The Painter's Apprentice

by Laura Morelli

  “So you took your old position back,” I say.

  “You could say that,” he says, “but mostly I came back because the painter owes me money. If I wanted any chance of getting back what he is bound to me, I had no choice but to return. Heh! Casso!” the boatman bursts suddenly, making a rude gesture with a meaty hand. I turn to see a cargo boat blocking the narrow canal where we are trying to pass. A skinny boatman is unloading crates from the grimy skiff onto a wooden dock on the back side of a shop. The boatman utters a stream of obscenities under his breath. The skinny boy turns around slowly to meet the boatman’s gaze.

  “You cannot dock there, Sior,” the boatman yells, mocking a noble way of speaking by emphasizing Sior in Venetian with a sarcastic lilt. He spits into the canal through his square teeth. “What are people thinking?” he growls to me under his breath. I watch the skinny boy raise his hand in supplication, then back the skiff awkwardly out into the wide part of the canal. We resume our path.

  “How does the painter owe you money?” I venture, not certain if I want to engage him further, but I am curious.

  The boatman wends his way around the skiff and resumes rowing. “Normally I am paid my salary every fifteen days, but when I left he was already in debt to me by nearly three months. We had already agreed on the contract. By my calculations he owes me for nearly a half year’s worth of work.”

  “Why did he not pay you on time?”

  “That is what I am trying to tell you, Maria Magdalena. “These people,” he says, gesturing to the tall houses lining the canal, “they cannot be trusted. He was trying to retain me, to make me indebted to him.”

  “And surely you are.”

  He shrugs again, and one side of his mouth turns up. “At least he must trust me, for he has sent me out with a lady alone in a boat. Now that is a delicate proposition.”

  When I do not respond to his implication, the boatman falls mercifully silent. I want to wriggle out from under his scrutiny.

  I feel a deep wake rock the gondola from side to side, and then a dark form on the canal catches the corner my eye. I turn to see a large ferry making slow progress in the direction of the outlying islands. The back of the boat is so laden with passengers and cargo that it seems as if the ferry might take on water.

  “Caxìn,” I hear the boatman’s curse, barely above a whisper. He squeezes the oar under his arm and quickly crosses himself.

  Even though I have never seen one, I recognize the boat immediately. It is one of the ferries that the Sanità is using to transport people to and from the pesthouse islands. The boat is sluggish and low, heavy with plague victims and their earthly belongings. As the boat draws nearer, I can see some of their sunken, beaten faces peering out of the boat. As the boat passes, a young boy turns his ashen face toward me.

  I feel as though my insides have been turned out. A wave of nausea overtakes me, and all I can think is that I do not want to vomit on the painter’s beautiful brocaded cushions. I stumble across the hull of the gondola and fall to my knees. I grip the varnished rim of the boat and hang my head over the green water, feeling the wave overtake me. The aroma of cabbage and rot fills my nostrils. A long string of spittle hangs from my lips and drips bubbly into the canal. Then it passes. I push myself from the edge of the boat and slump down into the floor. I feel the wooden curve of the keel against my back.

  I feel the boatman’s eyes on me again, as if his gaze could sear a pattern on the skin along the back of my neck just as a mark has been etched into his face with a hot iron. I pull my shawl around me and cover my chest. I put my face in my hands, not wishing to encourage conversation.

  Another wave of nausea overtakes me, and this time I am unable to stop it. Just in time, I grip the side of the gondola and vomit into the canal. I slump down against the side rail of the boat and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. The boatman is wrinkling his nose. “Che cazzo?!” the boatman yells to me from his place at the stern the boat.

  “The wake has gotten to me,” I say.

  I hear the boatman make a chortle deep in his throat. I look up at him, holding up my hand to ward off the winter angle of the sun that casts him in silhouette against the sky, his stocky frame and the oar framed in the haze.

  “You are not seasick, Maria Magdalena,” I hear the shadow say. I do not see his face in the glare but I imagine its sly look.

  “You are with child.”

  Mercifully, the gondola glides into the darkness of the painter’s cave-like boat slip. I cannot get away from the boatman fast enough, but he has placed his body in front of the stepping stool that I must use to climb out of the boat.

  “Perhaps the painter and his wife should know of your situation.” The boatman’s gravelly voice echoes off the walls of the cavana. In the shadows, I study the stubble along his chin and try not to rest my gaze on his scar.

  “You would not dare.”

  His square teeth come into view. “I might... That is, unless I were offered something that would make it worth my while not to reveal the information.”

  I stop to consider his words. “You are extorting me.”

  The boatman makes a clucking noise. “Estorsione. A harsh word.”

  “I do not know what else to call it.”

  We stand in silence for a few moments, and I regard his brown eyes reflecting the wavering waters of the boat slip. The only sound is the lapping of the small waves against the stones.

  “How much?” I say finally.

  “Bene.” The boatman rubs his thick palms together. “I could be satisfied—for now—with one hundred silver soldi.”

  I stand in the rocking boat. “One hundred soldi! Who has access to such sums?”

  “You may not have money, Maria Magdalena, but I hear that you are a gilder’s daughter, no? L’oro. Now that is worth something.”

  My mind races. “You want me to give you gold leaf so that you can sell it. And in exchange, you will say nothing about me to the painter and his wife.”

  He nods, a smug smile on his face.

  “And if I refuse?”

  The boatman shrugs. “It is a simple transaction, signorina doratrice. You pay my fee. I seal my lips.” He brings his fingers to his lips and gestures as if he is turning a key, then his mouth spreads into a wide grin.

  Chapter 14

  I make my way down the narrow stairs to the painter’s studio, my body heavy and sluggish as though filled with rocks. For days it has taken all my strength to drag myself from bed when the cock crows. I have recovered from the utter horridness of Antonella’s concoction, but exhaustion envelops me.

  I have avoided the boatman at all costs and have spoken little to Antonella. I have tried to devise a way to keep them quiet that does not involve handing over the precious gold leaf I have brought with me from my father’s studio, gold leaf forged with Cristiano’s own hands. How could I not have seen that Antonella and that hateful boatman were in alliance? Why did I trust her? Clearly she has told him about my situation. What can I do to keep them from telling the neighbors, their friends—God forbid, the painter and his wife? I fail to imagine what will happen to me then.

  I feel a pang in the middle of my ribs, a twist in my gut. I am resigned that this encumbrance is out of my control, that I have no more persuasion over it than I do to direct the dark hand of pestilence that has laid itself on my quarter of the city. I am resigned, but I do not know what my future holds.

  Some mornings when I wake, for a moment I forget that I am with child. When the truth comes pressing in, I must catch my breath. It is difficult to believe the reality of the situation. I am only relieved that my aunt did not seem to read it on my face. I cannot imagine how I would form the words to tell the painter, his wife, my father, Cristiano. But I can no longer deny the truth to myself.

  And if I go home with a swollen belly or a swaddled baby, will my father accept me
? Will the battiloro still love me? Will he claim his child? Will I be thrust out into the street? I have seen the convent of the foundlings and I wonder if that is the fate that awaits me.

  I want to go back to my life the way it was before—without the plague, without the pregnancy. For a moment, I permit myself to relive the delicious, heart-wrenching, bittersweet memory of Cristiano’s broad hands on my hips. Without thinking, I bring my fingers to the hard outline of the gold ingot that I wear around my neck. I pull it out and twist the warm gold between my finger and thumb.

  I think about what Antonella has told me, that she can take me to a medico, but I will not do it for anything. I will never again trust Antonella, the only one in the house who might have been my friend.

  For now, there is only one person who might be in a position to help me, and that is the painter’s wife.

  “Bondì, Signorina Maria.” Master Trevisan’s journeyman offers an innocent smile as I enter the workshop. His skinny frame crouches before a large panel as he makes delicate strokes along the bottom of a cloak with a fine paintbrush, an imitation of embroidery trim on a rich textile pattern.

  I grasp a leather apron from a hook on the wall and tie it behind my back. “Where is Master Trevisan?”

  “He has gone to see a patron about a new commission for San Giacomo dell’Orio,” he says. “They have asked for a large panel of one of their patron saints. I do not imagine that you will be working on that one. They have not asked for gold.”

  I nod, knowing that Father was right. I must learn the colored pigments if there is any future in our workshop. If I am ever to return.

  I pull back my braids and tie them off with a small leather strap. I go to my worktable and resolve to work on drawing rocks and trees using the method that Master Trevisan has demonstrated for me. The worktable where I have laid out my meager gilding tools is cluttered with supplies from some previous apprentice: a stack of sketches on parchment and paper, several paint-splattered ceramic containers, a haphazard collection of pens and brushes caked with pigment. I fish through the jars with pens and the small glass containers of brown and red inks used for making washes. It feels as though the old apprentice has left suddenly on an errand and might be back any minute. I have not found it my place to clear the table.

  Master Trevisan has shown me how to practice shading with the silverpoint pen and has laid out a number of his own sketches on the table so that I can use them as a model. I carefully observe the cross-hatching that he has used to render depth to a surface of a craggy rock. I do my best to follow the example laid before me.

  The two of us work in silence, the journeyman at his painting and I at my sketching, but the air feels heavy and uncomfortable, full of words unspoken. It is the first time, I realize, that Trevisan’s journeyman and I have been in the workshop alone together. We have hardly had a conversation without the painter in between.

  He is the first to break the silence.

  “I suppose you must miss your own workshop, your family,” he says. He does not lift his brush or move his eyes from the panel, but his words hang heavy and ripe in the air.

  “It is only my father and my cousin,” I say. “And our battiloro.”

  “Ah yes, I remember,” he says. “And your mother?”

  “She died before my second year,” I say. “Took my baby brother with her to the World to Come.” With a small metal scraper, I scrub the ugly hatch marks I have made on the paper, trying to remove them from the page so that I can start again. “I have no memory of her.” My answer must appear callous, I think, but my mother has been gone so long, the victim of a difficult labor and a stillborn child. Though I have tried my entire life, I cannot imagine her face and she is no more than a shadowy, fleeting figure in my mind. “For as long as I can remember, it has been only my father and my cousin Paolo,” I say.

  “My condolences,” the journeyman says, pausing to look at me, his brush suspended in the air.

  I shrug. “My father raised me. I have known nothing other than the gold.” I muster a smile.

  “But,” he hesitates, “your father did not see fit to have you married? I mean...” He trails off, and I register the irrepressible curiosity on his face in spite of the discomfort of his asking. He tries again. “I mean that it is unusual for a girl such as yourself to be apprenticed rather than betrothed.”

  “Yes.” I hesitate. Surely it is clear that I am well past the age at which many girls in the trades are married. Most of the guildsmen in my quarter had selected husbands for their daughters long before they became capable of bearing children; many of the girls I ran through the alleys with as children have already celebrated marriage masses. A few have begun to tote one or more babies on their hips.

  For me, things were different.

  I do not know how to begin to say any of this to the painter’s journeyman, so I simply shake my head.

  “You will return to your father then, when you are finished with Master Trevisan’s commission?” he asks. I perceive a fleeting sense of worry in his voice. It has not occurred to me before now that the journeyman might feel threatened by my presence in his master’s workshop.

  My father’s words ring inside my head. When you return, Maria, we will have found a husband for you. We must not deceive ourselves any longer. It is past time.

  “Yes,” I say to the journeyman. “Yes, I will return home without a doubt.”

  I retie the strings of my work apron behind my back and turn over a nub of charcoal, which immediately blackens my fingertips. “My father’s agreement with the painter lasts for a term of eighteen months, but the contract may be extended if they both agree,” I say. “And of course it depends on what happens with the pestilence.”

  The conversation has veered into uncomfortable territory and I am eager to change the subject, so I turn to another difficult question.

  “The painter’s wife and the children…” I say. “They have gone with Master Trevisan to see the commission?”

  The journeyman snorts out a curt laugh. “Santo Cielo, no. The signora does not get involved in the master’s work. Once every two weeks she takes the children to visit her parents. I have heard that, years ago, the signora showed interest in the master’s work, at least enough of it to marry well. Marriage to a renowned painter like Master Trevisan; well, I am certain that you can see the advantages for a gilder’s daughter. But now…” The journeyman has abandoned his painting and presses his thumb to his chin. “Between you and me, I believe that she would rather not get involved in the studio. And I am certain that she wants nothing to do with the people that Master Trevisan chooses to bring into the house, especially after what happened with that boatman and our old apprentice.”

  “The old apprentice,” I hesitate. “What happened to him?”

  The journeyman’s eyes scan the clutter at my worktable. “Well.” He sets down his brush, takes a deep breath, and turns his bright face toward me. “He was the son of one of the pupils of Master Bellini the Elder. A quiet boy with a talent for drawing figures,” he says. “At least we thought he was quiet. It turned out he was just hiding something.”

  “Hiding?”

  “Yes. On the surface he appeared conscientious. But later we discovered that he had been using his salary from Master Trevisan to entangle himself with a smuggling ring. They were bringing raw silk thread from terra firma, partially working it, then selling it for high profits.” I hear thinly veiled excitement in the journeyman’s voice. “They were going around the established trade channels for silk. They made a small fortune.”

  I feel my eyes widen. “How did they do that?”

  The journeyman shrugs. “There were a group of them. They were smuggling in heaps of illegal raw thread; we learned of it only in retrospect. They were bringing it in on boats, hidden in sacks of grain or in coffers under layers of clothes.”

  The journeyman sta
nds and, abandoning his picture, he begins to pace the room. “There’s more,” he says. “Our boatman was involved.” He lowers his voice and gestures with his thumb toward the boat slip. “He knew about it. He was even carrying the thread in Trevisan’s old gondola. He was skimming the profits.”

  I feel my jaw drop. “What happened?”

  “They were caught,” the journeyman says. “Boatman claimed he knew nothing about it, but I doubt that.” He chuckles. “I mean, would you trust anything a boatman says? The authorities seized Master Trevisan’s boat.”

  That explains why Master Trevisan has a new gondola, I think. “Is that how he got the scar…” I gesture toward my own cheek.

  “No,” the journeyman says. “I believe that boatman was marked with fire long before he came here. I suppose Master Trevisan should have heeded the sign. But the apprentice,” he continues, gesturing to my worktable. “He was supposed to pay his price with a sentence on the slave galleys, but then we heard that he fled the city with all that money, all his share anyway. I have no idea where he is now, but he got away with a lot of money. That’s all I know.” The journeyman shrugs and returns to his seat before the painting.

  I realize that the former apprentice will not be back in Master Trevisan’s studio. The space is mine for as long as I last here. The journeyman and I return to our silent work.

  I walk over to the table where Trevisan keeps his charcoal, silverpoint pens, inks, and paper for sketching. I recognize the small collection of folios that Trevisan had brought along when we were in the boat on the way to the church. I open the cover and thumb through the sketches: a few images of Madonnas, a whole page of hand studies, some architectural details, the prow fork of his own gondola.

  I pick up a pen and attempt to copy one of the hands that Master Trevisan has drawn. Under my breath I begin to hum, a kind of compromise for not being able to sing aloud like I used to in my father’s workshop. I turn to see if the journeyman is watching me, but he is deeply engrossed in replicating embroidery trim.