The Painter's Apprentice

by Laura Morelli

  Slowly, I begin to shimmy my way along the wall, not daring to look down at the green canal waters. The hardness of my stomach presses against the wall. I do not know how far I will have to shimmy like this on my tiptoes, as the other end of the building is shrouded in the fog.

  After what seems an eternity, I see the other corner of the building, and I heave a sigh. I inch my bare foot around the edge until it touches the narrow quayside. Finally, I let go of the stones and rub my stinging fingertips along my dress.

  I am inside the barrier.

  For a moment, I stand with my palms on my knees, sobbing with relief and worry. My heart pounds again, uncontrollable in my chest. I draw my shoes from the pocket of my shawl and put them back on my aching feet.

  I duck into another narrow alley, little more than a tunnel that is a well-worn shortcut to our street. Beyond, I see nothing, as the vista is shrouded in white, but the smell of smoke rises into the air from the Campo Sant’Alvise, the small square nearest our house. With my heightened sense of smell I seem to ingest the smoke, the dirty canal, into my very being. It smells of cabbage. Rotten eggs. Ghosts. Death.

  In my head I hear the voice of Trevisan’s journeyman. “The Sanità? What can they do? They only handle matters after the fact. All they can do is take away the bodies and burn people’s belongings after they die. There is nothing they can do to prevent the pestilence from spreading across the city.”

  I press my shawl over my mouth and nose to avoid vomiting. Ahead of me, a patch of white fog swirls upward, revealing the familiar crooked roofline of my childhood home. I feel a surge of hope and break into a run, turning the corner onto our street.

  Then I see it.

  For a moment, time is suspended and I feel that I might fall to my knees. The sound I make wells up from somewhere deep inside, but I hear it as if it came from outside of me. It is a heart-wrenching sound that I cannot believe I have made myself.

  A wooden cross has been nailed over the door.

  Chapter 31

  I duck under the rough-hewn wooden beams that line the ceiling of the root cellar under my father’s house. The health officials have neglected to bar the cellar door, perhaps overlooking it or not caring to take the time.

  Looters, however, have already found it. I feel the crunch of glass shards under the soles of my shoes, and observe the circles outlined in dust where our winter provisions were once stored. A year’s worth of bounty from our garden—small glass containers of asparagus, cabbage, shallots, artichokes. All gone. Only the wobbly table in the center of the room remains.

  The table. I feel a shock like a bolt of lightning run through my entire body.

  The day my father discovered us here under the house, the battiloro and I had been sneaking away for several weeks already. In retrospect, I am not sure how we avoided notice that long. After all, we lived in close quarters all the time. We ate from the same pot, worked alongside one another, slept under the same roof.

  My cousin must have realized it. But if he recognized the flush in my cheeks, the stupid grin on my face that would not disappear, my sudden distractibility, he said nothing of it.

  When my father happened into the root cellar that day to discover me entangled against the wooden table with the battiloro, he said nothing. I dared not meet his gaze, but stood frozen, staring at his scuffed leather shoes and the bottom half of his worn breeches framed in the light of the cellar doorway. Then he turned and walked up the stone stairs.

  When I returned to the house a few minutes after, flushed and staring at the floor, my father said few words but acted swiftly. As quickly as the battiloro had entered our workshop, I left it. It happened in a heartbeat, within a day. There was a hushed conversation between my father and our gastaldo, a mention of Master Trevisan’s name, a contract of eighteen months, a plan for learning the pigments, a new commission, and suddenly I was whisked with my trunk onto a fine gondola bound for the painter’s workshop with a promise to return home with newfound skills and a promised husband.

  Cristiano and I only had one more stolen moment to exchange words. For a few precious seconds, we cleaved to one another in the courtyard next to his goldbeating bench. We consoled ourselves that we would lay eyes on one another for the Sunday midday meals. We hung our hope on the moments when we might slip away to meet in the monastery garden at Rialto on Friday evenings.

  Neither of us imagined that it would end with a few hurried exchanges, a small golden token of affection now handed over to a crooked boatman in vain, and a cross on the door.

  I lift the wooden hatch door that leads from the root cellar to the interior of my father’s house. I climb out and stand in the center of the grey, dusty workshop and take in the barrenness of the once-familiar space. I recognize the walnut beams of the low ceiling, the hearth with its single chain now devoid of a pot, empty of firewood. Only the wooden table before it remains, with its forlorn-looking chairs, one turned over on its side. All of the linens, rags, and cloth have been removed from the house, presumably burned. The sagging mattresses have disappeared, leaving the skeletons of the old oak bed frames in the bedchamber and the loft.

  The house feels familiar yet strange at the same time, as if the entire world has fallen silent. I push the back door open and venture into the courtyard, where a few new green buds have appeared on the tree that shades the battiloro’s workspace. In the canal behind the courtyard the water stands stagnant and still. The old chicken coop stands empty and in need of repair, its door hanging sideways off the hinge. The hens have disappeared, and the small garden plot where we grow onions and root vegetables is dry, untended, and full of weeds. A tattered-looking cat, perhaps one who has wandered away from Signora Granchi’s upstairs rooms, lolls in the garden dirt and regards me through squinted yellow eyes.

  I duck under the covered area along the canal and see the hammers still lined up on the worktable. The plunderers who rustled through our house neglected to reach the courtyard behind the house. In the drawer, I finger several gold sheets still intact in small vellum packets under the table.

  It is as if the battiloro was here just a moment ago. I imagine that he has been sent out on an errand for my father and will return at any moment. I pick up one of the mallets, and in my mind I hear the noise of it ringing on the gold ingots. I stand at the table and place my hands on the plank of oak, full of knots.

  Then I feel his presence as if he might walk into the courtyard where I stand. I feel filled up for a fleeting moment, then I feel only a void, only loss, for it is silent save for a bird rustling in the leaves of the tree branches above my head.

  Chapter 32

  Hearing the squeal of the metal hinges as I throw open the door, the gastaldo lurches forward in his seat. “Signorina Maria!” He pulls the leather strap that holds his spectacles and props it to his brow, making wisps of grey hair stick straight up on top of his head. “You gave me a scare!” His eyes light up for a fleeting moment, then the gastaldo’s face turns dark. “But you should not be here, cara. The ban... You are risking yourself by coming to the neighborhood.”

  I stand frozen in the doorway. For a few moments I cannot find my voice. The gastaldo and his sons in the back of the workshop watch me in expectant silence, but I am unable to speak, as if the floodgates are dammed.

  The gastaldo clambers up and staggers across the space. “You must not be here,” he says again, taking my hands in his. His palms feel thick, warm, and rough. “You risk catching this horrible disease. More streets have been blocked and the guardia has sent more men... You are breaking the law.” He stops and looks into my eyes. “Maria... Madre di Dio, what has happened?”

  “Where are they?” Finally my voice emerges, scratchy and small in my ears. “Where is my family?” His face registers confusion. “I am sorry but I could not stay away,” I say. I begin to feel the hot tears run down my cheeks. I feel the gastaldo’s warm, rough hands a
s he squeezes my own. “There is a cross on the door.” My voice comes out as a squeak.

  “What in God’s name? Dio.” He pauses, letting the information soak in. “Why have the signori not come to inform me?” He lets go of my hands and rubs his palms over his face as if trying to wipe it clean.

  “It is hardly the only one,” the younger son says. “There are more crosses on doors in this neighborhood than there are cats. Surely they cannot be bothered to report them all.” The gastaldo casts his son a dark look.

  “I beat on the door, even tried to pry the wood off with my bare hands,” I say, “but all I heard was silence. So… I found a way in through the root cellar.”

  “You went inside! San Rocco,” the gastaldo says under his breath. “It can only mean one thing. They have been transported to the Lazzaretto Vecchio.”

  I feel the tears roll down my cheeks. “What? And when were you going to tell me?! Signora Granchi… It must have come through her.”

  “Maria, I did not know. I tried to go check on them a few days ago, but they would not let me pass through the barricade,” he says. “How on earth did you get through?”

  “I... It took a few tries.”

  The gastaldo sighs and pounds his fist on the worktable. “The representatives are supposed to inform me of such things, but I have not seen them in days. Perhaps Father Filippo can tell us something. His presence is required along with the health officials whenever someone is found sick.”

  “That old priest is probably staying at home trying not to get sick himself. Or under ban already. Who would want to read rites to the plague-ridden?” the younger son tries again.

  “What is there to discover?” the older son says. “You must know that it is the procedure for those who are sick. They are transported to the old pesthouse—good as dead.”

  This time the gastaldo does not hold his tongue. “Basta!” he says sharply to his sons. “That is enough. The poor girl.” The gastaldo grasps a large iron ring heavy with keys from a hook by the door. He pauses to look into my eyes. “I must go see the neighborhood representatives. I promise I will get to the bottom of it.”

  I feel my body shudder, and the gastaldo takes me in his arms. I press my face into his vest, which smells of leather and smoke.

  The gastaldo grasps my cheeks in his hands and turns my face to his. “Maria, it is not a death sentence. Those who recover—as I am sure will be the case with your family—are eventually transported to the Lazzaretto Nuovo. That is also the place where family members who seem well and have not shown signs of the plague go.”

  “You are going to need to restock your house, no doubt,” the older son says.

  “Yes.” The gastaldo fingers the keys in his hand. “Unfortunately, Maria, they require that all the belongings—especially the linens, be taken out of the house. Some things are burned right away in the campo. The more valuable objects are transported to the lazzaretto with their owners. There they are aired out with the hopes that they will no longer spread the contagion.”

  “None of it matters,” I say. “We have nothing of value beyond our tools and whatever gold leaf was left unused. I am only concerned about their health.”

  “Of course. I am sorry.” The gastaldo places his hands on my shoulders and looks into my eyes again. “I want you to feel certain that they will get well. Once they are better they will transport them to quarantine until they are no longer contagious. The authorities are requiring those released from the lazzaretti to stay there for forty days to ensure they show no more signs of the pestilence. Then they are released back home. You must hold out hope for that.”

  The information seeps into my being, and I feel my shoulders fall. I must accept the fact that I may not see my family for some time. “We must look for the good,” the gastaldo says. “I am grateful that this twist of fate has brought you to the painter’s house, for it means that you have been spared. It must mean that God has something else in store for you.”

  “If you had stayed in your house you would also be in the lazzaretto now,” the younger son says.

  The gastaldo nods. “On that count my son is correct. You yourself would have been there now had it not been for the fact that you were safely housed with Master Trevisan,” he says. “As long as you stop sneaking back into this neighborhood you will be fine. Now please, for the love of God, go back to the painter’s house before you end up in the lazzaretto yourself.” His eyes, surrounded by wrinkles, look kind and sincere. “Come,” he says. “I will walk back to San Marco with you.”

  I nod, wiping another hot tear from my cheek with the back of my hand. I step back out into the street, strangely quiet and still, the air filled with the overwhelming dry smell of smoke from the square. The gastaldo offers me his arm and I gratefully take it, for I feel that I might fall to my knees. He does not try to make small talk. He only pats my hand in the crook of his arm and leads me quickly into the street that will take us out of the quarter and toward the painter’s house.

  If the gastaldo is right and God has something else in store for me—if he is listening at all—I do not know what it is. We make our way quickly down the quayside in the direction of San Marco, where the white blanket of fog has finally lifted. The sun’s rays pierce through the clouds, making sparkling patterns across the basin of the lagoon. I cannot begin to imagine my own future and the fate of this life growing inside my body, under the layers of my dress and my giant smock.

  A blanket of silence has fallen over the painter’s house.

  The painter’s wife uttered a shriek of despair when the gastaldo shared the news of the cross over the door and my father’s empty house. After that, only hushed conversations and the squeals of the children fill the house.

  “Maria, you must feel free to take as much time as you need,” the painter told me.

  “That’s very kind of you, Master Trevisan, but I prefer to work,” I said.

  He nodded knowingly. “Understood.” Then he returned to his easel and left me to prepare the surfaces of the new gondola lanterns with my jar of gelatinous primer.

  The journeyman, without words, placed his hands on my shoulders and squeezed. I gave him a thin-lipped but sincere smile, for there are no good words for such a time.

  Now, I press down the leaves of gold just as my father showed me when my fingers were hardly big enough to do it. Just as he did. Just as his father and his father before him. In a contemplative state, I honor my father with the skills that he taught me. Without thinking about it, I hold my breath while I separate the gold sheaf from the vellum, for a whoosh of breath, a sneeze, a laugh could send it spinning to the floor. Better to keep my hands and my mind occupied. It is the best that I can do.

  For a moment, I dare to hope that when my father returns home from the pesthouse, I will be able to give him the gilded box under the table, or a better one that I have made in the weeks while they are convalescing.

  When Master Trevisan and his journeyman begin to fill in the outlined spaces on our gilded panels with the brightly colored pigments, I practice working with them, too. Rosso, vermillione, azzurro... They used to sound like a foreign language, feel strange loaded on the brush in my hand. But I am getting better.

  At night, I lie in bed and beg for sleep that will not come. I stare at wavering patterns on the ceiling made by moonlight on the canal far below our window.

  “You are not alone,” Antonella says in the dark, placing a tentative hand on my shoulder. When I do not respond or turn toward her, she tries again.

  “My cousin says that some of the people who perish do not suffer very long. They just break out in black boils or vomit blood, and within a day—just like that—they are gone. The suffering does not last.”

  She cannot see me press my eyes closed. I only wish I could close my ears, too.

  Chapter 33

  From a distance, the small mass of land wher
e the Lazzaretto Vecchio stands looks like any other island in the lagoon. It stands lonely and grey in the expanse of still water that surrounds it. I ponder its soft outlines in the dull haze as the boatman rows eastward toward the Lido in Master Trevisan’s gondola.

  The air is still, and the lagoon reflects the light like a mirror. We are surrounded by an array of watercraft—ferries, passenger gondolas, cargo rafts. A long boat with finely dressed people glides into the lagoon, perhaps on a hunting expedition or a joy ride, silhouettes of grey in the stillness. As Our Most Serene City slips into the distance, I admire its church towers and jagged roofs, marred only by several funnels of smoke that drift skyward from the squares of Cannaregio and Dorsoduro, the pyres where people’s belongings are disintegrating in the flames.

  From his place on the aft deck of the gondola, the boatman looks down at me and shakes his head. “You are pazzesca for wanting to come here,” he says.

  “I am paying you to be quiet, not to comment on my situation,” I say. I am filled with self-loathing at the thought of asking the boatman to bring me here, but I could think of no other solution. Besides, I have lost patience with him and no longer worry what he will think. He agreed to take me on this secret foray to the pest islands of the lagoon, but has not returned my necklace. “I paid it to my friend at the ferry station,” he said, “for your man.” His hands went to his pockets, and his eyes searched the floor. I felt in my heart that it was a lie, but how could I prove it and to whom would I make my appeal?