Scacchi coughed and gave him a sideways glance. Some scrap of intimacy had passed between them, though neither was ready to acknowledge as much.
“Credulity is the man’s weakness but the child’s strength, they say,” Scacchi murmured. “Twenty years old, Daniel, and which are you?”
“A little between the two, I imagine,” he answered honestly. “But set in the right direction.”
Scacchi turned his head to stare into the darkness. “You remind me. Tomorrow there is something in San Rocco I must show you. Before your visit to La Pietà—which I think you shall enjoy immensely.”
“You’re too kind.”
Scacchi tapped at the papers again, but more gently. Still, the dust came forth. “I am?”
“Perhaps not too kind.”
The old man picked up the lanterns. It was time to go. “Daniel,” he said. “Find something in here for me. Something I may sell. We laugh and joke and act as if there’s no tomorrow. In a sense, for Paul and me there is no tomorrow, or not much, anyway. But not yet, and I need you to find me something in here I can sell, for good money too. I wish to die beneath this roof, not have to sell it to some American who has a fancy to remodel a Venetian palazzo. And I wish to leave our dear Laura enough to give her a fresh start in life. God knows she deserves it. For that we need some grubby cash.”
Daniel was shocked. The change in Scacchi’s tone was so unexpected. “I hadn’t realised. You must stop this expense on me at once. I can work for nothing. You feed me. You bought my ticket. Please.”
Scacchi patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, nonsense, Daniel. The pittance I am paying you is neither here nor there. I need money, not small change. There’s providence working somewhere here. It sent you to me. It sends you to this room. Search and you’ll find, I know.”
He fell silent. Daniel touched the old man gently on the sleeve. Some small amount of moisture glistened in the corner of his eyes. Had Laura been there at this moment, she would, he knew, possess the right words, the correct gestures to comfort him.
“This is Aladdin’s cave,” Daniel said, trying his best.
“Or Pandora’s box.”
“Either way. I’ll find you something here to sell.”
Scacchi turned to go. Daniel picked up the sheets of paper which had produced the dust cloud and peered at them in the dank yellow light. The ink ran across the page like smudged mascara. The warehouse was at ground level, next to the rio. At some stage, perhaps on many occasions, the flood of acqua alta must have penetrated into the room at least a good three feet deep, destroying everything it touched.
9
The route to the ghetto
The piece of paper Leo gave me read, “Dr. Levi, Ghetto Nuovo.” Nothing else. No directions. No instructions on what to do when I got there. I left Ca’ Scacchi just after midday in a state of mild anxiety, walked straight into the campo to the wellhead, and gulped down a cup of musty water. From across the square came a long, familiar whistle. Gobbo was there, ostensibly seeking out some rare kind of mushroom for his epicurean master from the markets round the corner, though I think the unmistakable smirk on his face as he watched a few of the painted ladies go by told of another intent.
“Tell me where the Ghetto Nuovo is, Gobbo,” I pleaded.
“Why do you want that place?” he asked, instantly suspicious. “You’re not a little Jew in disguise, are you?”
I would trust Gobbo greatly, but not with my life. One Venetian improvisation of which I was uncomfortably aware at that moment was the gilded and gaping lion’s mouth one sees on street corners and in important buildings. These lions are there for the suspicious to rat anonymously on their fellow citizens for whatever civic misdeeds they suspect. I did not fancy finding myself in the Doge’s Palace, explaining away my actions, just because Gobbo failed to keep his trap shut down some Dorsoduro drinking dive.
“Of course not, you fool! My master is a printer. Some Hebrew wants his memoirs put on the page. If they pay the money, we’ll publish it, however dreary the old fart happens to be.”
“Glad to hear it!” he said, relieved, and gave me a painful slap on the back. “It seems to me…”—he pulled himself up almost to my own height, to add weight to this coming observation—“that those slimy bastards got o f altogether too lightly for murdering our Lord like that.”
“Your grasp of learning never ceases to amaze me, Gobbo,” I sighed. “I had no idea theology was among your talents.”
A quick grin split his ugly face. “Really? Thanks. The Ghetto Nuovo’s up in Cannaregio. Fifteen minutes on the water at the most.”
I held out my hand with the paltry coins in it. He looked at them and grimaced. “Leo’s a tight-fisted bastard, eh? In that case, you’ll have to leg it over the Rialto and head past San Fosca. Won’t take you more than half an hour, provided no one whacks you on the head along the way.”
“Thanks…”
“I had a master like that in Turin. Stuck him with a penknife before I decamped out of the window with a bag full of silver. Pick a generous guvnor next, my friend. It saves so much grief.”
“I’m an apprentice, Gobbo. Not a servant.”
“Oh!” he said with a mock bow. “I do apologise, sir. I’d give you a lift on my way back, of course, but it’s in the wrong direction, and one couldn’t expect one to share a seat with the hoi polloi. Besides…” A ragged-haired whore with a painted face had just made eyes at him from the warren of alleys beyond the church. “I may be a little time.”
Without wasting another breath on the infuriating chap, I strode o f eastwards, following the tangle of “streets,” little more than dark corridors, which I knew would take me to the Rialto. I have thus far not told you the truth about walking around this fair city of mine, dear sister, and that is for one reason alone: I do not wish to worry you. I am now sufficiently familiar with its ways to know I can survive, but many, I fear, never reach that happy stage. Even by day, Venice is a nightmare to navigate on foot, a tangled warren of passages and gangways, few of them running in a straight line for even ten paces, and mostly built up on both sides so that the weary and confused wanderer can scarcely see where he is going. If an alley should turn into a cul-de-sac — and one that may deposit you in the unsavoury waters of the canal — you may be assured there will be no warning of the fact until the point at which you almost tumble into the grey and greasy lagoon. Should there be the luxury of a bridge, be assured that it will have no handrails, so that a single false step in the dark will tip you once again straight into the drink. On Saturday nights, when the osteria around the corner from our house fills to the seams with rowdy boozers, I lie in bed listening to them trying — and failing — to cross the plankwork that spans the rio into the Calle dei Morti (so called, I imagine, because this is the quick way to walk coffins into the church). For a good two hours after midnight, it is always the same: plop, curse, plop, curse, plop … Ah, Venice.
The Rialto is no such bridge. It is the single way to cross the Grand Canal on foot and, as such, must naturally reflect the glory of the Republic. It does, too, in abundance, being a veritable community above the water, with shops and houses and hawkers and quacks, the latter bellowing their wares into the hubbub as the water seethes with traffic beneath them.