Let me start with the chin, which is delicately rounded and always facing up to you, as if to speak. Her mouth is inquisitive. She has the whitest teeth I have ever seen, each like some small, exquisite pearl. Her nose is modestly snubbed. Her skin has the pale, luminescent quality of a full winter moon, with only a faint trace of colour to her cheeks. She has brown eyes the shape of some precious opal from an emperor’s crown, eyes that twinkle, as if laughing, and never leave the person she is facing, not until their business is done. And above all this loveliness, like a frame to some gorgeous piece of classical portraiture, is as wild a head of hair as you might find on one of those gypsy lasses who used to tease us at the fair: loose and cascading, a sea of feral, shining curls and waves the colour of chestnuts fresh from the tree in October. It falls around that superlative face all the way to her shoulders, and I have no idea how much of this is artifice and how much simple wilful abandonment, though I can say that from time to time she runs her fingers through her locks as if to free or shape them, and this provides a moment which will leave an entire monastery of monks praying for instant release back into the wicked world.
My auditory senses appeared to fail me until I heard two quick, deliberate coughs from behind: Jacopo trying to bring me to my senses. I felt hot and somewhat giddy and hoped the room’s darkness was enough to cover the blood that had undoubtedly risen in my cheeks.
“He does speak, doesn’t he?” she asked in a voice, slightly accented, that is as light and musical as a flute.
Jacopo’s face came round to meet mine, his expression mock quizzical. “He did. You haven’t bewitched another, old girl? I’m clean out of broken-heart ointment.”
She giggled. No, be truthful now. She snorted! Quite unladylike, and I couldn’t help bursting into laughter too.
“There,” she said, and, with a sudden purpose, picked up a battered fiddle case from the floor, then pulled a scarlet silk scarf from her skirt pockets and tucked the best part of those lovely tresses beneath it. “Lorenzo has found his voice again. May we go now?”
Jacopo bent down to kiss his sister, an act which made my heart perform a rapid somersault inside my chest. Then he took me by the arm. “Take care of her, my boy. She’ll impress the hell out of this priest of yours, and then the fun really begins. But if anyone should challenge you, profess all ignorance and say I sent you both on this escapade, on pain of death. You’ll be amazed the things they’ll believe of a Jew in this town.”
“I will do no such thing, sir!”
Jacopo’s eyes blazed at me with a sudden anger. “You will follow my instructions to the letter, lad, or drop this escapade at once. There’s danger behind this laughter, and none of us should forget it!”
There. Two threats in the space of a single afternoon. One from my good Christian uncle, promising to incriminate me in something of which I am quite innocent. The second from some Hebrew stranger who pledged to exculpate me of a crime I was about to commit in full knowledge of my guilt.
“Very well,” I agreed, making it clear from my tone that this last part was not to my taste at all. “If you insist, then I seem to have little choice in this matter.”
“Splendid.” Jacopo was his old, amiable self again.
Outside, in the ghetto square, none looked at us twice. We strode quickly out beneath a nearby arch, over the bridge, past the guard, and into the city. Close to the church of San Marcuola and a jetty where we might find an inexpensive boat to San Marco, Rebecca suddenly grasped my arm and pulled me into a dark alley by a fish vendor’s stall. There she snatched the scarf off her head, shook her hair as if to free it from some prison, and ran her strong, slim fingers through the curls.
“If anyone asks, Lorenzo, we are cousins and visitors to the city, and any o fence we may have caused comes from our ignorance alone.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Lorenzo!”
“Yes, Rebecca.”
She seemed pleased with that. “Aren’t you even the tiniest bit afraid? I am.”
In all honesty, the thought had not occurred to me. I was too engrossed in other matters to consider much the cost of failure. I worded my reply carefully. “My father often said that fear is mainly a reason men cite for doing things they’d rather not. And that what we should fear most doesn’t lie in the external world but in our own hearts.”
“Clever man,” she said.
“I believe he was. I miss him, and my mother also. It is because they are dead that I must live with my uncle.”
She regarded me with an expression I could not decipher. “I am sorry to hear that, Lorenzo. Tell me. Do you think any will look at me now and see a Jew?”
“No,” I answered honestly. But they will look at you anyway, I thought. Who could blame them?
13
At large in the city
On the way to la Pietà, fiddle case at the end of his arm, Daniel enjoyed the promised detour. Scacchi had led him, at a slow but steady pace, south from San Cassian into San Polo, past the great Gothic hulk of the Frari, with its tall campanile, to the Scuola di San Rocco. Daniel recalled the place from the books in the college library. The scuole were charity brotherhoods, like Masonic lodges, each with its own funds and premises and each competing to display the finest art. San Rocco was the home of Tintoretto, whose cycle of paintings seemed to cover almost every inch of the interior.
Scacchi insisted that he pay the entry fee, then led Daniel upstairs to the Sala dell’ Albergo, where they marvelled at the centrepiece depiction of Saint Roch towering over them, and the great panoramic crucifixion. Scacchi quoted Henry James on the latter and added, “Not that I have read anything else of his, of course. Much too tedious.”
Then they went back into the main hall and he pointed out to Daniel the work which was, he claimed, the reason for their visit.
“There,” he said. They both strained their necks upwards. In the corner, close to the door which led to the sala, was a large dark canvas depicting two figures. The first, a handsome young man with blond curls and a pleasant smile, looked upwards to the second, holding two rocks in his hand. The object of his plea, clearly Christ, from the halo that shone out of the darkness around his head, was half turned to him, as if in consideration.
“Subject, please?” Scacchi demanded.
“Painting is not my field,” Daniel objected.
“Then use your head. That’s why it’s there.”
It was, in a sense, obvious, although there was something highly unusual about the work. “It’s the Temptation of Christ in the desert,” Daniel suggested. “The lower figure is Satan holding out the rocks, which are shaped like loaves, with the idea that the starving Christ should turn them into bread.”
“Spot on!” said Scacchi, beaming. “The date?”
“About 1570?”
“Ten years too early, but a good try. Now, please, tell me why this canvas is so very curious.”
Daniel stared at the painting on the ceiling. “Because the focus is almost entirely upon the Devil, not Christ.”