The Nature of Blood (7 page)

Whereas the state reluctantly admitted their need for the Jews, the church required no such diplomacy. The Franciscans, in particular, preached vehemently against the Jews, and urged that their avaricious monopoly of credit and usury be taken from them and given to a devout Christian group, who might operate without the base objective of profit. One among these Franciscan priests, a seventeen-year-old boy named Martin Tomitano of Feltre, gained much fame for his vigorous rhetoric. He was a small novice of less than one and a half metres, who, when he preached, barely reached the parapet of the pulpit. However, like many small men, he was driven by a desire to achieve great feats in the world. As a young boy, Martin Tomitano had twice witnessed his father travel to Venice to protest in vain to the
Grand Council
against the Jews who wished to open a bank in Feltre. Martin Tomitano was in no doubt as to the primary source of evil in the world in which he lived.

Eventually, the boy took the name of Bernard, after a renowned Franciscan predecessor from Siena, and he began to travel from city to city, preaching in a clear, strong voice. He pronounced the language distinctly, slowing down and speeding up to good effect, accentuating the right words, making comparisons, relating pious anecdotes, techniques that he painstakingly designed, then practised, in order that he might keep the people's attention. He burnt with a love for God, and for God's people, whom he wished to help escape from the influence of the Jews, who were little more than merchants of tears and drinkers of human blood. During Lent, many cities recruited him to preach in town squares, because the churches could never hold all who wished to listen. As soon as he was done he would hurry away, for people would pull at his clothes to try to claim a relic for themselves. After his departure, people would light fires to burn what he had called the 'instruments of sin': playing cards, decorative ornaments, and even the emblems of enemy factions, were all cast into the flames. It was only after the feverishly righteous Bernard, formerly known as Martin Tomitano of Feltre, had left that the Jews would dare to show their faces once more, and they always did so cautiously and with the knowledge that the heated passions stirred up by this small man would take some time to die down.

The night of Saturday 25 March 480 was the occasion of the first full moon
of Spring. In Portobuffole the atmosphere was merry, as many husbands had
now returned from the Venetian army. The recently arrived men were happy in
the arms of their loved ones, while those wives who still lived in anxious
expectation of their husbands' return eventually tore their eyes from the
streets and found solace in the company of their children. These highly spirited
Christians were joyfully celebrating the Feast of the Annunciation and looking
forward to the following day, Palm Sunday.

The Jews of Portobuffole had gathered in the house of Servadio to begin to celebrate the night of the fourteenth day of the month of Nissan in the year 5240 since the creation of their world. In common with all their holidays, this Jewish celebration began after sunset, with the men and children seated around a large table. In front of each person was a large illustrated Hebrew book of stories, which these Jews read from right to left. The men sat with their heads covered and with their elbows leaning against the table, and they read from their history about the night of the fleeing Jews.

At this time of the year, Jewish law called for these people to rid their homes of all fermented foods, and, beginning that night and for the next eight days, these Jews could not eat bread or anything leavened, for they were remembering when they had had to flee Egypt so quickly that their bread did not have time to rise. In place of bread, they ate unleavened crackers that had been carefully sheltered from any fermentation or external contamination. These crackers were placed at the centre of the table on a huge tray that also contained a hard-boiled egg, a thin leg of lamb, herbs, a small cup of vinegar, wine, and various other objects necessary to their Jewish rituals.

For many weeks, Servadio's youngest son had prepared with his tutor to ask in a high and confident voice, and in the Hebrew language, why this night was different from any other. And then suddenly the moment arrived for the boy to ask his first question, and then three further questions, and his mother, and the other women, left the kitchen with damp eyes and came to listen to this small boy who stood in front of the assembly of men. Servadio responded to his son's questions by reading from the Hebrew book of stories, occasionally interrupting his reading to make comments, and then stopping to listen to statements from those more learned than himself. Eventually everybody had a chance first to read from the books and then chant, 'This year, slaves; next year in the land of Israel, free', and the storytelling and chanting continued as the Jewish spirit moved each of them in turn.

For almost three thousand years the Jews had celebrated this holiday by reciting the same prayers, abstaining from the same foods, and reading the same stories as if reading them for the first time. This was the source of their safety, and the basis of their relative confidence and happiness. They repeatedly told each other about how the waters of the Red Sea were opened for the fleeing slaves and how, immediately after, they closed on the ranks of the Egyptians who followed them. Servadio watched his son carefully, and smiled as he recognized himself in the inquisitive young boy. And then Servadio was shaken from his proud contemplation as the hungry children shouted the last words of a prayer, which was the sign for the food and wine to be served. Jewish songs would continue to be sung and Jewish stories would be joyfully recited, but most would now concentrate upon their feasting and the eager wolfing of Hebrew food.

The innocent beggar child with blond hair and a sack on his shoulder, who had appeared in Portobuffole at this time of Christian and Jewish festivities, was never seen again. Once Easter had passed, those who thought they had seen him began to talk about him. Those who had definitely not seen him also began to talk about him, and eventually the details of the stories became less conflicting. There was no doubt that the boy had entered the house of Servadio. Someone had noted an unusual number of Jews gathered in the house, and someone else had distinctly heard the sound of a boy sobbing and then suffocating cries, and yet someone else had seen a Jew walking the streets, dragging a sack behind him, at three in the morning. Nearly everyone remembered seeing smoke coming from the chimney of the house of Moses, but no one could remember the name of the boy. The image of the poor boy was clear, but the name was missing, and then one old woman retrieved his name from the corner of her mind. His name was Sebastian. The Jews had killed a beggar boy named Sebastian, and the precise details of this monstrous crime were on everyone's lips. The Jews had killed an innocent Christian boy named Sebastian New. They had dared to make a sacrifice in the Christian town of Portobuffole.

I REMEMBER the afternoon when I first saw
the woman. Mama and Papa were out in the streets looking for food, and, as
usual, they had left me in my room, with my books, in the small apartment
that we shared with the woman. The door to my room was firmly closed, the
understanding being that it would remain so. In the past, Mama and Papa used
to lock the door when they went out, but I hated this because I could never
decide whether they were locking me in, or the woman out. Either way, I would
spend most of the day crying. Some days I never bothered to open my books,
and when they returned at the end of the day they would find me bleary-eyed
and unable to tell them what I had learnt. They mustered hastily assembled
excuses such as, 'It's for your own good,' or, 'We wouldn't do it unless it
was absolutely necessary,' but still I cried and ignored my books, so eventually
they agreed that they would leave the door unlocked. However, I was forbidden
to venture out and into the small apartment. That was our understanding, that
the door to my room would be closed – unlocked, but closed – and
I would submit to voluntary captivity (for my own safety) until they returned
at the end of each day.

I was standing by the high window in the tiny kitchen. It was my habit to abandon my books after an hour or two of studying, and looking out of the kitchen window had become my own special pastime. First, I would drag a small wooden crate across the floorboards to the window, and then I would mount it so that my chin could rest on the lower sill. From this precarious position, I looked down into the streets. It had been some time now since anyone in our community had witnessed splendid decorative hats upon women's heads, or gentlemen walking with canes. From my perch I observed only bent backs, bare heads and, Uttering the streets, lonely corpses. Occasionally I would see a scholar, an old man in a full-length coat, shamelessly dependent upon his walking stick, beard flowing, eyes damp, a pile of books tucked under one arm, his soup pot hanging idly from his waist. These men peered at the useless future without the aid of their round wire-rimmed spectacles, and they depressed me the most, for it was all too easy to calculate the extent of their fall, wearing as they did the outward garb of their former status. I hoped that Mama and Papa's daily search took them to a better place than this, but in my heart I knew otherwise. I assumed that every street was crowded with people with crazy, despairing eyes, and I imagined that they were all trying to sell something, or beg something. It could not only be this street. We knew that everything in our world had changed. In fact, everything in our world was collapsing all about us.

And then one hot summer day Rosa appeared, as if from nowhere. I don't know how long she had been standing behind me, but when she spoke I nearly fell from the crate.

'Can you see anything interesting out there?'

I turned quickly, then grabbed the tattered curtain. Rosa had about her shoulders a woollen shawl which she clasped tightly in front of her. I jumped to the ground and, as I did so, she took a step backwards. There was to be distance between the pair of us.

'Just people,' I said. 'Lots of people.'

I lived for nearly two years in that small apartment, abandoning my books, making daily visits to the high window in the tiny kitchen, and staring at the world which my parents had forbidden me to re-enter. They feared that, should I venture out, they would lose their remaining daughter, and so I was to remain hidden inside. I understood that we were fortunate, that most were living ten or more to an apartment, and that Papa's money, and what little influence Mama still had, had bought us this luxury of space. But still, I was unhappy and frustrated, and sixteen.

Rosa stayed in the room next to mine, but I had never heard
a sound through the wall, or, until the afternoon she surprised me in the
kitchen, caught a glimpse of this mysterious woman. However, during the day,
when my parents were out, I often heard a man who came regularly to visit
her. I would sit in my room and listen to him pounding up the communal stairs.
Then I would hear the front door open, then slam, and then I would listen
to the hurried patter of his feet as he scampered into Rosa's room. Soon I
knew how to time my exit so that I would be in the kitchen by the time he
curled himself around the front door. He would look down the short hallway
and see me standing on the crate. An unshaven man, with dirty worn clothes,
he seemed an unlikely visitor. Perhaps three times a week he would simply
smile at me, and then he would disappear into Rosa's room.

'A friend,' was Rosa's response to my question. 'Just a friend.'

'But why is your friend not living here with us?'

Rosa gave me a tired smile.

'He cannot be with us. He's fighting. In the underground.'

I looked down at her bony hands, then up again at her anxious face. She could only have been in her mid-twenties, yet she seemed so sad.

'I see.' I watched as Rosa tried to hide her hands in the folds of her cotton dress.

But, of course, I didn't really see. Rosa and I would spend
long afternoons taking turns on the crate, and then Rosa would suddenly step
down and disappear before Mama and Papa returned. No 'goodbye'. No 'see you
tomorrow'. She would just turn and leave, as though in her mind an alarm-bell
was sounding. I would climb back up on to the crate and once more survey the
streets that were crowded with the desperate and the hungry. With each passing
day, the women in the street grew to resemble men; by this time, it was often
difficult to tell the difference. And then, later in the afternoon, I would
once again step from the crate, drag it back to its familiar place, and return
to my room and my books, and pull in the door behind me.

The day that Rosa surprised me on the crate, Mama and Papa
arrived back early and were extremely angry to discover me sitting in the
kitchen. Papa stormed off into their room, but Mama stayed with me. I explained
in a low voice about Rosa, and how wonderful but frightened she was, and Mama
listened patiently. However, I sensed that I should not be discussing Rosa.
Before my discovery of her (or her discovery of me), Mama and Papa had seemed
reluctant to answer any of my questions about the young woman in the apartment.
Was she old or young? Did she own the small apartment that we had been forced
to move into? Was she pretty or ugly? Did she know that we had had to leave
nearly everything behind, including Mama's piano? Did she know that we were
not poor, that I had a sister, that the things we brought with us were merely
the things that we could carry? Did she know? Mama and Papa always evaded
my questions with a polite smile. And then they would change the subject.
And then, in the morning, they would once more go out into the streets to
find whatever they could, and each evening they would return with the evidence
of their labour. A single potato was a triumph. Or an egg. Or a misshapen
loaf of illicitly baked bread. Papa was too honest to become involved in any
of the smuggling rings, so there were never any treats. Never any fruit. Never
any sugar.

After they discovered me in the kitchen, Mama and Papa must have talked. A week later, Papa came to me and announced that, because the heat was becoming more oppressive, he understood that I could not be expected to remain in a stifling room all day. Not only was the door to be unlocked, but I could occasionally leave. Finally, they were treating me as an adult. Papa continued and said he hoped that I knew that I would soon see Margot again. He also told me that they, too, missed her. Papa never said how, or where, or when I might see Margot again; he simply said he hoped that I knew that I would soon see her again. I almost believed him.

'Are they killing people today?'

I heard Rosa's voice and turned from the window. The early autumn light was catching Rosa's face and accentuating her pale features.

'Don't watch if they're killing people.'

I stepped down from the crate and smiled at my friend. I was the same height as Rosa. These days, she seldom seemed to venture anywhere without her shawl. During the summer, the shawl was occasionally forgotten, but now, summer over, she always wore the shawl across her rounded shoulders.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Please, watch if you must.'

'I don't like watching.'

'I know you don't. You're just curious. It's perfectly normal.'

I felt ashamed. There was nothing normal about watching a boy
dancing barefoot, one hand outstretched, his brother's corpse curled at his
feet, and people slouching around them both as though neither of them were
visible. Normal? I had almost forgotten the meaning of the word. These days,
Rosa and I talked more easily. She informed me that I was lucky, for my parents
were relatively young. Even though the weather was turning bitter, they still
had the energy to go out. They still had hope.

It was almost December, and snow had fallen heavily and settled. In the street it was thick and discoloured, and piled up like ploughed mud. Rosa had long confessed to me that she was married to her unshaven friend in dirty worn clothes, but that was all she told me. She opened and closed her confession in a single sentence. He is my husband. As I huddled in bed, and imagined the fearsome wind in some distant place stripping the remaining leaves from trees, I realized that these days I heard the pounding of his feet less frequently. I was disappointed, for I had become accustomed to his winking at me conspiratorially before he disappeared into Rosa's room. And then one afternoon, as the snow began to fall again, and while I stood on the crate wearing cap, scarf and gloves, I asked Rosa without turning to face her.

'Why does your husband not live with us?'

She did not answer. For a few moments, I was too nervous to turn around and face her. When I eventually did turn, she was smiling sadly.

'I told you, he's fighting on the outside.'

'He lives on the outside?'

She nodded.

'But he could get you out. You could live on the outside too. Both of you.'

'Yes,' said Rosa. 'That is possible, but then he would have difficulty visiting me.'

That evening, I dared to raise the name of my friend Rosa with my parents. Mama looked up at me and shook her head slowly and with resignation.

'She should forget him and live among her own kind. With them, she has a chance of a life.'

Papa looked across at his wife.

Spring arrived. It ceased snowing. In our streets birds did not sing, or trees bud, or flowers bloom. There were rumours that, within the year, we would be taken to the east. That the streets and houses would be emptied. And in the east? Work, of course. We would be required to labour like farm animals until we dropped. I had begun to question Rosa openly about her husband who seemed to be neglecting her. Three months had passed since his last visit. Had he gone away? Rosa simply smiled and shook her head.

'But why does he want to fight? Does he not see that it is hopeless?'

'It is not hopeless,' snapped Rosa. 'If we do not fight, then we have lost.'

(We? Always we. Rosa and her 'we'.)

'But we have already lost, Rosa. They are everywhere.'

I paused, for my friend was staring at me with a pained expression. I softened my tone.

'I'm sorry.'

'Eva, we have not lost. And I cannot go to him. I am a wife, so I must be where he can visit me.'

'But with us you are in danger, Rosa.'

'But with him I am in danger. It's all the same.'

'But you can save yourself. If they come in the night, there will be no time for explanations.'

For a moment there was silence. And then Rosa took my hand.

'Eva, I have made my choice. I have no regrets. Truly, no regrets.'

It was a long hot summer that second year, and the heat served only to increase the stench and the sadness. People continued to fall dead in the street from starvation, but an increasingly common practice was the taking of one's own life, and that of one's family. Jumping from a high window was a popular individual method, while rat poison administered to food was a common way of dispatching a household at one sitting. By utilizing these and other procedures, one remained master of life and death. A precious gift. Mama fell ill, so it was now Papa alone who left on the daily search for food. Rosa and I would sit together in the kitchen, the heat dripping from our bodies, talking and mopping our brows, while Mama lay alone in the cool darkness of her room. And then one day, Papa came home early, and he told Rosa and I that he had seen a girl of about my own age throw herself in front of a military vehicle. Papa's jacket was stained with blood. The horror of this girl's suicide had struck Papa a heavy blow. He waited a few minutes. Then he calmly told us that today he had also seen the son of a fellow doctor begging with open palms. Again, he waited a few moments, then he looked from Rosa to his daughter, then back again to Rosa.

'Some among us are behaving like animals. But we are human beings.'

And then he lowered his eyes. Papa's heavily fortified personality lay in ruins.

'It is written in the Holy Books,' he began, 'that a time will
come when the living shall envy the dead.'

The summer heat gave way to grey skies, and then the freezing chill of a second winter. By now I had lost interest in my studies, although I occasionally still sought refuge in my books. An ailing Mama simply languished in bed and waited for her husband to return. One morning, she called me in to her bedside. With her stiffened fingers she touched my threadbare dress, and then, in a feverish voice, she began to try to explain the pain that she felt at not being able to buy clothes for daughters who were growing tall.

'I remember, you girls used to love to look at yourselves in the mirror. You used to try different hairdos, and secretly put on my make-up, and my jewellery, and my clothes. But of course, I knew. Neither of you could ever put anything back in the right place.'