The Midwife of Venice (13 page)

“It was a masquerade?”

“Not exactly,” said Jessica. “I was the only woman in costume. Some older men adore young boys. Many prefer them to pretty young women.”

Hannah nodded, but without comprehension.

Jessica lowered her voice and drew Hannah into the shadow of a building. “The men fear the sodomy laws.”

“I do not understand.”
Sodomy
. Hannah had only a vague notion of what the word meant.

“I am a
cortigiana
, Hannah. You must have heard. There are thousands like me in Venice competing for the same wealthy protectors. We all need a speciality, and dressing as a handsome youth in tight breeches is mine.” She hooked her thumbs in the lapels of her satin jacket and gave a little bow. “I permit men to have the pleasure of the experience without the commission of the crime. The penalty for sodomy is fifty ducats for the first charge, if you are a
cittidini
. If you are noble, then it is …” Jessica made a sweeping motion with two fingers across her throat. “You can find me listed in
Il Catalogo
, should you care to look—my address, prices, and specialities—along with all the other honest courtesans in Venice. There is even a flattering miniature of me in tempera.” She gave her sister a sly grin, but Hannah looked away. “You are very poor at concealing your emotions. I can see that my talk pains you.”

Of course she had known Jessica was a courtesan, but not the details of her occupation. The thought of her having to please men by performing acts that should be done only between husband and wife made Hannah blush. “There is no need to speak of this.”

“I am a courtesan, not a whore,” Jessica responded. “I do not stroll the
calli
of Castello letting men take me against the wall of the Alms House.”

It took an act of will for Hannah not to put her hands to her ears.

“
Dio mio,”
Jessica said, fanning herself. “I have drunk too
much wine.” Unbuttoning her waistcoat, she revealed a shirt underneath, cut low to expose her breasts, between which hung a gold crucifix.

Hannah did not know what shocked her more, the mention of Jessica’s profession or the cross around her sister’s neck.

“How do you expect me to keep myself, Hannah?” She winked. “Someday, when my waist thickens and no one desires me, I will live as I please. I will not end up destitute like so many others of my kind. I have properties in Castello and a pile of gemstones.” She paused. “I could even marry if I wanted. A substantial dowry goes a long way in making a good match.”

Hannah opened her mouth to reply, but Jessica went on, “Do not worry about me. I have planned my future like a general amassing a war chest.”

“Isaac took me without a dowry,” Hannah said. “Without anything except my wooden
cassone
packed with a pair of candlesticks and a lace coverlet from Aunt Zeta.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them.

A look of irritation passed over Jessica’s face. “Isaac is a rare creature. Generous, a head for business, handsome …”

Hannah pressed her hand to her mouth in an effort to stop her tears.

“Hannah, what is wrong? And what on earth are you doing here in the early hours of the morning? Venice is filled with ruffians, lumbering pigs, all of whom would be eager to undo you.” Jessica wiped Hannah’s cheek with the back of her hand.

“Isaac has been taken as a slave. He is in Malta.”

“I had not heard. Oh, Anni, I am so sorry.” She touched the cross at her throat. “May God return him to your bed soon, healthy and whole.”

Hannah then told Jessica about her lonely nights and her anxiety about Isaac. She wished they were somewhere private instead of standing on the Fondamenta, where any early morning passer-by could spot them. She drew Jessica by the arm into a nearby doorway.

“Every gossip in the ghetto knows some terrible story of a Jew who perished in Malta and cannot wait to tell me the details. I am out of my mind with worry.”

“I have heard the stories too, but take heart—Isaac is a resourceful man. Quick of tongue, and clever.”

Hannah’s shoulders shook with sobs. “He will make an enemy of everyone he meets. It is his nature to be quicktempered.”

“Except with you,” Jessica said.

“No, to me as well. We fought in the week before he left. I begged him not to leave for the Levant. I said nothing good would come of it.” She drew the Conte’s cloak closer around her.

“Listen to me. Isaac adores you. I used to see him waiting for you to emerge from bathing in the
mikvah
, all clean and pure and ready for his caresses. He knows that you love him. You proved it every day of your marriage.” She gave Hannah a hug and whispered, “Men forgive everything in bed. When you are snuggled in his arms, he will replace those ugly words with sweet and tender ones.”

“Not if I get to Malta and find him dead.” The dawn was so cold Hannah could see her breath in the air. “After you left to study for your conversion, I languished in bed for fourteen days and fourteen nights without eating.”

Jessica stroked her hand. “At the House of Catechumens, each morning the nuns wrung out my pillow, soaked with tears from longing for you. I even missed Rabbi Ibraiham and his foul herring breath. That is how lonesome I was.” She pointed to the hem of Hannah’s dress showing under the Conte’s cloak. “You have not told me what brings you out so early. And … there is blood on your clothing.”

Hannah pulled Jessica by the sleeve of her waistcoat deeper into the shelter of the doorway and whispered, “A confinement, in a palazzo on the Grand Canal.”

“A Christian confinement? You are jesting!” A look of amazement came over her features. “You? The little ghetto mouse? You tell me you have violated a Papal Edict? You could be brought before the Court of the Inquisition!”

“For the love of God, keep your voice down!” Hannah said. “It was to earn Isaac’s ransom and for no other purpose.”

“My God, necessity has made the two of us brave.” Jessica twisted her curls into a knot and shoved them back up under her boy’s cap.

Hannah protested, “It is hardly the same.”

“Of course it is. We both do things we would rather not do for money. You, in the end, will have Isaac back, and I will have velvet gowns and my revenue houses, which no man can take from me.”

Hannah’s eyes kept lighting on the crucifix around Jessica’s neck. “Are you truly a Christian? Surely you still observe Shabbat?”

Jessica said, “I have left all of that behind.”

“No blessing of the candles on Friday night, no
challah?”

“I do not even celebrate Passover. I hang an enormous greasy ham in my window so everyone who passes my house knows me for a Christian.”

A gentile life, free of rules, free of constraint. Not only was Jessica estranged from her past, cut off from the people who had loved her, but she had lost her religion as well. Hannah felt anger rise in her. “So it seems you lead a life of selfishness, thinking only of the luxuries that money can buy.”

“You think
me
selfish?
You
are the one who is selfish. You have endangered the entire ghetto by attending a Christian travail.”

“I did it for
Isaac.”

“You did it for yourself so that you could have your husband back in your arms. You are ruled by men—the Rabbi, Isaac, our father when he was alive. You are a little ghetto mouse and will never be anything else.”

Hannah was shocked by the hardness in Jessica’s voice.

“I am sorry I asked for your help that night years ago,” Jessica said. “I hoped you cared enough for me that you would defy that ill-tempered old goat of a Rabbi and help your only sister give birth to her first child, but I was mistaken.”

Hannah wanted to ask her about the baby but could not bring herself to do so.

“I screamed your name throughout the night and sent a girl to fetch you. I wanted you, and only you, to steady me on the birthing stool. Instead a clumsy Christian midwife from San Marcuola parish attended me.” Jessica’s voice broke. “My baby was born dead. Suffocated in the birth passage.”

Dear God. Hannah had not known.

“You say you love me, but you abandoned me when I needed you most.”

“That is not fair. I had to obey the Rabbi.”

“Well, you certainly did not obey him when you went to this noblewoman’s travail. A pity you were not as brave when
I
needed you.”

Hannah felt a pain under her breast and a tearing sensation, as though her heart had come loose from its moorings. In her mind’s eye, she covered the mirror and rent her clothing. These were not the empty gestures prescribed by the Rabbi years ago, but heartfelt this time.
Shiva
was complete. Now, Jessica was truly dead to her.

Without a further glance at her sister, she picked up her bag and headed for the gates of the ghetto. Her earlier joy in saving the Contessa and her baby had vanished like ripples from a passing gondola.

As she strode away, Hannah heard Jessica call, “Run back to your suffocating ghetto! I may be immoral in your eyes, but you have broken the law. You have welcomed disaster not only on yourself but on the entire ghetto you profess to love so much.”

H
ANNAH HAD NO
choice. She must return to the ca’ di Padovani, with its hard, bright surfaces of marble, gilt, and silver, its cavernous rooms and enigmatic Christians. For over forty days she had waited in vain for Giovanna to return the birthing spoons.

In preparation for her journey to Malta, she now sat on the roof, the only place to dry the apples the Rabbi had given her. The fruit, fresh from the lagoon island of Turcello, was a luxury she could not have afforded. When he handed her the basket in the morning, looking as pleased as if he had grown them himself, he had said, “Take these and be well. If there are any remaining by the time you get
to Malta, give them to Isaac.” Hannah accepted them with thanks. From anyone else, the gift would have been an offering of peace. But from the Rabbi, who could tell?

This year the apples were so red and succulent that Hannah could have boiled the skins to dye flax. Sitting cross-legged on the boards of the roof, she sliced one into crescents, scooped out the core with the tip of her knife, and placed the sections, cut side up, on an old linen sheet to dry.

The sun beat down, filling her nostrils with the smell of pitch melting between the boards of the roof. In a few hours the apples would be shrivelled and ready to be wrapped in cloth strips and packed in bags along with her other food. The sheet bore the stains of previous preparations for her voyage—dried strips of lamb and beef, coins of carrots and rutabagas.

The day after tomorrow, when the tides in the lagoon provided the strongest current to open water, she would be on the
Balbiana
sailing to Malta, a passage the Conte’s friend, Captain Marco Lunari, said was likely to take two months, depending on the weather and the will of God. For days she had been able to sip only chicken broth, her stomach in knots from anticipation.

She wiped her hands on her apron and glanced from the roof down to the
campo
below. A familiar-looking figure bustled past the shops of the moneylenders, butchers, and bakers, and headed across the square. His high shoes elevated him above the mud, which made his gait unsteady. As he drew closer, Hannah recognized Jacopo.

Hannah dropped her paring knife. For a moment she wondered if Matteo had taken ill and if Jacopo was summoning her for help. But no, more likely the Conte had sent Jacopo to return her birthing spoons—though with a household of servants, why would he be charged with such a task? She watched as he asked directions of an old woman who pointed to the roof. There was no time for Hannah to do anything but fling a cloth over her head and await his arrival. Better to meet him here than in the
campo
, where no conversation could be conducted in private.

Just as she was about to walk over to the stairs, the trap door of the roof clattered open and Jacopo emerged from the stairwell wearing silk tights, his cheeks pink from the climb up four flights. The buttons on his sleeved jacket were covered in embroidered silk. What could it signify when a man was so hairless he looked as though he had been immersed in a vat of lye to remove even the slightest fuzz? Jews, from the Rabbi to the
shochet
, the ritual slaughterer, were hairy men with flowing beards, shaggy chests, and
peyas
dangling on either side of their jaws. The ears of the old men sprouted hair.

Panting, Jacopo looked curiously around the roof, a space barely big enough to contain the two of them, the sheet glistening crimson with slices of apple. Hannah wiped the perspiration off her face with a corner of the apron in her hands, and rose to greet him.

“Good morning, Signore. Catch your breath.”

“Yes, one of your neighbours told me I would find you here.”

If they both sat, they would not be seen by the people in the
campo
below, but she had no chair to offer him. She noted with disappointment that he did not appear to be carrying anything, but he had an embroidered cloak slung over his shoulder.