Daughter of Venice

by Donna Jo Napoli

  I hobble along the street, my bottom lip trembling with self-pity. My path winds carefully around stray objects that might cause further injury to these poor feet of mine. Every step hurts.

  The bell of San Marcuola rings loudly. The church is off to the left somewhere beyond the next bridge. It couldn’t be that hard to find.

  The clothes for the poor mount high in a bin just inside the doors of the parish rectory. I could go to the rectory and ask for a pair of shoes. They’re sure to have wooden-bottomed zoccoli, at the very least. And I could beg a bareta, too.

  But I would recognize the priests. They’re always slavish around Father and Mother, and they mumble pious words to us girls as we leave the Mass. So there’s a chance, no matter how small, that they’d recognize me, even though they’ve only seen my face when they’ve lifted the veil to offer the Communion wafer and wine.

  And maybe there are other beggar boys watching me, too, not just that one boy. Maybe asking for shoes would count as begging to them.

  I can’t go to the rectory.

  My foot hurts worse with each step.

  I come to the bridge. A group of boys swim naked in the canal. I blushed at the sight of the naked fisherboy this morning—but now all I feel is envy. A fine reprieve on a hot day. I’d smile if my foot didn’t hurt so much. I look back toward the alley I think of as mine. So many people clutter the street that it takes several minutes before there’s enough of a clearing for me to see—alas, the beggar boy stands beside the opening of the alley talking to a man.

  I fight back tears and look ahead. On the other side of the bridge the pathway opens to the right into a wide street. I can see the opening to the first alley off of that. No one comes out of it. No one goes in. I’d be safe there, at least for a little while.

  A cart loaded with summer melons from somewhere far south of Venice rolls past noisily. The vendor and his two helpers bump it up the steps of the bridge, roll it across the center, then bump it down the steps on the other side. The bridge is narrower than the passage, so walkers cluster impatiently behind the cart as it crosses the bridge, then quickly fan out and pass around it on the far side. I wait. When the hubbub quiets down, I limp over the bridge. I stay right behind the melon cart as it turns into the next wide street. Then I turn again, into the quiet alley.

  I lean against a wall. It seems my whole body throbs now with the pain of the splinter.

  A man comes out of a house and walks past me without a glance. But I cannot take my eyes off him. He’s a Jew. I know from the little cap on his head. Mother explained about those caps once when we passed a boat full of Jews. She said all Jewish boys and men wear them.

  This must be the path to the Jewish Ghetto. I’ve heard Francesco talk about it. The newest synagogue of Venice stands in the Ghetto Nuovo—the New Ghetto. Why, I can go there and ask for shoes. Jews are famous for their charity. That beggar boy won’t care if I seek help in the Ghetto. He’s not a Jew, for he wasn’t wearing a little Jewish cap. And, yes, I can ask at the synagogue for one of those caps, too. Then no one will question me about my hair.

  I move along the shadowed alley as fast as I can manage. The smaller alleys to the side are dark and cool and soothing, like the little alley beside our own palazzo. I realize that’s because the buildings here are extra tall, some of them taller even than the biggest palazzi of Venice. And the alleys here are hardly dirty at all. I don’t have to keep scanning the ground for sharp objects.

  There’s light ahead—light and music. Children sing in another language. Not Venetian, and not the Latin I hear every Sunday at Mass. This must be the ancient language Hebrew. I get to the end of the alley and stop just within it, having a clear view of the campo. Small boys, ranging from perhaps six or seven to ten or eleven, stand shoulder to shoulder in rows before a tall, heavyset man of perhaps twenty years old—maybe twenty-five at the most. The high, sweet voices rise into the late-morning sunlight like doves.

  When the boys finish singing, they drink from a basin of water and disperse. The choir master, or whatever he’s called, sends greetings to their families in a strong voice and in clear Venetian.

  I wait for him to disappear down an alley, then I manage my way painfully to the basin and dip my sore foot in the water. It’s surprisingly cold. The shock almost numbs me, like the Chinese balm that Mother administers to our cuts.

  A dark boy, much darker than the fisherboy, walks up to me and stands with a bucket, waiting, his eyes black stones in clear white. He stares at my foot.

  I realize with a gasp that I have dirtied the water he’s come to fetch for drinking. I turn aside quickly, ashamed. “I beg of you,” I say softly, beckoning him to take the water. “Surely you can still use it for cooking.”

  The boy doesn’t answer. He doesn’t wear the Jewish cap. He must be a slave.

  Father keeps no slaves. He believes it is unjust for one human being to own another, since all human beings have souls. He’s right, as always. But some noble families disagree, and even ordinary citizens own slaves if they can afford them. This boy is probably Turkish. In our recent war with Turkey many slaves were taken.

  The slave fills the bucket and drags it by the rope handle, walking backward. His eyes flicker from the vacillating surface of the water in the bucket to me. The water and me—we both worry him. Maybe he’ll get a beating if he spills too much water. But why would I make him worry?

  I wait till he’s gone. Then I dip my hands in the water and let it trickle over my sore foot.

  “Do you have a disease?”

  I practically jump at the voice. “No, gentle sir.” The man has a small start of a beard. He looks around Antonio’s age—seventeen. Or perhaps eighteen.

  “Your foot is turning black.”

  “What? No it’s not.” I look down at my feet, which seem obscenely white against the gray stone.

  “Hasan told me.”

  The boy. I wonder if he told that I had my whole foot in their drinking water. “Your slave boy was mistaken, as you can see.” I offer a small smile.

  “Hasan is no slave. We don’t keep slaves here.” Scorn sharpens the man’s voice.

  “My father doesn’t keep slaves, either,” I say quickly.

  The man’s eyes narrow. Then he laughs. “Your father, who cannot even keep his son in shoes, does not keep slaves. What a surprise.”

  He’s laughing at me, as though I’m a fool. I go hot.

  He stops laughing and squats, so that his head is now at my waist level.

  The unexpectedness of his action makes me fall back a step onto my right foot, my injured foot. I wince from the pain.

  “Let me see,” he says kindly. “Hasan said the blackness is on the underside.”

  Ah, now I understand. “It’s a birthmark,” I say, twisting my foot upward. “But I got a splinter in the center of it.” The splinter forms a ridge under the skin. It’s long. The sight of it makes it hurt more.

  The man takes my foot in his hands. I pull back instinctively, but he holds firm. His hands feel around the edges of my foot. He looks up at me with questioning eyes.

  “If you have a needle, I can work it out,” I say at last. “Please, sir.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “I saw the basin,” I say. “I came to wash my injury.”

  “Tell the truth.”

  “As the Virgin Mother is my witness, this is the truth.”

  The corners of the man’s mouth twitch. I’m almost sure he’s holding back a smile. “The Virgin Mother, indeed,” he says. “But why here, in the Ghetto?”

  I try to free my foot, but he’s got a strong grasp. “I was going to visit your synagogue and beg for shoes and one of your caps.”

  “A yarmulke? What does a Catholic boy want with a yarmulke?”

  There’s nothing to respond to that.

  “All right, boy, we’re used to people seeking refuge. We turn no one away. But if you’re spying, that’s another story.”

  “I’m n
ot a spy.” The idea is absurd. “Who would I spy on? And why?”

  The man turns his back, still in a squat, still holding me by the foot. “Climb on my back and we’ll take care of that splinter.”

  I’ve both gotten rides and given rides before. But only with my family members. The young man waits, tensed in his squat. The very position makes his shirt press against his flesh, revealing the outline of muscle. What if he senses my femininity? Or, worse, feels the evidence against his back? But what else can I do? Barely breathing, I climb onto his back and curl my hands around his shoulders lightly, holding my torso stiff and as far from his spine as I can.

  He carries me across the campo, up an alley, to a doorway. He kisses the fingers of his right hand and touches a metal marker on the doorway. Then we pass through the dark storage area of the ground floor, and up the stairs. He opens the door of that first floor above the ground floor and walks inside, me still on his back.

  I am in the home of a Jew.

  CHAPTER NINE

  QUESTIONS

  An older woman, with a basket over her arm, is clearly on her way out. She gives me a glance, hears about my splinter from the man, and leaves, without a word.

  The man deposits me on a bench at a kitchen table. “One minute.” He goes into another room.

  I’m alone with a strange man in a strange house. The thought makes me shake. Mother would be appalled. So would my sisters. And I can’t begin to describe the way Father and my brothers would react. I should go down the stairs and out as fast as I can.

  But I don’t want to limp home, a failure. Laura and Andriana would argue that this is proof that I shouldn’t go out in disguise ever again. Only Paolina would take my side, and she hardly counts. If this were my only reason, I’d have no choice but to go immediately.

  But there is another reason: simple curiosity. The very reason why I’ve come on this adventure. I never even hoped to find myself in someone else’s home, much less that of a Jew, much less alone in his kitchen so that I can freely look among his things. And it isn’t dangerous to be here, because the man doesn’t know I’m a girl.

  The ceiling is low. The wood of the furniture and counters and door and floor is as dark as Paolina’s hair. I run my hand along the table. The surface is worn smooth; it feels almost soft. I stand and hop on my left foot as quietly as I can, over to the counter. The wood dips in one spot, forming a shallow indentation. This must be where they grind nuts, or maybe pound meats. Our counters at home have similar dips, but the counters are marble, so the dips are but slight.

  The smell of onions permeates the air, but I don’t see any bins of them. And there’s another smell, a sour smell I don’t recognize. And the odor of sweet wine.

  Plates, bowls, cutlery are stacked neatly on the sideboards in a funny arrangement. Some of the bowls are on one board, and others are on the other board. The same number of bowls, in fact: eight. And exactly half the plates are on each board. I count the spoons.

  “Hello.” A girl comes into the room from the stairway. Though she’s small, her face shows she’s at least Bortolo’s age—six.

  “Good day.”

  She wrinkles her nose and I remember the reek of fish in my clothes—I’ve become used to it. “What happened to your yarmulke?”

  What a funny first question. She doesn’t even ask who I am. But at least she didn’t say something rude about my smell. I smile at her and quickly put down the spoon I’m holding. It clacks against the others.

  “No!” The girl rushes to the sideboard. “Now look what you’ve done.”

  “What?” I clutch my hands together in front of my chest. “What did I do?”

  “Sara? Is that you?” The man comes into the kitchen. “Can you find me a needle?”

  “This boy mixed the spoons.” Sara picks up the spoon I was holding.

  The man takes it from her. His other hand goes to his head in dismay, and he knocks his yarmulke off center.

  I look again at the sets of spoons on each shelf. They are identical. I merely set the spoon on the wrong shelf in my haste.

  Sara spreads out the spoons on both shelves and counts. “See, Noè?”

  “Did you move anything else?” the man called Noè asks me. His voice holds a frightening fierceness.

  I press my clutched hands to the underside of my chin and shake my head.

  “Tell the truth,” Noè says. “This is important. We separate our eating utensils by what they are used for. We cannot mix them.”

  Sara gasps. “Doesn’t he know how to keep a Kosher home?” She looks at me with awe. “So that’s why you don’t have a yarmulke. Are you a Lutheran, then?”

  “A Lutheran? Of course not.” My eyes burn. I know in a moment I’ll cry. “The spoon is the only thing on those shelves that I touched.” I turn my head away and blink fast. “I’m sorry,” I mutter. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  Sara comes around in front of me. “Don’t cry. Sometimes babies make the same mistake. The rabbi can fix it.” She lifts her chin coaxingly. “We’ll use forks in the meantime.” Her tone is that of a mother.

  I smile in spite of myself.

  Noè puts the offending spoon in his pocket. “What are you doing home at this hour, Sara?”

  “I came to fetch a cushion for Mother’s back.”

  “Then fetch it and be gone.”

  To my surprise, Sara runs off obediently, all her spark suddenly subdued.

  “Sit back on the bench,” Noè says. He picks up a wine jug and a knife.

  “You’re not using that knife on me.” I sit on the bench and tuck my right foot under my bottom.

  “I won’t cut. You’ll see.” Noè puts out his hand for my foot.

  I don’t move.

  Noè laughs. “I won’t cut. I promise.”

  Grudgingly I extend my foot.

  Noè pours wine over it. It stings. Then he uses the point of the knife to nudge the splinter toward the hole where it entered.

  I suck in with a hiss.

  “This might take some time.” Noè’s voice is casual. “So. What are you doing in the Ghetto?”

  “Exploring.”

  He uses his thumbs now to squeeze toward the splinter. It hurts a lot. “Exploring what?”

  “I already answered one question. It’s your turn,” I say, more boldly than I feel.

  “All right. Ask.”

  “Did I make a terrible problem with the spoons?”

  Noè smiles. “It can be fixed. So what are you exploring?”

  “Everything,” I say. “Why are the buildings here so tall if the ceilings are so low?”

  “Don’t you know about the decree back in 1516? All the Jews of Venice were ordered to move to the Ghetto. So the buildings have to be built tall enough, with enough floors, to hold us all.”

  “How sad that they had to leave their ancestral homes.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  I cock my head in confusion. “What?”

  Noè jabs the point of the knife a little too deep.

  “Ahiii!” I yelp.

  “Sorry. This splinter is stubborn.”

  A bubble of blood forms on my sole. I look away. “What do you mean, they didn’t leave their ancestral homes?”

  “Some of them had their ancestral homes here. Jews have lived in the Ghetto for the past five centuries. But others have lived on the island of Giudecca even longer, so they stayed there. And there are plenty on Murano.”

  “They didn’t obey?” I ask in alarm. State punishments can be severe. “So what happened to them?”

  “Nothing.”

  I can’t believe that.

  Noè squeezes from the sides of my foot again. “Ah, at last.”

  I look down. An end of the splinter sticks out.

  Noè puts his head to my foot and, with his teeth, he pulls the splinter out. “Ta-da!”

  I’m still amazed at the fact that this man’s mouth was just on my foot. But the relief of having the splinter out surp
asses the amazement. “Thank you. It’s maddening that something so small could cause so much pain.”

  “You owe me,” Noè says, pouring wine over my foot and finally letting go.

  Now the wine stings worse than before. I cradle my foot in both hands and blow on it. When the sting stops, my foot feels much better. I look up at Noè. “I owe you for more than just this. I owe you for the water in the basin. I dirtied it with my foot. It was thoughtless. I’m sorry.”

  Noè smiles. “Hasan told me.”

  “I’ll pay for it. I have no money on me. But I can bring some back.”

  “I bet you can.” Noè puts the wine jug away. “But that’s not what I meant. You asked several questions in a row. So you owe me several answers in a row. Where do you live?”

  “Do you promise not to tell anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Then I won’t answer.”

  Noè folds his arms across his chest. “You said you wanted shoes. We have zoccoli that will fit you, but we can’t afford to simply give them away.”

  “Sell them to me then,” I say eagerly. “I’ll bring you back the money.”

  Noè makes a small whistle. “Now, why is it that you’d rather buy zoccoli than simply borrow them? I know you’ve got shoes at home. Your feet are too soft and tender to travel the streets barefoot. I bet today is the first time you’ve gone outside barefoot.”

  “You’re the one with the mind of a spy,” I say.

  Noè laughs. “Answer that one question and I’ll sell you a pair of zoccoli. Why buy rather than borrow?”

  “I want to own them so that I can use them over and over.”

  “Why don’t you use your own shoes?” Noè says.

  “I already answered your one question.”

  Noè grins. “All right. I’ll get the zoccoli.”

  “And a cap, too,” I say. “A yarmulke.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  TOLERANCE

  I run home, despite the small ache that remains in my foot, holding the yarmulke in place with one hand. Noè gave me one that fit just right. But when I went into the alley and twisted my hair up inside it, it no longer fit. Instead, it balances loosely on the coiled braid. These zoccoli, likewise, flop a little, and since they are open-toed, I cannot simply stuff a little ball of wool yarn inside each sandal. But I’ll find a way to tighten the leather straps. I’ll make them fit perfectly. The yarmulke may be a lost cause, but the zoccoli are not. And that’s all right, anyway, because I’d rather have a bareta, which wouldn’t mark me as a Jew. I have to figure out a way to get one.