I’m the patient. And I’m scared. What does she want to do to me?
Old Abecassi announces her battle plan. She’s going to take my books, put them in a bundle and give them to a friend. For indûlko there must be no Scripture, nor any mention of the name of God. And I will have to stop praying. An easy one, that, I say to myself.
Old Abecassi already has all the things she needs: grain, water, salt, five eggs, honey, a jug of milk, candied fruit. A few minutes before midnight, she will mix a little of each ingredient into a blob that she will spread around my bed, on the threshold and in the four corners of the little room. While doing that, she will recite some formulas and beg the demons infesting me to leave me be. In exchange she will offer them honey to sweeten their tongues, grain to feed the livestock (demons keep livestock?), water and salt for I no longer remember what. After that, she will go to the cellar, where she will break the eggs, prostrate herself, kiss the floor and do who knows what else. She’ll do that for three nights in a row, and if necessary for seven, or even nine, until I’m cured of my rage.
Except that the neighbors refuse to leave. This produces a furious argument: Old Abecassi yells, the others yell, angry words are exchanged, dewlaps wobble.
Unnoticed by anyone, I slip outside.
“Worms, rats, that’s what you are! You’ve spent your lives running away, hiding, flattering the powerful. You’ve bought your flight in gold. You’ve lied and dissembled, all of you. I have nothing but disgust for you!”
Old Abecassi, feeble now, hunches on her chair. Perhaps she’s aggrieved about not having placated my demons, that day seven years before.
I yell my accusations in her face, in as loud a voice as I can muster. I shout at her, implicating my mother and with her all the other Jews. Guilty of so many things. Guilty of bringing me up with lies. I came back only for that. I’m almost fifteen years old and I’m with Tuota; the port and the sea have saved me from meanness, from narrow-mindedness, from the mold that coats the souls of the ghetto. But the separation has been long, and the road long and winding. I left Old Abecassi’s house shortly after my bar mitzvah, master of myself according to the Law.
Lies. Gioanbattista De Zante wasn’t an unknown sailor, but a Venetian capo da mar who one day, returning from a campaign against the Turkish pirates, cast anchor in the port and met my mother.
Perhaps they loved each other. De Zante stopped in Ragusa for some time, but in the end he had to go back to Venice, and when he did so he didn’t bring the Jewish woman with him. The woman pregnant with his bastard. Sarah Cardoso, who would be known as puta de los goyim.
Lies. My father isn’t dead. He isn’t dead, and he has sent money several times a year, even after Sarah’s death. He couldn’t settle with a Jewish woman without giving up everything, but he could provide for his son. I sometimes wondered where the money Sarah had left to Old Abecassi came from. I thought of Grandma Raquel’s jewels. The truth is that my mother didn’t leave very much, and most of the money has always come from Venice.
And now De Zante has returned to Ragusa, to take back his son. The captain of the fleet is here again. I’m nearly fifteen, and he’s offering me another life.
He sends someone to get me one morning in May. A boat takes me to Lacroma, the island that lies offshore from the city. Gioanbattista De Zante is a person of some standing, a guest at the Benedictine monastery there. It looks out on the Elaphite islands, on Šipan and Mljet and Srđ, the mountain that looms over Ragusa. My legs itch with excitement. Tuota doesn’t know where I’m going.
We look at each other in silence, my father and I, for a moment that I will remember for a very long time. He’s not a tall man, but his shoulders are broad. I have the same black hair, the same small and almost lobeless ears, the same cleft in my chin. The rest came from my mother. He is wearing a red cloak, fastened at the shoulder with five round buttons. Gold buttons. Gleaming. On his head he wears a wide velvet beret, also red. My cheeks must be the same color. I’m only a boy, and I find myself panting for breath. It’s the most important day of my life.
The captain knows many things about me, most of them dating back to when I was with my mother. Was it she who wrote to him, who kept him up to date? Did De Zante ever reply? Perhaps they exchanged letters filled with regret and remorse, but full of love, of unrealizable dreams. Or perhaps not; perhaps someone observed our life, our days, sending dispatches to Venice every now and then. I don’t dare to ask him, and I will never find out. After his death I will find no letters among his effects, nor anything else to remind me of my mother.
Of course, after Sarah’s death the glass grew cloudy. Of that part of my life he has only the vaguest information, episodes vaguely told to him.
“When I asked about you, I found out that you’d taken up with a gang of smugglers. You’re my son, and you deserve better. Perhaps I’ve found out late, but not too late, and perhaps there’s still time to start over again. In Venice.”
Venice. Everything he says leads in that direction. He doesn’t talk about my mother, or about why he abandoned her. He doesn’t ask me about myself, about Old Abecassi, about life in the ghetto. Those things no longer matter. He looks forward, always forward. His voice is low and gentle, but his tone is firm, his meaning peremptory. I am his son; I will go to Venice.
He is advanced in years and without descendants: his two legitimate sons are both dead. That’s the source of my new fortune: the void left in the heart of an old man.
12
I gave a start, and resumed my journey into the past. I was still at Sarah’s grave, and the sun had risen, faint and pale behind a veil of clouds.
Mother, who would have thought that we’d meet again like this?
Mother, I’m leaving again, this time bound for I don’t know where. I will never see your grave again. I turned my back and walked away from the gravestones.
It happened all of a sudden. Four of them were waiting for me, hidden behind a low wall. They attacked me with sticks; I fell to the ground; I felt blood on my forehead. Then they dragged me off, into a whirl of shadows and muttered orders.
I drowned in the void that I had just evoked.
When I came to, the first thing I saw was a cockroach climbing the wall. It was escaping the floor, which was drenched with water. The walls of the cell were eroded with damp and salt. The only items of furniture were a bench nailed to the wall and a hole in the ground for the call of nature. The pain in my head and chest made even breathing difficult. How long had I been here?
I shut my eyes, letting the little dots of light flit about me like glowworms. My temples thumped. I touched my face: burst lip, swollen cheekbone, a big bump. I’d seen so many of them, beaten like this: spies, pimps, petty informers, hotheads from the Arsenal. I’d arrested lots of them. I’d even made some of them disappear. Not in person, of course. I had men willing to do that job; mine was to give orders. Or to take them, from the Consigliere.