Daughter of Venice

by Donna Jo Napoli

  “I’m sorry about the spoon,” I say quickly.

  But the girl closes the door in my face before my words are finished.

  What do I do now? I lean against the wall and glance up.

  A woman across the alley looks out at me from her window.

  I turn my face down and study the stone blocks of the ground, which are not in the least remarkable. When I peek up again, the woman is still there.

  Noè opens the door. “Hello. Excuse me for taking so long. I was finishing my breakfast.”

  “Go ahead and eat more,” I say. “I can wait.”

  “I’ve had enough. Why’d you come back?”

  “About the spoon . . .”

  “It’s already taken care of,” says Noè. He seems brusque—much more so than yesterday.

  I quickly take the gold brooch out of my pocket. “This is to pay for the zoccoli and yarmulke. But it’s worth more than them. So you can give me the change in coins.”

  Noè shakes his head slowly and laughs. “You’re a fine bit of amazement, you know that? What makes you think I want a brooch?”

  “I told you, it’s worth a lot. You can exchange it for coins.”

  “And where would I exchange it?”

  “At a bank. You run a bank, don’t you?”

  Noè pulls his head back in surprise. “Where’d you get that idea?”

  “Jews are bankers. That’s what my brother said.”

  Noè makes a grimace. “Some Jews are bankers. Some Jews are tailors. Some Jews are bakers or musicians or pawnbrokers. We’re people, my friend. We do many of the things Catholics do.”

  I’m breathing so hard from embarrassment, I’m afraid he’ll hear the whistle of my nose. I step back. “I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to think.”

  “Where’d you get that brooch, anyway?”

  I open my hand and look at the brooch dumbly.

  Noè takes it and turns it over. “You’re right. It’s worth a lot.”

  “I didn’t steal it,” I say, remembering the gondoliere.

  “You just took it, is that it? From your sister, maybe?”

  “She gave it to me. So I could pay you.”

  “So she knows about this little game you play. The plot thickens.”

  I stand stock-still. “What little game?”

  Noè flicks his fingertips against the sleeve of my shirt. “People who wear clothes like you have on are many things. Barbers, shop boys, porters, trashmen, hod carriers, street sweepers, itinerant peddlars of ink and rat poison, even. But none of them have feet as tender as yours or . . .” He pauses and takes my hand, turning it palm upward. “Or hands as tender as yours. None of them speak as you do. And none of them have sisters with brooches worth as much as this one.”

  “It’s an innocent game,” I say, my voice breaking over the words. “No one gets hurt.”

  “And you get to see how the rest of us live? Is that it? Is this a thrill for you?”

  “You make it sound nasty.”

  Noè drops the brooch back in my hand. “What’s your name?”

  I hadn’t prepared for this question. Idiot. “Donato,” I say. How unoriginal can I get? But the name is already in the air.

  “Listen, Donato. I don’t want your sister’s brooch. If I tried to sell it, I’d probably be accused of stealing it. Besides, I don’t have on hand, or even in any bank, as much money as it would take to pay you the change you’d be owed. So I’ll make you a proposition.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Come to work with me. Help me every day for two weeks. And I’ll declare the debt paid.”

  Two weeks, just to pay for a cap and a simple pair of shoes? But it’s work he’s offering me. Real work. Real adventure. “I can only come in the mornings. I have to be home at midday.”

  Noè laughs. “See? My guess was right. You’re out for the thrill.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You didn’t even ask what my work is. You don’t care. You’re like a scientist and I’m like the strange animal you’re studying.”

  “That’s not true.” I clamp my jaw shut and will myself not to cry.

  “All right, then. If you can come only mornings, it will take a month to work off the zoccoli and yarmulke. By the way,” Noè says, pointing with his chin toward my head, “what happened to the yarmulke?”

  “I traded it to my brother for his bareta.”

  “Your brother’s in on it, too, huh? The plot is thicker than pitch.” Noè laughs.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LETTERS

  Noè has long legs and long strides. I didn’t notice that yesterday because I was on his back. But now I practically have to run to keep up with him.

  We go quickly down one alley and another and cross a bridge.

  “Are we out of the Ghetto?” I ask.

  “Yes. The Canale di San Girolamo marks the boundary.” Noè’s thin arms swing far as he walks the long fondamenta beside the canal.

  “But don’t you work in the Ghetto?”

  Noè gives me a sideways glance, not slowing his pace. “Jews are supposed to live in the Ghetto, but we’re not confined to it except at nighttime. During the day, we go anywhere we want. And, anyway, I told you, we don’t really follow the law. Even at night I’d walk freely here.”

  I feel scolded unjustly. “Yesterday you were in the Ghetto during work hours.”

  “You’re right. I had a special errand.”

  A woman comes outside and hangs a string of newly made candles across the top of a door. The smell of hot wax is strong.

  “Noè, could you wait? Please, could I watch a little while in the wax-working shop?” I’ve already stopped, and I’m looking through the window at the huge kettles inside, and the boys lined up on either side, holding strings. This is a factory—my first glimpse of a real factory.

  “You can spend your own time how you want, but not my time,” Noè calls. He’s already halfway down the fondamenta.

  I run to catch up, past gold-working shops and jewelers, past coopers and ribbon shops. I want to look in all of them. “What’s the hurry?”

  “In the world of nobles, being late might not be costly. But in the world of the people, being late could cost me my job.”

  “Oh. I didn’t mean to make you late.”

  “Aha,” says Noè. “So you are from a noble family. I knew it.”

  “Are you going to keep doing that?” I say in annoyance.

  “Why not come clean and tell me all about what you’re up to?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, I guess I will keep doing it.” Noè crosses another bridge and I recognize that we’ve passed over the Rio di Noale, where the gondoliere called me a thief.

  We wind down alley after alley and finally come out on the wide Fondamente Nuove, which looks out over the lagoon. The green water shimmers with the brilliance of morning. I halt and breathe in the beauty.

  A barge goes by, piled high with lumber. The way the logs are arranged, it looks vaguely like the sea dragon in the frieze over the mantelpiece in our dining hall. A giant from some mystical time long ago. I almost expect it to let out a bloodcurdling scream.

  I run to Noè and grab him by the crook of the arm. “Look at that barge. What does it make you think of?”

  “Venice’s problems.”

  “What? It looks like a monster from the deep. Can’t you see? Doesn’t it seem like it’s just about to shoot fire from its mouth?”

  “It looks like our future going up in flames, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That isn’t what I mean at all. What are you talking about?”

  “That barge came down the Brenta River. It’s carrying lumber from the mainland, probably from Verona, but maybe even from as far away as Brescia, to the shipyards.”

  “I knew that,” I say with assurance. “Venice makes the most superior sailing vessels in the world.”

  “Not for long,” says Noè. “The oak forests in the Veneti
an territories are dwindling. Soon we’ll have to buy lumber from the territories of Milan. That means it will cost more to build ships, so we won’t be able to build them as cheaply as our competitors. Plus the pirates on the Dalmatian and Barbary coasts keep stealing our ships, sometimes with full cargoes. Even European pirates attack us.”

  Father talked about pirates just last week. But I didn’t know how it connected to shipbuilding. And I can’t remember him talking about the shortage of timber. I thought Padua and Treviso had plenty of wood. “You can’t mean Venice will lose supremacy on the seas.”

  “And why can’t I, my friend?” Noè stops at a door. “Stay here while I talk to the master.”

  I lean my back against the wall and look out over the waters. The barge is still visible, heading slowly toward Castello and the wide canals that lead to the shipbuilding factories. Noè is like Father, and like Francesco and Piero, too, always thinking about business, about how everything affects business. But I’ve never heard anyone talk about problems for the future. Father says the Venetian Empire is the greatest economic power in the world. There’s never any doubt in his voice.

  Noè can’t be right.

  Noè comes out and puts his arm around my shoulders. He pulls me to the edge of the fondamenta, so that I’m looking down directly at the lapping waves. “Listen, Donato,” he says quietly, “for the next month your name is Donata.”

  I gasp and jump back.

  He gives a little laugh and pulls me back to him. “Don’t worry. Your member won’t shrivel at the mere change in name. It has to be this way.”

  I stand in total confusion. Has he found me out or not?

  “Look, to join the guild you have to pay the entrance fee. You don’t have any money on you, right?”

  “Just the gold brooch,” I say.

  “Which you’d better not show to anyone,” Noè says seriously. “And I don’t have enough money to pay the fee. So I said you owed me for a pair of zoccoli and you would work every morning for a month to pay me back. I’ll get the money you earn. See?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, Donato. If you’re a boy, you have to join the guild to work. But if you’re a girl, you can’t join. Girls work here on and off, unofficially, and their brothers are always the ones to get paid.”

  “All right,” I say, finally getting it. How funny. I’ll be a girl pretending to be a boy pretending to be a girl. I smile.

  “You do look sort of girly,” says Noè.

  I stop smiling.

  He elbows me in the ribs. “I was joking. We can’t do anything about the fact that you’re in trousers, but take off that bareta.”

  I hold the bareta on my head with both hands. “I can’t. My hair’s way too short for a girl. This way people can think I’ve got long hair stuffed up inside the hat.”

  Noè makes a grimace. “And they can think you’re pretty strange, too.”

  “I’m not taking off the bareta. If anyone says I’m strange, tell them I’m trying to look like a boy.”

  “All right, all right. Come on.”

  I follow him through a front room full of big machines. I look closely. These must be printing presses. So Noè makes books.

  We pass down a corridor with rooms off to each side and out to a back room that has so many windows it’s filled with light. The door stands open to a courtyard where two long rows of tables with benches running down one side of the tables stand out in the open.

  “There’s no one here.”

  “They’ll come,” says Noè. “Let me see what the job for today is and I’ll get you started. Sit on a bench and wait.”

  I wander around the courtyard. Except for the occasional lizard, there’s nothing of interest. Paolina would have immediate plans for this place. For the past year she’s been trying to convince Mother to have the stones of our own courtyard dug up so that she can make a garden. And this courtyard is much bigger than ours. I can imagine Paolina saying, “That corner is perfect for a mulberry tree, and this one for a pomegranate.” She’d put a line of plum trees along the far end and a stone reflection pool, far enough from the mulberry to be free of its messy fruits when they fall but close enough to be in its shadows in the afternoon. I smile and twirl around, thinking of my little sister dancing through the garden she’d create here.

  “You don’t have to act the part yet,” says Noè. He watches me with a strange look on his face. His arms hold a stack of papers with a box perched on top.

  “I was thinking about my sister.” My face grows hot. “She likes gardens.”

  “This is hardly a garden.”

  “I know. She’d change it.”

  Noè puts his tongue in his cheek and pushes it around a bit. He looks as though he’s going to say something. Instead, he lays the papers on an end table. From the box he takes out jars and places them at regular intervals along the two rows of tables. Then he takes out quills and scatters them equally on the tables, too. He sits down at the end table and takes one sheet of paper off the top of the stack. He writes.

  I stand looking over his shoulder.

  He fills the page with big letters. “There. That should do it.”

  I stare at the letters. “I thought this was a printing house.”

  “It is, smarty. We do small jobs for the two big printing houses . . .”

  “The house of Antonio Galassi in Padua,” I say, jumping in to show him that I know some things, that I really am a smarty, even if I didn’t know about Venice’s timber shortage. I have memorized everything Piero has told me about the book industry. “And the house of Aldus Pius Manutius. Venice is the center of the world book trade. It started out in Germany, but now we do it much bigger.”

  “That’s right.” He beckons me toward him with a single finger.

  I lean forward.

  “You don’t have to impress me, my friend,” he whispers. “I know you’re educated.”

  Suddenly I feel like a cheat. “I don’t know about the book business. Not really. Please tell me about the work here.”

  “We typeset and print books. In fact, we even do some of the new, small books that you can carry in one hand. The Aldine press—Manutius’ press that you mentioned—perfected them. Have you seen them?”

  I shake my head.

  Noè rushes into the building, then comes out holding a small book bound in red leather. He hands it to me.

  I’ve never held a book before. The ones we have at home are too large. I’ve seen them lying open on the reading table in the library when I’ve gone in to fetch Father or one of my brothers. This one feels precious in my hands. A thin gold cord with a tassel on the end marks the reader’s place. Gingerly, I use the cord to open the book.

  “See? The lettering is squared off. Italic print, it’s called. It’s not beautiful, I admit. It can’t compare to the large books, where the printing mimics script as much as possible. But typecutters can make these simple letters quickly, and the small print allows for small pages. The binding is goat, rather than a more expensive leather, but there’s still a vellum flyleaf at the front and back and the pages still have gilt edges.” Noè runs his finger lovingly along the edge of a page as he talks. He’s like a book himself, so full of information. “Aldus Manutius meant for these books to accompany the rich as they travel. But the result is a book that a man can afford to own—a man like me, not just one like you.”

  “It’s wonderful,” I say. “Is this what you work on?”

  “No. I’m a journeyman in handmade books. Many people still prefer script, no matter the cost. That’s what I do.”

  I look at the sheet of paper that Noè just covered with script. The letters are equal in size and well placed on the page. But there’s nothing beautiful about them. Noè rushed the lettering, and it shows. “This doesn’t look like a book page to me,” I say hesitantly.

  Noè laughs. He puts the small printed book in his pocket and gestures for me to sit on the bench. “It’s not. Read it.”

 
; I press my lips together. I don’t know how to read. But Noè assumes I can because a rich boy should be able to. Then I remember. “Read it to me. If the master looks out, he shouldn’t see a girl reading, after all.”

  Noè gives a half smile. “If the master looks out, he shouldn’t see any copyist reading, boy or girl. That’s what you are today, my friend, a copyist earning a piece rate. You’ll be earning the same mercede all copyists earn, which is why it will take you a full month to pay me back. Copyists are poor, my friend. And no copyist gets a private education. Most of them never learn to read.”

  “But you know how to read. Didn’t you start as a copyist?”

  “All Jewish boys go to school in the Ghetto. By the time we become apprentices, no matter what the job, we can read anything, in Hebrew, Latin, or Greek. And we can read and write Venetian, too, of course. My uncle often works for the Tribunals during court cases, helping the recorder decide how to write the words of witnesses, many of whom speak in Venetian, even in court, because they’re ordinary citizens or just plain people. They don’t know Latin.”

  I’m aghast. “Your uncle’s a Jew, isn’t he? How can he work for the Tribunals, of all things?”

  Noè grins. “He doesn’t have a regular job as a civil servant, of course. He’s called in for special cases, as the need arises. He translates and acts as an interpreter, too. It’s not illegal to be a Jew in Venice, after all. What kind of fool are you? It’s illegal to convert from Catholicism to Judaism. Or even from Catholicism to Lutheranism.” His voice takes on a sarcastic edge. “To turn from the true way is heretical. You can be denounced as a threat to the State. But if you start out a Jew, well, that’s just your bad luck.” He laughs. “The Vatican can be clever in its reasoning.”

  Nothing he has said is in itself blasphemy. Yet I feel sure that Noè is poking fun at my religion. I’m glad no one can hear.

  Being denounced is the worst thing that can happen to a Venetian. If a man commits an act that threatens the Republic—if he tells State secrets or tries to buy a seat in the Senate or is somehow else treasonous—and if someone finds out, that person will write up exactly what the man has done in a formal letter, a denunciation, and slip the letter through the opening in the mouth of a carved stone lionhead, a famous bocca di leone. The Council of Ten interviews the accused and if there seems to be cause for concern, spies go out and gather information for a full trial. Within fifteen days from the denunciation, the accused is judged and, if guilty, sentenced. If he’s lucky, he might spend years in prison. If he’s unlucky, he might spend years in exile. And if he’s truly wretched, he’ll suffer death by hanging, decapitation, or night drowning in the lagoon.