All I could think about was getting to the pesthouse; I could not imagine doing anything else. But now I wonder. Do I really want to see with my own eyes the things I have heard about—the people like rags, mere shadows of their former selves, their eyes sunken, raging boils on their legs and arms? Do I really want to hear the suffering cries of the sick and dying?
None of these images is visible before me; the horror only appears in my mind’s eye. For now, all I see is a massive brick wall enclosing the island, and a plume of smoke rising from its center. We glide farther across the stretch of slick water that separates the pest islands from the city. From this distance, the lazzaretto resembles an ominous fortified city, a castle whose walls reach to the very edges of the island. As we draw nearer, a patch of golden light cuts through the soupy haze and the island comes into sharper focus. Several chimneys and towers loom from a great brick wall that surrounds the edges of the island. I can see the roofs of several long buildings, and the bell tower of a church. I can also see laundry airing out over the top of the brick wall. And I see smoke emerging from the chimney pots.
As we draw closer to the pesthouse, the other boats in the lagoon fall into the distance. There are no passenger ferries, no cargo boats, no one out for a leisurely ride. Eventually we are the only ones anywhere near the island. The boatman’s face has assumed an expression I have not seen before. He seems to have lost all of his color, his skin the same pallid grey as the sky above us. He goes silent and slows his oar to a gentle swirl in the still water.
From one of the quaysides a small, agile passenger boat, a scipion, is suddenly moving in our direction. As the boat gets closer I realize that it is heading straight for us. Its boatman holds his hand in the air and gestures to us, then rows his small craft alongside our gondola. I stand. I see the man’s uniform and realize that he is not a regular boatman but an officer from the Sanità.
“Bondì!” The boatman salutes the man on the scipion.
“What business do you have here?” the young man says, turning his oar to slow the boat and saluting with the other.
“My passenger is looking for someone,” the boatman says in his gruff voice.
“I am looking for my family,” I say, pressing my palms against the rim of the boat. “We believe they are here.”
“You cannot moor your gondola at the island,” the man says, turning his gaze back toward the pesthouse. “Only the official ferries may dock here. You must turn around and go back to the city.”
“That suits me. You could not pay me enough money to dock this boat there,” the boatman says, his face still devoid of color. “I am not going any further than this.”
“Please, missier,” I say, “I am looking for my father and my cousin, and another man who works in our gilding workshop.”
“Signorina, we do not accept visitors to the lazzaretto. I am certain that you can understand.”
“I am trying to find them, to see if they are all right. To learn of their condition.”
“Were they brought here from their home?”
“Yes, in Cannaregio. There is a cross over the door. I saw it myself.”
“All the names of the people who have been transported here are held in the Health Office in San Marco. If you are looking for someone specific you may inquire there. Now I must please ask you to turn your boat around and go back where you came from.”
“With pleasure,” the boatman says, smirking at me.
I sit in the new chair that the gondola makers have placed on our deck. A gentle breeze stirs the surface of the water as the boatman reverses the gondola to head back toward San Marco.
“I told you there was no way they were going to let us in there,” he says. “You are fooling yourself, Maria Magdalena.”
“If he asks, you must tell the painter that I have gone to visit my aunt at Santa Maria delle Vergini,” I say. I do not meet his eyes.
“Puttana,” the boatman growls under his breath, but I see the corners of his mouth turn up into a crude smile, taking pleasure in calling me such a rude name. “Full of deceits,” he says. “Full of secrets. They keep growing.”
I turn my back so that the boatman will not see my face. I watch the smoke of the pest island chimney pots swirl and circle into the grey sky, growing smaller as we make our return to San Marco.
“You think you can control what others believe, but you are hardly in control of your own situation, signorina,” he says. “If you ask me, your future is about as bright as that lazzaretto. It is only a matter of time.”
“You know nothing of me,” I say. I duck inside the passenger compartment and let the drapes fall closed behind me.
“Family name?”
I look down at the crown of the man’s head seated behind the hulking wooden desk in the center of the room. White flakes emerge from his dark strands of hair, and a few shavings of dry skin fall onto the ledger in front of him. He does not look up at me.
“Bartolini,” I say. “The gilder. Our workshop lies at the edge of the baker’s bridge in Cannaregio.”
“How many in the house?”
“Three. My father is Giuseppe, and there is my cousin Paolo. We also have another man who works for my father. Cristiano Bianco. A battiloro.”
“Cannaregio,” he says, making a clucking sound with his tongue. “Yes. The pestilence has been slow to spread there, but it has been particularly virulent.” The man stands and hobbles awkwardly to a shelf with leather-bound books, their bindings stamped in gilded letters. “Worst in all of the city.” He removes a volume from the shelf and returns to the desk.
He runs his crooked finger down a long register of names. After what seems an eternity, he pauses.
“Bartolini, here it is. Giuseppe the gilder and Paolo his nephew and apprentice. Ponte Forno in Cannaregio.”
My heart sinks.
“They were removed from the house on the feast of San Pietro,” he says. “Most likely they were put on one of the ferries that have been stationed at the traghetto in the quarter. In any case, they were destined for the Lazzaretto Vecchio.” He runs his finger down the page again, squinting at the names and notes scrawled in a list ruled with thin lines of black ink. “The doctor recorded them sick. With lesions.”
I feel as though someone has kicked me.
“I am sorry, signorina,” he says, finally looking up to meet my gaze for the first time. “That is all I can tell you; that is all it says in the book. God help them.” He stands and begins to close the register but I hold out my hand.
“Wait!” I say, slapping my hand over the open spread of parchment.
“What about Cristiano Bianco? He was also working in my father’s studio.”
The man runs his finger back down the page again, then shakes his head. “I do not see any mention of a Cristiano Bianco here,” he says. “Was he living in your household?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Strange. The doctors and notaries are required to document everyone in the house.” He places his index finger on his mouth. “Was he a servant?”
“No,” I say. “Battiloro. He came from a goldbeating workshop in the quarter to help my father.”
“Me scuxa,” he shrugs, clipping the words with a sharp Venetian dialect. “I simply have no record of him. It happens.” He returns the book to the shelf, then pauses and puts his finger on his chin. “Hmmm. Bianco. By any chance, was he a Moor?”
“Yes!” I say, realizing that “White” is a common name for blacks.
“That might explain it,” he says, resting the ledger in the crook of his elbow and turning to the back pages. “There is a long list of Saracens, though they mostly do not record the names.” He runs his finger down the list.
“I see a few Moors listed in Cannaregio but none that match the date or location of your father’s removal from the quarter.”
“D
o they not record everyone in the house?”
“The doctors and notaries are supposed to, yes. Sometimes they are recorded with the household, sometimes here in the back, sometimes, I am sorry to tell you, not at all.”
The man cocks his head and looks at me with a strange expression. “It is your father’s workshop, signorina?” he peers at me over the top of his glasses.
“Yes,” I say. “My home.”
The man suddenly looks alarmed. “And you were not ferried away with the others?”
“Oh. No, I did not explain that correctly. I was not there with them. You see, my father sent me away to work with Master Trevisan the painter in San Marco.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Before Epiphany,” I say. “That is when the pestilence began in the neighborhood.”
He looks at me now with piercing, dark blue eyes.
“You have been checked for lesions by a physician?” he asks.
“No, of course not. I told you, I was not in my father’s workshop. I was in the painter’s house.”
“Would you please come with me, signorina?” He crosses the room and opens a door to a long corridor.
“I already told you. I am not sick.”
“Signorina, we are required by the laws of the Republic to examine anyone who has come in contact with a victim of the pestilence. Follow me, per favore.” He grasps my arm with a claw-like hand.
I am speechless. I freeze, my feet glued to the tiled floor.
The old man turns back and sets his blue eyes on me. “Signorina, I am sorry. I truly am. But I am afraid that if you do not comply with the examination we will have to ferry you into quarantine at the Lazzaretto Nuovo by default until we can clear you.”
Inexplicably, I find myself following the man down the corridor. The man knocks on another door and pushes his way in. He grips my forearm firmly and pulls me into the room.
“Medico,” the man says to another seated behind a desk. “The signorina’s family has been transported from Cannaregio to the Lazzarretto Vecchio,” he explains. “You will want to check her.” He presses me further into the room and closes the door behind me.
The man stands and greets me with a tight, wordless grin. “Signorina,” he says, bowing his head of grey hair.
I have never been examined by a doctor. I feel my tongue go dry and my heartbeat quicken.
The medico opens the door a crack and presses his head into the hallway. “Sorella Vittoria!”
The doctor looks in my eyes and asks me to open my mouth. I stick out my tongue and look into his dark brown eyes. He stands so close that I can smell the sourness of his breath. My tongue still wagging, a nun in a long, black habit enters the room.
“Please remove your dress,” the doctor says to me, turning his back and opening the door to a cabinet along the wall.
“What?” I say. I look to the nun for help.
“Please remove your dress. You may leave on the underskirt.”
My mouth opens but no words come out.
“Do as the medico says, please, signorina,” says the nun. “It will be all right.”
Reluctantly, I remove my cloak, then untie the ties of my homemade dress and let it fall off my shoulders. The nun grasps it and lays it over the back of a chair.
The doctor grasps my left wrist and lifts my arm, looking under my armpit. Then he repeats it on the other side.
“Any fever?” he asks. I shake my head.
“Coughing?”
“No!” I say with exasperation. “I understand that you are only doing what is required of you, but it is as I have already told the inspector outside,” I say. “I have not been exposed. I have been working outside of my father’s shop since Epiphany. I was not living there when they got sick. No one is sick in the house where I am currently living.”
“I see. Please lie down,” he says.
I lie on the table, and the nurse lifts my underskirt. Instinctively I push my hands down to my groin and around my pregnant belly. The doctor presses his fingers into my inner thighs and examines them closely, then runs his hand across my stomach. I wince.
“Ah, well,” says the doctor. “You may not have been exposed to the pestilence, but it seems there is more than at first meets the eye.”
He walks across the room and grasps a large wooden funnel from a shelf. He returns and places it on my stomach. For a few long moments, the room is cast into silence. I wonder if the doctor or the nun can hear the loud pounding inside my head.
The doctor raises his head. “You are just a wee thing, Maria Vergine! But I hear a heartbeat.”
“A heartbeat?” I am dumbstruck.
“Yes. You are further along than you appear.”
I feel my own heart begin to race. “How much time do I have?”
The doctor shrugs. “Sixty, maybe ninety days.”
I feel my stomach lurch. Surely not enough time to marry Pascal Grissoni and convince him that the baby is his.
“You are feeling well?” the doctor asks.
“Better than I was a few months ago,” I say. “But I still vomit.”
The doctor gives me his hand and helps pull me to sitting. “That is to be expected,” he says. “La nausea is a sign of a healthy baby. I am sure the old ladies in your neighborhood have already told you that.” I can think of nothing to say. “I hope you are eating plenty of eggs and cheese,” he says.
The nun nods. “You are very thin, cara,” she says. “You must eat even if you do not feel like it.”
The doctor pulls me up to standing. “No lesions. You may get dressed, signorina. I will let the inspector know.” Without another word, the doctor disappears through the door.
I fumble with the ties of my dress, then feel a cool hand on my shoulder. “I am sorry you had to be submitted to such an examination, signorina.” I turn to see the nun’s clear eyes on me. “You must understand that it is required of us in these dark times. Perhaps you will take comfort in knowing that not only are you not sick with the pestilence, but in spite of your thinness you look healthy and so does your baby.”
I nod.
“If it is as the medico has said,” she adds, “this baby may come sooner than you think. You will want to advise your husband.”
Chapter 34
I recognize the battiloro’s mother from across the square.
We hardly know one another, yet as soon as our eyes meet we cleave to one another with all of our strength. I feel the tautness of Zenobia’s wiry frame, her muscled arms, her strong back built through years of labor. We cling to one another with everything we have, with all the despair and fear in us. I do not care what the others in the crowd think of the slight, secretly pregnant white woman with orange hair embracing the tall, black washerwoman. I have called for her and she has come. It is all that matters.
When I went looking for her at the Rialto washhouse she was not there, and for a while I feared that I had lost track of her, that she had disappeared like so many in this city who are already invisible. I feared that she had slipped through my hands like Cristiano himself, lost without a trace. But a kind laundress took me aside and promised that she would get word to Zenobia, that she would pass on my message to meet me at San Rocco for the plague mass at midnight.
“You have news of Cristiano?” I wonder if she hears the desperation in my voice.
She shakes her head. “I only know what the washerwomen from your quarter have told me. That the workshop has a cross on the door. That they have most likely been transported to the pesthouse. You?”
I shake my head. “I know nothing. I have been to the Sanità, but they have no record of him. Only my father and my cousin. It is as if he has vanished.”
“The lazzaretto is the only place he can be, child. I have seen a few more plague outbreaks than you have. This is what they do.”
“I tried to inquire there, too, but they turned me away.”
“You went to the lazzaretto?”
I nod. “They turned me back. Of course they did. How silly of me to think I could get inside.”
Zenobia takes a deep breath and looks into my eyes. “You love him.”
“With all of my soul,” I say.
“Come.” Zenobia grasps my hand in hers, and I feel the tight, comforting grip of someone stronger, more confident than I. She pulls me through the throngs of people who have made their way to the San Polo quarter, and into the burgeoning crowd that has amassed in the square around the church of San Rocco.
There is no moon. People fill in the spaces around us, some carrying lanterns with them, lit up like fireflies in the dark. Normally such a crowd would form a raucous frenzy, but tonight, it is silent enough to hear the shuffling feet of those who have come to ask God to spare their husbands, wives, parents, children, brothers, sisters, and friends from the indiscriminate hand of the pestilence. We have all gathered for one purpose: to pray for a miracle, to return our people to health, to atone for whatever wrongdoing has brought this horror on Our Most Serene Republic.
Inside the church thousands of small flames illuminate the vaults of gilded mosaic. There is the sound of people plunking coins inside metal boxes and the sonorous din of monks intoning the prayers in the lofts above our heads.
Not long before my birth, I have been told, the bones of San Rocco were brought to Our Most Serene Republic on a great ship. It was San Rocco himself who, on a pilgrimage from the Frankish kingdoms to Rome, healed plague sufferers, and even saved himself from the pestilence. Now, the relics of San Rocco lie below the altar, and all of us direct our prayers to he who, it is believed, holds the singular power to deliver us from the scourge.
Inside the church the crowd grows louder, as small conversations, pleas, prayers, gasps, and cries echo throughout. Behind us someone has led a donkey into the aisle, and a scuffle breaks out as the beast is shooed outside. I pull a coin from my pocket and place it inside the metal box for candles. I light the wick and place my candle on the metal stake alongside many others placed there, sending up illumination that makes the mosaic tiles above our heads sparkle and shine.
The Painter's Apprentice Page 22
