Was I the only one who remembered I had a four-act opera to sing that evening?
***
The stout wooden gates of the ghetto were flanked by Christian guards whose pay, Liya had once told me, fell on the shoulders of the Hebrew community. As we stepped through those open portals, we entered a city within a city.
This area, which had once played host to an iron foundry, was riddled with narrow passages overshadowed by tall buildings with scaling plaster and broken window shutters. The few open squares could barely contain the activity that swirled within. Every necessity of life had its own shop: bread, greens, fruit, wine, meat, and cheese. With space at a premium, much of life was lived outdoors. A profusion of accents and alien tongues met my ears as women bargained over goods spilling from doorways and men conducted learned discussions in tight, intense circles.
Since the ghetto’s inhabitants had landed there from all four corners of the globe, I wasn’t surprised to pass several proud descendants of Spanish Jewry speaking Castilian or catch sight of a fellow in caftan and turban following us down the alley. With a flap of his headgear drawn across the lower part of his swarthy face, he looked as if he could have been miraculously transported from the Holy Land. We also rubbed shoulders with plenty of my fellow Christians who had come to the ghetto to either leave an item in pawn, if their purse was empty, or get it out again if they were flush with coin.
With Liya in the lead, we crossed a small campo dominated by the plain stone façade of the Spanish synagogue and made several left turns to reach an even narrower passageway where the air was full of goose feathers floating like ragged snowflakes. We were getting close. I recalled that the poultry shop was just a few doors down from Pincas Del’Vecchio’s place.
Liya’s father was waiting in the doorway. I had last seen him before my ill-fated visit to Rome several years ago, when I was accustomed to dropping in at his shop to see if there was any news from his errant daughter. Once I’d found his wandering Liya and taken her as my wife, I’d been made to feel that I had stolen his greatest treasure and the friendly visits ceased. I was thus relieved when he hailed us with loud exclamations of welcome. No sneaking us past the neighbors. The eldest daughter of the house had returned, and Pincas wanted everyone to share his joy. In the crowded passageway, I saw faces turn toward us, many wearing smiles, some not.
“You look well,” he told me after he’d embraced Liya. Then he rose on tiptoe to kiss both my cheeks.
Somewhat surprised, I returned his greeting. “As do you, Signore. Business must be good.”
With pride, Pincas nodded toward the jackets and waistcoats hanging from a line tacked to the side of the building. Linen shirts and neckcloths were piled in baskets on either side of the entrance, and through the open doorway, I could see shelves and racks bulging with all manner of finery. As he always had, my jowly, rotund father-in-law wore a coat and wig in the style of the day before yesterday, preferring to save more fashionable wares for his customers. Unfortunately, he was also still using his oily, overly sweet-smelling pomade; it formed a cloying stew with the odor of simmering goose fat wafting from the poulterer’s. I slipped my scented handkerchief from an inside pocket and dabbed it to my nose.
Pincas asked if we required any refreshment, gesturing toward a tiny café at the end of the alley. I declined politely, citing our eagerness to interview the widow Grazziano and privately mulling how I could speed my first errand of the morning along. We’d turned to go back the way we’d come when our mission was immediately forestalled by Fortunata darting out of the shop, intent on saying her helloes. The doll-like girl that I remembered had grown into a beautiful young woman. How old was she now? Twelve? Thirteen? With her striking indigo gown and dark hair fastened up with gold pins, she reminded me of Liya when I’d first met her as she peddled masks and headdresses at the Teatro San Marco so many years ago.
As the sisters chattered, Pincas pulled me to one side and leaned a shoulder against the plastered wall across the way. At first I wondered why he had not invited us into the shop, but then I noticed the open window on the floor above and the curtain twitching despite the still, sultry air. Pincas may have stiffened his spine sufficiently to welcome his daughter, but I’d wager he was still very much under the thumb of his ungovernable wife who obviously wanted to observe her daughter and her capon of a husband without being seen. Yes, out of the corner of my eye, I caught the watchful figure garbed in black.
“It was shocking to hear of Mina’s death—so violent and in such a public place,” Pincas was saying in his slightly guttural accent. “But then, Mina Grazziano never did anything by halves.”
“Did you know her well?” I asked, trying to picture the woman I thought of as Zulietta Giardino existing within the stifling confines of the ghetto.
He nodded. “Her father was a friend of long standing. I remember when Mina was born—Davide nearly burst with pride and gratitude. He and Esther had been married for six years and despaired of ever having a child.” Pincas gave a short chuckle. “We always joked that when the Lord got around to sending us daughters, he kept his hand on the pump.”
“Liya guessed that Mina had five sisters.”
“That’s right. The youngest two are still at home, one married a man of the ghetto, and the others married a pair of cousins from Livorno.” He sighed and massaged the excess flesh above his frayed collar. “I always feared Mina would come to grief. Davide made a terrible mistake, you see.”
“Ye-es,” I replied in a tone that let him know he had my full attention.
“Perhaps because she was the answer to his prayers, Davide worshiped his little Mina. He put her on a pedestal and expected her mother and sisters to pay her the same homage. She was petted, indulged, given extravagant presents…” He shook his head sadly. “She ruled the household until a sudden attack of apoplexy carried Davide off. Then she had to fall back on those she’d always put in the shade.”
“How old was she when he died?”
“Sixteen. As sharp as a needle, handy with ruses, and already pretty enough to turn every man’s head.”
“Ruses?”
“Let me just say that Mina told the truth only so long as it was convenient. When the truth became tedious, she invented a story that was more to her liking, generally one in which she took center stage.”
“No wonder these walls couldn’t hold her.”
“It was more than sheer willfulness that led her astray.” Pincas frowned and pushed off the wall. “But the rest of the tale is best told by Esther. It’s time we go to meet her, don’t you think?”
After bestowing kisses all around, Fortunata returned to her shop counter. Liya and I followed Pincas out the way we had come. I looked back at Signora Del’Vecchio’s observation post just in time to see the corner of the curtain fall back into place. I also noted something else as we passed the poultry shop. Tucked behind three jocular youths who sat plucking feathers from the limp bodies of geese was a dark gentleman in turban and robe. The very same, I was certain, who had dogged our steps from the entrance gates.
***
“Without a dowry, what sort of respectable marriage could she make?” Signora Grazziano shifted her gaze from Liya to me, then to Pincas.
She looked older than most other women I knew to be in their fifth decade. Where my theatrical colleagues were skilled in creating the illusion of youth, Zulietta’s—or Mina’s—mother seemed unconcerned. Her wrinkled face was bare of paint or powder, tendrils of silver-streaked hair escaped an untidy bun, and her massive hips filled every inch of the wide armchair.
Pincas was not an easily angered man, so it startled me when he shook a fist and nearly shouted, “The confraternity provided funds for your daughters’ dowries in addition to making sure you had this roof over your heads. There was no reason for you to hand Mina over to Signor Malpiero.”
A clay pipe with a goose quill mouthpiece lay between the lady’s fingers. She took several fierce puffs before answering. The smoke smelled like burning rags. “Two rooms for me and my daughters still at home. And two windows no larger than the bunghole of a wine cask. Is this what you call living?”
I followed her gaze around the tiny sitting room. It was stuffed with broken-down furniture, and in the corner, wet laundry hung from a rack set before a charcoal stove. Items of feminine attire dangled to the floor, and little rivulets of water ran from the tips of gray stockings across the bare, uneven floor. While the window was actually a good deal larger than a bunghole, the place was still dim and stuffy. And overheated. Whatever else the widow skimped on, it wasn’t fuel for the stove.
“You could have managed better, Esther.” Pincas was still fuming. “Davide would be heartsick to know that Mina turned her back on her people—and under such circumstances.”
“Settle down, Pincas,” Signora Grazziano said, “you know the price of eggs. When Davide dropped dead at his desk, he left us with only enough to last a month, if that. My husband must have believed he would live forever, or at least long enough to put money aside for the girls. My poor Davide could add three columns of figures in his head and never made a mistake in his ledger, but he seriously underestimated his allotted time on this earth.”
Signora Grazziano drew herself up majestically, as if she were the bestower of charity, rather than the recipient. “We welcomed the synagogue’s alms then—and still do—but you must admit they’ve barely been enough to keep a cat alive.”
While Pincas harrumphed and continued to decry Mina’s fate, it occurred to me that he was being uncharacteristically belligerent because Mina’s desertion reminded him of Liya’s. Back then, a generous ladle of tact and kindness could have prevented her flight to the mainland, but Pincas had bowed to his wife’s unusual and vengeful dictum that Liya must relinquish the child she carried to one of the Christian convents. Of course, my brave, determined wife was having none of that. She found sanctuary in Monteborgo, a remote village tucked among the ridges and valleys of Italy’s northern mountains where the inhabitants kept to the old ways and ancient gods.
Not for the first time, I considered how utterly destiny depends upon coincidence. If Liya’s mother had not been so implacable, if Pincas had found the will to follow his own lights, Liya would probably still be keeping the counter at the used-clothing shop and Titolino would be growing up as an Elijah or Solomon of the ghetto.
I turned my attention to my wife. Liya’s forehead was puckered, leading me to think this conversation was making her uncomfortable, as well. I reached across the narrow space that divided our hard chairs and clasped her hand. Answering with a squeeze, she settled our joined hands within the folds of her skirt.
Signora Grazziano had puffed at her pipe until the smoke wreathed her head in blue clouds. Now she cut Pincas off sharply. “Listen, if your esteemed confraternity had given me enough to get Mina married off properly, you wouldn’t be complaining now and I wouldn’t be mourning a dutiful daughter. I know of six or seven widows who receive twice what I’m given plus boxes of food on the doorstep every Friday morning. It wouldn’t be this way if Davide hadn’t been who he was. With only scraps to depend on, I went along with putting Davide’s precious treasure where she could do us some good. It was the gold Mina brought in that married off her sisters. Was I not wise, after all?”
Pincas glowered; Signora Grazziano puffed. Both seemed to have forgotten Liya and me entirely. The building tension in the cramped room could have bowed the walls out.
Confused at the turn the conversation had taken, I squeezed Liya’s hand and questioned her with a look. She leaned close. “Mina’s father was the ghetto’s tax assessor,” Liya whispered into my ear. “Known to his friends as an honest, upright man, but nevertheless, you can’t convince people that the tax assessor puts a fair value on their belongings.”
I nodded, understanding. Taxes are always unfair to those who pay them. Though cruel and senseless, the congregation felt it was getting some of its own back on the tax assessor by slighting his widow. Human nature at its ugliest.
But we were drawing no closer to solving the mystery of Zulietta’s murder. To break the Jews’ impasse, I rose, crossed the small space between us, and went down on one knee before the angry widow. Skipping over superfluous details, I told her how I had witnessed the death of her daughter and that I felt honor bound to assist the authorities in finding the wretch who killed her.
She gazed at me for a moment, then tilted her chin back and blew a long, meditative curl of smoke toward the ceiling. Finally she responded, “They say her latest lover murdered her—a Signor Pino from Murano.”
“That is by no means certain. I’ve met the young man. He professes the tenderest love for Zu—er, Mina and seems genuinely grieved.”
The wrinkles deepened around her narrowed eyes. “What do you think, then? Who killed my daughter?”
“I haven’t formed an opinion, but know there are others who wished her ill.”
“Hmmm.” Low and throaty, it was almost a moan. She shifted in her chair. “I can well believe that, but my good signor, how can I help you?”
“Please,” I replied. “Simply tell me about Mina. About her life here in the ghetto and what you know of her situation in the wider world.” Without breaking eye contact, I pushed up from my knee, pulled my chair close, and waited for enlightenment.
As a sterling example of silent support, Liya also rose and went to her father. Massaging his thick shoulders through the wool of his jacket, she stood ready to prevent any interruption he might offer.
Signora Grazziano had dropped pipe ash all over her lap; tiny round holes among the gray smudges gave evidence of past sparks. I was relieved when she set her pipe aside and shook her skirts out. “Mina was spoilt,” she said as she settled back. “Davide led her to expect the finer things, and as long as he was alive, she had them. I warned him that such indulgence was bound to cause trouble down the road, but…” she shrugged. “For all that, you couldn’t call Mina lazy or spendthrift. While her sisters helped me at home, she insisted on accompanying Davide on his rounds among the ghetto householders, and, if any business errand took him out into the city or down to the Piazza, our young princess was always ready to go. He gave her a leather-bound notebook when she was barely ten and dictated figures as they poked among our neighbors’ possessions. By the time Davide died, Mina shared his head for business and knew the worth of a ducat better than most young men hereabouts.”
Pincas was nodding. His expression had mellowed. “Mina was Davide’s little shadow in truth. When he was felled so suddenly, it was like someone jerked the rug right out from under the girl.” He pressed his lips together as Liya dug her slender fingers into his shoulders.
“Exactly so, Pincas,” Signora Grazziano went on. “For several months after Davide’s burial, our strong-willed Mina showed all the spirit of a boiled cabbage. Then Signor Malpiero came to call.” She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Do you know anything of him?”
“Only what everyone knows.” Among the patrician class, Malpiero had been the cream of the cream, a descendant of one of the original twelve tribunes who had elected our first Doge back when Venice was little more than a collection of mud flats.
On one hand, Signor Malpiero had been known for his intellectual pursuits. A fair poet, he frequented several literary salons and often penned selections of verse to open a fete or celebrate the election of a Senator or Procurator. In that vein, he also published pamphlets that espoused such revolutionary ideas as publicly funded education for any child willing to take advantage of it. On the other hand, his physical appetites were huge. Before he died several years ago, his reputation as a gourmand and shameless libertine had overshadowed his better qualities. None of his activities had taken him to the opera or involved him in my cir
cle.
The widow continued, “As a Christian nobleman on the ghetto’s Board of Overseers, Signor Malpiero often had business with my husband and never made a secret of his attraction to Mina. When he made his belated condolence visit, he brought me an armload of flowers—useless things! Did he think we could eat them?—but to Mina he brought a new hat. With a bright blue feather. Can you imagine a more inappropriate gesture?”
I shook my head. “Was Mina pleased with her hat?”
“Of course, greedy, shameless creature that she was. Though Malpiero must have been past fifty and already in ill health, she became infatuated with him. I suppose in some small way, his attentions made up for the absence of her father. When the old rogue offered to move her into his palazzo and provide dowries for her sisters, she barely hesitated, even after I explained what would be expected of her.” Signora Grazziano paused to reach for her pipe but found that it had gone out.
“Rash,” Pincas put in. “That’s what Mina was. Headstrong and rash.”
The widow nodded, still fiddling with her pipe. “So don’t blame me, Pincas. I had the rabbi in to talk to her and she made his cheeks burn. ‘My person is my own, and I shall do with it what I please,’ she told him and flounced out of the room.” Signora Grazziano shrugged. “What was left for me to do but make the best of a bad situation?”
“So Mina Grazziano became Zulietta Giardino when she was only sixteen,” I observed.
“That’s right. She made the conversion your Venice demands of those who leave the ghetto to dwell in the city, and so she needed a Christian name.”
I nodded slowly. I’d toured the opera houses of Italy and Germany and even sung at Covent Garden in London. In comparison with other cities I’d visited, Venice treated her Jews well, but they were still regarded as foreigners, and with suspicion on account of opposing our faith, as well as their mysterious network of monetary ties.
5 - Her Deadly Mischief Page 10
