We landed. All I could see were wooden houses, exactly like the ones on the other shore, but less densely crowded. I was led into one of these, which leaned out over the water from the top of a slope. The interior was comfortable and well decorated. Efrem got to work lighting the brazier to heat the room. After a few attempts, the faggots caught fire. He turned his usual smile on me, but this time I knew he was saying good-bye: “I have other business to attend to in town before I go back.” The idea of being left on my own wasn’t entirely consoling.
“And I’m stopping here, really?”
Efrem shook his head. “You’re not quite there yet,” he said. He walked to a side door and threw it open, revealing a covered terrace. I joined him in the doorway, looking out at the white flakes that were still falling. Beyond the gray water stretched the city. Efrem pointed to the right, where the straits continued towards the Black Sea.
“The Palazzo Belvedere is on the far shore. The Nasi residence.”
The cold forced us back inside.
“Will I meet him?”
He turned and looked at me. “If that happens, listen to him.” He nodded good-bye. “Suerte. .”—he paused very slightly—“amigo mio.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I had learned to appreciate his sympathetic expression, but I certainly couldn’t call him a friend. He had been polite with me, more like a landlord and a traveling companion than a jailer. But he left the room and my life as lightly as he had entered them.
I was alone. I didn’t know whether there was anyone down below who might be keeping an eye on me, and I didn’t care. I stretched out on the bed, fully dressed. I felt ill, exhausted by my journey and my uncertainty. I was in the snake’s nest, close to the greatest enemy of Venice.
Giuseppe Nasi. The Damned. The Cursed One. The Devil in person. The Sultan’s favorite Jew. Also known in Europe as Juan Micas or João Miquez. I had listened to more gossip and collected more information about him than I had about the Great Turk. For years I had fought, unearthed and punished his agents. Now I was in his hands.
The bed was too high, and too soft.
I fell asleep just as dawn was breaking.
Interlude. The world traveler, Out of Europe, Rabi’al Awwal — Shabban 977 (September 1569–February 1570)
The old man rereads the letter. Marks on paper, entrusted by a woman to a commercial agent. Words that have traveled from Egypt at the bottom of a rucksack, then to the Red Sea by camel, then again on a fast ship, propelled by favorable currents, before finally reaching the shores of Arabia Felix, 2,000 miles southeast of the waters of the Bosphorus.
Mokha. City of coffee, a crossroads contested and shared by Arabs, Turks, Abyssinians, Portuguese. Mokha, theater of a rebellion, occupied for months by insurgents. The imperial fleet has just reestablished the authority of Selim II, and the rebels have fled to the high plains. They aren’t warriors; they’re coffee planters who have taken up swords and the Shi’ite faith, weary of the theft and corruption of Ottoman functionaries. A peasants’ revolt once again. Once again, the religion of beggars. . and business.
The old man has remained. Packing up and leaving belongs to his earlier lives. At least he thought so before this letter arrived.
He looks at the signature once more, he observes its uncertain line, not firm as it once was, back when he imagined he would be by that woman’s side until the winter of his life.
Hard to say when their paths began to diverge. He remembers the day he asked her if he could follow the Nasi family’s trades from that staging post deep in Arabia. She raised no objections. She knew, she had always known, that the world traveler can’t stop, that there’s always another place to see before you close your eyes, an unknown place to be buried. That old Ismail should have taken the coffee route was written in his fate. And yet now she is inviting him to travel that same route in the other direction. Before it’s too late.
Can words move a mountain? Because that’s the old man, a block of rock eroded by time, whom the letter wants to tease from his lair in the remotest corner of the empire.
The old man will move, but he will have to wait for winter to come, and with it the monsoon that blows to the north. The coffee caravans will come down from the mountain like snakes attracted by water, and Yossef Nasi’s ships, laden with merchandise and lined up along the jetty, will wait for the moment to leave. The pointed sails of the feluccas will travel back up the Red Sea to Suakin, the city of coral, where the barges of Suez will take on board slaves and precious spices.
Wait for the monsoon. Does that wait alone impede the journey? Or is there also the fear of confronting the past, the weight of balancing the books of a life, the fear of seeing in the death of the beloved the fear of one’s own memories?
Winter comes, and the old man can dedicate himself to his luggage. When he was younger, that ritual marked out his days.
He puts in a bag the pages written by his own hand, and impulsively touches the middle of his chest. Beneath the fabric that covers it he feels the outline of the ancient coin, carved with the credo of the kingdom of the mad: “One God, one faith, one baptism.”
His past lives are fading and he doesn’t know what awaits him. The outlines around him are blurring. So he carries his words with him, all the words he has written over the years.
That’s not enough. He also takes a fragment of mirror, to be sure that he recognizes himself at the end of the journey.
He takes his pistols and the twins, Hafiz and Mukhtar, silent and sharp as blades.
Ali Hassan announces that he will go with him. The ascetic friend of God has prepared his bag for him.
Having reached Suez, they entrust the cargo of coffee to the local agents of the Nasi family and then set off again, with a caravan of camel traders heading for Arish, where the ships set sail for the Holy Land.
At the oasis of Elim, a staging post for the Israelites fleeing the pharaoh, the old man falls ill. Ali keeps watch over him for three days and three nights of fever and delirium, and when he thinks has finally lost him, his friend recovers and they resume their march.
The journey by boat from Arish to Haifa restores his strength. God spreads out clear water and propitious winds. In Haifa they buy dromedaries, paying twice their value. Ali tries to protest, but the old man shrugs: The money is his, and fever has already made them lose precious days; there’s no time to haggle.
It’s a silent journey, as if the old man’s taciturn nature has infected everybody else.
Tiberias appears like a mirage, softened by the haze of morning. Behind the city, the lake reflects the gray of the sky. Beyond the mirrored surface of the water, the Golan Heights lead the eye to the horizon.
Outside the arch where they enter the city they have to declare their names and places of origin to a squad of janissaries, who look them up and down suspiciously. Other soldiers guard the walls and the market. The travelers leave their mounts and accept the water offered to them.
The old man climbs down from the saddle, and grits his teeth to keep from groaning. He summons his strength, grips his stick and, accompanied by the others, starts walking, surrounded by the voices, languages and dialects of every corner of the Mediterranean and the Levant.
He finds the house of Gracia Nasi without having to ask for directions. A Spanish-style building on the edge of the square stands out. At a window, a man watches them approach. The old man calls to him from the street, introduces himself, says he has come to visit Gracia Nasi.