Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice (23 page)

So it was a dangerous mission we were on, no less dangerous for carrying a baby who might betray us, no less dangerous for going to seek out one Jewish family in a Christian land. If it were known that we brought a Christian's baby to become a Jew, neither of us would be safe. Not I the Christian-Jewess, nor Will the Englishman who loved a Jew. It was for this reason that the poet and I spoke cautiously to each other as long as the boatmen were about—which was most of the time.

When we stopped to sleep at inns along the way, only then did we—who seemed but two brothers and a bundle, and slept in the same chamber—talk the night away as we ministered to the babe, coming to feel that its very survival was an omen for both our fates. Both of us were parents without our children; both of us far, far, far from home. Such camaraderie as developed between us was the camaraderie of fellow players, fellow parents, fellow travelers on the road of time. The love that had bonded us at first sight had space and time to ripen into something more—thanks to this babe—yet also thanks to this babe, we could not easily consummate our love. Or could not yet.

The poet told me much about himself, save where he got the child. He told me of his noble friend and his noble friend's proclivities. He told me of his struggles to establish himself as poet and player. He told me of his wife and children, his parents, Stratford country life. I could reveal all this here—but what purpose to my tale, which longs to rush onward like the mountain streams of the Veneto? Besides, if I told these things about this man of Stratford, what pleasure would I take away from how many book-bound scholars, whose greatest joy is to speculate upon this mythical man, providing him with professions he never followed, ancestries he never traced, even names he was never called! I'll not have that on my conscience. Let the Shakespeare industry flourish! I speak here not of “the Bard,” whoever that may be, but only of a very lost and homesick young Englishman named Will who traveled a little way with me on time's continuum and then was wrenched away into eternity—or else I was.

At Bassano we paid our boatmen (and not without altercation), procured a new supply of goat's milk for the little one, and took horse into the mountains.

The poet was not much of a horseman, so I carried the baby, making a little sling for it out of linen and twine so it could rest against my chest, hear my heartbeat, and feel the heat of my body. I swear it comforted me to become a mother again in that alien time. Maternity is in my bones and blood—perhaps all the more because my child was taken from me when she still had that new-mown hay smell at the back of the neck, the divine trailing-clouds-of-glory smell that children lose at five or so, when babyhood ceases and the age of “reason” (or at least self-consciousness) begins. Also, I probably regret that I have never borne a son. This little orphan was my son for a time, I who wore boy's attire, yet felt in my heart like a mother again.

Once a mother, always a mother. This most humanizing act of the human species once done can never be undone. It reshapes the heart. It is a means of traveling through time. Even if one's child is snatched away (by death or an ex-husband), one remains a mother still. The identity is immutable—the opposite, in short, of an actress's role.

Del Banco actually lived nearer to Asolo than to Bassano, in the foothills under Monte Grappa, where the hillocks are as round and full as a nursing mother's breasts and little villas dot the countryside. Peasant cottages cling to the sides of mountains. Sometimes the roads are so steep a horse can't find foothold and one wishes one had a mountain goat. One looks in terror down a sheer mountainside, grasps the reins, looks up, and moves on.

Fortunately, my mother had taught me to ride when I was little, and horsemanship, like motherhood, is an unloseable skill. Woman and horse, woman and baby, woman and dog, woman and man—these things are constant in every age.

As our horses walked along the broader roads, Will and I would talk. He had a poet's hunger to know all about my life—my education, my thoughts on poetry, philosophy, history. He wished to know also of my father and how his people came to Venice, for he was fascinated with the Serenissima, saw it as the crossroads of the world, full of people one would never (or seldom) meet in London—Jews and Moors, in particular, as well as Turks and Germans, Greeks, and Arabs…

“How came your great-great-grandfather from the Holy Land?” he asks, while his horse treads the snowy path up a little hill.

“He came as many Jews of the Levant—as a shackled galley slave, though not a true slave but one who rowed his way to Venice and freedom, paying the captain for the breaking of his chains. Still, 'twas a dangerous passage, for these Jewish prisoners never knew whether or not they would be betrayed. They would join a galley in Beirut or Tyre, Famagusta or Alexandria, paying to be put into their chains, paying to be taken out. In the meantime, they rowed, like any prisoners, with shaven heads and shackled ankles, sitting in their own filth. When the wind dropped, the stench was unbearable, and the officers who strutted about the gilded poop with their nostrils crammed with spices, their bodies doused in scent, took to their cabins—for all the good it did them.”

The poet is entranced by my tale. “Did many of them die?” he asks.

“They did. Of dysentery, of plague, of other diseases. And the Jewish prisoners never knew whether, having paid for their freedom, they would in fact obtain it. But so great was their desire to reach the Serenissima that they took the chance. We are a nation of wanderers, of vagabonds—perhaps that is why the theater suits us so.”

“In their own filth,” says the poet, seizing on this detail, as poets will. “Ships are but boards, sailors are but men, and there be land rats and water rats…”

“All of Venice is a ship,” I say, “floating upon the waters. There are rats there, too—but, thank God, the cats are winning.”

“Land rats and water rats,” says the poet. “I should write that down.”

“You won't forget it,” I say with a twinkle in my eye.

“How do you know?” he asks. “Ah, Jessica, you seem to know more than a mortal should…”

“Also, you,” say I.

“I merely struggle on the path,” says Will, “wending my way with words. I know no other currency.”

“'Twill pay back dearly, Will.”

“How can you be sure?”

“History is on my side,” I say, and I consider for a mad moment telling him where I come from—a strange future in which all things will change except his words—but I think better of it.

“Sometimes I think of you as Venus or Clio come to earth amongst mortal men,” says Will, “for you are so wise. I swear I love you with all my heart…” And he reaches out to touch me with his hand, stroking my cheek, then my breast, then the babe's head that nestles against it. For two who love with eyes, with words, the first carnal touch unlocks all else—and with it the entire future, fair or foul.

But do we two truly have a future, being in war with time as we both are? Whatever the answer to that question, this mountain touch changes all. A torrent of sexual longing locked up in me for so many celibate months is suddenly unloosed. My heart pounds in my bosom, my thighs grow moist, my skin craves his touch. Though he cannot see the eruption in my heart nor feel the pounding in my quim—or
can
he?—I swear I am embarrassed with him for the first time, as embarrassed as a little girl who has said something all the adults laugh at, and my face turns crimson.

“
Carissima
,” he says, touching my hair.

The horses halt, stumbling slightly on loose rocks; for a moment we look down at the mountainside. My stallion shakes his head in its bridle as if he somehow feels the lustful vibrations that pass between me and Will…Will's mare snorts in sympathy. Under the horses' stumbling hooves we hear the crunch of snow. The sky looks leaden as if, indeed, snow might come again. Then, suddenly, far below us in the valley, we see two horsemen, appearing and disappearing in the breaks between the trees. Will pales.

“Bassanio and Gratiano,” he gasps. “God have mercy upon our souls.”

We spur our horses on and begin to trot up the mountainside, for 'tis too steep to gallop. My heart is seized with fear. If we are caught and killed by the two lordings, the Jews of the Veneto all will be endangered by the corpse of the babe—and Will may never return to England to complete the life's work he does not even know is before him. If he alone is killed, then will I also vanish (since I am just a character in one of his plays)? Or is
he
a character in some delirium or dream of mine? No time for speculation now. We stumble upward, hoping to elude our pursuers on this rocky path.

Montebello—for that is the name of Del Banco's villa—lies far upcountry, above the snow line. In winter it is as remote as it is pleasant, and cool in the summer for which, truly, it was built. Del Banco stays there far past the summer season to give his wife good mountain air instead of the pestilential air of Venice. But his estate was not meant for access in the snowy months, thus the road is ill prepared for it. Rutted and rocky it is, with intervals of ice and frozen mud. The horses are recalcitrant, their footing unsure. We half trot, half walk, upward in fear for our very lives.

Suddenly we see a little farmhouse clinging to the mountainside. Shall we stop there and try to hide, or make for Del Banco's villa? The poet is in favor of pressing on, so we stop briefly only to water the horses. The
contadino
who owns this country shack gives us a piece of news that does not gladden our hearts: he tells us that an English lord has passed this way before us, raving and beating his horse, screaming bitterly at his retainers, possessed, in fact, like a madman.

“
Inglese furioso
,” the
contadino
says.

“Dear God,” says Will. “Let us bring this baby to his protectors, Jessica, and flee forthwith.”

I nod my head as I spur my stallion on, but in faith I do not know
where
we may flee—unless it be out of time and into eternity.

Montebello is a place that seems to perch on a mountainside outside of time. A Grecian temple serves as its facade, and mythic figures crown its eaves. Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Apollo, and Minerva rise, resplendent, from its roof; and stone satyrs frolic on its snowy lawns while Diana, the huntress, carved in dolomitic stone, protects its central fountain, dry now, and choked with ice and snow.

The sky still threatens storm, but here above the world the firmament seems pink, not leaden. Montebello sits above the fray, neither Jewish nor Christian, but outside all battles over the cutting of foreskins and the eating of pork. Will is as stunned as I am by the halcyon look of the place.

“If Jews cannot own land, how comes Del Banco by this country seat?” asks the poet.

“It belongs, in title, to the family of the doge, but Del Banco has the lease of it, which is as sacred as his ties to the Serenissima. Both his brother's doctoring and his great wealth serve to keep him safe…Though not so safe that some new and hostile doge might not sweep it all away.”

Will understands this well. “Nothing mortal is wholly safe,” says he, “whether on land or sea. Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust? And live how we can yet die we must…”

The poet is cheered by this little inspiration of his. It seems to buoy him forward on his horse and take away his fears.

“Poetry is our great consolation, isn't it,” I say, “and you bear the word forward into the future.”

He looks at me and shrugs with all modesty.

“I wonder mightily about this thing you term the future,” says Will.

“That only proves you are wise,” I say, “for fools never doubt their happy futures even as they cancel them out with foolish deeds.”

Will gazes at me with love and longing, then casts his eyes upon Del Banco's unearthly country seat.

“Montebello,” says the poet. “In England, we would call it Belmont.”

W
HEN THE COFFERED DOOR
to Del Banco's villa swings open on its great brass hinges, the first thing we hear is the sweet sound of the virginals playing in some distant chamber. Behind the door is the porter, who does not reveal himself to us for the nonce. I clutch the baby in my arms. We have fed it just after dismounting from our horses, and yet it squalls and fusses in discomfort—and I, being a woman, feel responsible for its welfare.

Suddenly, the servant who has opened the door emerges from behind it. 'Tis no man, but a bent and witchy-looking old woman! I swear 'tis Arlecchina, or her doppelgänger! She mocks me with a cackle that seems to reverberate through time, and her two coal-black eyes stare out from under her coal-black velvet wimple. The baby lets out a fierce howl as if reacting to her proximity.

“So now you know the virtue of the ring,” she says, looking me in the eye with a manic gleam. “
Vieni, vieni
.” She beckons with one bony finger; then she throws wide the portal, and her toothless retainer scurries up behind her to take our cloaks and wraps.

I am dumbfounded by this appearance of Arlecchina and her consort—yet also, I wonder if I am not imagining it. Is Montebello like some dream wherein all the creatures from one's past appear, in different costumes?

The music of the virginals plays on. Dimly, through an open door, we hear a female singer singing the words to the song in English, accented strongly with Italian:

Tell me where is fancy bred,

Or in the heart, or in the head?

How begot, how nourished?

Reply, reply.

It is engendered in the eyes,

With gazing fed, and fancy dies

In the cradle where it lies.

Let us all ring fancy's knell.

I'll begin it—Ding, dong, bell.