The Midwife of Venice (9 page)

Hannah had no time to answer, and instead prayed silently,
Please, God, may I not have the murder of this Christian woman on my conscience
.

“Come on, my child, we are waiting to welcome you. I will bathe you in warm water and rub you with fragrant oils. You will have a life of joy. Come out and meet your mama.”

With the next weak contraction, she pulled, but she felt nothing until the next contraction, and then she tugged more forcefully, careful not to compress the spoons. Lucia’s flesh ripped and blood splattered onto the bed. Hannah took advantage of this ragged gash to slide the spoons in deeper.

God, place your hand over mine. Give me the wisdom to know how much pressure to apply and when to pull
. When she pulled again with slow, steady force, she was rewarded with a glimpse of dark, wet hair. With the next attempt, the head emerged, and then one shoulder. She released the spoons and tossed them on the bed. With her hands, she freed the other shoulder, which was caught under the bridge of the sharing bones.

With a final burst, the slick body fell into her hands.

The sight of the baby soon extinguished whatever relief Hannah felt. It was the mottled colour of autumn plums, deep purple with patches of white where no blood flowed.

“Quick, Giovanna, get two basins—one with hot water, the other with cold.”

“I would do better to fetch the priest,” Giovanna said. “That babe is soon to be Lilith’s.” She hurried from the bedroom.

Hannah scrambled under the bed, retrieved the knife, and cut the navel string, which felt like cutting through a boneless finger. Seizing a candle from the table next to the bed, she cauterized the severed end of the cord, which made a
pfsst-pfsst
sound when she held the flame to it.

Fitting her mouth over the baby’s, Hannah sucked mucus from its nose and mouth and spit it on the floor. The infant remained limp.

Giovanna returned with the basins and said, “Just use a damp cloth. Immersion in water is not good for a child. It will die and all our hard work will be lost.”

Hannah knew of the Christian indifference to bathing. The Rabbi had told her once—in jest, perhaps—that when a Christian baby is baptized, an old priest dressed in smelly black robes pours water from a chalice over his head and declares that forever more the child is relieved from the responsibility of bathing.

“It is not to cleanse but to bring the child back from the edge of death.”

Giovanna said nothing, but watched as Hannah plunged the tiny form into the basin of warm water, then into the basin of cold water, back and forth.

Come. Breathe, child. A life of ease awaits you. Fine clothes, private tutors, loving parents, a palazzo on the Grand Canal. All that is required of you is to suck air into your little body and then exhale it. Try. It is not so difficult
.

“The child should be christened,” said Giovanna.

“I will blow smoke into the lungs.” Hannah took the same candle she had used for cauterizing, held it above the baby, careful not to let the tallow drip onto its chest, and through pursed lips blew the smoke in the direction of the baby’s face. She did it several times, but the child remained blue and lifeless. Perhaps a dish of singed rosemary under the baby’s nose? But there was no time. She grabbed it by the feet and, holding it upside down, slapped its bottom and back, careful to keep the slippery body suspended over the bed.

“I am doing my part, God. Please help me.” Holding the small body, she made a plunging vertical motion as though scrubbing clothes on a washboard. “By all that is great and good, breathe.”

“Only God can give him life,” said Giovanna.

“Tonight He needs my help.”

“You blaspheme.”

Hannah righted the child, but its colour was no better. Again she submerged the infant into cold water, the waxy coating nearly making the tiny body slither from her grasp. This time, the shock of the freezing water elicited a shrill cry of outrage. Hannah’s shoulders sagged with relief, and she placed the baby on the bed.

“May your screams be heard all the way to the Piazza San Marco.”

As the baby wailed, its colour turned from purple to pink. The birthing spoons, lying on the end of the bed in plain view, had left tiny red marks on either side of the babe’s forehead. It would do her no good if Giovanna
snatched her spoons and presented them as evidence to the Inquisition. She grabbed them and thrust them, sticky with mucus and blood, into her bag.

She heard a faint moan from Lucia, and said, “Your child lives. I will attend to you in a moment.”

Turning her attention back to the baby, she scrubbed off the layer of waxy cream with a rough cloth. The infant was large, the private parts so swollen it took Hannah a moment to realize he was male. The slate blue eyes in the wrinkled face opened. He would be a beauty—if he continued to breathe. Seeing the tiny abdomen rise and fall like the soft belly of a kitten, Hannah smiled with joy. He was plump, with strong, even features, a high brow, and full cheeks. His hair would be reddish when it dried. How unlike the dark, complaining babies of the ghetto, who entered the world red and protesting, born instinctively sensing that a life of struggle awaited them. She held the child to her breast and rocked him as he appraised her, clenching his tiny fists.

“Bring the candle closer, Giovanna. Let me examine this little man.”

Giovanna obliged and held the light high, illuminating the baby’s skin, which now bloomed a healthy pink. She did not want to put him down, he was so beautiful. A Jewish child would now be oiled and covered in a layer of salt for his own protection. On the eighth day, he would be circumcised. None of these things would be done for this child of nobility.

In the corner stood the cradle with four marble posts supporting the canopy of red silk, embroidered with fauns.
She placed the child inside and pulled the coverlet up to his chin. Swaddling would have to wait until she had attended to the Contessa.

The afterbirth, like a veined piece of calf’s liver, should have glided out of its own accord and fallen into the basin. In biblical times, a Jewish midwife would have straddled the mother’s thighs, ramming her head into the mother’s belly until the liver cake dislodged. Hannah’s method was kinder. She tugged on the navel string that hung out of the birthing passage, but as she pulled, the cord, engorged with blood, broke. Was it too much to ask of God that one small detail go smoothly? If Lucia had been able, Hannah would have asked her to stand so that the liver cake would drop from between her legs, but Lucia could no more stand upright than could the baby she had just birthed. If the afterbirth did not emerge, putrefaction would result. There was only one thing to be done.

“Giovanna, clasp her by her shoulders. I must feel what is wrong.”

Hannah pushed back the bloody sleeves of her
cioppà
. She plunged her forearm into the warm darkness of the womb, clutched the resistant afterbirth, braced herself, and tugged. Lucia’s back arched. There was a tearing sound, and Hannah staggered back, gripping a raw piece of the organ. She dropped it to the floor and reinserted her arm, groping in the womb, seizing more spongy flesh, tugging, holding it fast, and reeling back with another purple fistful. Her arm was shaking and glazed with bright blood. This time, Giovanna held a basin for her to cast the tissue into.

Once the afterbirth was extracted and the matrix cleaned of tissue, the flow of blood slowed to a trickle. Now, according to Jewish custom, the placenta should be wrapped in a clean cloth and buried in the ground. For reasons Hannah could not fathom, Christians preserved it in a jar of fine oil.

A clicking sound brought Hannah to attention. Lucia’s teeth were chattering and her whole body trembled. Hannah grabbed a feather quilt from the armoire and buried Lucia under it. She put a hand on Lucia’s forehead. The Contessa was burning with fever. Hannah prayed there would not be prodigious bleeding that could not be staunched.

Hannah’s vision was blurry with fatigue; her arms ached from the effort of extracting the afterbirth. She had been at Lucia’s bedside the entire night and needed to sit down, drink a bowl of strong broth, then sleep—but her work was not yet completed. She pulled up a chair and sat next to Lucia.

“It is over,
cara
. You did well.” She took Lucia’s hand. “You have suffered, but you have a beautiful boy to show for your pains. A boy with a large head, as I do not need to tell you, and your husband’s blue eyes. Just wait until you see him.”

Lucia squeezed Hannah’s finger. Motioning Hannah to lower her head, she murmured, “You have been so kind. The Holy Virgin will watch over you all the days of your life.” And then her eyes fluttered closed.

Rest and nourishing food were all the medicaments Lucia needed now. In a few months, God willing, she would be well again.

“We should change the bedding, Giovanna.”

They tackled the task together, rolling Lucia from one side of the bed to the other as they worked, the bed linen so drenched they could have wrung it out and filled a laundry tub with the blood. But there was colour in the Contessa’s cheeks and her pulse was growing more regular.

From her bag, Hannah took out packets of fennel and some wild sage and handed the herbs to Giovanna. “If you combine this with some wine, honey, and hot water, we will feed the infusion to her. It will draw the matrix closed and ensure that all the bleeding ceases.”

Giovanna returned a few minutes later with a cup of the mixture, and Hannah spooned it between Lucia’s unresisting lips while Giovanna held her head upright. From the cradle came the sounds of the baby beginning to cry. When Lucia had swallowed as much of the liquid as she seemed able to, Hannah asked Giovanna for a basin of warm water, and when it arrived, she bathed Lucia with a square of cotton. The water turned watery pink. Hannah kneaded her belly with almond oil until the candles by the bed burned out and Giovanna had to replace them. The massaging would close the matrix tight and slow the bleeding.

While they worked, Giovanna often looked at Hannah strangely, opening her mouth as though to speak. Finally, she said, “The Contessa will live, God be praised, but her child was brought into the world with an implement of the devil.”

“Why should a midwife not have her tools? Does not the farrier have his nails and hammer? The glassblower his
borsella
, his pinchers? My spoons are no more an instrument of the devil than those.”

“Birthing is God’s work. We are here only to cut the cord and encourage the mother, not to shove God aside and take over the job ourselves.” Giovanna balled up the bloody linen sheets and tossed them into a rush basket.

“God has given me the spoons and He, in His Wisdom, directs my hand as I use them,” said Hannah.

Giovanna was about to make a retort when from the cradle came the tremulous cry of the baby, growing lustier as he gained strength. In response to the cries, two wet spots appeared on the front of Giovanna’s apron.

“You are with milk?” Hannah asked.

Giovanna nodded. “My baby girl was born six months ago.”

Hannah scooped up the infant and motioned for Giovanna to sit. When Giovanna had arranged herself on the chair and had undone her bodice, Hannah handed the child to her. He tossed his head from side to side, searching out the nipple, and when he found it, he latched on as though he would never let go. Giovanna gave a start from the strength of his suck. Hannah’s breasts ached in response. How she wished someday to hold Isaac’s child to her breast and feel the quick tug of a baby’s lips drawing the milk from her.

The bedchamber had grown quiet, aside from the sucking, rooting noises of the baby. Even Giovanna’s face relaxed as she gazed down on the nursing infant, the deep grooves of her forehead softening. Hannah walked to the casement window, where the full moon radiated silvery arrows of light. She threw open the window, looking out
at the canal below, seeing nothing but black waters. When she felt the rasp of dark wings on her face and sensed her hair shift in the slight breeze, she knew that, for the moment anyway, death had been defeated. She slammed the window shut.

Isaac would be proud of her. She had saved both the mother and the child. She had succeeded where most would have failed. Soon they would celebrate her triumph together. Because of her skill, and her birthing spoons, she had saved Isaac’s life as well. If only he were waiting for her at home, ready to apply the
bahnkes
to her back, which ached from hours of bending over Lucia. The cupping would draw out the pain, leaving her relaxed, ready for sleep.

Giovanna said, “The master is in the hall. Let him see his healthy brute of a child who is draining me dry. Then you can collect your fee and get out.”

T
HE WOMAN WAS
already a foe, but why make it worse?

“I thank you for your help, Giovanna,” Hannah said, and walked out of the room.

In the light from the clerestory window, the Conte was slumped in a chair in the hallway, dozing, his head resting on his chest. Dawn was gilding the city. Long fingers of sunlight illuminated the palazzo. This glowing light was so unlike the darkness of her cramped room in the ghetto, which required candles even at noon.