some days I never bothered to open my books, and when they returned at the end of the day they would find me bleary-eyed and unable to tell them what I had learnt. They mustered hastily assembled excuses such as, 'It's for your own good,' or, 'We wouldn't do it unless it was absolutely necessary,' but still I cried and ignored my books, so eventually they agreed that they would leave the door unlocked. However, I was forbidden to venture out and into the small apartment. That was our understanding, that the door to my room would be closed – unlocked, but closed – and I would submit to voluntary captivity (for my own safety) until they returned at the end of each day.

  I was standing by the high window in the tiny kitchen. It was my habit to abandon my books after an hour or two of studying, and looking out of the kitchen window had become my own special pastime. First, I would drag a small wooden crate across the floorboards to the window, and then I would mount it so that my chin could rest on the lower sill. From this precarious position, I looked down into the streets. It had been some time now since anyone in our community had witnessed splendid decorative hats upon women's heads, or gentlemen walking with canes. From my perch I observed only bent backs, bare heads and, Uttering the streets, lonely corpses. Occasionally I would see a scholar, an old man in a full-length coat, shamelessly dependent upon his walking stick, beard flowing, eyes damp, a pile of books tucked under one arm, his soup pot hanging idly from his waist. These men peered at the useless future without the aid of their round wire-rimmed spectacles, and they depressed me the most, for it was all too easy to calculate the extent of their fall, wearing as they did the outward garb of their former status. I hoped that Mama and Papa's daily search took them to a better place than this, but in my heart I knew otherwise. I assumed that every street was crowded with people with crazy, despairing eyes, and I imagined that they were all trying to sell something, or beg something. It could not only be this street. We knew that everything in our world had changed. In fact, everything in our world was collapsing all about us.

  And then one hot summer day Rosa appeared, as if from nowhere. I don't know how long she had been standing behind me, but when she spoke I nearly fell from the crate.

  'Can you see anything interesting out there?'

  I turned quickly, then grabbed the tattered curtain. Rosa had about her shoulders a woollen shawl which she clasped tightly in front of her. I jumped to the ground and, as I did so, she took a step backwards. There was to be distance between the pair of us.

  'Just people,' I said. 'Lots of people.'

  I lived for nearly two years in that small apartment, abandoning my books, making daily visits to the high window in the tiny kitchen, and staring at the world which my parents had forbidden me to re-enter. They feared that, should I venture out, they would lose their remaining daughter, and so I was to remain hidden inside. I understood that we were fortunate, that most were living ten or more to an apartment, and that Papa's money, and what little influence Mama still had, had bought us this luxury of space. But still, I was unhappy and frustrated, and sixteen.

  Rosa stayed in the room next to mine, but I had never heard a sound through the wall, or, until the afternoon she surprised me in the kitchen, caught a glimpse of this mysterious woman. However, during the day, when my parents were out, I often heard a man who came regularly to visit her. I would sit in my room and listen to him pounding up the communal stairs. Then I would hear the front door open, then slam, and then I would listen to the hurried patter of his feet as he scampered into Rosa's room. Soon I knew how to time my exit so that I would be in the kitchen by the time he curled himself around the front door. He would look down the short hallway and see me standing on the crate. An unshaven man, with dirty worn clothes, he seemed an unlikely visitor. Perhaps three times a week he would simply smile at me, and then he would disappear into Rosa's room.

  'A friend,' was Rosa's response to my question. 'Just a friend.'

  'But why is your friend not living here with us?'

  Rosa gave me a tired smile.

  'He cannot be with us. He's fighting. In the underground.'

  I looked down at her bony hands, then up again at her anxious face. She could only have been in her mid-twenties, yet she seemed so sad.

  'I see.' I watched as Rosa tried to hide her hands in the folds of her cotton dress.

  But, of course, I didn't really see. Rosa and I would spend long afternoons taking turns on the crate, and then Rosa would suddenly step down and disappear before Mama and Papa returne
d. No 'goodbye'. No 'see you tomorrow'. She would just turn and leave, as though in her mind an alarm-bell was sounding. I would climb back up on to the crate and once more survey the streets that were crowded with the desperate and the hungry. With each passing day, the women in the street grew to resemble men; by this time, it was often difficult to tell the difference. And then, later in the afternoon, I would once again step from the crate, drag it back to its familiar place, and return to my room and my books, and pull in the door behind me.

  The day that Rosa surprised me on the crate, Mama and Papa arrived back early and were extremely angry to discover me sitting in the kitchen. Papa stormed off into their room, but Mama stayed with me. I explained in a low voice about Rosa, and how wonderful but frightened she was, and Mama listened patiently. However, I sensed that I should not be discussing Rosa. Before my discovery of her (or her discovery of me), Mama and Papa had seemed reluctant to answer any of my questions about the young woman in the apartment. Was she old or young? Did she own the small apartment that we had been forced to move into? Was she pretty or ugly? Did she know that we had had to leave nearly everything behind, including Mama's piano? Did she know that we were not poor, that I had a sister, that the things we brought with us were merely the things that we could carry? Did she know? Mama and Papa always evaded my questions with a polite smile. And then they would change the subject. And then, in the morning, they would once more go out into the streets to find whatever they could, and each evening they would return with the evidence of their labour. A single potato was a triumph. Or an egg. Or a misshapen loaf of illicitly baked bread. Papa was too honest to become involved in any of the smuggling rings, so there were never any treats. Never any fruit. Never any sugar.