The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi (63 page)

CODA

The passenger in the
pizola
was not permitted to go ashore at Ragusa.

“Being a sailor myself, I know what it is to be young and looking for a spot of shore leave after a long stretch at sea,” Captain Loredano explained when he stepped forward to block Danilo’s descent down the gangway onto the Ragusa pier. “But you must understand that Ragusa is a nest of Ottoman spies, and your fine gold-threaded caftan would immediately single you out from the crowd as an object of curiosity and put you in danger. I cannot allow that to happen. I have given my word to deposit you safely at the San Marco dock. And I am a man of my word.”

This was not the first time since the ship set sail from Istanbul that Captain Loredano had made reference to the debt of honor he had incurred when he took on the young passenger whose papers identified him as Davide dei Rossi, son of the merchant Isaac dei Rossi of Mantova. Nor was it the first time the passenger in question was moved to estimate the size of the bribe that had protected him from any Ottoman attempt to gain access to his cabin since the ship set sail and, if the captain was to be believed, would continue to shield him from any Ottoman agents that the ship might encounter at the many ports of call between the Galata docks at Istanbul and the
dogana
at Venice.

His escape must have cost the princess hundreds of ducats. No doubt she had put herself in serious danger to buy his safety. Not since his mother had risked her life for him had anyone loved him that much. And very likely no one ever would again. It was a sad thought.

But after several days of being tossed about on the wine-dark Mediterranean and now finding himself skimming along over the crystal wavelets of the Adriatic, the newly christened Davide dei Rossi began to feel the occasional surge of life. Not quite a stirring of hope but at least a flickering of curiosity about what lay in store for him.

When the ship put in at the port of Ancona, the captain relented so far as to set up his passenger in the helmsman’s chair at the top of the ship’s castle, from where he was able to enjoy seeing ordinary people going about their everyday business on the pier below. The sight of their genial faces was a welcome change from the sullen, angry glares of the oarsmen of the
San Domenico
, not one of whom had so much as met his glance when he passed by them on his daily exercise — a run from the stern of the ship to the prow, weather permitting. Even on board the vessel, as Captain Loredano made clear, the less visible this passenger was, the better for both of them.

“Since I have neglected to include you on the passenger manifest, it would be awkward to explain your presence on my ship should anyone see you come ashore,” the captain explained.

Nor did the captain’s efforts to conceal his charge diminish when they finally entered the Venetian lagoon. Quite the opposite. As soon as the ship’s sails gave way to oars, Danilo found himself bundled up in blankets and stuffed into the back of a closet in the
pizola
on the off chance that the customs officers at the Venetian
dogana
might take it into their heads to make a search of the ship’s castle before clearing the cargo to be unloaded at San Marco.

As it happened, the custodians of Venetian security who met the ship at the
dogana
showed no interest whatsoever in the private cabin in the ship’s castle. Nevertheless, the passenger was not released from his hiding place until the ship had crossed the Grand Canal and dropped anchor under the watchful eyes concealed high in the Serenissima’s fabled clock tower. Only after the
San Domenico
was securely moored did the captain appear at the
pizola
to accompany its occupant ashore. But not before that man of honor had imparted one final, stern admonishment to his charge.

“Remember to keep your papers close to your person at all times.” He wagged his fat finger under his passenger’s nose. “And for God’s sake try not to be noticed. If you take my advice, the first thing for you to do is to get rid of that outfit you are wearing and get yourself some new clothes. Those balloon pants and that gold-threaded jacket spell out the word ‘Ottoman’ to Venetians in capital letters. Remember, in Venice all Ottomans are spies. So, for your own sake, do not take it into your head to take a stroll into the Piazza
San Marco dressed as you are. Your life may depend on it.”

It was a stern warning but not an unkind one, and the passenger took it in that spirit.

“Thank you, Captain,” Danilo said. “I am grateful for your advice and I mean to follow it.”

“Good.” The captain patted him on the shoulder. “By the way, try not to be caught with that weapon you have so poorly concealed in your waistband. This is Venice, boy, a city of suspicion, skullduggery, and deception. There is a metal box on a pole in every
campo
inviting citizens to drop in reports of strangers who look to be carrying weapons, with substantial rewards offered. And, believe me, you do not want to find out what will happen if you are taken over the bridge to the Doge’s dungeon. Not for nothing do they call it the Bridge of Sighs.”

Then, fearing that he had not made his point well enough, he took his charge by the shoulders and shook him, not roughly but firmly. “Understand, Signor dei Rossi, once you step off this vessel you no longer have me to watch over you; once I have fulfilled my commitment I have no stake in what happens to you. But you have behaved well on this journey and I wish you Godspeed.”

All very well. But not having set foot on Venetian ground since his parents carried him away to Rome as an infant, Danilo had no familiarity with the city. Where better could he conceivably melt into the crowd than in the town’s main piazza?

“If I may not walk into the Piazza
San Marco, where shall I go?” he asked.

The captain had a ready answer. “When you leave the ship, I suggest you walk along the Grand Canal with your head down until you come to the gondola jetty. That way —” with a vague gesture to his right. “There you can ask to be taken to the Rialto. That is where you will find the stalls for
strazzaria
. You will also find your countrymen. The Jews have a monopoly on the sale of second-hand goods in Venice, and they will sell you an outfit that a well-to-do Italian merchant’s son would be wearing. You can tell the Jewish stalls by the striped pole at their doors. They may even give you a good price for your fancy jacket. I hear you Jews stick together. Come to think of it, you may want to go through the Cannaregio
district from the Rialto to the old foundry. That is where the Jews live now. They still call it the
ghetto vecchio
.”

“I know it,” Danilo told him.

“You’ve been there?”

“I was born there.”

“You were born in the
ghetto
? Well, then, this is something of a homecoming for you, is it not?”

“I left there at a very early age,” Danilo replied.

“Even so, you are returning to your birthplace. You are coming home.”

And, seeming very pleased to have found such a happy ending to their long journey together, Captain Loredano made for his ship, only to turn back halfway there and add, “For God’s sake, boy, do not go into the
piazza
dressed in those Ottoman clothes. Any man of sense knows that if a spy were sent by the Sultan to steal Venetian naval plans, he would hardly be wearing a pair of Turkish pants. But the spy catchers of Venice are hardly men of good sense, and any one of them might easily see his advantage in arresting such a person in hopes of collecting a reward. By the way, don’t even think of walking to the Rialto. Hire a gondola to take you there. And don’t try to economize by engaging an open craft, even though they come cheaper. Get yourself one with heavy
felse
at the sides. That way, if you sit back in the seat, the canopy and the curtains will hide you from curious eyes.”

And, finally the captain whirled away into the bowels of his ship with a quick
bona fortuna,
leaving his young passenger to find his own way to the Rialto.

Ahead of Danilo lay the Piazza
San Marco, forbidden territory. Behind him flowed the broad expanse of the Grand Canal. That left him only two choices, right or left. He was about to flip a coin when he recalled the captain’s gesture. Left it would be. Within a few moments he came upon a clutch of gondolas bobbing up and down beside a short pier. The price for the journey was, as Captain Loredano had warned him, steep. But the captain’s warnings had made their impact on his passenger. He did not hesitate to open his purse to pay the gondolier fifteen gold ducats for a ride to the Rialto under cover of the heavy curtains, which did indeed shield him from curious eyes as long as he sat far back in the canopied chair in the center of the craft.

But the canopy also prevented him from seeing the line of Venetian landmarks that bordered the fabled Grand Canal as they were extolled in a sing-song by the gondolier.

“
Ca Foscari, Palazzo dell’Ambasciatore
,
Ca Vendramin-Calergi
,
Palazzo Giustiniani
. . .” The boatman called the names as if singing a lyric, names that conjured up visions of elegance and romance so intriguing that his passenger could not keep himself from sticking his head out between the
felse
to catch a glimpse of the renowned palaces of the Canal Grande. For this bold move he was rewarded with the sight of a shoreline faced with a line of structures so elegant, so imposing that they left him convinced that the sight of them had been worth the risk.

It wasn’t as if he had been catapulted into this great city after a lifetime in the provinces. He had, after all, in his early years lived with his mother among the great Roman palaces. But at that young age styles in architecture held a low place among the objects of his interest — far below armor and weapons and horses and playing fields and arenas.

Later, in Istanbul, his eyes had become accustomed to the Ottoman residences built along the Bosphorus after the Turks made the venerable city of Constantinople their capital. Even to the untrained eye, the wooden villas that the Ottomans had built on the shores of the Bosphorus, three stories high at most and cozily aproned by capacious wooden balconies jutting out over the water, could not match the stately palaces that the Venetian plutocrats had planted in the murky depths of the lagoon — each one simply called, with suitably arrogant modesty, a
casa
or
ca
in the local dialect.

So, yes, these Venetian “houses” were new to Danilo’s eyes. Most of them were built entirely with gleaming Istrian marble, each one floating like a stone pontoon on its deeply sunk wooden foundations. There they stood, not a single one of them undistinguished, rendered majestic by their courses of vaulted marble columns and tall gothic windows separated by carved-out niches inhabited by sculptured figures. They were not alike in detail, yet all similar enough to create a perfectly harmonious shoreline, each
casa
featuring a decorated portal and each canal water gate displaying a sufficient number of striped poles at the portal to moor a fleet of gondolas if need be. And these portals were only the back doors. An infinitely more impressive entry could be found on the land-side of the
casa,
fronted by a garden.

Gazing at this stunning array of elegance and harmony, Danilo could almost hear the sounds of dance music issuing from the tall windows and see the whirling skirts of beautiful women behind the stained-glass windows.

He was interrupted in these fancies by the repetition of the cry, “Rialto!” The gondola had brought him to his destination. The Rialto, it seemed, was both a piazza
and a bridge. Colorful, crowded, noisy, and variously peopled as if begging to be painted by some Venetian street painter. (A task he later discovered had in fact been done by Vittorio Carpaccio.)

After a few minutes of being jostled and stepped on in the bustling crowd, there came to Danilo’s mind his mother’s observation that you can always find the Jews in any town by following your nose. Just pick up the scent of fish, she said, and it will lead to the Jewish merchants’ establishments because nobody else is willing to set up shop amid the stench of fish. Thus the Jews can move in unopposed. And, to be sure, his nose soon picked up the unmistakable stink of fish-mongering, which led him to a row of stalls marked by the red, green, and black striped poles that he had been told identified the
strazzaria
kiosks.

On a whim, he chose the middle one and found himself the only customer in a small kiosk festooned with articles of clothing — women’s, men’s, children’s, all colors of the rainbow with an added mixture of black.

Where to start? With the cut? With the color? With the fabric? At that moment, the young man who had faced a thundering herd of
gerit
warriors unflinchingly in the Istanbul hippodrome felt himself completely overwhelmed by the cascading racks of hose, shirts, doublets, and jerkins raining down on him wherever he looked, and he was about to make his escape when he felt a tug on the sleeve of his caftan.

“Wherever did you come by such a gorgeous jacket?” The questioner was a dark-skinned Spanish-looking fellow, beardless like himself, and seeming to be about his age.

“Please don’t be offended.” The stranger spoke Italian with a pronounced accent, but Danilo was hard-pressed to distinguish what country’s accent he was hearing.

“I have never seen a more elegant brocade,” the stranger went on, fingering the fabric. “Bursa?”

His manner was so straightforward and his smile so infectious that Danilo could not resist the urge to confide. “It was a gift to me from the Ottoman Sultan, for winning a
gerit
contest in the hippodrome.” Then, suddenly remembering the captain’s warning about Venetian spy catchers, he added, “I am not an Ottoman spy.” Whereupon, appalled by his own folly, he stood silent, waiting to be arrested and conducted to the Bridge of Sighs, never to be seen again.