The Jerusalem Diamond (32 page)

“
Great trouble,” he said
.

The mount cantered skittishly, sensing Isaac's feeling of release as he rode back to Treviso. His land was well beyond the town, which he
skirted out of habit. It was poor limestone land, part of the rocky Adriatic Plain that ran from the coast to the Venetian Alps, purple in the distance. The rain dropped straight through the chalky soil and drained away to the sea, so that in the summer Isaac and his family had to irrigate constantly. He rented the land from the Doge, who had been sure no one could grow anything there
.

Elijah was in the vineyard, ploughing. They cultivated all through the mild winter, trying to persuade the soil to retain some of the moisture. In the spring the vines would throw green tendrils and draw the mineral strength of the thin earth that was full of the carapaces of ancient land mollusks and animal bones and bits of Roman metal and the chitinous shells of uncounted generations of insects. Somehow when autumn came there would be heavy clusters of great, mysterious grapes, almost black with a fine powdery blue bloom, and bursting with sweet, musky juices—the only blood, he thought grimly, they needed or wanted to help them celebrate the Passover
.

Elijah waved when he saw his father, and reined up the oxen. He didn't smile often, and Isaac was sorry to bring heaviness back into his face by telling him of the day's events
.

“
I don't care,” Elijah said, surprising him. “I want to go where we can own land
.”

“
There is no such place. Things are better for us here than they would be anywhere. Here, I am the Doge's jeweler
.”

“
You have some money
?”

“
So
?”

“
There must be some state. Some country
.”

“
No. And if there were? What of the others, those in the
Gietto?
Most have little or nothing
.”

But the boy wasn't letting go. “We could go to the east
.”

“
I have been there. Life is hell now under the Turks
.”

“
Far to the east
.”

Isaac frowned. Following Marco Polo's route had been a boyhood dream of Elijah's, but his son was almost a man. “The Polos reached Cathay three hundred years ago, not yesterday,” he said curtly. “Westerners who venture there are put to death, whether Christian or Jew. You'll do with what we have.” He changed the subject. “Do we own a jacinth
?”

Elijah looked away. “I don't know
.”

“
It is your responsibility to know,” he said. “Digging in the dirt is a joy, an embellishment. Gems are your business. I need a jacinth for the Doge. See if we own one and tell me at once
.”

Riding to the house ahead of the oxen, he regretted the sharp edge of his tongue. He wished he could still clasp the boy to his bosom, speak of his love. Things had never been easy for Elijah. Shortly after his birth Isaac had left Venice on his first long diamond-buying journey. He had traveled the Levant—Constantinople, Damascus, Cairo, Jerusalem—coming back with some of the most beautiful gems he had ever seen, jewels that had allowed him to escape the semi-prison that was the Cannon Foundry. But trading for them had kept him away from home for more than four years. When he returned, his girl-bride was a woman, a stranger, and for weeks his son had shrieked whenever he came near. After that he had made two more voyages, but he had stayed away no longer than eighteen months at a time. Three other sons and two daughters had followed, Fioretta, Falcone, Meshullam, Leone and little Haya-Rachel, all close enough in age so they had each other. Of all his children, Elijah, the first born, alone lacked companionship. Elijah had only the two oxen and the poor rented land and his wild dreams
.

Were the dreams so wild
?

In the middle of the night Isaac came face to face with the fact that whether or not he agreed with his son's desire to leave, the Jews had been ordered to go
.

He left the bed quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping woman. There was no moon, nor despite the hour would he have risked someone seeing the Jew of Treviso digging in the earth near the animal pens. The little goat's-bladder bag was precisely where he had buried it. Inside was the large yellow stone he had bought on his third journey. It represented the accumulated earnings of generations of diamond merchants named Vitallo. It was a fortune more modest than those accumulated by other persons of wealth, even by a number of Jews, yet it represented riches beyond any his forebears had imagined. He had bought it cheaply, in a country and year where it had been available at a price far below its worth. Yet he had had to use virtually his entire capital reserve. Owning it made it possible for him to pick up his fortune and flee, if that should
be necessary. It also made it possible for him to be wiped out by a single act of theft, and from time to time he checked the buried bag to make certain it hadn't been disturbed
.

If they had to leave Venice, might this buy some kind of secure life
?

After the Jews were expelled from Spain, eight hundred thousand had left that country with no place to go. Some reached the coast of Africa, where Arabs raped their women and, looking for swallowed valuables, split open the bodies of males. Some went to Portugal, where they bought the right to exist with everything they owned, and their sons and daughters were draggéd away to baptism before their eyes. Thousands were sold as slaves, thousands committed suicide. In the Port of Genoa, several fleets carrying famine-stricken exiles had been refused entrance to the city. Rich and poor alike, Jews had died of starvation in the harbor. Their festering bodies had started a plague that took the lives of twenty thousand Genoese
.

Isaac shuddered. He replaced the diamond in the bag and reburied it, not forgetting to disguise the signs of digging
.

Many prayed wildly. Some fasted, as if they could bully God into mercy by denying themselves. It had been Isaac's experience that it did no good to listen to the hand-wringers who spent their time bewailing fate. He met with a few steady-eyed men who knew what danger was
.

“
You think they mean it this time?” asked Rabbi Rafael Nahmia
.

Isaac nodded
.

“
So do I,” said Judah ben David, the Doge's physician
.

“
They have said it before,” the rabbi said
.

“
They have never said it following the beatification of Simon of Trent,” Isaac told him. “They have never said it in the year of their Lord 1588
.”

The banks were their strongest hope
.

Jews had lived in the city-states since the time of the Romans, when they had suffered no restrictions. They had been farmers, laborers, merchants and craftsmen, but as the great Italian trading and manufacturing centers emerged, Christian workers came to resent and fear the competition of energetic infidels, and the craft guilds were formed as semi-religious societies. Slowly but surely, Jews were forced out of competition, into jobs so dirty and demeaning that nobody else wanted them,
or so esoteric and specialized, like medicine and diamond dealing, that their services were eagerly sought
.

As this was happening, the Church began to recognize that Christian usury was a sore problem. Although money-lending was forbidden as sin, merchants, princes and churchmen engaged in it on an enormous scale, and the interest rates were grinding, sometimes as high as 60 percent. The entire society depended on borrowed money. Peasants borrowed when there was a bad harvest, city people because of illness or to celebrate a marriage. While the Church condemned lending for profit, it was not itself willing to lend money without interest. Yet it recognized that loans were essential for the survival of the poor
.

Most Jews of the day, banned from the trades and forbidden to sell new merchandise, lived precariously as secondhand dealers and ragpickers. The Church invited a few of the older Jewish families, who had once been successful merchants, to become loan bankers, an arrangement in which it saw many advantages. Christian usurers wouldn't burn in hell. Jewish bankers were controllable because their civil liberties were minimal. The city earned an annual tax from those given the privilege of operating the banks, and the Church took a substantial payment from the bankers each time the
condotta
was renewed
.

The new interest rate was set at 4 percent, but it was immediately obvious that with the necessary bribes and payments, this wouldn't allow the banks to survive, and the interest was raised to 10 percent with a pledge and 12 percent without one, a fair rate in the Venetian economy. In a few years both the people and the Church had forgotten about the former 60 percent interest rate and were united in hatred and contempt for the Jewish usurers. Soon they exerted so much pressure that the rates were gradually lowered until they were
5
percent, and what had been offered to the old families as a privilege had become an impossible burden. Since Venice's three banks were the reason why Jews were tolerated in the city, the people of the
Gietto
considered support of the banks a special tax, to be endured, and annually raised fifty thousand ducats to capitalize three-ducat loans to the Christian poor
.

“
Can they be willing to do without the banks?” asked the rabbi
.

“
They hate us more than they love our loans,” Isaac said
.

Nearby, the sound of praying reached a new frenzy
.

“
We need a miracle,” the rabbi said bitterly. “To match what took place at the grave of St. Simon of Trent
.”

Next day, Isaac was summoned to the Ducal Palace. “We require a service, Vitallo,” the Doge said
.

“
Your Grace
?”

“
In the Vatican Collection is a yellow diamond. Large, a fair bastard of a stone. Called Alexander's Eye, after Pope Alexander VI, father of the Borgias
.”

Isaac nodded. “One of the great diamonds. I know of it, of course. It was cut by my ancestor
.”

“
The Vatican now wishes to have a mitre fashioned for Pope Gregory, into which Alexander's Eye will be set. The skill of my jeweler is well known,” the Doge said proudly. “I am asked to assign you to this work
.”

“
An enormous honor, Your Grace. I am sorely grieved
.”

The Doge looked at him. “Why grieved
?”

“
We Jews have been ordered to leave
.”

“
You, of course, may stay and do my work
.”

“
I could not
.”

“
You shall stay. You are ordered to stay
.”

“
To stay when the others leave would be a living death for me and for my family.” His eyes met the Doge's. “Other forms of death hold no greater fears for us
.”

The Doge turned and walked to the window, where he stood and contemplated the sea
.

Time passed. Isaac waited, knowing he had not been dismissed. He could see, beyond the Doge's head in its silken cap of authority, countless points of sunlight dancing over the water. How many carats in the sea? God was the complete maker of facets. No mortal diamond cutter could do more than feebly emulate such a display
.

The Doge turned at last
.

“
It may be that I shall help your Jews. There are those in the Senate who would regret the closing of the banks. I can influence the others
.”

“
Your Grace, our gratitude
…”

The noble raised his hand. “Understand me well, Vitallo. I care not a piss for your gratitude. I demand a piece of work that will win me the
gratitude of the Vatican, for having furnished the workman.” He moved his hand contemptuously, dismissing
.

Isaac hurried to the
Gietto.
He went straight to the synagogue and sought out Rabbi Nahmia
.

“
We have your miracle,” he said exultantly
.

In selecting a goldsmith, Isaac turned to Naples. Salamone da Lodi was a fiercely talented Jew who had apprenticed under Benvenuto Cellini for the final years of the master's life. Cellini had chosen him out of gratitude for his own apprenticeship under Graziadio, who had been a Jew, and many considered Da Lodi to be his teacher's successor. The Neapolitan was a gross man, a sloppy drunkard who knew the pimples on every whore, but Isaac felt easier working with a Jew. Together, they reached a design based on the mitre that had been worn in the Temple by the high priest. They were uneasy about the gold it would require, but when the time came, money was furnished for materials without complaint. To keep costs down, and because the headpiece otherwise would have been too heavy for Pope Gregory to wear, Da Lodi melted down the gold and spun it into threads that he wove into a crown before the loosely overlaying strands had fully cooled. The result was a mitre of such delicacy and richness that it overwhelmed Isaac. He was awed to think that God worked so mysteriously—to create this beauty out of his own fear, the Doge's ambition and the ugliness of Salamone da Lodi
.

The mitre delighted the Doge, who placed it under guard and ordered Isaac to set the diamond at the Ducal Palace
.

“
I work only in my own shop, Your Grace,” Isaac said firmly. It was a skirmish they had fought before
.

“
Then your shop and your home should be moved into the
Gietto.”

“
I cannot live in the
Gietto,
lord
.”

“
I cannot guarantee the safety of your home in Treviso,” the Doge said
.