Lucifer's Shadow

26 A fracas in the church

The deception is simple. We become more bold. The guards are so stupid or lazy or both that we have now managed to create an entirely new doctor of the ghetto! Jacopo no longer need lurk inside his room while we flit about the Venetian night. I merely informed the buffoon upon the bridge that I required the services of Dr. Roberto Levi for a nobleman who was sick. The bu foon waved me through without a second thought, Rebecca donned a spare coat, and we bustled out upon our business without a second glance. This is an excellent disguise, for even if the soldiers had their suspicions, who would intervene to stop a physician on his way to tend upon a man of influence? Each Venetian looks to his own first and the state second. We have gulled them completely, and my only concern is that we become so blasé about the deed that one evening Rebecca will throw off her hood, declaring it to be too hot, shake out those lovely tresses, and make open villains of us all.

Last night, after the concert, with Rebecca still every inch the good Gentile, we decided to explore a little before going home. It was a glorious evening, warm but not airless, with a full moon reflected in the sleek black surface of the Basin as our gondola paddled past St. Mark’s on to the Grand Canal.

She insisted we stop near Ca’ Dario, curious about the place which we had been forced to leave so hurriedly on the day of the trip to Torcello. We paid off the gondolier at the Salute jetty and walked the back alleys until we stood in the small campo behind the house. I kept my fingers crossed that Gobbo would not catch us together, forcing some awkward questions, but luck was on our side. Together, beneath the bright light of the moon, we counted the curious chimneys on the place, eight of them, all funnel-shaped, as is popular in some of the older palaces. There is a rectangular walled garden at the rear. To the front, which may only be seen to much advantage from the canal, the house is most extraordinary, a narrow, crooked mansion on four floors. The ground is for storage and transport, naturally. The three above are almost identical, with four arched windows running from floor to ceiling on the left, then a single, circular rose window, and finally another vast glass arch on the northern end of the building. The entire frontage is etched and engraved and tattooed after the fashion of an African sailor, making it shine out among the larger, grander mansions on either side like a curious jewel found in a case of lesser stones. It must cost Delapole a fortune, but the Englishman has, I gather, money to waste. Curiously, no one seems to have a clue who the true owner is. Dario is long dead, and some say the place is cursed, since it has been the scene of two murders at least. As if bricks and mortar might carry within them the seeds of human destiny…

Rebecca’s curiosity is intense. I believe she hopes Delapole’s money will help legitimise her musical ambitions in some way. Leo and the Englishman have cooked up a plan. The concerto will be performed in La Pietà shortly. Delapole will pay for the publicity, which will attempt to raise some public interest by promoting a fair deal of bunkum about the piece and its mysterious composer. The story goes that the creator is a citizen of a shy and uncertain nature who does not wish to make his (it must be his!) identity known until he is certain the city approves his style. Therefore the work will be played in its entirety, with Vivaldi (for a sum) condescending to direct proceedings. Then the audience will be asked whether the work has merit or merely deserves an early demise in the fireplace. Should they decide the former, the composer undertakes to reveal himself publicly at a later date. In the event of the latter, he will retire to his present trade, never touching the stave again, grateful that the glorious Republic saw fit to pay attention to his amateurish scribblings for even a moment.

It is all nonsense, of course. No one doubts the work will be a sensation; otherwise, why would Vivaldi deign to grace it with his talents? Money goes so far with artists, but it cannot buy their dignity. Rebecca’s goal remains the same: to be seen one day as a musician and composer of the stature of Vivaldi or any other city great. Yet, though I do not say as much to her face, I fail to understand how this might be achieved. Even if she manages to reveal herself without disclosing our misdeeds, I wonder if the city will readily accept a woman, and a Jew and foreigner to boot, as an heir to the likes of Vivaldi. Be honest, Lorenzo. I find this hard, too, and I wish it were not so. We grow up with some prejudices buried deep within the blood. Rebecca’s vision for herself goes against everything we have been told about the way the lives of men and women are conducted in our society. Still, it will all come out in the wash, as Mother used to say.

We gawped at Delapole’s palace for a good thirty minutes, then wandered past San Cassian, where I showed Rebecca my home, from the outside, naturally. Later, we wound up at Giacomo dell’Orio, a squat lump of church that sits in its own square a little way back from the canal. The pair of us wander the night so freely these days that we walked inside the place without a second thought and found ourselves in the company of an ancient warden who was only too anxious to reveal its wonders. There is a fascinating roof, designed to look like a ship’s keel, and a selection of columns purloined from Byzantium, I imagine: one with a very ancient flowered capital, and another in smooth antique marble. These Venetians will steal anything, I swear.

The paintings include some passable martyrdoms and one piece, brand-new, being put in place by the creator, which was so ludicrously done we stood in front of it lost for words. The “artist” (I feel this is stretching things somewhat) noticed our interest and asked me what I thought. It appeared to depict the dead Virgin being taken to her grave, with some kind of commotion in the forefront.

“The reference escapes me, sir,” I confessed. “Perhaps you could enlighten us.”

He was a coarse fellow, with a hunched posture, a pockmarked face, and a somewhat lunatic expression. I couldn’t begin to imagine whose palm had been crossed in order to get his work a hanging in a public place. “Why, it is the defilement of the Virgin by the Jew, and how his sin is punished by God on the spot. You see!”

True, next to the deathly pale and rigid corpse of the Virgin was the form of a poor fellow whose hands had been lopped off by some miraculous divine intervention. A very private divine intervention, it appears, since the rest of the funeral party scarcely notice him, and get on with their job of carrying the unfortunate cadaver to its resting place.

“I don’t recall this event from the scriptures, sir,” Rebecca said sweetly.

“The Bible alone is not a route to God,” the madman said very gravely. “Some of us read more widely than others.”

“Some imagine more widely than others too,” I ventured. “But I fail to understand. Why is this man defiling her? To what purpose?”

“Because he is a Jew, of course.”

Rebecca asked, “For no other reason?”

“What other reason would a Jew need?”

“Some surely, sir,” I replied. “For wasn’t Mary a Jew? And Christ half-Hebrew himself?”

Even in the half dark of the church, I could see some blood su fuse his pockmarks.

“Why,” I continued in the face of his growing fury, “would one Jew do this to another? Unless… unless… he does not see this dead white figure as a human corpse at all but believes it to be some child’s model in wax or fat, and seeks to steal a little for his lamp. But then why would God strike him down? I am most puzzled.”

“Blasphemy!” the madman roared, and I could see the ancient warden at the far end of the nave cast a worried look in our direction.

Rebecca tugged on my arm, but I could not let this point go. “Not at all, sir. If you scrawl a child’s doodle on a wall and call it the Virgin, I commit no blasphemy in pointing out it is a child’s doodle. The comment is directed at your skill, or lack of it. Not the Virgin herself.”

“Blasphemy!”

The warden was heading for the side door. Rebecca was hissing at me under her breath. I know when it’s time to leave.

We fled into the night. Just in time too. The soldiers were racing for the church as we turned the corner and disappeared back into the safety of San Cassian, where I might find a gondola and return Rebecca, briefly transformed back into Roberto, into the ghetto.

When we were on that last, familiar walk towards the bridge, she turned to me and said, “You’ll be the death of us, Lorenzo. I swear.”

“Nonsense,” I replied. “The man was a charlatan. Bad art is bad art, and sticking the Virgin in there to stop someone pointing it out is just plain dishonest.”

“So when I write a bad concerto, you will boo along with the rest of them?”

“Louder than the rest, in fact, since I, more than most, know how much better you can do.”

That snort again. We approached the bridge, she pulled up her hood, and I started to concoct a story once more, not that the guard, who was half-drunk, seemed much bothered.

I saw her to the door. Jacopo opened it and caught the mirth on both our faces.

“Villains, both of you,” he said. “They’ll be displaying your heads on the waterfront before the year is out.”

Rebecca kissed him once on the cheek. “Falling at my feet in gratitude, more like, dear brother, when they realise the Serenissima has another master in its midst.”

“Of course.” I caught Jacopo’s eye. There was something he wanted to say to his sister, but he didn’t have the heart. We both knew what it was.