People of the Book (19 page)

Judah Aryeh sat up slowly in the dark, so as not to awaken his wife. The moonlight lit the curve of her cheek, and her unbound hair, always modestly hidden by day, spilled across the pillow in a wild profusion of black and silver. It was all he could do to refrain from caressing it. When they were first married, he had tangled his hands in that hair, clutched at it, been aroused by the feel of it against the bare skin of his chest as they made the wild, unpracticed love of the very young.

Sarai was a lovely woman still, and even after two dozen years he could grow hard if she looked at him a certain way. Sometimes, he wondered about Vistorini, and how he could live a life without a woman’s warmth in his bed. Or children. What would it be, to miss the sight of them, sweet-faced infants growing, changing, year by year, finding their paths to an honorable maturity? He wondered if the wine his friend drank so excessively was a way to blunt those needs, so natural, so God given.

It was not that Aryeh despised the life disciplined by faith. To the contrary, he knew the ascetic beauty of such a way of being. He lived every moment mindful of the 613 commandments of the Torah. It was natural to him to separate the milk from the meat, to refrain from labor on the Sabbath, to abide by the laws of family purity in his relations with his wife. The disciplines of that monthly abstinence had only sharpened desire and sweetened their reunion. But to be without a wife entirely…that, to him, was no fit life for a man.

The door creaked as Aryeh closed it. He waited on the stair for a moment to see if the sound had roused anyone. But the crowded building was never quiet, even at this late hour. An old man’s hacking cough came through the thin wooden partition between their apartment and the next. If one needed to build ever upward, the walls had to be of the thinnest and lightest materials. From the floor below, the cry of a hungry newborn pierced the night. And from above came the incessant crowing of the damned cockerel that seemed to lack all sense of dawn or dark. Someone should have the
shochet
dispatch that benighted fowl to the pot, Aryeh thought, as he picked his way carefully in the dark down the creaking wooden staircase. Outside, he made for the narrow place that divided his building from the next one. Dropping to his knees, he passed a hand through the slimy stones and tugged out the canvas sack he had hidden there. Stealing down the alley, he waited until he was in the deepest shadow to open the sack and shake out the contents. After a few moments, he went on toward the Geto gates.

The hardest part of the night’s deception lay ahead of him. The gates had been closed several hours earlier. Gentiles whose business in the Geto had detained them past curfew could easily obtain egress simply by bribing the guards. But the only way out, for a Jew, demanded nerve and guile. Aryeh lingered in the shadows and waited. The rabbi’s distinctive chestnut curls escaped from beneath the tri-corn hat of a patrician. The damp air penetrated even the fine wool of the nobleman’s cloak that, with the mask, completed his disguise. Almost an hour passed. He flexed his shoulders to relieve their stiffness and shook his legs, one after the other, to prevent cramps. Soon, he would have to give up for the night and try again the next. But just as that thought took shape, he heard the sounds he had been waiting for. Ragged voices, raucous laughter. Soon, a party of Gentile youths straggled into the
campiello.
Using the license of Carnivale, they had been snatching some illicit foreign pleasures among immigrant Jews whose condition was so low that they pandered their sons and daughters for the purpose.

There were six or seven of them, staggering toward the gatehouse, crying up the guardsmen to let them out. All wore the dark cloak of Carnivale and the masks of characters from the commedia dell’arte. Aryeh’s heart flipped and fluttered in his chest. He had only a moment to act, to fall in with the party and hope that in the dark and their inebriation they would not raise a fuss. He touched a hand to his mask, nervously checking the ties for the tenth time in as many minutes. He had chosen a common and popular design: the long beak of the plague doctor. No doubt there were, that night in the city, a horde of men dressed just alike. But at the last moment, as he stepped from the scalloped shadows and into the square, doubts swarmed his mind. Surely it was too great a risk. Surely the youths would challenge him. He should go back as he had come, anonymous in the dark, and fling the damnable mask into the sewer as he went.

But then he thought of the candlelight dancing on piles of gold sequins, the dizzying ecstasy in the moment the card turned and revealed its secrets. Aryeh swallowed hard. The pleasure of the thought was so great he could taste it at the back of his throat. He stepped forward and into the youths’ noisy wake. Be bold, he thought. He threw an arm over the shoulder of the nearest youth and attempted to feign a laugh that came out in a strange, nervous falsetto.

“Help me, young sir. My legs are gone from too much drink and I don’t wish to draw the attention of the guards.” The youth’s eyes, through the crescent slots of an Arlecchino mask, were unintelligent as a cow’s. “Awright, uncle, on we go,” he slurred. His breath, Aryeh thought, could have fueled a lamp.

It was just an instant, passing under the lit gate, but Aryeh felt sure his pounding heart—how could they not hear it?—would give him away. But then he was through and on the narrow bridge. Three steps up, three steps down, into the Gentiles’ Venice. As he left the bridge, he reclaimed his arm from the youth’s shoulder and melted away toward a shadowed overhang. He rested his head against a rough stone wall and tried to breathe. It was some minutes before he was able to go on.

As he turned back into the
canaletto,
the crowd swept him up into itself. The dark brought no rest in Venice during Carnivale. At sunset, torches and chandeliers shed light on a continuum of celebration. The city was mobbed; its main thoroughfares more crowded, for once, than those of the Geto. The costumed nobles drew pickpockets and mountebanks who hoped to prey on them; jugglers, acrobats, and bear baiters who hoped to entertain them. Class, for the moment, was expunged. The tall man in the long-nosed Zanni mask bearing down upon Aryeh might well be a servant or a porter, like his character, or he might be one of the Ten. “Good evening, Mr. Mask,” was all the greeting required.

Aryeh touched his hat as he sidled by the tall Zanni and merged again into the throng, allowing it to carry him along toward a
ridotto,
which lay no great distance from the bridge. He entered, one masked nobleman among so many abroad in the night. He climbed to the second floor and passed into the room of sighs. The salon was fitted up in a gaudy taste, the light from many chandeliers too bright to flatter the wrinkled necks of the masked women who lolled listlessly upon sofas, comforting their losing partners. There were husbands with mistresses, wives with the
cicisbeos
meant be their chaperones but often, in fact, their lovers. There were also prostitutes, panderers, and police spies. All wore masks to equalize their condition. All, that is, except the bankers. These men, all of them members of the aristocratic Barnabot family, were the only Venetians approbated to fill this role. Each Barnabot, dressed alike in long black robe and flowing white wig, stood behind his own table in the next salon. Their bare faces proclaimed their identity for all to know.

There were more than a dozen tables from which to choose. Aryeh watched as the bankers shuffled and dealt hands of basset and panfil. He ordered wine and ambled over to observe a high-stakes game of treize. There was just a single player, matching his luck with the bank. The deal passed back and forth between them several times before the player scraped his sequins into a small purse and went off, laughing, to his friends. Aryeh stepped into his place, and two other men joined him. The banker stood between tall candles, shuffling the cards as the players laid out their piles of sequins, each of them betting against the luck of the dealer. It was a simple game: the dealer had to name the cards from one to thirteen—ace to king—as he dealt. If the card fell as he named it, he collected the wagers and retained the deal. If he reached the king without matching a call to the dealt card, he had to pay the wagers and relinquish the deal to the player on his right.

His voice, when he commenced the deal, was low and even.
“Uno,”
he said, as the five of spades hit the table.
“Due,”
as the nine of hearts appeared.
“Tre,”
and luck was still against him as the eight of spades appeared. The count had risen to
“nove”
and still the dealer had not dealt the card he was naming. Just four more chances, and Aryeh’s gold sequin would be doubled.

“Fante,”
the banker called. But the card that he dealt was a seven of diamonds, not a jack. Just two more chances. Aryeh eyed his sequin.

“Re.”
The last card, the king. But the dealer had turned up an ace. The dealer’s long white fingers reached for the pile of sequins beside him. He placed one before Aryeh, four before a man in a lion mask, and, with a slight bow, seven before the high-wagering man in the Brighella mask. The dealer, having lost the hand, surrendered the deal to the Brighella. Aryeh loosened his mask to mop his brow. He reached into Doña Reyna’s purse and placed two more sequins on the table beside his original wager and his winnings from the first hand. His wager was now four gold pieces. He thought he noticed the men on either side of him give small nods of approval.

“Uno.”
The voice from behind the Brighella mask was deep and resonant. The card he turned over was a nine of clubs.
“Due.”
A jack, much too soon to be of use to him.
“Tre, quattro, cinque, sei…fante, cavallo…”
The Brighella’s voice seemed to get deeper on each card, as none matched the number he cried out. Aryeh felt his own heart beating faster. He was about to win another four sequins. At this rate he would double Doña Reyna’s purse in no time.
“Re!”
cried the Brighella. But the card he turned was a seven of spades. The Brighella reached into his purse and placed sequins on each player’s pile. His eyes glittered through the half-moon slits above the mask’s bulbous cheeks.

The deal passed to Aryeh. He watched as the lion, the Brighella, and the impassive-faced noble of the Barnabot family placed their piles of sequins. The Brighella, chasing his losses, placed twenty gold sequins on the table. The Barnabot wagered a modest two sequins. The lion played four, as he had each hand.

Aryeh’s hands were deft and steady as he shuffled the deck. He felt exhilaration rather than dread, even with twenty-six sequins at stake.
“Uno!”
he cried exultantly, and, as if he had the power to summon the card from the deck, the single, vivid red blot of the ace of diamonds gleamed in the candle glow.

Aryeh scooped the winnings toward himself. As winner, the deal remained with him. Once again, the players laid their bets; the Brighella chancing another twenty sequins, the Barnadot two, the lion four.

“Uno!”
Aryeh’s voice lilted, even though the card he turned over was a nine.
“Due! Tre! Quattro!”
It wasn’t until he reached
fante,
the jack, that his throat began to tighten at the prospect of loss. But the secret to Aryeh’s gambling compulsion was contained in that moment, when the dread began to spread through him like ink in a glass of clear water. For he welcomed the feeling, that dark, terrifying sensation of risk. To teeter on the edge of loss, or to win the hand, the point was the intensity of the sensation. He never felt so alive as he did in those moments, poised between the one outcome and the other.

“Cavallo!”
he cried, and the card was an ace of diamonds—the same ace that had brought him fortune on the last hand had betrayed him on this one. He had only one chance more. His flesh tingled.

“Re!”
he cried out, and the king he had named stared back at him from the table. The others shuffled uneasily. This man in the plague doctor mask had uncanny luck. To win one hand on the first card, and then to win another on the last card. A strange chance, indeed.

Aryeh watched the candlelight dance on the Barnabot’s ruby ring as the Barnabot slowly drew out two more sequins, and then, slowly, added two more. The nobleman was betting that the plague doctor’s luck must turn.

The Brighella gazed at him, his eyes glassy now, as he laid forty sequins upon the table. Only the lion held his ground, placing the same four sequins at risk.

For just under an hour, Aryeh’s fortune waxed, and he basked in the pleasure of his mounting pile. He had more than doubled the value of Doña Reyna’s first purse. The lion mask left the table and made an unsteady way to the room of sighs. He was replaced by a Pulcinella who seemed intoxicated and played with a reckless flourish, crying out ostentatiously at every ill turn in his fortunes. The Barnabot nobleman maintained his aloof and dignified demeanor, but his bare face began to show some lines of strain. The Brighella, the biggest loser, grasped the table. His knuckles had turned quite white. A small gallery of the curious had gathered on the edge of their circle.

Finally, inevitably, Aryeh reached the king without naming a card correctly. The Pulcinella gave a raucous cry of glee. Aryeh bowed and paid out the wagers—eighty sequins to the Brighella, ten to the Pulcinella, four to the Barnabot. He passed the deal to the Brighella and considered his next wager.

It had been a magical hour. He felt as light as one of the colored balloons that rose above the city during Carnivale. Truly, the large pile of winnings could do much for the poor in his congregation. He stood there, his hand hesitating over the gold. Perhaps Satan had lured him here, but God had given him this moment of choice. He would listen to the voice of reason in his head. He would take these winnings and leave the
ridotto.
He had fed his beast, had felt the blood rise in terror and exhilaration. It was enough. He swept the pile toward the mouth of his purse.