“This isn’t the Sultan’s harem, and I’m not a concubine. Remember that, kofer. Do you need anything else?” I shook my head and watched her slip out of the room.
I needed air. I went over to the window and discovered that it looked out over the Bosphorus. The stars of Leo kept an eye on Asia.
Here I was, risking having my throat cut because of my baser instincts. What a grotesque end, after the journey I had taken. But certainly it was even more grotesque that I should have found myself there, that I had a room assigned to me in Palazzo Belvedere, the source of all conspiracies.
Later, Dana came back with a tray. As she set the plate and glass down on the little table, I noticed that she avoided catching my eye. Before she left, I called to her.
“Please forgive me,” I said.
She nodded slightly, made not even the hint of a bow, and immediately turned to leave, but I held her back once more.
“Please, stay. I haven’t spoken to a woman for weeks.”
She knelt down reluctantly on the carpet, a few feet from the door.
Dinner was yellow rice with pistachios and raisins, then aubergines in yogurt. As I ate, I asked her to tell me about life at Palazzo Belvedere, to have an idea what awaited me.
Dana had worked for the Nasis for four years. She told me of the habits of the household, the names and jobs of about fifteen servants, the layout of the rooms on both stories of the building. She listed each detail rather mechanically, but when she talked about Gracia Nasi her voice filled with love and devotion. She had been her personal chambermaid, and she had treated her as if she were her old mother, until she began succumbing to illness.
“She wanted to die in the land of our fathers, in Palestine.”
“Were you with her?”
I saw her face darken. “The Senyora didn’t want me. She ordered me to stay with Donna Reyna, her daughter.” She looked at me impatiently. “May I go now?”
I didn’t want to stay on my own. I knew already that I wouldn’t sleep. I remembered that when I was a child, to keep my mother by my bedside I used the excuse of my fear of the dark. Then my mother had been replaced by old Abecassi, and I had had to conquer my real nightmares on my own.
I thought of holding Dana back again, but it was clear that my presence irritated her.
It was hard to blame her: I was a spy of Venice, a renegade Jew, and I had just brazenly importuned her. I dismissed her with a word of thanks and prepared to fill my night alone.
I blew out the candles; the embers in the stove were my only source of light. For at least an hour I stayed on the bed, crushed by my thoughts, trying to impose a different rhythm on my heart. But none of it was any use: I couldn’t sleep, and anxiety drove me out to the loggia. Through the windows in the ceiling the moonlight fell on the mosaic floor, illuminating Spain, Italy, the Balkans. I heard faint sounds, apart from the murmur of the fountain. I leaned in, but the hall was deserted. Only a strip of light under the library door indicated that there was anyone there.
All of a sudden I felt my skin prickle, and realized that there was someone else there, a few feet away from me. The figure came forward, holding a candelabra.
A woman.
The flickering flame revealed a pale face and big, dark eyes. I was looking into the face of the ghost of Gracia Nasi, but she was a woman of flesh and blood.
“He is locked in there every night,” she said, “Studying maps. Cherishing his dream.”
My senses in a state of alarm, my throat dry, I watched her white fingers brushing a pillar. She stared, her big eyes boring into mine, and made me flinch.
“I don’t know what to wish for you. Love him unconditionally or really get to know him one day.”
She raised her hand as if to touch my face, but at the last moment she stopped.
“Dana is right,” she said. “You have honest eyes.”
Then, without another word, the woman disappeared into the shadows.
Again I dipped my memory in the spring of the long lessons I had learned in Venice. Donna Gracia’s daughter, Reyna, had been given in marriage to her cousin Yossef. Consigliere Nordio had taught me the story of the Nasis very well. He had always fought against them; it was his mission, and he had trained me to fear them and to defend the Republic against their traps. He had trained me so well that I still felt at fault in spite of everything. From one corner of my mind his feeble voice told me over and over again that I wasn’t equipped for the extreme sacrifice. I had failed in my mission. I hadn’t known how to do anything but end up in the arms of the enemy.
In the belly of Leviathan, or on top of the world.
5
A hole in the ground smeared with honey, a sweet and sticky trap. I might never get out of it. Gradually, with smiles and jokes, lavish meals and riddles, they would take over my soul and Nasi would add it to his collection.
Lying among the pillows, on that excessively soft bed, I could hear, beyond the wood of the doorway, the echo of little movements, as of a body settling down, assuming new positions to conquer stasis and tedium and thus to bring an assignment to its conclusion. Someone out there, someone, was keeping watch over me. I thought I could hear his breath, and I was like that, too, listening, my limbs aching, unable to sleep. My mind’s eye scoured the palace, to see if escape was possible. My soul wandered, tethered to my body by the leash of weariness, and my ears tried to catch every sound. The splash of the fountain in the palace drawing room. Distant voices. The creak of wooden boards, the soft clatter of feet.
I cursed the person I had been in Salonika, the one who had had the chance to flee and hadn’t done it. The one who had felt the shadow of affinity with his jailers. I cursed myself for not having tried to kill Nasi. For not killing the enemy, finally within arm’s reach.
I saw the scene. I clutched the man’s throat and tightened my grip. Rage and contempt sustained me. I felt the bones of the neck yielding, and then I started on his face. I wanted to wipe that ambiguous, self-important expression from his face. I wanted to erase Yossef Nasi from the category of the living, from my life, from my future memories. I struck at him doggedly, drowning his features in a lake of blood. I plunged into an uneasy half sleep.
It must have been the middle of the night by the time I stirred again. I felt my clothes burning. Something was running along my skin. Agitatedly, I undressed, and in the candle-light I tried to inspect every recess, every nook of myself, but I found no parasites, no fleas in my clothes or lice on my head.
It was only a sensation, a sign. I was in a Procrustean bed, and this was a portent of the suffering to come. I wouldn’t stay and wait for it.
I assessed all the possibilities. Only flight would make me free, but I would have nowhere to go. To return to my earlier life I would have to turn my fantasy into a plan: bring Nasi’s head to Venice, return to my responsibilities and, in fact, be the savior of the Republic.
Nordio would be proud of me, and his power and influence would increase, because one of his men would have got rid of Giuseppe Nasi, bringing an end to his sordid intrigues.
Yes. Having the Jew’s head. Killing him was a task within my scope. But going back to Venice?
It wasn’t impossible. Just difficult. A disguise, a ship. A basket with a head in it, salted, to keep it from stinking. Kill Nasi. Flee, perhaps in disguise. Reach the port. I had to get hold of some money, there must be plenty in the palace. . yes, even that was a problem that was easily solved. I would be meek. I would sting like a serpent in the breast. Yes. But first I had to rest. Rest.