The Midwife of Venice (5 page)

“I will do my best.”

“I believe you will, my dear. Like most men, I know nothing of the ways in which children enter the world. But heed my words: if you must make a choice between my wife’s life or my child’s, save my child.”

Before she could stop herself, Hannah said, “But Jewish midwives are schooled to favour the mother’s life.” Seeing his troubled face, she added, “With God’s help, I will not have to make such a choice.”

“I love Lucia, but under the terms of my father’s will, I must produce an heir before I turn fifty. Otherwise, the family estate will pass from my hands into the hands of my brother Jacopo. I will celebrate my fiftieth birthday next month.”

It was not the first time Hannah had heard such confidences. Fathers-to-be were often consumed with
maninconia
, a combination of anxiety and distress that made them disclose things they had no business telling strangers.

“Jacopo and my younger brother, Niccolò, are feckless and will ruin the family businesses. If the estate falls into their hands, it will mean the devastation of the family. Niccolò has already gambled away a small fortune. Jacopo is a worry to me for reasons I cannot discuss with a woman.”

What did this talk of his father’s will and family business have to do with her? Rolling out dough for matzo she understood. Delivering babies she understood. But the inheritance laws of rich Christians?

It would not be a kindness to tell him what every midwife knew: that for every five babies born, one died; that for every ten labouring mothers, one would not live to give suck to her child. Nor would she tell him she had bettered those dismal odds with the device hidden in the linen bag resting at her feet.

One Shabbat she was ladling beet soup, so hot and steaming it made her hair spring into tiny curls. The silver soup ladle in her hand, with a concave belly and a curved handle, plunged deep into the tureen. She dropped the handle when it grew too hot and it slid along the side of the bowl, coming to rest against the curve of the bottom. An idea took shape in her mind. She took an identical spoon down from the cupboard, and with her hands still stained red from the beets, she crossed one spoon over the other to form the letter
X
. Such an instrument, she thought, could bring a child’s head farther down the birth passage and hasten deliveries.

She made a rough sketch, which the silversmith then used to fashion the instrument, sculpting the bowl of the birthing spoon more deeply than that of an ordinary spoon and making the handles longer. A hinge held the two spoons together in the middle, so that they could be opened and closed like a pair of scissors. At first, she had practised in private, extracting onions from the cavities of raw chickens. When her dexterity improved, she used them at confinements, draping a bedsheet over the mother’s bent knees so she could not see, and shooing all the other women from the room. Midwives were burned as witches for less cause than this, so Hannah knew she must be circumspect.

“I want you to know I am not a man without sentiment,” said the Conte, “one who thinks only of his estates and horses and how many ducats he can make on every business transaction.”

“I know you care for your wife or you would not have taken the risk of summoning me,” Hannah replied.

The Conte patted her hand. “My brother spoke harshly to you because he is indebted to the moneylenders. Jacopo is as profligate with his money as a dyer.”

Several moments later, with a creak and a muted thump, the gondola slid alongside the dock of a palazzo with a stone facade and arched windows. On the last curve of the Grand Canal, this palazzo overlooked the
campo
of St. Samuele. A liveried servant on the dock caught the bowline from the gondolier and lashed it around a mooring pole painted in the colours of the family, gold and green. The Conte helped Hannah out and escorted her inside. A manservant held open the door for them and bid them good evening. She followed the Conte through the
piano terra
, where the commercial business of the family took place. This ground floor—used as a warehouse, judging by the wooden crates—was heavy with the fragrance of cardamom, cinnamon, and raw wool. It seemed as large as the entire Campo Ghetto Nuovo.

She tried to keep pace with the Conte, noting how large his head was. If his wife was small, this did not bode well. A delicate wife and a substantial husband often caused the mother to carry a baby with a head too big to make good the passage through the sharing bones.

Before they reached the main entrance hall, Hannah returned the Conte’s cloak to him, feeling lighter with it off her shoulders. A servant woman greeted them, her dark hair clinging to her face with perspiration and her apron stained with blood.

“Hannah, this is our midwife, Giovanna.”

Hannah smiled and nodded, but the woman did not acknowledge her greeting.

“Giovanna, this is Hannah. Take her to the Contessa. Not a word to anyone. She has come to assist,” said the Conte. “Any change during my absence?”

“I think you must summon a priest, sir,” Giovanna said, speaking with downcast eyes.

Hannah backed toward the door. A priest would know from her red scarf and modest dress that she was a Jewess. If a priest arrived, she must leave, or her arrest would follow as surely as blood trickled downhill.

To her relief, the Conte replied, “We will wait to see what Hannah can do for her.” He must have sensed Hannah’s nervousness, for he turned to her and said, “Do not worry. You shall have your chance. Now go quickly.”

Giovanna curtsied to the Conte, and then led Hannah up a wide staircase, the stone walls radiating damp. Accustomed to the enclosed, rickety staircases of the ghetto, Hannah felt dizzy at this expanse of stone. She stopped mid-flight and clutched the cold balustrade. To regain her equilibrium, she looked down, and saw in an alcove below two men drinking at a table, a flask of wine between them, a spaniel lolling at their feet. One was the brother Jacopo, flushed from his walk home in the night air. The other, she surmised, was Niccolò, the youngest brother. He was handsome, with curly dark hair and the rumpled look of a man recently risen from bed.

Jacopo took a pair of ivory dice in his hands, blew on them for luck, and then cast them onto the table. Hannah
moved slightly and her leather sandals made a squeak on the marble staircase, and Niccolò glanced up, giving her a mocking salute with his glass.

Nothing in this palazzo seemed familiar or safe. She felt the way a small animal must feel in a field surrounded by predators. Too much space and nowhere to hide. The Conte must have experienced the same sense of discomfort in her humble
loghetto
with its damp walls and smoky brazier as she did now amongst the silk-tasselled curtains, gleaming silver, and coffered ceilings of his palazzo.

Up the stairs she continued, feeling the chill of the stone radiate through the soles of her sandals, putting her thoughts of the two men out of her mind. Of one thing she was certain—the Contessa would be like any other woman, with sharing bones, a belly, and a matrix.

Hannah had heard that Christians filled their grand palaces as well as their churches with images of the human figure. And sure enough, at the landing at the top of the stairs appeared a fresco in brilliant colours depicting two women washing the feet of Christ. Hannah gathered her skirts and walked with her head down. The Torah forbade the worshipping of graven images. She thought of her beautiful
shul
in the ghetto, with a carved wooden pulpit for the Rabbi to deliver his sermons, a gilded Holy Ark to hold the Torah, and a filigreed screen to separate the main floor of the men’s section from the women’s gallery above. It seemed austere by contrast to this palace.

She followed Giovanna’s ample behind down a hallway covered with a carpet patterned in ruby and emerald and
topaz. The moon shining through the high clerestory windows cast rhomboid shadows on the jewel colours.

As she walked down the hallway, Hannah did not need Giovanna to direct her to the Contessa’s bedchamber. The woman’s screams drew her to a room so large that at first she could locate the bed only by the screams issuing from it. She paused in the doorway, dazzled. There seemed more gold in the room than could be found in King Solomon’s mines. Moonlight shining through the front and back windows, and light from lamps and candles, filled the bedchamber. Light was everywhere, dancing in gilded looking-glasses, mirrors, and bronzes. Even the terrazzo floor, glass smooth and fashioned of coloured stone embedded with semi-precious gems, glowed. Adorning the windows were curtains of silk taffeta woven with a gold brocade weft forming loops to catch the moonlight.

Above the bed hung a small devotional painting of Madonna and child. The Madonna, wearing a gown of lapis lazuli blue, offered him a breast with a look of rapture on her smooth face. For Christians, it was a tender scene, but Hannah felt her stomach contract in revulsion. Only God could make another human being. It was wickedness to attempt to emulate Him by creating graven images. If only she could ask Giovanna to remove it and in its place substitute her
shadai
of hammered silver. Hannah looked away and placed her bag on a chair.

In the corner was an elaborate child’s crib identical to the Contessa’s bed but on a smaller scale. May it be filled soon,
Hannah thought. The screams drew her to the woman on a bed supporting a canopy on four pillars.

There lay the Contessa, so pale she was almost translucent. Around the bed was a ring of salt to protect mother and child from the Evil Eye. No doubt this was Giovanna’s contribution, and a useful one against Lilith, the slayer of newborns. Hannah wished her amulet, the
shadai
, was in her hands and not in her bag on the chair. When the contractions started, Lilith heard the screams and hovered close to savour the scent of blood. The more protracted the delivery, the bolder she grew. Humble
loghetto
or palazzo, it made no difference. Lilith was no respecter of social class.

Hannah took Contessa Lucia’s hand, her fingers as cool and waxy as candles. Her blue eyes were swollen and her hair matted with sweat. Her cheeks were too flushed, her eyes too bright. Had it not been for her coughing and a thin blue vein throbbing on her forehead, Hannah would have thought her dead.

She said, “Contessa, I am Hannah. I’ve come to help you give birth to your baby. Can you hear me?” Hannah felt the rustle of the wings as she bent over the bed and thought she saw the rosary dangling from the headboard shift in response. She murmured a swift prayer.

Putting her arms around the Contessa, Hannah pulled her up into a sitting position to make it easier for her to cough. Her shoulder blades cut into Hannah’s arms. Blood dotted the handkerchief Lucia held to her mouth.

“You must listen to me. I know it is difficult. You have laboured long and hard without result. I must examine
you.” Hannah studied her patient’s face. It was as Hannah had feared: the Conte had waited too long to summon her. If only he had fetched her at dawn, before Lucia had lost so much strength, there might have been some hope. Now, it was well after midnight and the Contessa looked too weak to push out a mewling kitten, much less a baby.

Lucia peered at her through half-closed lids, as though trying through her pain to work out who Hannah was. “Do I know you?”

“Your husband fetched me. I am a midwife. I have come to help you.”

A few moments passed, and Lucia blinked, seeing what must have looked like an apparition in a blue
cioppà
, shawl and head scarf. “Hannah, yes. All the women speak of you.” She tried to smile. “They say you work miracles. That is what I require.”

And what I require as well, thought Hannah, but she said, “One must not rely on miracles.”

Now that the coughing fit had passed, Hannah lowered the Contessa into a supine position and pulled back the covers sodden with sweat and blood.

“I will be gentle, but I must feel your belly and see if the child is in the correct position.”

“Hand me my rosary.”

Hannah was about to reply that it was forbidden for Jews to touch the religious objects of Christians, but she stopped herself. God would make an exception. To give comfort, to hand a rosary to a dying woman, would be a
mitzvah
, not a violation of either the
Mishrat
or the Papal Edict. Hannah
took the rosary from the headboard and handed it to Lucia. The beads felt warmer and more lifelike than Lucia’s fingers. Lucia held them to her lips and kissed them.

“You are a Jewess?”

“From the Ghetto Nuovo.”

“Thank you, Hannah, for having the courage to come. Whatever becomes of me or my baby, I am grateful to you.” Then she lay still and her eyelids drifted closed. “You touched my beads as though handing me a serpent.”

“So you noticed? Good for you. There is life in you yet.” Hannah smoothed the damp hair off Lucia’s forehead. She turned to Giovanna, who was wiping her hands on her apron. “How far apart are her pains?”

“Only a few
pater nostrums
apart for the past three hours. She started two days ago, but she has made no progress. Now she is exhausted and has lost a lot of blood, as you can see. I have told her she must push. But she is too feeble.” Giovanna studied Hannah for a moment, taking in the red scarf and dark hair, and then said, “You know as well as I do that it is forbidden for Jews to deliver Christian babies. What if, God forbid, the child requires immediate baptism?”

“Then you can provide that service.”

“As I have for all the other babies born to her,” Giovanna said, her broad face set in a frown.

For a Jew to have Christian foes was dangerous. She would have to handle this midwife with care. Hannah went to the washbasin beside the bed, wrung out a wet cloth, and placed it on the Contessa’s forehead.

“To give birth is hard work, is it not?”

Lucia nodded as Hannah palpated the Contessa’s stomach. Hannah did not like what her hands told her. Not sure how much Lucia was capable of understanding, Hannah said, “The head is twisted and is stuck in the womb. I must try to move it.” Lucia opened her eyes and gave Hannah a look of incomprehension.