Altai: A Novel (11 page)

3.

By the end of the meal, the meaning of that bizarre meeting was clear to me. Basically, that was my trade, working out who was doing what and why. The presence of those people must be significant. Nasi had wanted me to be a spectator at this drama, so it was up to me to decipher the roles.

The Grand Vizier’s secretary represented the Empire. France and Poland were the Catholic friends of the Grand Turk. The English bibliophile might have been there only for a book, but for some time his queen had certainly wanted to gain favor with the Sultan and open a trade route in the East. After all, Nasi was the guarantor of the soup kitchen, the referee in the diplomatic game, and I was the advantage point that he held over the others.

But I had no intention of being his amuse-bouche, the surprise dish to serve to the guests after the sea bass and roasted kid.

I told him as much later on, after he had said good-bye to his guests and we were left on our own. Not alone, as we had been that morning, in fact, because when we went back to the library, he introduced me to David Gomez, Satan’s right hand. Gomez was a sturdy-looking man, with an olive complexion and distinctive features. He must have been about the same age as Nasi; his youth was behind him, but his physical and mental health were still intact. He inspired awe, although it would not be he who held a blade to my throat a few moments later.

I refused the tobacco that Nasi offered me and observed him as he lit up a roll of it, taking dense mouthfuls of smoke in the manner of the natives of the New World.

“So, what did you think of the meal?”

“Your cook serves you well. And so does your cellar keeper.”

He smiled. “I was actually referring to the guests.”

“Listen,” I said to him through gritted teeth. “Moisés Navarro sent me all the way here from Salonika to give you some information, not to answer your riddles. In exchange, you promised that I would receive money and a house where I could rest.”

“Everything under the sun takes its time
.
For a time, you will be my guest here at the palace, if you don’t mind.”

That really was the final straw, and I could barely refrain from insulting him.

“Use words to mean what they mean. I’m not really your guest, I’m a prisoner.”

His surprise seemed sincere. He looked at me as if I were a chaffinch that had suddenly started braying. Then, with a slow movement of his arm, he invited me to look around. “Does this look to you like a cell?”

I didn’t move my eyes; I kept them fixed on him. The smell of tobacco made me want to vomit. “How long am I going to have to stay here?”

“Long enough for us to get to know each other,” he replied. “Today’s meal has shown you who I am.” His keen eye lit up with a strange light. “A Jew at the top of the world. Would you have thought it possible?”

He got up and set the roll of tobacco down on a little plate. “You can circulate wherever you like except for the north wing. That’s my wife’s chosen refuge.” I thought I spotted some sadness in his eyes. “David will show you to your lodgings.
Ásta luego,
Senyor De Zante.”

He strode out, leaving me prey to a mute rage. I breathed deeply and looked around at the hundreds of volumes that filled the walls. It was then that I noticed the open chink. Dark eyes were studying me from the secret room that I had occupied with Nasi.

Almost as soon as I spotted them, the chink was closed.

4.

A big room, a bed overflowing with pillows. A small table, a chair, a desk. Broad carpets on the floor and the walls. Warmth from the stove and the perfume of sandalwood from the candles. I looked around, and remembered Tuota’s hovel, the cell in the backstreets of Ragusa, Efrem’s house in Salonika.

Time, when it builds up momentum, changes a man’s conditions quite quickly. Even the conditions of his imprisonment.

Gomez looked at me in puzzlement. Perhaps he didn’t understand the smile that had just vanished from my lips. I imagined him serving Nasi all his life, and then a memory took shape. An old list of names. The eminent wanted men, the list of Giuseppe Nasi’s acolytes and agents.

Duarte Gomez. Yes, Duarte was his
marrano
name; David was his Jewish one.

He picked up a bell from the desk and made it tinkle faintly. A young woman appeared in the doorway, her raven hair piled up under a mantilla, a tanned complexion. She was wearing wide breeches and a wool jerkin.

“If you need anything, you know what to do,” Gomez said before taking his leave, leaving me alone with the girl.

I asked her for her name.

“Dana.”

I stared at her. Memories of my body wrapped around Arianna’s. I stepped forward, letting my eyes caress her features and the curves of her body. I framed her eyes with my hands and felt her freeze. Her eyes were light green, like the patina on copper pots.

No, they weren’t the eyes that had been spying on me through the chink in the library wall.

“Why does Nasi’s wife stay in hiding?”

She hesitated, the reply already on her lips, perhaps to weigh the words she was about to say. “She isn’t hiding. She’s still in mourning for the death of her mother, Donna Gracia.”

There were other questions I would have liked to ask, but her body claimed all my attention. The shape of her breasts. The curve of her hips. The swelling between her legs.

She began straightening the bed, which was perfectly tidy already. Nervous gestures to overcome embarrassment, waiting for me to dismiss her. I sidled up to her until the fabric of my trousers touched hers. I took a deep breath, filling my nostrils with her perfume. She smelled of almonds and . . . a blade pricked my throat. The woman’s eyes were keener than the dagger that she was pressing to my neck. She waited for me to step back before returning the weapon to her belt.

“This isn’t the Sultan’s harem, and I’m not a concubine. Remember that,
kofer
. Do you need anything else?” I shook my head and watched her slip out of the room.

I needed air. I went over to the window and discovered that it looked out over the Bosphorus. The stars of Leo kept an eye on Asia.

Here I was, risking having my throat cut because of my baser instincts. What a grotesque end, after the journey I had taken. But certainly it was even more grotesque that I should have found myself there, that I had a room assigned to me in Palazzo Belvedere, the source of all conspiracies.

Later, Dana came back with a tray. As she set the plate and glass down on the little table, I noticed that she avoided catching my eye. Before she left, I called to her.

“Please forgive me,” I said.

She nodded slightly, made not even the hint of a bow, and immediately turned to leave, but I held her back once more.

“Please, stay. I haven’t spoken to a woman for weeks.”

She knelt down reluctantly on the carpet, a few feet from the door.

Dinner was yellow rice with pistachios and raisins, then aubergines in yogurt. As I ate, I asked her to tell me about life at Palazzo Belvedere, to have an idea what awaited me.

Dana had worked for the Nasis for four years. She told me of the habits of the household, the names and jobs of about fifteen servants, the layout of the rooms on both stories of the building. She listed each detail rather mechanically, but when she talked about Gracia Nasi her voice filled with love and devotion. She had been her personal chambermaid, and she had treated her as if she were her old mother, until she began succumbing to illness.

“She wanted to die in the land of our fathers, in Palestine.”

“Were you with her?”

I saw her face darken. “The
Senyora
didn’t want me. She ordered me to stay with Donna Reyna, her daughter.” She looked at me impatiently. “May I go now?”

I didn’t want to stay on my own. I knew already that I wouldn’t sleep. I remembered that when I was a child, to keep my mother by my bedside I used the excuse of my fear of the dark. Then my mother had been replaced by old Abecassi, and I had had to conquer my real nightmares on my own.

I thought of holding Dana back again, but it was clear that my presence irritated her.

It was hard to blame her: I was a spy of Venice, a renegade Jew, and I had just brazenly importuned her. I dismissed her with a word of thanks and prepared to fill my night alone.

I blew out the candles; the embers in the stove were my only source of light. For at least an hour I stayed on the bed, crushed by my thoughts, trying to impose a different rhythm on my heart. But none of it was any use: I couldn’t sleep, and anxiety drove me out to the loggia. Through the windows in the ceiling the moonlight fell on the mosaic floor, illuminating Spain, Italy, the Balkans. I heard faint sounds, apart from the murmur of the fountain. I leaned in, but the hall was deserted. Only a strip of light under the library door indicated that there was anyone there.

All of a sudden I felt my skin prickle, and realized that there was someone else there, a few feet away from me. The figure came forward, holding a candelabra.

A woman.

The flickering flame revealed a pale face and big, dark eyes. I was looking into the face of the ghost of Gracia Nasi, but she was a woman of flesh and blood.

“He is locked in there every night,” she said, “Studying maps. Cherishing his dream.”

My senses in a state of alarm, my throat dry, I watched her white fingers brushing a pillar. She stared, her big eyes boring into mine, and made me flinch.

“I don’t know what to wish for you. Love him unconditionally or really get to know him one day.”

She raised her hand as if to touch my face, but at the last moment she stopped.

“Dana is right,” she said. “You have honest eyes.”

Then, without another word, the woman disappeared into the shadows.

Again I dipped my memory in the spring of the long lessons I had learned in Venice. Donna Gracia’s daughter, Reyna, had been given in marriage to her cousin Yossef. Consigliere Nordio had taught me the story of the Nasis very well. He had always fought against them; it was his mission, and he had trained me to fear them and to defend the Republic against their traps. He had trained me so well that I still felt at fault in spite of everything. From one corner of my mind his feeble voice told me over and over again that I wasn’t equipped for the extreme sacrifice. I had failed in my mission. I hadn’t known how to do anything but end up in the arms of the enemy.

In the belly of Leviathan, or on top of the world.

5.

A hole in the ground smeared with honey, a sweet and sticky trap. I might never get out of it. Gradually, with smiles and jokes, lavish meals and riddles, they would take over my soul and Nasi would add it to his collection.

Lying among the pillows, on that excessively soft bed, I could hear, beyond the wood of the doorway, the echo of little movements, as of a body settling down, assuming new positions to conquer stasis and tedium and thus to bring an assignment to its conclusion. Someone out there, someone, was keeping watch over me. I thought I could hear his breath, and I was like that, too, listening, my limbs aching, unable to sleep. My mind’s eye scoured the palace, to see if escape was possible. My soul wandered, tethered to my body by the leash of weariness, and my ears tried to catch every sound. The splash of the fountain in the palace drawing room. Distant voices. The creak of wooden boards, the soft clatter of feet.

I cursed the person I had been in Salonika, the one who had had the chance to flee and hadn’t done it. The one who had felt the shadow of affinity with his jailers. I cursed myself for not having tried to kill Nasi. For not killing the enemy, finally within arm’s reach.

I saw the scene. I clutched the man’s throat and tightened my grip. Rage and contempt sustained me. I felt the bones of the neck yielding, and then I started on his face. I wanted to wipe that ambiguous, self-important expression from his face. I wanted to erase Yossef Nasi from the category of the living, from my life, from my future memories. I struck at him doggedly, drowning his features in a lake of blood. I plunged into an uneasy half sleep.

It must have been the middle of the night by the time I stirred again. I felt my clothes burning. Something was running along my skin. Agitatedly, I undressed, and in the candle-light I tried to inspect every recess, every nook of myself, but I found no parasites, no fleas in my clothes or lice on my head.

It was only a sensation, a sign. I was in a Procrustean bed, and this was a portent of the suffering to come. I wouldn’t stay and wait for it.

I assessed all the possibilities. Only flight would make me free, but I would have nowhere to go. To return to my earlier life I would have to turn my fantasy into a plan: bring Nasi’s head to Venice, return to my responsibilities and, in fact, be the savior of the Republic.

Nordio would be proud of me, and his power and influence would increase, because one of his men would have got rid of Giuseppe Nasi, bringing an end to his sordid intrigues.

Yes. Having the Jew’s head. Killing him was a task within my scope. But going back to Venice?

It wasn’t impossible. Just difficult. A disguise, a ship. A basket with a head in it, salted, to keep it from stinking. Kill Nasi. Flee, perhaps in disguise. Reach the port. I had to get hold of some money, there must be plenty in the palace . . . yes, even that was a problem that was easily solved. I would be meek. I would sting like a serpent in the breast. Yes. But first I had to rest. Rest.

I closed my eyes, and the inanity of my plan struck me from behind, like when you’re a child and one of your friends jumps out from behind a corner and shouts
Boo!
and you turn around and see him laughing. A thousand variables had to be aligned, like a favorable astral conjunction involving all the planets and the fixed stars. And even if everything went according to plan, if I reached Venice with my trophy in the basket, it wouldn’t change my nature. To Venice I was only a Jew. My place was the ghetto. Or rather, my place was under the ground. But not in the graveyard, not in consecrated ground.

And then it would no longer matter if I got away. What I needed wasn’t an escape plan, but the strength to act and forget myself with my final act of redemption. Kill the Jewish Dog and allow myself to be torn to pieces by his brigands. Show him that I was capable of making the ultimate sacrifice.

My mind ceased its intense conscious activity. I fell back into dull, dark sleep, peopled by voices and faces: Nordio, Arianna, my father. Those accents, Tavosanis’s from Friuli, Rizzi’s from Rovigo. Old Abecassi’s rough speech. The mute censure on Tuota’s face.

Then voices and faces became bodies and faces, lined up on a stage like actors in a play, masks lowered. They were calling to me to climb onto that stage, and all around were the loggias that opened onto the drawing room of Palazzo Belvedere. I struggled and managed to get up there. I wanted to join the masks; I walked towards the proscenium arch; but I discovered that I was still in bed, half asleep, unable to move a muscle, oppressed by a terrible weight, while the masks laughed at me and mocked me.

All this went on for a long time: I dreamed about getting up and saw myself asleep, useless, defenseless, while the audience laughed, until I felt drawn upward, toward the ceiling, and I awoke.

I didn’t know how long my stupor had lasted. No light entered the room; the air came in through little openings above the architrave of the door, which had been closed for the night. Now I could move my body, and I raised it up, fearing this might only be a new episode in the nightmare. But no, I was me, alive and awake.

I closed the window halfway and washed my face with water from the basin, then tipped it over my head. I dried myself, got dressed and leaned against the door.

“I know you’re there. I want to leave.”

No answer.

I cautiously opened the door. There was no one there. The light hurt my eyes. The day had begun long before.

The smell of food rose from the courtyard of the palace; someone among the Jewish refugees was having breakfast. I felt pangs of hunger, and that forced me to go downstairs.

A group of men were sitting around a low table. I didn’t know what language to speak to them, but the oldest of them anticipated me, talking to me in Italian.

“You look like someone who hasn’t slept well, Signore.”

A strange answer came to my lips: “The bed is a hard battlefield.”

I had spoken under my breath.

“I’m sorry?” He was a serene-looking old man.

“I was saying I had a troubled night.”

He gestured to me to sit down next to him. “Please meet my brothers and sons-in-law.” I sat down without thinking and was offered bread, cheese and olives. “Where are you from?” the man asked. The question left me dumbfounded, and my reply came instinctively: “Venice.” They all nodded, to show that they understood. “Don’t worry,” the old man continued. “Here you find sleep. This place will protect you.”

I didn’t say a word, with last night’s thoughts still echoing vaguely in my head. I bent my head over my plate and, along with the others, ate the bread of the man I saw as an enemy.