Altai: A Novel (4 page)

8.

I climbed the wooden ladder, and this time Tuota went ahead of me. The trap door led to the roof space of the old warehouse. As the stench of mold reached me from above, I hoisted myself toward the opening.

In the corner I recognized the straw mattress, the bowl, the worm-eaten table. It was there that we used to wait for the right time of night to go to sea. I remembered the first evening, my heart in my mouth, the feeling of expectation that devoured me, and Tuota telling me to get up and follow him. That was what I had done for years, and when I had chosen another destiny for myself, I hadn’t been able to keep a scrap of my soul from being trapped there.

I had come back. I thought of my house in Venice, where I had lived at ease and in prosperity, and I smiled contemptuously. Tuota noticed and gave me a wry look.

“You know the place,” he grunted. “If I were you I wouldn’t show my face in these parts.” He looked around and added, “I’ll fetch you something to eat.” He looked as if he were about to go downstairs.

“Tuota . . .”

He stopped, and for a moment I said nothing, looking at his sunburned face. He was still as powerful as I remembered, like a mooring post. I wanted to hug him as I never had when I was a little boy, to feel his muscles, the protective hardness of his belly.

I took the medal from around my neck and handed it to him. The medal with the warlike symbol of Venice. Intent as I was on hiding the truth from him, I wanted to buy the right to his help.

Tuota looked at the precious object, turned it around in his hand and then, without even raising his eyes, he handed it back to me. He disappeared through the trap door, which closed over his head. I heard the squeak of the rungs and the fading footsteps.

I went and stood by the only source of light, the little skylight in the roof. Ragusa was a clutch of fire-red tiles and white stone, between the green of the mountain and the green of the sea. When I was a boy, I had watched the ships coming into port through that opening. How many times, in the clear May days, had I daydreamed, looking for the outline of the Gargano. And how many nights had I spent admiring the constellations.

Many years before, one summer day, I had run to the port. I was shouting, “Tuota, Tuota,” because I had learned to throw a knife and wanted him to see me. Some of the sailors standing around thought that “Tuota” was a mispronunciation, my way of saying “Tuone,” or Ante, Toni, Antumi, Antal
.
Everyone liked the sound of the name, and from that point on they started using it all the time, although the Dalmatians knew that
tuota
is a word from the island of Veglia and means the same as
baba
in Turkish,
tata
in Croatian,
pare
in Venetian and
papa
in Ladino, the Jewish dialect. That was what I had started calling him,
papa
, in the language of my mother and the Jews of Spain, but he had told me he didn’t like the word, because “
il Papa
” is the king of all the priests and he didn’t like kings or priests. So he had given me permission to call him Tuota, as he had called his father, and I, who was eight years old and didn’t know who my father was, didn’t need to hear him say it twice. At the port everyone knew that Tuone Jurman had no children, that he wasn’t married, and, as I knew, the idea that someone might call him Father even made them laugh. So the nickname became official, and to close the circle they started calling me
el Feil
, and the dog that was always near me in those days was rechristened
Spirit Sant
. A fine paradox, for a little Jewish boy.

I lay down on the mattress, my mind caught somewhere between my memories and the uncertain present. I looked at the walls around me, the ruined objects. It took me a long time to get to sleep, and I entertained myself by throwing dice, playing against myself, losing even when I won.

I was wakened by the sound of the trap door opening. I instinctively brought my hand to my stiletto, under my cape. I didn’t know what time it was, but the light outside the window was intense.

Tuota’s gray head emerged from the floor, followed by the rest of his body. He was carrying a bag over his shoulder, and from it he took a bundle. Bread, sardines and a canteen full of water.

“I was hoping you’d offer me some of your grappa.”

“It isn’t that cold yet, and you don’t need it.”

There was no room for discussion with Tuota; age hadn’t softened him. We sat in silence, chewing our food. He was the first to speak.

“You haven’t told me where you plan to go.”

“Because I don’t know yet. Anywhere I can stay alive. Far from Venice, that much is certain.”

“I’m trying to find a boat for you, but it’s going to take a few days. You’ll have to be very careful in your movements if the Venetians really are looking for you. You’re hiding in their backyard.”

I couldn’t help provoking him: “When I left, the word
freedom
was written on the banners of Ragusa. The Sultan’s still guaranteeing you protection.”

Tuota hissed between his teeth. “Freedom. The more they write it on their shields the less they want it. I come from a line of pirates that has never bowed to anyone. My ancestors were enemies of Julius Caesar. The aristocrats of this city are as despotic as your Venetian friends; they’re just a bit smaller.”

“Age is making you bitter, Tuota. You used to be proud of the independence of Ragusa. You were the one who brought me to the castle of San Lorenzo to read the motto carved above the door. Do you remember? It says Freedom isn’t sold for all the gold in the world.”

“And you’ve learned it off by heart to spit on it.”

I couldn’t hold my tongue. “You’ve never learned to see things from above sea level, have you, Tuota? Do you think Venice doesn’t fight for its freedom? It’s a little republic squashed between giants that would like to bend it to their will. On the one hand there’s the Great Turk, on the other the Holy Roman Empire, and then the Church of Rome, which is hatching every imaginable plot to impose its power on the city. And yet Venice resists. In freedom.”

“Then you could have stayed there,” he said, and his words were like a tombstone. I was a fugitive, my old homeland wanted me dead, and yet my tongue went on defending it.

“I’ll help you,” Tuota went on, “but I don’t want to know anything about what’s happened to you, or about what you’ve done for the Venetians.” He got up. “I’m setting off at dawn tomorrow. Over the next few days a woman called Dinka will bring you something to eat. If I were you, I would hole up here for a while. If you really can’t resist the temptation to go down, remember to leave your dagger behind. In these parts they don’t deal kindly with Jews who walk around the place carrying weapons.”

He must have noticed the stiletto under my cape. His eyesight was still sharp.

“I’m not a Jew anymore.”

He shook his head. “We aren’t in Venice here. Lots of people remember Manuel, son of Sarah. That’s enough.”

9.

Very soon, boredom came to dominate my days. Time passed slowly and languidly, minute by minute, hour after hour. The next day, Dinka, an old woman who didn’t waste her words, climbed up to bring me some food and empty the pot. She made me take off my Venetian clothes and replaced them with a pair of torn trousers and a jacket that had once belonged to who knows who. The signs of my previous life slipped away and I assumed a new appearance. I looked at my reflection in the glass of the jug, my beard longer than before, and prickly, my face pale, my eye vague. A different man. Flight was a chrysalis, but the caterpillar didn’t turn into a butterfly, just a different caterpillar.

In that room I had nothing to do but look down upon the city of my birth, for ages, until it burned my eyes. The busy coming and going of ships was accompanied by shouts from longshoremen and the barking of dogs. The wind stirred the laundry that hung from the windows; the gusts struck the sheets, making them crack like gunfire. Observing and deducing were part of my job. I imagined those people’s lives. On that white linen men and women had slept, the old and the sick had died, children had come into the world.

Inevitably, I ended up thinking of my mother, her black eyes, the old Spanish lullabies she sang to put me to sleep. From there my memory slipped as if in a puddle of grease, and I found myself in a November dawn, in the bed of my childhood, woken without patience or affection by the shrill voice of Old Abecassi.

Once again, everything exactly the same as before. She throws open the door and drags me from sleep, always with the same stupid phrase on her lips, one of the many Sephardic proverbs that I have learned to hate.

“Wake up! If you want to marry a
moza
, don’t wait till you’re old.”

I give a start that shatters my beautiful dreams, try to grasp the tail end of them lest I forget them, but they vanish in a flash. By the time I’ve washed my face, there’s nothing left of them. It’s dark outside, the water is cold, my heart is thumping in my throat. I’m just seven years old.

Proverbs. Even on the point of death, as she entrusted me to Abecassi, my mother told me one with her very last breath.

“
Ke darse mi ijo, ke seyga en Teshabeav.
”

May my son preach in the temple, even if it’s for
Tisha b’Av
, the Day of Conflict. Even in these dire circumstances, make sure my son grows up as a good Jew, in the observance of our rules, at the rabbi’s school. So I, who until that moment lived close to the port, have been moved to the ghetto, to Jew Street, to the house of an old witch, a friend of my grandmother’s since the days of Spain—or so she says, although it’s impossible. When they left Toledo, my grandmother was still in swaddling clothes.

The Cardosos had fled from Spain in 1492. Wife and husband, Aganbena and Baltazar, with a newborn daughter, Raquel, who would be my grandmother. The exact date had been etched in my mind, because Sarah did nothing but repeat it: the fifteenth day of Adar, 5252, the day after Purim.

On their way eastward, the Cardosos stopped in Ragusa, where a little community of Jews was starting to form. They never left. Baltazar began dealing in wool and fabrics. Their daughter was impregnated by the shop boy, a Romaniot Jew who died of bad blood even before the birth of her daughter, my mother, Sarah. It was 1515. Sarah was born, and was given the surname of her mother and grandfather.

Sarah’s life, by a quirk of fate, began with an exile. That year the Jews were expelled from Ragusa, all of them, apart from the ones who had converted to the Holy Roman Church, or who let it be known that they had. The Cardosos moved to Spalato. By the time the Jews were able to return to the Good Venice, Sarah was seventeen and carrying a child. No one knew who the father was, and the child was born dead anyway. The big sister I never had.

Five years later it was my turn, another child of an unknown father. I was born alive and stayed that way. The surname of Baltazar, Raquel and Sarah became mine too. They called me Manuel.

In the evening, Tuota came looking for me in my attic refuge. I was mid-doze, and the sound of the trap door closing made me jump, my hand reaching for my stiletto. Tuota threw down his own so that it stuck in the floor. The thump shook the last residues of sleep from me.

“The difference between the sleep of the just and the sleep of the idiot is that the idiot doesn’t wake up.” The voice was the scrape of a ship’s hull on rocks, but his mood was jollier. He clearly had good news.

I muttered something. I thought this rude awakening was worthy of Old Abecassi, but I wasn’t a little boy anymore. I was a condemned man on the run. I got up, went over to the washbasin and tipped the jug of water over my head. When I took the towel off my face, Tuone Jurman was leaning against the table, arms folded.

“In Venice I was rich,” I said. “I had a servant, and lived in a beautiful house.”

“I told you before, I don’t want to know what you’ve done. I’m not getting involved; don’t tell me anything.”

I rubbed my eyes. I didn’t want to talk. A sea and ten years had interposed themselves between us, and I couldn’t fill that distance.

“You’ll be leaving soon. A ship is sailing for Durrës in a week. I’ve called in an old favor, and you’ll have a place on board. From Durrës you’ll be able to take the Via Egnatia, and stop wherever you feel like it. Maybe in Salonika, where there are lots of your people.

I gave a sort of grunt. “My people? You’re hard of hearing; I’m not a Jew anymore.”

He gave one of his snorts and smiled. “As you wish. In the meantime, don’t champ at the bit too much. Go out as little as possible. Don’t look for women, whether alive or dead.”

Having said that, he pulled the stiletto from the floor and put it back in his belt.

The Via Egnatia. Across the Balkans, eastward. All the way to Constantinople, if I liked.

I remembered the angel with the severe expression in the Consigliere’s courtyard. I imagined it saying, “Clear off.”

To spend weeks penetrating the empire I had opposed, whose agents I had had arrested, whose plans I had foiled, whose interests I had thwarted. I had dedicated ten years of my life to that opposition. There was something wrong about my escape plan, something obscene. Venice accused me of serving the Turks, and I was seeking refuge among them. It was like admitting I was a traitor. On the other hand, hadn’t I perhaps betrayed them? I had deceived them. I and my father, old De Zante, had kept quiet, had hidden the truth, had erected an edifice of lies. Lies told to the Republic, and above all to the Consigliere. At what point had Nordio started to suspect me, to seek information about me? What could have put him on his guard? And how much truth had he managed to discover? I told myself it was no longer important, but I was lying. I was the umpteenth Venetian I had lied to. The wound was too recent, the suffering flesh still belonged to Venice, and Venice would reclaim it.

Hide out for a week, sit there like a stewing codfish, then board another ship, only to disembark and set off once more on my journey. By what means of transport, in whose company, heading where and living how? And money? I would have to sell the gold medal. I would do that in Durrës. No, I had to do it right away, the next day. Sell it, and later allow myself a glass of
rakia
. Go down, find the right shop, the right person. But not a Jew: There was a risk of them recognizing me. Go to the port, find a buyer among the commercial agents. No, too risky. The port was swarming with guards and informers. A week still lay between me and my journey, more than enough time for them to find out about me, trap me, sell me to Venice. The rumors about the traitor who had burned the Arsenal, the arrest warrant, all of that must have reached as far as Ragusa. That meant leaving immediately! Selling the gold and using part of the money to pay someone with a ship, a boat, to head elsewhere. Yes, and where could I go? I was surrounded by Ottoman lands, Christian Europe had spewed me out, and the Jews were the people I hated. I was nothing now. I was sweating and breathless, and sleep was out of the question.

At dawn I decided to go outside.