Daughter of Venice

by Donna Jo Napoli

  “They’ve already been complaining,” says Father. “Everyone wants finer wool cloth, and finer wool cloth comes from the very finest spinning. Uncle Alvise won’t accept a spool of yarn that isn’t completely regular and thin as silk. So a spinning job that used to take a day now takes two. The spinners are working twice as long for the same pay.”

  “So the spinners will petition for a raise, too,” says Piero.

  “And that becomes Uncle Alvise’s problem,” says Francesco. “He either has to oppose the combers’ petition, or make a petition of his own.”

  “Those are the choices,” says Father. “And what the Senate decides will affect the tailors, and cloth sellers, like us.”

  “And our trade abroad,” says Piero.

  “And our buying at home,” I say.

  Father acknowledges my words this time with just the quickest of glances. “There’s no end to it,” he says. “And it doesn’t start with the combers. They’re the first to petition. The carders complain that the cards for working the weft wool went from thirty-six soldi to seventy. And the beaters complain about their costs.”

  “So, little sister,” says Francesco, looking at me, “we’ve all figured it out together—you included. What the handbills say is that we’ve got trouble.”

  “We might as well eat and eat hearty,” says Father. “And we better start having lamb even more often, to keep those sheep herders in business.”

  The food is served and the others are eating, but Mother’s eyes are on me, almost as though she’s questioning me. I nod at her. Then I look again at the handbill that I quietly took from Antonio. The little splots here and there make me smile.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LESSONS

  The tutorial takes place in our library. Laura and I sit in chairs at the side of the room. Our older brothers sit in chairs grouped together in the center of the room. The tutor stands in front of them, pacing, now and then circling them. He doesn’t look at Laura and me.

  Messer Zonico is a private tutor, not a teacher. Most private tutors are members of the clergy, usually priests well known for their skills in preaching. But Messer Zonico is a layman—and a citizen, not a noble. I know a lot about him. Or about his family. Antonio told Laura and me the whole story of intrigue and treachery.

  The Zonico family had been a member of Venice’s nobility for as far back as anyone knows. They were never wealthy, but they had a good business in luxury items. Today they’re known for soap. They import the ingredients—soda ash, quicklime, and olive oil—from other areas on the mainland peninsula, but they actually produce the soaps in Venice. Like everything else wonderful in Venice, these soaps come in startling colors. And they smell of fruits and flowers. Zonico soaps are exported all over Europe. We use them in our family. In fact, Andriana likes to wet her underdresses in little spots here and there and rub on a bit of soap. At parties the other girls ask her how she gets that sweet smell, and Laura and I, on strict instruction from Andriana, insist that it’s our sister’s natural essence.

  The Zonico family was busy developing their connections in the export business and, thus, were not participating in the government of Venice, when the Great Council passed its decree of 1297. This decree officially closed the nobility, limiting it to those who were active in the legislative body during the few years preceding it, and to their descendants. The Great Council drew up its membership roles of all the noblemen over twenty-five years old. The Zonico men were excluded.

  It was a terrible blow. And not just for the Zonico family. Dozens of old families were left out. They argued over it for more than ten years, but only the men listed in the membership roles were allowed to vote to select the magistrates for the offices of the Republic. And those men, the electorate, didn’t seem to care about the ones left out.

  So a group of ex-noblemen formed a plot to overthrow the government. They enlisted the help of some commoners, too—citizens. And even of some outsiders, from Florence and Ferrara. All together there were over thirty men who planned to attack the Palazzo Ducale.

  But at the last moment, one of the Venetian ex-noblemen, one who had been a key figure in the conspiracy, went to the Doge himself and reported the whole plot. In return the Doge put the man’s name in the register of the Great Council, so his family regained their status.

  But the Doge was pitiless toward the others. He had the rebels captured and beheaded. Those few he could not capture were banished from Venice forever.

  Two of Messer Zonico’s ancestors were beheaded.

  The Zonico family, it would seem, has never gotten over this awful event. They have persisted in doing everything that the real noble families do, other than hold office, that is, and in doing it to a greater degree. They send all their sons to the University of Padua, not just those who show an inclination. And they pride themselves on having two or three men in every generation who serve as tutors for the noble families of Venice. They say in that way they are influencing the minds of Venice’s rulers more than if they were merely members of the Senate.

  This, then, is the history of our tutor. I tried to remind myself of that, when Francesco presented Laura and me to him, because I wanted to excuse him for his rudeness. He kept his lips closed in a thin line and gave us not even a nod. Only the fact that he blinked let us know that he had heard what Francesco said. He immediately pushed the two chairs by the window over to the side of the room and then went about the lesson as though Laura and I didn’t exist.

  But I cannot really excuse him. Something that happened close to three centuries ago should not intrude itself into this library today. Messer Zonico is a seppia—an ugly cuttlefish. A giant cuttlefish, in fact, for he’s quite tall. And he’s slightly pigeon-toed. It’s not nice of me to notice that. I know I’ll have to confess this thought before I can receive Communion at Mass next Sunday.

  Messer Cuttlefish is talking about architecture. He’s describing columns and windows and building materials. His voice drones, but his speech is so packed with information that I listen raptly. Now he opens the giant book lying on the small, wheeled table behind him. He invites our brothers to take a look.

  Laura and I are not invited.

  I think of the wonderful little book that fit into Noè’s hand this morning. The book I held in my own hands. If Messer Cuttlefish had a small book like that, he’d have to pass it around, and then one of our brothers, Piero or Antonio, I’m sure, would pass it to Laura and me. We’d be part of it all—like the Jewish girls in Noè’s study group. Instead, Messer Cuttlefish has a massive book, so massive that it has to be wheeled around when it’s not sitting on a shelf. He stands over it like a guardsman.

  The boys are saying all sorts of things and Messer Cuttlefish keeps asking them “exactly” what they mean and congratulating them. When they ask questions, he answers happily, as though he knows everything in the whole wide world.

  While all Laura and I want is to know a little something of this world—this Venice. Just a little something. At least at first. I smile to myself. Then, later, maybe everything.

  “What are you doing?” Laura whispers to me. “Sit back down.”

  But I’m already on my feet. I take her hand and jerk her to her feet as well. I march to the table, pulling her along beside me, and wedge us between Piero and Antonio.

  Messer Cuttlefish clears his throat and his eyes dart at me, then away again.

  “So this one’s Byzantine,” says Vincenzo, pointing to a drawing of columns and arches, “and this one is Romanesque, and this one is Gothic.”

  “Exactly,” says Messer Cuttlefish.

  I study the pictures and everything the tutor was saying before makes sense now. “So what is the architecture of the new palazzo across the Canal Grande?” I ask.

  Messer Cuttlefish stands so still, it’s as though he’s been turned to stone. Then his tight little mouth wrinkles along the upper lip and his cheeks puff. “Messer Mocenigo,” he says, addressing Francesco. “Did you not tel
l me, did you not explicitly assure me, that the visitors would not disrupt the lessons?”

  “I did.” Francesco looks at me. His eyes sparkle as though he’s enjoying Messer Cuttlefish’s discomfort. Somehow I know that if Messer Cuttlefish weren’t looking directly at him, Francesco would wink at me. “The question, however, surely seems not a disruption, but, rather, most pertinent,” says Francesco.

  “Most impertinent, I’d say,” says Messer Cuttlefish. “Anyone who had been following the lesson wouldn’t ask silly questions.”

  “I’ve been following the lesson,” Piero says. “The arches on the new palazzo aren’t pointed like the arches on our palazzo—so it’s not Gothic. Nor are they high like the horseshoe arches on the Basilica di San Marco—so it’s not Byzantine.”

  “It has simple, rounded arches,” says Antonio. “But somehow it doesn’t seem like the other examples of Romanesque architecture.”

  “And the columns go all the way up beside the arches, rather than supporting the bottoms of the arches,” says Vincenzo. “That means the arches don’t really support any weight. They’re purely for decoration.”

  “Exactly,” says Messer Cuttlefish. “You young men have, indeed, understood.”

  “As did our sister,” says Antonio quietly. “She asked the question, after all.”

  “And none of us can answer it,” says Francesco. “Can you?”

  Messer Cuttlefish lifts his chin. “Why don’t we just take this book into the great hall and look out at that new palazzo together?”

  Antonio is already wheeling the book table into the corridor. Laura and I follow the troops, her hand squeezing mine hard.

  “Please position the book directly in front of the balcony,” says Messer Cuttlefish. “Yes, that’s perfect. Now come look.”

  The boys line up along the wide balcony. But they leave spaces between them. I step into one, and give Laura an encouraging look. When she doesn’t budge, I give her a commanding look. She pretends not to see me. Finally, I go over and whisper in her ear, “Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist.”

  Laura looks at me dumbly.

  “Pretend you’re in a procession,” I whisper. “March.”

  Laura steps forward, between Vincenzo and Piero, and I get back into my spot.

  “All right, now, please look through the drawings in this book, starting at the very beginning.”

  Piero slowly turns the pages as everyone looks on.

  “It seems the architect has gone backward,” says Vincenzo.

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” asks Messer Cuttlefish. His voice rises in excitement.

  “The palazzo is almost classic in style, like an ancient building.”

  “Exactly. It harks back to the Greeks. You remember the lessons on the classical styles. Oh, bravo bravo!” Messer Cuttlefish steps from foot to foot and I guess that this is his form of a celebration dance.

  “It’s ugly,” I say. “It doesn’t fit our city.”

  Messer Cuttlefish looks at me and seems unsure. “What exactly do you mean by that?” he says at last.

  “Venice is a city of light and water, where colors flourish because of . . . I don’t know . . . but maybe a spirit of hope. The architecture in the new palazzo, the architecture that harks back to the Greeks, as you said, that architecture is heavy. Too heavy for Venice.”

  Messer Cuttlefish’s face is loose and flaccid for a moment, as though his eyes are open but he’s really asleep. Then his eyes come awake and he’s looking at me strangely. “I agree,” he says. He takes off his eyeglasses and slowly cleans them with a white cloth. Then he puts them back on. “Our buildings reflect how we view the world. Venice thinks anything is possible, so long as we praise the Lord.” He closes the big book. “Vincenzo, would you please wheel this back to the library? And I’d like all of you to arrange your chairs around the long library table for individual tutoring now.” He looks at Laura and me. But he doesn’t have to. I heard what he said—“all of you.”

  We push our chairs to the table in the library and the boys each take a stack of materials off a side shelf and set it on the table in front of themselves. They work silently at tasks Laura and I have no part of.

  Messer Cuttlefish comes to Laura and me and says, “We’ll begin with mastering your letters.” He lays a sheet of paper in front of each of us, puts a jar of ink between us, and hands us quills. “This is the letter ‘A’.” He draws it on his own piece of paper. “Form it exactly as I do: stroke one, stroke two, stroke three.”

  For the second time today, I am faced with paper, ink, and quill. I work hard to do “exactly” as Messer Cuttlefish instructs. I will learn the magic of letters. Praise be to our Lord.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  GOOD-BYE

  A month goes by in a lovely routine. The only really bad parts of it are that Laura must do most of my work and I rarely get to see Mother or the little ones. In the past I spent my mornings with Mother, doing the work that women do in our house. And I spent my evenings with Laura and Paolina, playing with the little ones. I feel almost like they’re strangers to me now. I miss them. But, oh, what I’m doing instead is worth that temporary loss.

  Every morning I go to work, like most middle-class and poor boys my age. I change in the storeroom and wear my bareta out into the world. Noè meets me in the Rio Terrà di Maddalena and we walk together, unmolested by beggar boys, to the book printer’s.

  I skip Sunday, of course, because I must attend Mass with my family. And I skip Saturday, because that is Noè’s holy day, which he passes studying the psalms, even though the printing house still operates. So on Saturday I work like a madwoman, doing both my share of the chores and Laura’s. A small payback, to be sure, but anything is better than nothing.

  The printing house, it turns out, is owned by Catholics; Jews have been prohibited from owning printing houses since 1548, though they can work in them. Noè told me that. And there’s another prohibition against Jews owning the Talmud or even Hebrew versions of the Bible. But this prohibition is not enforced: Catholic printing houses supply sacred Hebrew texts to many Ghetto families. In fact, one of Noè’s jobs—for he has many—is to take the daily sermons of the chief rabbi—the man Noè calls his gaon—and translate them into Hebrew and deliver them to either the di Gara printing house or the Zanetti printing house. It is Noè, again, who later distributes the printed sermons to those faithful who can pay. So Ghetto homes are full of texts in Hebrew, law or no law.

  I don’t have a sense yet of what the real rules affecting Jews are. But I know that the interaction between Jews and Catholics is not purely commercial, despite what Francesco and Piero said. One of the magnificent staircases in the Palazzo Ducale leads to a bocca di leone where people can insert denunciations against blasphemy in the lion’s mouth. Gli Esecutori contro la Bestemmia—the Executors against Blasphemy—were founded in 1537 and they punish not only blasphemies of word, but gambling, drunkenness, and sexual relations between Jews and Catholics. Sexual relations? As Noè says, you don’t have a law against something that never happens.

  And there are religious events that bring Jews and Catholics together. Noè told me that the new Ghetto choral master, that Leon Modena (whose name he never utters without saying swiftly “may God his Rock protect him and grant him long life”), preaches in the campo. He’s so eloquent that even Catholics come to hear him. And it goes both ways—Jews listen to the famous Catholic Fra Paolo Sarpi, who comes right into the Ghetto to speak with them. Many criticize Fra Sarpi; Pope Clement even denied Fra Sarpi a bishopric because of his friendships with Jews. But Sarpi hasn’t been daunted.

  I love it when Noè tells me these things. I love every date, every law, every detail of any sort. We walk to work with Noè talking and me learning. It is wonderful, indeed, to be treated like a boy.

  When we arrive at the printing house, I take out a plain white cloth and drape it over my head, with enough sticking out in front to act like a visor against the sun. Giuseppe
, one of the copyists, questioned this the first time I did it. Noè quickly said it was because I was a girl. Rosaria, the only other girl copyist, piped up with, “A girl who gives herself the airs of nobility.” People snickered here and there, but no one has said anything about it since. And when we were alone, Noè commented that it was “a nice touch” to my disguise as a girl. I pull the sleeves of my shirt down over my hands when I’m working in the printer’s courtyard so that only the fingers I use for writing are uncovered. It’s lucky, after all, that the fisherboy’s shirt is so large on me. My writing fingers have turned a little darker with the sun exposure, but no one at home has noticed.

  On every afternoon but Sunday I go to tutorial. Laura stopped coming after the first couple of days. She said she was too exhausted from doing double work all morning—or almost double. Sometimes she doesn’t finish the work that’s supposed to be her share. But she always does my share. She protects me. She winds wool onto the bobbins and she takes care of our younger siblings. She works so hard.

  I felt guilty when Laura quit tutorial lessons, and I told her. Then she admitted that she hated the lessons anyway. She much prefers to spend the afternoon with Andriana or playing her violin.

  Mother has no suspicions, largely because she’s hardly ever home, and, when she is, she’s distracted. But also because in the evenings, after I mangle songs on the violin, I run into the workroom and do whatever I can to catch up. A few times Mother has happened by the workroom and given me a surprised smile. I smile back, in genuine happiness, because winding the bobbins for an hour or two isn’t dull at all when I have the morning’s adventures to think about. But, oh, it is hard to hear the giggles from the little ones as Laura and Paolina play with them while I work.

  But I’m happy Laura has this pleasure. And I’m happy when her eyes light up and she laughs as she tells me about her afternoons with Andriana at parties. For Andriana has been invited to small parties ever since Father announced that he would begin thinking about the family marriage plans. Many of these parties are at the homes of noble families, where the mother and the sisters want to look her over. Since Father will undoubtedly give a large dowry, Andriana is the object of immense curiosity. She says she feels as if she’s constantly on display. She plays the harp, always the same tune, because Andriana, like me, is not a natural musician. But she’s mastered one tune beautifully, and that’s all she needs. When they applaud and beg her to play another, she demurely says her own mother plays much better, which is true. Mother taught Andriana the harp, since she wanted her oldest daughter to follow in her footsteps. In any case, Andriana sounds like a paragon of modesty, which is much better than if she had actually played a second tune perfectly.