by David Hewson
8
A mission
DANIEL FORSTER’S FIRST FULL DAY IN THE CITY WAS, AT Scacchi’s suggestion, spent in some solitary sightseeing. He arrived back at the large house by the square of San Cassian at five and was summoned, on the ringing of the church bells at six, for the evening ritual: spritz. Scacchi drank three large tumblers, each bloodred, Paul a little less. Laura, both servant and guest, had but a single glass.
Scacchi looked fitter today. His face had more colour to it, and his mood seemed much improved. Daniel understood the nature of the illness afflicting both men yet believed he could not begin to appreciate how deeply it might alter their moods. Laura’s plea for his consideration towards both of them was not, in truth, necessary.
“You know how this young man found his way here, Laura?” Scacchi asked.
She exchanged a glance with Paul. “You may have mentioned it once or twice. But do, please, jog my memory.”
“Why, through genius! There he is, writing some thesis on the Venetian printing industry in that famed college of his in Oxford. And what does he do? Finds that one of the humbler printing houses still exists! In bricks and mortar alone, of course. I salute your dedication, Daniel!” Scacchi’s glass bobbed up and down. “It is more than two hundred and fifty years since a page was printed on these premises, and still you track us down!”
Daniel recalled the moment. Out of a whim he had looked up the records for the Venice phone directory while in the college library and cross-checked the entries there with the printing houses he was researching for his thesis. Every single name survived, scattered across the Veneto region. But there were only a handful of Scacchis, and one, to his amazement, lived at the very address which had, since the early sixteenth century, housed a once-famous city press. He was proud of his detective work. Since the death of his mother, he had immersed himself in research, partly as a form of escape but also because he found some private enjoyment in these old books and musical scores. Life in the college was pleasantly measured and ordered, if somewhat solitary. He had, in spite of himself, acquired the reputation of being bookish, a little remote, perhaps. There were acquaintances, if no close friends. He was aware that some distance existed between him and his fellow students. He had spent the last few years caring for a dying parent while those around him moved and grew in ways he could only guess at. In a sense, he felt he had only begun to develop on the day his mother died, though the thought filled him with guilt and pain.
A soft hand fell on his arm. Laura smiled at him, a little concerned, he thought.
“I’m sorry,” he stuttered. “I was daydreaming. You were saying?”
Scacchi waved a forkful of meat in the air. “I was speechless when that letter arrived, wasn’t I, Paul?”
“You are never speechless, Scacchi. Surprised, perhaps.”
“What impertinence! I shall not rise to the bait. The city knows us, Daniel, if it knows us at all, as a couple of old queens who make a living buying and selling antiques from time to time. Yet you, with your computers and your talent for research, discover something that was little more than an old family rumour for me.”
“But you knew,” Daniel asked, “there was a famous publisher here, surely?”
Scacchi guffawed. “Flattery! All of this was so long ago and through different lines of the family. The name may be the same, but this house has been passed from relative to relative, branch to branch, for centuries. My own line goes back only three generations and inherited it from some bankrupt cousin. We ran a small warehousing business from the adjoining building for many years, until the demand for that collapsed. Now I am the last of the Scacchis. There will be none after me. And no Ca’ Scacchi.”
He stared at his plate and said without emotion, “As if that matters.”
Laura bristled. “It matters to all of us, Scacchi. Remove that hangdog expression instantly, please. It does not suit you. And as to why Daniel is here...you invited him, if you recall. To help catalogue the...” She stared at Daniel. “...‘library.’”
“Ah.” All were silent. Daniel found himself wondering once again about this complex trio and, most of all, the role Laura played within it. She was both servant and friend, confidante and guardian to these two much older men. It would be an onerous task at times—that much was obvious—but he did not doubt she adored it.
Scacchi looked at the table, an awkward grin on his lips. “A little exaggeration, perhaps. But nevertheless I think you will find this all most instructive. In any case, Laura, I paid the lad’s ticket, didn’t I? And a little pocket money for his stay. And a place at that nice little circus in La Pietà so that he may exercise that bow arm of his. Yes, I read your letters very carefully, Daniel, as you may see.”
“La Pietà?”
“More of that later. For now...”
The old man stood up and, as he did so, retrieved from his pocket a set of keys dangling on a long chain attached to his belt. “Come one! Come all! We explore Ca’ Scacchi and corners where none of you has ventured before!”
Laura saw the eagerness in his face and the direction he was headed, to the door which led to the ground-floor cellar. “We go to the warehouse? Are there rats?”
“My dear! There are rats everywhere in Venice.”
“I think I’ll clear up, thank you.”
“Me too,” Paul agreed. “The dust down there gets on my lungs, Scacchi.”
The old man took it in his stride. “As you see fit. Come, Daniel. We venture into this netherworld on our own.”
They went down a narrow set of stairs to the ground floor of the main house. It was dark and dusty, full of ancient furniture and crates. A single yellowing lightbulb lit the room. Scacchi picked up two large electric lanterns at the foot of the stairs and headed for a door to the left.
“Into the bowels we go,” he declared. “It’s dark as hell in there. No window. No electricity. You’ll need these, and I’d be grateful if you tread as little dust into the house as possible. Laura can be a martinet over the merest hint of a dirty boot.”
Daniel followed the old man through the ancient door. The lanterns cast twin yellow beams ahead of them. The adjoining room seemed even more disordered than the basement of the house itself. Dusty covers sat on shapeless forms, some only a few feet high, others towering to the height of a man. The space was the length and breadth of the house itself, seeming to stretch forever. At the front came a little light from two cracked wooden doors filling what must once have been the water-level trade entrance to the workshop.
“What is this, Scacchi?” he asked.
“Why, it’s the remains of a print shop, I imagine. With some of the junk that must once have filled the three floors above us, dumped here when the business folded. When we were warehousing, we simply used the top floors and took everything in by hoist. Those stairs to the first floor are too narrow for carrying much, believe me. After you found me and got me thinking about this place’s history, I decided to take a little look down here. Soon after, I thought to invite you to examine it yourself. Look...”
He lifted a corner of the fabric covering a towering rectangular object set to the side of the entrance arch, revealing the foot of some vast machine.
“A press?” Daniel asked.
“Some such junk. Worthless, from my enquiries. Not much call for this kind of thing. The world wants works of art, not ancient machinery. Paper, perhaps, but there I am lost. Show me a musical instrument, a painting, or a piece of ormolu and I can value it. Words on a page... they never meant much to me. A fine Scacchi I am, eh?”
Daniel heard something squeak, then scuttle off towards the light leaking through the doorway. Laura was absolutely right about the rats. She was, he thought, probably right about most things and generally ignored. He hoped that Scacchi understood how lucky he was in his choice of housekeeper.
“Some library, I suppose,” Scacchi said, his face positioned out of the yellow lantern light, where it was impossible for Daniel to di
scern his expression. “I’m a fraud. Say as much, please. I lure you here under false pretences and then show you a room full of dust and demand it be panned for gold.”
“No! No! I would have come anyway. Even if you had only one scrap of yellow paper for me. I would fly here just to breathe the air.”
Scacchi patted a low pile of papers near him. A miniature thunder-storm of dust rose from it and enveloped them. For some reason he seemed mildly upset. “Why do you say that, Daniel? We are strangers. I have lured you from your home on false pretences. Go on, admit it.”
He was amazed the old man saw so little. “I’ve longed to come here. Always. My mother was English, but she lived in the city once, as a student. Where do you think I first learnt Italian? I grew up with her books and her stories. When I look around me...”
Daniel hesitated. Something, the dust perhaps, pricked at his eyes. “. . . I feel I see this place through her eyes and that here she’s still close to me.”
Scacchi coughed and gave him a sideways glance. Some scrap of intimacy had passed between them, though neither was ready to acknowledge as much.
“Credulity is the man’s weakness but the child’s strength, they say,” Scacchi murmured. “Twenty years old, Daniel, and which are you?”
“A little between the two, I imagine,” he answered honestly. “But set in the right direction.”
Scacchi turned his head to stare into the darkness. “You remind me. Tomorrow there is something in San Rocco I must show you. Before your visit to La Pietà—which I think you shall enjoy immensely.”
“You’re too kind.”
Scacchi tapped at the papers again, but more gently. Still, the dust came forth. “I am?”
“Perhaps not too kind.”
The old man picked up the lanterns. It was time to go. “Daniel,” he said. “Find something in here for me. Something I may sell. We laugh and joke and act as if there’s no tomorrow. In a sense, for Paul and me there is no tomorrow, or not much, anyway. But not yet, and I need you to find me something in here I can sell, for good money too. I wish to die beneath this roof, not have to sell it to some American who has a fancy to remodel a Venetian palazzo. And I wish to leave our dear Laura enough to give her a fresh start in life. God knows she deserves it. For that we need some grubby cash.”
Daniel was shocked. The change in Scacchi’s tone was so unexpected. “I hadn’t realised. You must stop this expense on me at once. I can work for nothing. You feed me. You bought my ticket. Please.”
Scacchi patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, nonsense, Daniel. The pittance I am paying you is neither here nor there. I need money, not small change. There’s providence working somewhere here. It sent you to me. It sends you to this room. Search and you’ll find, I know.”
He fell silent. Daniel touched the old man gently on the sleeve. Some small amount of moisture glistened in the corner of his eyes. Had Laura been there at this moment, she would, he knew, possess the right words, the correct gestures to comfort him.
“This is Aladdin’s cave,” Daniel said, trying his best.
“Or Pandora’s box.”
“Either way. I’ll find you something here to sell.”
Scacchi turned to go. Daniel picked up the sheets of paper which had produced the dust cloud and peered at them in the dank yellow light. The ink ran across the page like smudged mascara. The warehouse was at ground level, next to the rio. At some stage, perhaps on many occasions, the flood of acqua alta must have penetrated into the room at least a good three feet deep, destroying everything it touched.
9
The route to the ghetto
The piece of paper Leo gave me read, “Dr. Levi, Ghetto Nuovo.” Nothing else. No directions. No instructions on what to do when I got there. I left Ca’ Scacchi just after midday in a state of mild anxiety, walked straight into the campo to the wellhead, and gulped down a cup of musty water. From across the square came a long, familiar whistle. Gobbo was there, ostensibly seeking out some rare kind of mushroom for his epicurean master from the markets round the corner, though I think the unmistakable smirk on his face as he watched a few of the painted ladies go by told of another intent.
“Tell me where the Ghetto Nuovo is, Gobbo,” I pleaded.
“Why do you want that place?” he asked, instantly suspicious. “You’re not a little Jew in disguise, are you?”
I would trust Gobbo greatly, but not with my life. One Venetian improvisation of which I was uncomfortably aware at that moment was the gilded and gaping lion’s mouth one sees on street corners and in important buildings. These lions are there for the suspicious to rat anonymously on their fellow citizens for whatever civic misdeeds they suspect. I did not fancy finding myself in the Doge’s Palace, explaining away my actions, just because Gobbo failed to keep his trap shut down some Dorsoduro drinking dive.
“Of course not, you fool! My master is a printer. Some Hebrew wants his memoirs put on the page. If they pay the money, we’ll publish it, however dreary the old fart happens to be.”
“Glad to hear it!” he said, relieved, and gave me a painful slap on the back. “It seems to me . . .”—he pulled himself up almost to my own height, to add weight to this coming observation—“that those slimy bastards got o f altogether too lightly for murdering our Lord like that.”
“Your grasp of learning never ceases to amaze me, Gobbo,” I sighed. “I had no idea theology was among your talents.”
A quick grin split his ugly face. “Really? Thanks. The Ghetto Nuovo’s up in Cannaregio. Fifteen minutes on the water at the most.”
I held out my hand with the paltry coins in it. He looked at them and grimaced. “Leo’s a tight-fisted bastard, eh? In that case, you’ll have to leg it over the Rialto and head past San Fosca. Won’t take you more than half an hour, provided no one whacks you on the head along the way.”
“Thanks . . .”
“I had a master like that in Turin. Stuck him with a penknife before I decamped out of the window with a bag full of silver. Pick a generous guvnor next, my friend. It saves so much grief.”
“I’m an apprentice, Gobbo. Not a servant.”
“Oh!” he said with a mock bow. “I do apologise, sir. I’d give you a lift on my way back, of course, but it’s in the wrong direction, and one couldn’t expect one to share a seat with the hoi polloi. Besides . . .” A ragged-haired whore with a painted face had just made eyes at him from the warren of alleys beyond the church. “I may be a little time.”
Without wasting another breath on the infuriating chap, I strode o f eastwards, following the tangle of “streets,” little more than dark corridors, which I knew would take me to the Rialto. I have thus far not told you the truth about walking around this fair city of mine, dear sister, and that is for one reason alone: I do not wish to worry you. I am now sufficiently familiar with its ways to know I can survive, but many, I fear, never reach that happy stage. Even by day, Venice is a nightmare to navigate on foot, a tangled warren of passages and gangways, few of them running in a straight line for even ten paces, and mostly built up on both sides so that the weary and confused wanderer can scarcely see where he is going. If an alley should turn into a cul-de-sac—and one that may deposit you in the unsavoury waters of the canal—you may be assured there will be no warning of the fact until the point at which you almost tumble into the grey and greasy lagoon. Should there be the luxury of a bridge, be assured that it will have no handrails, so that a single false step in the dark will tip you once again straight into the drink. On Saturday nights, when the osteria around the corner from our house fills to the seams with rowdy boozers, I lie in bed listening to them trying—and failing—to cross the plankwork that spans the rio into the Calle dei Morti (so called, I imagine, because this is the quick way to walk coffins into the church). For a good two hours after midnight, it is always the same: plop, curse, plop, curse, plop . . . Ah, Venice.
The Rialto is no such bridge. It is the single way to cross the Grand Canal on foot and,
as such, must naturally reflect the glory of the Republic. It does, too, in abundance, being a veritable community above the water, with shops and houses and hawkers and quacks, the latter bellowing their wares into the hubbub as the water seethes with traffic beneath them.
I had no time to dawdle in this pleasant mêlée of humanity. The Jewess awaited me, and Vivaldi after that, so I broke into a loping jog and pushed my way through the throng, past churches, through oddly shaped squares and the low, vulgar architecture of Cannaregio, on to the area where Gobbo had directed me. Then, turning a corner, I found the Ghetto Nuovo, a sight so odd I stopped in my tracks, leaned against the nearest wall, and wondered whether to turn on my heels at that very moment, return to Ca’ Scacchi, and pack my bags.
What stood before me seemed to be a single, small island in the city, like many others, but guarded by a wooden drawbridge—yes, the kind that goes up at night—with a bored soldier scratching his backside by the entrance. Behind, on the island, like some monstrous building that had grown of its own accord, towered a single line of housing six or seven floors tall, with washing hanging out of every window and such a cacophony of cries, young and old, singing, too, and a yowl of argument, that I wondered if an entire city might live behind these black, bleak walls. For a second, I thought that I had taken a wrong turning and stumbled upon the Republic’s prison instead. But no. I walked entirely around this curious kingdom in miniature—no larger, sister, than that little field at the back of our farm where our father grew those waving heads of artichoke in the summer—and found two more such bridges, each with a solitary guard and each capable of being drawn up when required. This tiny piece of land, surrounded on each side by canal, was indeed the Ghetto Nuovo, and I cursed my uncle once again for failing to tell me what lay in store when he ejected me so ruthlessly into the street.
As boldly as I could, I walked up to the guard and said, “I wish to see Dr. Levi, sir. Is he at home?”
The soldier almost clouted me on the head with his fist. “What do you think I am, son? Personal secretary to these bloody monsters? You get your arse in there and find the little kike for yourself. Don’t go asking the Republic’s soldiers to do your dirty work for you.”
