People of the Book

Wine Stains Venice, 1609

THE BELLS—silvery, shivering—rang in his head as if the clappers were striking the raw red interior of his skull. The wine lapped the cup as he replaced it on the altar. When his knee touched the floor, he rested his brow against the crisp linen. He stayed there a moment, letting the cold of the marble seep through the altar cloth. When he got up, there was a small damp patch from his sweat.

The old mothers at this early Mass were too devout to notice that he staggered slightly as he rose. Their heads, wrapped in threadbare shawls, were bent in devotion. Only the altar boy, his eyes bright as a newt, drew his brows together. Damn the young and the clarity of their judgments. He tried—God knows how he tried—to keep his own mind centered on the holy mystery. But the faint stink of his own predawn vomit would not leave his nostrils.

He was dry. The words stuck to his tongue like ashes of burned parchment. Like the ashes that had fallen in a warm rain after the last book burning. A piece had landed on his cassock, and as he raised a hand to brush it away, he noticed that the words were still legible, pale ghost letters against the charred ground. And then they turned to dust and blew away.

“Per ipsum”—he held the Body over the Blood and made the sign of the cross—“et cum ipso”—curse his tremors—“et in ipso”—the Bread of Heaven was dancing over the chalice like a bumblebee—“est tibi Deo Patri omnipotenti, in unitat e Spiritus Sancti, omnis honor et gloria.” He raced through the Pater Noster, the Libera Nos, the Agnus Dei, and the prayers for peace and sanctification and grace until, Deo gratias, he finally tilted the chalice and felt the Precious Blood—cool, astringent, delicious—washing away the bile and the bitterness and the terrible tremor in his flesh. He turned to give Communion to the server. The boy’s eyes, thankfully, were closed, their judgment hidden behind the thick hedge of his lashes. Then he made his way to the altar rail and placed bright white hosts on a half dozen furry old tongues.

In the sacristy after the Mass, Giovanni Domenico Vistorini felt the boy’s appraising gaze again, lingering on the tremor in his hands as he drew off his stole and struggled with the tie on his cincture.

“What are you dawdling about for, Paolo? Take off your cassock and get along. I saw your grandmother at Mass. Go on now. She will have need of your arm.”

“As you wish, Father.” The boy spoke, as ever, with an exaggerated politeness. There was even the hint of a bow. Vistorini sometimes thought he might have preferred open insolence. But Paolo was graceful and precise, at the altar and away from it, and gave him nothing to complain about. The boy’s contempt was conveyed only in long, assessing glances. He gave the priest one of these lacerating stares and then turned away to disrobe, his efficient, economical gestures mocking Vistorini’s fumbling. He was out the door without another word.

Alone in the sacristy, Vistorini opened the cabinet that contained the unconsecrated Communion wine. The cork came out of the decanter with a wet, sucking sound. He licked his lips. The cool jug was misted with condensation, so Vistorini raised it carefully, for his hands were still trembling, and took a deep swallow. Then another. Better.

He was about to replace the stopper in the decanter, but then he considered the morning stretching before him. The office of the pope’s Inquisitor in Venice was not noted for its liberality. The rooms the doge had assigned to the members of the Inquisition were gloomy, badly furnished, and poorly provisioned. Vistorini believed that the doge was trying to make a point; that the minions of Rome held a subordinate position in the state where only he, and the Ten, made decisions of significance. In any case, it might well be past the noon hour before he could procure another drink. He raised the jug again and let the velvet liquid course down his throat.

Vistorini’s step was almost jaunty as he closed the side door of his church and stepped out into the milky light of early morning. The sun was just high enough to reach into the narrow calle, throwing dappled reflections from the canal that silvered the stone in bright, dancing patches. The chime of the Marangona bell sounded, deeper and more resonant than any other bell in the city. It signaled the start of the workday for arsenalotti, and the opening of the gates at the nearby Geto. Shutters rattled as merchants opened for trade on the campiello in front of the church.

Vistorini breathed deeply. Even after thirty years in the city, he still loved the light and the air of Venice, its mingled scents of brine and moss, mold and moist plaster. He had been only six years old when he came to the city, and the brothers at the orphanage had encouraged him to shed all memories of the past, along with his accent and his foreign manners. They had conveyed to him that reminiscence was a shadowy and shameful thing, indicating lack of gratitude for his present blessings. He had been schooled to push away thoughts of his dead parents and the short life he had shared with them. But sometimes, fragments broke through, in dreams, or when his will was weakened by intoxication. And in those fragments, the past was always lit by a wincing glare and tasted of dust carried by scorching winds.

As he moved over the bridge, past the bargeman delivering meat to the butcher and the washerwomen at work by the canal, he recognized several of his parishioners. He greeted them with a pleasant word or a kind inquiry, depending on the family’s condition. A legless beggar propelled himself forward on the stumps of what should have been his arms. Great God. Vistorini formed a mental prayer for the man, whose deformity was so grotesque that even a surgeon would be hard pressed to lay eyes on him without recoil. He placed a coin on the beggar’s oozing extremity and then, fighting his revulsion, laid a hand on his scabby head and blessed him. The beggar responded with an animal grunt that seemed to be an expression of gratitude.

As a parish priest, Vistorini tried his best to feign interest in the little lives of his flock. Yet the work of ministry didn’t really engage him. His principal service to his church lay elsewhere. Vistorini’s abilities had been recognized by the brothers who had taken him in as an orphan. They had been impressed by his facility with languages, but also with his superior understanding of complex, abstract theology. They had educated him in Greek and Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic, and he had absorbed it all. In those days, his thirst for knowledge had been great; now, it was the other thirst that ordered his existence.

In 1589, when Pope Sixtus V proclaimed a ban on any books by Jews or Saracens that contained anything against the Catholic faith, the young priest Vistorini had been a natural choice to work as censor of the Inquisitor. For seventeen years, almost his entire life in Holy Orders, Domenico had read and passed judgment on the works of alien faiths.

As a scholar, he had an innate reverence for books. This he had been required to subdue when his mission was to destroy them. Sometimes, the beauty of the Saracens’ fluid calligraphy moved him. Other times, it was the elegant argument of a learned Jew that gave him pause. He would take his time considering such manuscripts. If, in the end, he determined that they had to go to the flames, he would avert his gaze as the parchments blackened. His job was easier when the heresy was patent. At those times, he could watch the flames, rejoicing in them as a cleansing thing, ridding human thought of error.

He had such a book with him this morning, a Jewish text. His morning’s work would be to draft the order for all copies in the city to be surrendered to the Inquisitor’s office, from whence they would go to the fire. The words, the blasphemous words, danced in his head, the Hebrew letters as familiar to him as Latin script:

Sometimes, Vistorini wondered how such words still came to be committed to paper, after more than a hundred years of Inquisition. Jews and Arabs had been fined, imprisoned, even put to death, for lesser blasphemies than these. He supposed that the proliferation of printing houses in Venice was to blame. Officially, Jews were banned from the trade of publishing, and yet their houses thrived under the flimsy front of some Christian willing to lend his name in exchange for a few gold sequins.

Not every man who wished to set up as a printer should be approbated to do so. Some of them, evidently, were ignorant or malicious. He would have to discuss this with Judah Aryeh. The Jews should exercise more control, or the Inquisitor would be obliged to do it for them. Better to keep the Office of the Inquisition outside of the Geto walls. Surely even a lesser intellect than Judah’s would see the sense of that.

As if his thoughts had conjured him up out of the stones, Vistorini saw the scarlet hat of the rabbi Judah Aryeh, making a furtive way through the crowd in front of him on the Frezzeria, where the arrow makers crafted their wares. He was walking with the stooped, head-down posture he always affected when outside the Geto. Vistorini raised a hand to hail the man, but hesitated. He watched the rabbi for a moment, considering him. How many small humiliations had it taken to bow him over into that cringing stoop: the abusive pranks of loutish boys, the jeers and spittle of the ignorant. If only the stiffnecked fellow would embrace the truth of Christ, he could end all such abasements.

“Judah Aryeh!”

The rabbi’s head came up like a deer expecting one of the craftsmen’s arrows. But when he saw Vistorini, his wary expression eased into a smile of real pleasure.

“Domenico Vistorini! It has been too long, Father, since I have seen you in my synagogue.”

“Ah, Rabbi, a man can take only so many reminders of his own shortcomings. One may wish to learn from you and yet at the same time feel humiliated by your eloquence.”

“Father, you mock me.”

“No need for false modesty with me, Judah.” The rabbi was so famous for his silver-tongued biblical exegesis that he preached at four different synagogues on the Jewish Sabbath, and many Christians, including friars, priests, and noblemen, entered the Geto just to hear him. “The bishop of Padua, whom I brought to hear you last, agreed that he had never had the book of Job so well explicated,” Vistorini said. He did not add that he had heard the bishop preach on the same text some weeks later, in the Padua cathedral, and had thought the bishop’s sermon nothing more than flour already ground between the millstones of the rabbi’s intellect. Vistorini was sure that no few of the priests who came to listen did so in order to steal the rabbi’s words. For himself, it was not so much the content, but the polished and passionate mode of delivery that he wished to emulate. “Would that I held the congregation in my hand, as you do. I try to learn your secrets, to better deliver the word of Mother Church, but alas! they remain opaque to me.”

“A man’s thoughts and the ability to express them come from God, and if my words find favor, may it be to his honor.” Vistorini suppressed a sneer. Could the rabbi really believe such unctuous platitudes? Aryeh noticed Vistorini’s displeased expression and changed his tone. “As to secrets, Father, I have but one: if the congregation expects a sermon of forty minutes’ length, then give them one of thirty minutes. If they expect thirty, then give them twenty. In all my years as rabbi, I have never once had a soul complain to me that a sermon was too short.”

The priest smiled at that. “Now it is you who mock me! But walk with me a little, if you will, for I have a matter to discuss with you.”

Judah Aryeh had straightened as he spoke to Vistorini, and now, protected by his eminent companion, he walked upright, his shoulders thrown back and his head erect. His dark hair escaped from the scarlet fabric of his cap in springy curls that were lit, like his beard, with chestnut highlights. Vistorini envied Judah’s physique, tall and well made, if somewhat spare, with an olive-gold skin unlike the pale flesh that marked so many scholars. But the impression was marred by that lurid head covering.

“Judah, why do you wear that hat? You know it is not impossible for you to get leave to wear a black one.” The scarlet color was meant to recall the blood of Christ that the Jews had brought down upon their own heads. Yet Vistorini knew a number of Jews who had been granted exemption.

“Father Dom, I know very well that with friends and money one may do almost everything in Venice. Money, as you well know, I have not. But friends, yes, I have several who would spare me this imposition. With a word here or there, I could, as you say, wear a black hat and pass about unmolested. But if I did so, I would not know life as the people in my congregation know it. And I do not want to be separate from them. I am vain enough to have my daughter sew my caps from velvet and line them with silk, but I will do as the law requires, for a man’s worth does not come from what he wears on his head. A red hat, a black hat: what matter? Neither one can cover up my mind.”

“Well said. I might have known you would have your reasons as well tended as a Benedictine’s garden.”

“But I do not think you asked me to walk with you to discuss millinery.”

Vistorini smiled. He did not like to admit it, even to himself, but sometimes he felt closer to this witty, intelligent Jew than to any priest in his own order.

“No, I did not. Sit a moment, if you will.” Vistorini gestured toward a low wall by the canal. “Read this,” he said, passing the book, opened at the offending passage.

Aryeh read, swaying slightly, as if he were in synagogue. When he had finished, he gazed across the canal, avoiding his friend’s eyes. “Clearly in contravention of the Index,” he said. His tone was carefully neutral, expressing no strong emotion. Vistorini had often noted with chagrin that although Aryeh, like himself, had come to Venice from elsewhere, the Jew spoke with the inflections of a born Venetian; the soft, lilting dialect of the city, overlaid by the distinctive cadences of his own particular sestiere, the Cannaregio. The priest had tried to make his own speech sound native, but he could never completely shed the accents of his childhood.

“It is a little more serious than that,” Vistorini said. “This kind of deliberately provocative text will bring the attention, the wrath of the Holy Office down upon the whole Geto. You would do well, my friend, to deal with this matter yourself, before we are obliged to do so. You should close down these printers.”

Judah Aryeh turned to face the priest. “The author of this text did not write to provoke, but merely to express a truth as he conceives it. Your own theologians have tied logic in knots to advance a doctrine addressing this very same point. What is the Virgin Birth, after all, but the fumbling of minds striving to deal with the indelicate realities of the body? We Jews are merely more forthright about such matters.”

Vistorini sucked in a deep breath and was about to protest when Aryeh raised a hand to forestall him. “I do not want to waste such a fine morning arguing theology with you. I think we learned long ago, you and I, how little profit there is in it. The merits or demerits of this particular work aside, I think you need to look realistically at where your office now stands with the state of Venice. The number of cases the Inquisitor is able to bring to trial here is falling year following year. And most of those that do come to court are quashed there for lack of evidence. I am not saying that we do not fear you, but we do not fear you as we once did. I will tell you what my people say of your office: that your poison has congealed, and that you have lost the recipe to brew more.”

Vistorini picked at the lichen growing on the stone beside him. There was, as always, sense in what his friend asserted. The late pope, Gregory XIII, had identified the very weakness of which the rabbi spoke. “I am pope everywhere except in Venice,” he had said. But Vistorini sensed a dangerous mood with the new pope in Rome. He might not confront the doge and the Ten directly, but he could do it through the city’s Jews. Even a wounded beast can gather its strength for one last lunge of the claw.

“Rabbi, I hope—and I say this sincerely—that you do not have cause to learn again the meaning of terror. Surely those among you who are descendants of the Spanish exile still remember the bitter conditions under which their grandparents were got hither?”

“We have not forgotten. But there is not here. Then is not now. The Spanish Inquisition was a nightmare from which many of us still cannot awaken. And yet we Ponentinis, whose forebears experienced that great dispossession, are just one group, one set of memories. There are Hollanders, Tedeschis, Levantinis. How can we not feel secure here, when every noble family has its Jewish confidante, and when the doge does not even allow your Inquisition to force conversionist sermons upon us?”

Vistorini sighed. “I myself counseled the Inquisitor against such sermons,” he said. “I told him it would only exasperate your people, not edify them.” The real reason: he had not wanted to expose the inferiority of his own preaching to congregations who had heard Judah Aryeh.

The rabbi rose to his feet. “I must be about my business, Father.” He tugged at his hat, wondering whether it was safe to speak his mind. He decided that the priest had a right to know his reasoning. “You know that your church has always taken a view on these matters very different from ours, from the day that the first printing press was assembled. Your church did not want your holy scriptures in the hands of ordinary people. We felt differently. To us, printing was an avodat ha kodesh, a holy work. Some rabbis even likened the press to an altar. We called it ‘writing with many pens’ and saw it as furthering the spread of the word that began with Moses on Mount Sinai. So, my good father, you go and write the order to burn that book, as your church requires of you. And I will say nothing to the printing house, as my conscience requires of me. Censura praevia or censura repressiva, the effect is the same. Either way, a book is destroyed. Better you do it than have us so intellectually enslaved that we do it for you.”

Vistorini had no ready response to the rabbi, and that irritated him. He became aware of a dull thudding in his temple. The two men took a cool farewell of each other, and Judah Aryeh left the priest, still seated, by the canal. As the rabbi walked away, his heart beat hard. Had he been too forthright? Anyone overhearing their exchange would have gasped at his insolence and wondered that Vistorini didn’t have him sent to the Leads. But anyone overhearing would not have known the history that stood between them. They had been friends, in so far as such a word had meaning in their circumstances, for ten years. So why, the rabbi asked himself, was his heart pounding so?

As soon as he turned off the fondamenta and out of sight of Vistorini, Aryeh leaned against the wall and breathed shallowly. The breaths hurt. He had had the pains for many years. He remembered well how his chest had ached the first day he met the priest, in the office of the Inquisitor. Judah Aryeh had taken a great risk. Few went willingly to the Holy Office, but he had asked to be heard there. He had spoken for more than two hours, in eloquent Latin, trying to obtain a partial lifting of the ban on the Talmud. The two-part work was the distillation of Jewish thought since the days of exile, and to be deprived of it had been a hardship, an intellectual fast that had begun to feel like starvation. For the Mishnah, the main body of the work, he knew there was no hope of reprieve. But for the second part of the Talmud, the Gemara, he felt he could make a case. The Gemara was an exchange of rabbinical opinions, a collection of arguments and disputes. This, he argued, could be seen as helping rather than harming the church, as it demonstrated that even rabbis disagreed on aspects of Jewish law. Surely the evidence of such divisions within Judaism could be used to strengthen the church’s case against his faith?

Vistorini had stood behind the Inquisitor’s chair, his eyes narrowed. He knew the Hebrew texts intimately, having confiscated and destroyed so very many copies of the Talmud. He knew that any moderately learned rabbi could take the Gemara and reconstruct from it the text of the accursed Mishnah for his students. But the Inquisitor let himself be wrapped inside the rabbi’s skein of clever words. He gave the Jews leave to keep such copies of the Talmud as they had in hand, so long as they were properly expurgated.

Although he had lost the match of wits, Vistorini had been impressed by Aryeh; by his learning, by his courage, but also by his cunning. It was, he thought to himself, like watching an alchemist show a deceptive increase. You knew there was some trick being played, yet observe as closely as you could and still the moment and the means of adding the extra ore would remain obscure to you.

As the rabbi, giddy with relief at saving his texts, made to leave the Inquisitor’s chamber, Vistorini had leaned in close and whispered, “Judah the Lion. Better they should have named you Judah Shu’al.” The rabbi looked into the priest’s eyes and saw, not anger exactly, but the ambivalent emotion a loser has toward a worthy opponent. The next time Aryeh came to the Holy Office, he took a chance. He had the curate announce him to Vistorini as “Rabbi Judah Vulpes.”

Vistorini came to enjoy sparring with Aryeh, who could appreciate a wordplay in three languages. The priest had led a solitary life. At the orphanage, his thick accent and the shame that seemed to shadow mentions of his past made him shy with the other boys. At the seminary, his interests and abilities had set him off from his peers. But with Aryeh, he could wrestle with an intellectual equal. He appreciated that Aryeh never wasted his time by trying to defend blatant heresy or clear violations of the Index. Sometimes, Vistorini allowed the rabbi to convince him. He would redact rather than destroy, and once or twice he raised his pen to reprieve a threatened text, writing the necessary words of authority on the first of its pages.

His interest in Aryeh eventually led him to conquer a long-standing distaste, and cross the little bridge to the Geto. When he had been a seminarian, many of his fellow students had gone there regularly. Baiting the Jews had been a favorite sport for some of the youths; others had gone in an honest spirit of evangelism, to win souls. A few had gone to risk their own by taking part in illicit entertainments. But Vistorini had found the very idea of the Geto repellent. He would not willingly enter a gated neighborhood crawling with nothing but Jews. The very idea made him feel trapped, suffocated, unclean.

The first Jews to settle in Venice in 1516 had been German loan bankers. Others followed, but were allowed to pursue only three trades: pawnbrokers, providing inexpensive credit to poor Venetians; strazzaria dealers, buying and selling used goods; or foreign traders, using their ties to the Levant to facilitate the city’s vast export and import business. They were permitted to live only in the small area that had once been the city’s iron foundry, or Geto, a walled island of ash, joined to the rest of the city by only two narrow bridges, gated and locked each night.

But as the years passed, some Venetians had warmed to the presence of the Jews, hiring them to perform their haunting music, seeking them out as physicians or financial advisers. For the Jews, the fact that their property rights were respected and that they had protection of the law made Venice a promised land compared with conditions elsewhere.

So they had kept coming: the Ponentini, expelled from Spain and then from Portugal by the Catholic monarchs. Then the Tedeschis, fleeing pogroms in the German cities; and the ever-restless Levantinis from lands such as Egypt and Syria. The community had swollen to near two thousand souls, their dwellings piled one atop the other, six or seven large families together, until the Geto had the densest population and the tallest structures in Venice. When Vistorini asked the way to Judah’s synagogue, he was directed to a tall, narrow apartment building. At the top of a steep, dark stairwell, the rabbi’s house of worship shared roof space with a dovecote and a chicken coop.

Although he had first been drawn to the rabbi as a kindred intellect, it was weakness, not strength, that had sealed their bond. One afternoon, Judah had happened to be walking in the area between the Geto and the priest’s church, taking the narrowest callettos and rughettas so as to escape harassment on the more crowded thoroughfares. He had interrupted a cutpurse who was bending over the body of his victim. The man ran off, and Judah recognized Domenico, drunk, his head bleeding from the robber’s blow, his cassock soaked in urine. The rabbi had taken a great personal risk, missing curfew, to obtain clean linens and help the priest get sober, so that his church never knew what a shameful spectacle its representative had made of himself.

When Domenico tried to thank Judah, the rabbi muttered that he too had a weakness that Satan exploited from time to time. He would not say more. And yet that weakness gnawed at his mind, distracting him from his prayers by day and from the tender exchanges with his wife by night. As he slumped against the wall in the calle, he knew that the pain in his chest did not come only from the boldness of his exchange with the priest. Nor was it his morning’s errand—illicit, dangerous—that had set his heart skipping and thumping. Both those things combined with the nagging voice in his head, the tempter’s voice that he could not quiet. He had tried, God his witness knew how he had tried, to arrange to leave Venice before Carnivale was to begin in just a few days. He had wanted to put himself out of reach of sin. The ability to go behind a mask, to be another man, to do what a Jew may not do—the temptation overwhelmed him. The year before, he had managed to get a position as a tutor outside the city. But the season of Carnivale had been extended year by year, and suitable appointments had become hard to find. He had applied to tutor a youth in Padua, and to take the bimah for a sick rabbi in Ferrara. But neither situation had been offered to him.

As Carnivale drew closer, his wife, knowing the danger, had gone through his box, searching among his clothes for the mask and cape that would make him indistinguishable from a Venetian Gentile. Eventually, she found where he had concealed them, among the notions and bolts of cloth belonging to their daughter, the seamstress. She had taken both items directly to the strazzaria and sold them. He had thanked her for it, kissing her tenderly on the forehead. For a day or so, he felt profound relief that the props of his disgrace had been put beyond his reach. But soon, all he had been able to think about was Carnivale, and the opportunity it afforded him.

Even now, when he needed his wits, the serpent wrapped itself around his every thought, squeezing out reason and conscience. He made his way to the set of steps near the Rialto where he had been told to wait. He did not like to stand so, exposed, in the heart of the city. He sensed people staring at him. Citizens pushed past him, muttering disparaging comments. It was with great relief that he saw the gondolier expertly poling the boat toward the steps. The boat was painted an austere black, the color mandated by laws to discourage Venetians from ostentatious displays of their wealth. The uniform color, as well as the legendary discretion of the gondoliers, helped trysting lovers maintain their anonymity.

Aryeh made his way gingerly down the slippery stone steps, aware that the sight of a Jew boarding a gondola was no very common thing. He was nervous, and the fluttering of his heart made him a little dizzy. A Venetian would have reached out to take the gondolier’s elbow as a way of steadying himself as he boarded, but Aryeh was unsure how the gondolier would feel about being touched by a Jew. The superstition that such a touch could be used for Jewish witchcraft, to pass evil spirits to Christians, was widespread among Venetians. Just as he placed his foot in the boat, the wake from a passing craft tipped the deck. Aryeh wobbled, waving his arms like windmills, and landed on his rear. From the Rialto came coarse laughter. A gob of spittle traveled over the canal wall and landed on his hat.

“Dio!” the gondolier cried, reaching down and grasping the rabbi with forearms well muscled from plying the oar. When the rabbi was on his feet, the gondolier brushed his clothing solicitously and then hurled a raft of salty invective that shut the mouths of the laughing youths ashore.

Aryeh chided himself for his thoughts about the gondolier. Of course, Doña Reyna de Serena would hardly have a Jew hater in her employ. She was sitting, waiting for him, in the cushioned privacy of the felze.

“Quite an entrance, Rabbi,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Not the most discreet way to come aboard. But sit now.” She gestured at the embroidered silken cushions opposite her own. Outside, the felze curtain was a discreet black sailcloth. But inside, it was lined with gold-threaded brocades that made a joke of the sumptuary laws.

Reyna de Serena had come to Venice in some state a decade earlier. Having fled Portugal a Jew, she had arrived in Venice professing herself a devout convert to Christianity. She had taken a new name, one that indicated her gratitude to her place of refuge. As a Christian, she had been able to establish herself outside the crowded precincts of the Geto, in a magnificent palace, right beside the Venetian mint. Some Venetians joked that the Serena house contained even more gold than its neighbor, for Serena was heiress to one of the greatest Jewish banking fortunes in Europe. Because the family had spread its operations well beyond the Iberian Peninsula, only a portion of the wealth had been lost to the plundering royals of Spain and Portugal. Although she no longer answered to her family’s Jewish name, there was little doubt in most minds that she still had access to its funds.

But Serena did not spend her great wealth only on her brocade hangings and her entertainments, which were attended by the cream of the nobility. In secret, she was Aryeh’s chief source of alms for needy members of the Geto community. Furthermore, he knew she aided Jews in many other cities, through the banking network her family had established. He also knew that her public face as a devout Catholic was a mask she wore, putting it on as casually as a Carnivale disguise.

“So, Rabbi. Tell me your needs this day. How can I help you to help our people?”

Aryeh despised himself for what he was about to do. “My lady, the wings of your generosity have already enfolded a great many of our sons and daughters, protecting them from the cruelties of exile. You are a fountain of clear water where the parched may drink, you are—”

Reyna de Serena raised a jeweled hand and waved it in front of her face, as if warding off a bad smell. “Enough. Just tell me how much you need.”

Aryeh named a sum. His mouth was dry, as if the lie had parched it. He watched her face, grave and lovely, as she considered the amount for an instant, and then reached into the pile of cushions beside her and drew out two fat purses.

Aryeh licked his lips and swallowed hard. “My lady, the families will bless your name. If you knew the details of their hardship…”

“I do not need to know anything more than that they are Jews, they are in need, and you think them worthy of my help. I have trusted you with my secret, Rabbi; how then not trust you with a few sequins?”

As the rabbi felt the weight of the gold, he wondered at her definition of few. But the word trust made his heart contract as if a fist had suddenly squeezed it.

“Now, Rabbi, I have a service to ask of you.”

“Anything, my lady.” The fist eased its grip a little, at the hope he might be able to do something in partial atonement for his dishonesty.

“I hear you are a friend of the censor at the Holy Office.”

“I would not say ‘friend’ exactly, my lady.” He thought of the terse exchange by the canal. “But we know each other, we speak together often, and with civility. In fact, I am just come from him. He wants to close the printing office of Abraham Pinel—the one that the Bernadotti lend their names to.”

“Does he so? Perhaps I might have a word with Lucio de Bernadotti. I am sure he would prefer to avoid such an embarrassment. Perhaps he can arrange to have the house commission a work in praise of the pope, so that a sudden closure by the Holy Office would become less politically expedient?”

Aryeh smiled. No wonder Reyna de Serena had survived, even thrived, in an exile that had crushed so many. “But how can I help my lady with the censor?”

“I have this,” she said, reaching once again under the cushions at her side and drawing out a small, kid-bound book with finely wrought silver clasps. She handed it to the rabbi. Aryeh took the book in his hands.

“It is very old,” he said.

“Indeed. More than a hundred years. Like me, a survivor from a world that no longer exists. Open it.”

Aryeh released the catches, admiring the talent of the silversmith. Each clasp, closed, was in the form of a pair of wings. As the delicate catch released—still smoothly, after more than a century—the wings opened to reveal a rosette enfolded within. Aryeh saw at once that the book was a haggadah, but unlike any he had ever seen before. The gold leaf, the rich pigments…he stared at the illuminations, turning each page eagerly. He was delighted, yet a little disturbed, to see Jewish stories told in an art so like that of the Christians’ prayer books.

“Who made this book? These pictures?”

Reyna de Serena shrugged. “How I would love to know. It came to me from an elderly manservant of my mother’s. He was a kindly man, ancient by the time I knew him. He used to tell me stories, when I was little. Such terrible stories, filled with wicked soldiers and pirates, storms at sea and plagues on land. I loved them, as a child will, who does not yet know enough of the world to perceive what is real and what is fable. Now, I am ashamed to recall how I pressed him for those stories, for I think they were the true stories of his own life. He said he was born in the very month of the Spanish expulsion, and that his mother had died in a shipwreck not long after that, trying to find a safe haven in which to raise him. He somehow came under the protection of my family—many orphans did, over the years. As a youth he worked for my grandfather, not in the bank, but in the secret business of helping Jews to escape from Portugal. In any case, the book was his; his oldest and dearest possession. When he died, he left it to my mother, and when she she died passed it down to me. And I have treasured it, because it is lovely, but also because it reminds me of him, and the suffering of so many like him.

“Rabbi, I need the censor to examine and pass this book. But I cannot take any chances with it. I must know he will pass it before I bring it to his attention. And, of course, no one must know it is mine. Catholic ladies have no need of haggadot.”

“Doña de Serena, let me take it and study it. I know very well what form of words violates the Catholics’ Index. I will make sure in the first place that there is indeed nothing offensive to the church, and then I will bring it to Father Vistorini in a way most assured to bring a satisfactory outcome.”

“You will be sure of it? I think I could not bear it if this book, having traveled so far and through so much, should be consigned to the flames.”

“So, that is why I must ask you, my lady, if I might: although I am confident I can get what you seek from the censor, why, if you keep the book in secret, do you need to have it passed? Surely you can have no reason to fear that your personal property would ever be searched or examined? No one in Venice would dare—”

“Rabbi, I propose to leave Venice—”

“My lady!”

“—and at that time, who knows what scrutiny my goods might become subject to. I need to be meticulous.”

“But this is grievous news indeed! I shall miss you. All the Jews of Venice will miss you, even though they do not know the name of their generous patroness. You have no idea how many undeserved blessings I get from my people as a result of the alms you allow me to dispense to them.”

She raised her hand, again impatient with his praise.

“I have lived well here. But I have learned something about myself, as the years have passed. I have discovered that I cannot live my whole life as a lie.”

“So, you propose to drop the pretense of your conversion? You know it is a risk, weak as the Inquisition is, it still—”

“Rabbi, do not trouble yourself. I have arranged safe passage.”

“But where will you go? Where is this happy place where one may live and prosper as a Jew?”

“Not so very far. Just across the sea that stands between us and the lands under the governance of the Sublime Porte. The Ottoman sultans have long welcomed us—for our skills and our wealth. When I was younger, I did not choose to go there, but much has changed since then. The community has grown. In several places we have our doctors, our Hebrew poets. The sultan has invited me, and even now is sending a chaus from his court to the doge with a message to arrange my safe passage. It is not without risk. Many will be glad to know that what they have long suspected is true: that I have pretended Christianity in order to live freely here. But if I stay, I must live my life alone. I cannot marry a Christian man and keep from him the secret of my Jewish soul. There, perhaps, it will not be too late to make a match, to have a child. Perhaps you will come and make the blessings at his brit? They say the city of Ragusa is very lovely—not so lovely as Venice, to be sure, but at least it will be an honest life. I will have my own name back again. Now, enough. Pray with me, for I yearn to fill my ears with the sound of Hebrew.”

A short time later, Aryeh disembarked from the gondola in a canaletto some distance from the bustle and inquisitive eyes of the Rialto. His pockets heavy with Doña de Serena’s purses, the small book pressed against his waist, he had every intention of going home. He was walking, head down, eyes on the stones. He had passed the mascarer’s workshop without even looking up to see what masks the artisan had placed on display. But at the corner, he stopped. The gold in his pockets anchored him there.

Usually, Judah knew his obsession for what it was: a temptation of Satan. But sometimes his reason and learning allowed him to convince himself otherwise. Had not the tribes of Israel been assigned their lands by the casting of lots? Had not the Hebrews selected their first king just so? How could something be from Satan if the Torah sanctioned it? Perhaps it wasn’t Satan who had instructed him to cheat Doña de Serena. Perhaps the hand of the Lord had given him these purses. It might be divine Providence, requiring him to risk all, so that he would win even greater riches for his people. He would dispense such wealth to the needy as would uplift the entire Geto. Even as his heart flipped and shuffled in his chest, Judah felt himself suffused with pleasure at the thought. He turned, retraced the few steps to the mask-maker’s workshop, and entered.

Vistorini rose from his desk, looking for a cloth to mop his brow. He had occupied the morning dealing with the seizure orders for the heretical book. It was too late in the year, and too early in the day, to be so hot. His sweat smelled sour, a reminder that he had not bathed in some time. The argument with the Jew had set his head throbbing, and now the pain grew sharp. A small knot of anger formed in his unsettled stomach. He told himself that he was affronted, that the rabbi presumed too much upon their friendship. He could not admit the truth; that he did not like being bested in argument. His gut tightened. He needed the latrine. He moved into the hall of the Holy Office with the unsteady gait of a sick old man.

It was cooler, at least, in the hall. Generally, the mildewed walls oppressed him, but on this day he was glad of a little respite from the closeness of his chamber. As he turned the corner, he almost collided with the serving boy, carrying the tray that contained his sparse lunch. He took the napkin from the tray and wiped his face, then handed the sweat-smeared cloth to the boy, who accepted it gingerly, and with an expression of distaste. Damn him, thought the priest, continuing to the latrine. Damn all these youths and their judgmental airs. It was bad enough to have to put up with that insolent altar boy, Paolo, an educated child of a good family. But how dare a servant look at him with such contempt?

Vistorini’s bowels leaked their contents into the malodorous drain, but the pain in his gut barely eased. Perhaps he had a canker sore developing. He went reluctantly to the refectory table, looking for the wine. He had no appetite for the cook’s watery broth or the bread to sop it. A single goblet, not more than half filled, had been set at his place. When he called for more, the boy said that the wine cupboard had already been locked by the steward. He thought he saw a shadow of a smirk, quickly suppressed, cross the youth’s face as he reported this.

Back in his office, his mood worse, Vistorini set about the routine business of redacting. His pen laden with heavy black ink, he went through pages, rendering illegible any Hebrew references to Christians, to the uncircumcised, to Jew haters, to “observers of strange rites” unless the passage was unambiguously referring to the idolaters of antiquity and was not a coded reference to the church. He fell upon words such as wicked kingdom or Edom or Roman that might possibly be read as referring to Christians. He also expurgated any mention of Judaism as the one true faith, all references to the Messiah yet to come, any use of the words pious or holy when applied to Jews.

On days when Vistorini felt well, he would handle the books more gently, sometimes even performing his duty by emending an objectionable passage, rather than striking it out. If he added the words star worshippers after a reference to idolater, he could exclude the implication that veneration of images of Christian saints was idol worship.

But now his head throbbed and his mouth tasted like dung. His pen slashed through the words with heavy cross lines. Sometimes, he scored so hard that the nib of the pen tore through the vellum. He felt as if he might be sick. He paged through the book, deciding there were too many errors. Vindictively, he cast it aside, destined for burning. That would show Judah Aryeh, the arrogant ass. Why not burn them all and be done with it? Then he could go home, where at least his servant would bring him a drink. He brought his arm across the desk, sweeping half a dozen unread volumes into the pile marked for the fire.

Judah Aryeh sat up slowly in the dark, so as not to awaken his wife. The moonlight lit the curve of her cheek, and her unbound hair, always modestly hidden by day, spilled across the pillow in a wild profusion of black and silver. It was all he could do to refrain from caressing it. When they were first married, he had tangled his hands in that hair, clutched at it, been aroused by the feel of it against the bare skin of his chest as they made the wild, unpracticed love of the very young.

Sarai was a lovely woman still, and even after two dozen years he could grow hard if she looked at him a certain way. Sometimes, he wondered about Vistorini, and how he could live a life without a woman’s warmth in his bed. Or children. What would it be, to miss the sight of them, sweet-faced infants growing, changing, year by year, finding their paths to an honorable maturity? He wondered if the wine his friend drank so excessively was a way to blunt those needs, so natural, so God given.

It was not that Aryeh despised the life disciplined by faith. To the contrary, he knew the ascetic beauty of such a way of being. He lived every moment mindful of the 613 commandments of the Torah. It was natural to him to separate the milk from the meat, to refrain from labor on the Sabbath, to abide by the laws of family purity in his relations with his wife. The disciplines of that monthly abstinence had only sharpened desire and sweetened their reunion. But to be without a wife entirely…that, to him, was no fit life for a man.

The door creaked as Aryeh closed it. He waited on the stair for a moment to see if the sound had roused anyone. But the crowded building was never quiet, even at this late hour. An old man’s hacking cough came through the thin wooden partition between their apartment and the next. If one needed to build ever upward, the walls had to be of the thinnest and lightest materials. From the floor below, the cry of a hungry newborn pierced the night. And from above came the incessant crowing of the damned cockerel that seemed to lack all sense of dawn or dark. Someone should have the shochet dispatch that benighted fowl to the pot, Aryeh thought, as he picked his way carefully in the dark down the creaking wooden staircase. Outside, he made for the narrow place that divided his building from the next one. Dropping to his knees, he passed a hand through the slimy stones and tugged out the canvas sack he had hidden there. Stealing down the alley, he waited until he was in the deepest shadow to open the sack and shake out the contents. After a few moments, he went on toward the Geto gates.

The hardest part of the night’s deception lay ahead of him. The gates had been closed several hours earlier. Gentiles whose business in the Geto had detained them past curfew could easily obtain egress simply by bribing the guards. But the only way out, for a Jew, demanded nerve and guile. Aryeh lingered in the shadows and waited. The rabbi’s distinctive chestnut curls escaped from beneath the tri-corn hat of a patrician. The damp air penetrated even the fine wool of the nobleman’s cloak that, with the mask, completed his disguise. Almost an hour passed. He flexed his shoulders to relieve their stiffness and shook his legs, one after the other, to prevent cramps. Soon, he would have to give up for the night and try again the next. But just as that thought took shape, he heard the sounds he had been waiting for. Ragged voices, raucous laughter. Soon, a party of Gentile youths straggled into the campiello. Using the license of Carnivale, they had been snatching some illicit foreign pleasures among immigrant Jews whose condition was so low that they pandered their sons and daughters for the purpose.

There were six or seven of them, staggering toward the gatehouse, crying up the guardsmen to let them out. All wore the dark cloak of Carnivale and the masks of characters from the commedia dell’arte. Aryeh’s heart flipped and fluttered in his chest. He had only a moment to act, to fall in with the party and hope that in the dark and their inebriation they would not raise a fuss. He touched a hand to his mask, nervously checking the ties for the tenth time in as many minutes. He had chosen a common and popular design: the long beak of the plague doctor. No doubt there were, that night in the city, a horde of men dressed just alike. But at the last moment, as he stepped from the scalloped shadows and into the square, doubts swarmed his mind. Surely it was too great a risk. Surely the youths would challenge him. He should go back as he had come, anonymous in the dark, and fling the damnable mask into the sewer as he went.

But then he thought of the candlelight dancing on piles of gold sequins, the dizzying ecstasy in the moment the card turned and revealed its secrets. Aryeh swallowed hard. The pleasure of the thought was so great he could taste it at the back of his throat. He stepped forward and into the youths’ noisy wake. Be bold, he thought. He threw an arm over the shoulder of the nearest youth and attempted to feign a laugh that came out in a strange, nervous falsetto.

“Help me, young sir. My legs are gone from too much drink and I don’t wish to draw the attention of the guards.” The youth’s eyes, through the crescent slots of an Arlecchino mask, were unintelligent as a cow’s. “Awright, uncle, on we go,” he slurred. His breath, Aryeh thought, could have fueled a lamp.

It was just an instant, passing under the lit gate, but Aryeh felt sure his pounding heart—how could they not hear it?—would give him away. But then he was through and on the narrow bridge. Three steps up, three steps down, into the Gentiles’ Venice. As he left the bridge, he reclaimed his arm from the youth’s shoulder and melted away toward a shadowed overhang. He rested his head against a rough stone wall and tried to breathe. It was some minutes before he was able to go on.

As he turned back into the canaletto, the crowd swept him up into itself. The dark brought no rest in Venice during Carnivale. At sunset, torches and chandeliers shed light on a continuum of celebration. The city was mobbed; its main thoroughfares more crowded, for once, than those of the Geto. The costumed nobles drew pickpockets and mountebanks who hoped to prey on them; jugglers, acrobats, and bear baiters who hoped to entertain them. Class, for the moment, was expunged. The tall man in the long-nosed Zanni mask bearing down upon Aryeh might well be a servant or a porter, like his character, or he might be one of the Ten. “Good evening, Mr. Mask,” was all the greeting required.

Aryeh touched his hat as he sidled by the tall Zanni and merged again into the throng, allowing it to carry him along toward a ridotto, which lay no great distance from the bridge. He entered, one masked nobleman among so many abroad in the night. He climbed to the second floor and passed into the room of sighs. The salon was fitted up in a gaudy taste, the light from many chandeliers too bright to flatter the wrinkled necks of the masked women who lolled listlessly upon sofas, comforting their losing partners. There were husbands with mistresses, wives with the cicisbeos meant be their chaperones but often, in fact, their lovers. There were also prostitutes, panderers, and police spies. All wore masks to equalize their condition. All, that is, except the bankers. These men, all of them members of the aristocratic Barnabot family, were the only Venetians approbated to fill this role. Each Barnabot, dressed alike in long black robe and flowing white wig, stood behind his own table in the next salon. Their bare faces proclaimed their identity for all to know.

There were more than a dozen tables from which to choose. Aryeh watched as the bankers shuffled and dealt hands of basset and panfil. He ordered wine and ambled over to observe a high-stakes game of treize. There was just a single player, matching his luck with the bank. The deal passed back and forth between them several times before the player scraped his sequins into a small purse and went off, laughing, to his friends. Aryeh stepped into his place, and two other men joined him. The banker stood between tall candles, shuffling the cards as the players laid out their piles of sequins, each of them betting against the luck of the dealer. It was a simple game: the dealer had to name the cards from one to thirteen—ace to king—as he dealt. If the card fell as he named it, he collected the wagers and retained the deal. If he reached the king without matching a call to the dealt card, he had to pay the wagers and relinquish the deal to the player on his right.

His voice, when he commenced the deal, was low and even. “Uno,” he said, as the five of spades hit the table. “Due,” as the nine of hearts appeared. “Tre,” and luck was still against him as the eight of spades appeared. The count had risen to “nove” and still the dealer had not dealt the card he was naming. Just four more chances, and Aryeh’s gold sequin would be doubled.

“Fante,” the banker called. But the card that he dealt was a seven of diamonds, not a jack. Just two more chances. Aryeh eyed his sequin.

“Re.” The last card, the king. But the dealer had turned up an ace. The dealer’s long white fingers reached for the pile of sequins beside him. He placed one before Aryeh, four before a man in a lion mask, and, with a slight bow, seven before the high-wagering man in the Brighella mask. The dealer, having lost the hand, surrendered the deal to the Brighella. Aryeh loosened his mask to mop his brow. He reached into Doña Reyna’s purse and placed two more sequins on the table beside his original wager and his winnings from the first hand. His wager was now four gold pieces. He thought he noticed the men on either side of him give small nods of approval.

“Uno.” The voice from behind the Brighella mask was deep and resonant. The card he turned over was a nine of clubs. “Due.” A jack, much too soon to be of use to him. “Tre, quattro, cinque, sei…fante, cavallo…” The Brighella’s voice seemed to get deeper on each card, as none matched the number he cried out. Aryeh felt his own heart beating faster. He was about to win another four sequins. At this rate he would double Doña Reyna’s purse in no time. “Re!” cried the Brighella. But the card he turned was a seven of spades. The Brighella reached into his purse and placed sequins on each player’s pile. His eyes glittered through the half-moon slits above the mask’s bulbous cheeks.

The deal passed to Aryeh. He watched as the lion, the Brighella, and the impassive-faced noble of the Barnabot family placed their piles of sequins. The Brighella, chasing his losses, placed twenty gold sequins on the table. The Barnabot wagered a modest two sequins. The lion played four, as he had each hand.

Aryeh’s hands were deft and steady as he shuffled the deck. He felt exhilaration rather than dread, even with twenty-six sequins at stake. “Uno!” he cried exultantly, and, as if he had the power to summon the card from the deck, the single, vivid red blot of the ace of diamonds gleamed in the candle glow.

Aryeh scooped the winnings toward himself. As winner, the deal remained with him. Once again, the players laid their bets; the Brighella chancing another twenty sequins, the Barnadot two, the lion four.

“Uno!” Aryeh’s voice lilted, even though the card he turned over was a nine. “Due! Tre! Quattro!” It wasn’t until he reached fante, the jack, that his throat began to tighten at the prospect of loss. But the secret to Aryeh’s gambling compulsion was contained in that moment, when the dread began to spread through him like ink in a glass of clear water. For he welcomed the feeling, that dark, terrifying sensation of risk. To teeter on the edge of loss, or to win the hand, the point was the intensity of the sensation. He never felt so alive as he did in those moments, poised between the one outcome and the other.

“Cavallo!” he cried, and the card was an ace of diamonds—the same ace that had brought him fortune on the last hand had betrayed him on this one. He had only one chance more. His flesh tingled.

“Re!” he cried out, and the king he had named stared back at him from the table. The others shuffled uneasily. This man in the plague doctor mask had uncanny luck. To win one hand on the first card, and then to win another on the last card. A strange chance, indeed.

Aryeh watched the candlelight dance on the Barnabot’s ruby ring as the Barnabot slowly drew out two more sequins, and then, slowly, added two more. The nobleman was betting that the plague doctor’s luck must turn.

The Brighella gazed at him, his eyes glassy now, as he laid forty sequins upon the table. Only the lion held his ground, placing the same four sequins at risk.

For just under an hour, Aryeh’s fortune waxed, and he basked in the pleasure of his mounting pile. He had more than doubled the value of Doña Reyna’s first purse. The lion mask left the table and made an unsteady way to the room of sighs. He was replaced by a Pulcinella who seemed intoxicated and played with a reckless flourish, crying out ostentatiously at every ill turn in his fortunes. The Barnabot nobleman maintained his aloof and dignified demeanor, but his bare face began to show some lines of strain. The Brighella, the biggest loser, grasped the table. His knuckles had turned quite white. A small gallery of the curious had gathered on the edge of their circle.

Finally, inevitably, Aryeh reached the king without naming a card correctly. The Pulcinella gave a raucous cry of glee. Aryeh bowed and paid out the wagers—eighty sequins to the Brighella, ten to the Pulcinella, four to the Barnabot. He passed the deal to the Brighella and considered his next wager.

It had been a magical hour. He felt as light as one of the colored balloons that rose above the city during Carnivale. Truly, the large pile of winnings could do much for the poor in his congregation. He stood there, his hand hesitating over the gold. Perhaps Satan had lured him here, but God had given him this moment of choice. He would listen to the voice of reason in his head. He would take these winnings and leave the ridotto. He had fed his beast, had felt the blood rise in terror and exhilaration. It was enough. He swept the pile toward the mouth of his purse.

A hard hand, the Brighella’s, landed on his own. Aryeh looked up, startled. The eyes behind the other man’s mask were black, the pupils dilated. “No gentleman quits the game after having the advantage of the deal.”

“Quite right,” slurred the Pulcinella. “Not done, making off with a man’s money. Think more of gold, do you, than of having a good time? Not the spirit of Carnivale. Not a gentleman. Not even a Venetian, I’ll wager.”

Aryeh flushed deeply beneath his mask. Did they know? Had they guessed? By raising the issue of “otherness,” the drunken Pulcinella probed very close to the vein. He withdrew his hand from under the Brighella’s and placed it over his heart. He stepped back from the table and made a deep bow. “Gentlemen,” he said, in his soft, lilting, unmistakably Venetian accent. “Forgive me. A momentary lapse, merely. Truly I do not know what I was thinking. By all means, let us go on.”

For the next hour, the game continued, each man winning and losing in his turn. Aryeh judged that enough time had passed, and once again made to leave the table. Once again, the Brighella stayed his hand as he reached for his still-significant winnings. “Why such a hurry?” the low voice said. “Do you have a tryst?” And then his voice dropped even lower, and the bulbous mask loomed closer. “Or do you have a curfew you must keep?”

He knows, Aryeh thought. Beneath his cloak, he began to sweat.

“Give us one hand more, at decent stakes, Mr. Plague Doctor! A hand in friendship, eh?” The Brighella reached beneath his cloak then and laid a full purse upon the table. Aryeh, his hand shaking now, pushed all of his winnings forward. The fear of loss—intense, delicious—overwhelmed him.

The Barnabot nobleman had the deal again. “Uno. Due. Tre…”

Aryeh’s head felt light.

“…Otto. Nove…”

He was finding it hard to breathe through the mask. His heart thumped and banged in his chest. He was about to win again.

“…Fante. Cavallo…”

The exhilaration and the terror held him in their delicious, equal grip. And then, the terror won, pulling him down, smothering him, as the Barnabot turned over a king. The roar in Aryeh’s head muffled the sound of the syllable slowly forming on the noble’s lips. “Re!”

The Barnabot reached for the pile of gold and swept it to himself, bowing slightly in the direction of the Brighella.

“Now, dear Doctor. Now you may leave us, if you are so very tired of our company.”

Aryeh shook his head. He could not leave. Not now. He had lost not only his winnings, but a full half of his stake. One of Doña Reyna’s purses lay flaccid and empty at his side. He had been determined to wager one purse only. Half to gamble, half to spend on the needs of his flock. That was what he had told himself. But now he fumbled at his other hip for the second purse. As his fingers closed on its reassuring bulk, Aryeh felt as if he were bathed in radiance. He felt complete conviction that the magical luck of the early evening was with him again. Not his own hand, but the very hand of the divine will directed him as he pushed the full purse forward upon the table.

For once, even the impassive face of the Barnabot registered emotion. The eyebrows rose to the edge of his frosted wig, and he gave an almost imperceptible bow toward Aryeh. Then he began to deal.

Aryeh had just a few seconds to feel the exquisite pleasure-pain to which he was enslaved. The card that cost him the purse was an eight. The round vowels of the word otto seemed to fall from the Barnabot’s lips and merge with the curved infinity symbol of the number itself, elongating into a tunnel that seemed to suck the soul from the rabbi.

He stared in disbelief at all that gold, pushed into gleaming towers on the dealers’ side of the table. He raised a hand and called for a quill. He shook as he wrote a note for another hundred sequins. The Barnabot nobleman took the note between two fingers, glanced at it, and shook his head in silence. Aryeh felt the blood rise, scalding, to his scalp.

“But I have seen you play with a loser upon his word to the value of ten thousand ducats!”

“The word of a Venetian is one thing. Why don’t you go to a Jew bloodsucker if you want credit.” He let the note fall to the floor.

There was a sudden silence at the nearby tables. Masked faces turned in unison, a flock of buzzards sensing carrion.

“A Jew!” the Pulcinella slurred. “’Splains it. I knew he was no Venetian!”

Aryeh turned, knocking over his wine goblet, and stumbled from the salon. In the room of sighs, a whore reached out a fleshy arm, attempting to pull him down upon her couch. “What’s the rush?” she said, her voice low and seductive. “Everyone loses sometimes. Sit with me and I’ll make you feel better.” Then she raised her voice. “I’ve always wanted to taste a circumcised one!” He shrugged her off and staggered down the stairs to the street, humiliated by laughter closing behind him like water.

In the gray light of the sanctuary, Judah Aryeh pulled his tallis over his head and bowed low before God. “I have trespassed, I have dealt treacherously, I have robbed….” Tears wet his cheeks as he rocked forward and back, reciting the familiar words of the prayer of atonement. “I have acted perversely, and I have wrought wickedness, I have been presumptuous, I have framed lies and I have spoken falsely…I have committed iniquity and I have transgressed…. I have turned away from your commandments and judgments that are good, and it has profited me naught. What shall I say before you, who dwellest on high, and what shall I declare before you, thou who abidest in the heavens? Dost thou not know all things, hidden and revealed? May it therefore be thy will, O Lord, our God and God of our fathers, to forgive me, to pardon my iniquity, and to grant atonement for my transgressions….”

He sank down upon a bench, exhausted and heartsick. God might forgive sins against his laws, but Aryeh knew—he had preached it often enough—that forgiveness also must be sought from, and atonement made to, those who had been damaged by sinful acts. He thought with despair of returning to Reyna de Serena to confess his deception. And of the humiliation he must face before his own congregation. He would have to admit to taking the bread from the mouths of the hungriest, the medicines from the dying. And then he, poor man that he was, would have to make good the sum he had stolen. This would require the most stringent economies. He would have to pawn his books, perhaps even move the family to cheaper quarters. With six persons in two small rooms, their home was hardly lavish, yet one of the rooms had a window, and both high ceilings. Aryeh thought about the cheaper alternatives: the shochet had shown him a lightless, one-room place hard by his butchery that he had on offer for very fair terms. Privately, Judah had called the place the cave of Makhpelah, but he had promised to keep it in mind if any in his congregation was in need of housing. Rooms were in such short supply in the Geto that even such grim quarters at a fair rent would find many takers. But how could he ask Sarai to move to such a gloomy place? And his daughter, Ester, who worked at home, how would she have space for her bolts of cloth and seamstress bench? How could she sew without daylight? The sin was his, not his family’s. How could he make them suffer so?

Aryeh rubbed his hands over his cheeks. His flesh, in the growing light, was gray and haggard. Soon, the minyan would begin to gather. He would have to prepare a face to greet them.

He left the sanctuary and descended to his rooms. The aroma of frying told him that Sarai was already up. Usually, Aryeh loved the crisped frittatas she made, hot and golden brown. He would sit at the crowded table with his three sons and his beloved daughter, and let their babble and banter flow around him. But this morning the scent of the hot oil assailed him. He felt ill.

He steadied himself against a chair. Sarai was working with her back to him, her hair caught up modestly in a fine wool scarf she had knotted fetchingly at the nape of her neck. “Good morning,” she said. “You were up before the birds….” She turned to glance at him over her shoulder, and the smile on her lips turned to a concerned frown. “Are you ill, husband? You look so pale….”

“Sarai,” he said. But he could not go on. His oldest sons stood together in the corner, making their morning prayers. The youngest, who had completed his, was already at the table with his sister, enjoying their frittatas. He could not speak of his shame before them, even though soon enough the whole Geto must know of it.

“It is nothing. I could not sleep.” That last, at least, was true.

“Well, you must rest, later. You need to be refreshed to greet the Bride Shabbat.” She smiled. For a husband and wife to make love on the Sabbath was a commandment, and it was one requirement of the faith that both of them observed with joy. He gave a weak smile back, and then turned to pour a basin of water. He splashed his face and wet his hair, then replaced his kippah and climbed the stairs to the sanctuary.

The minyan had already gathered in the pale light. In these times, thought Aryeh, it was all too easy to gather ten. An outbreak of plague, not quite one year earlier, had claimed so many lives that above twenty eldest sons still came to pray each day, marking their season of sorrow, reciting the prayer for their dead.

Aryeh made his way to the bimah. A blue velvet cloth, the color of midnight, lay across the table. It had been sewn by his daughter when she was still a little girl. Even then, her stitching had been fine and even. But the cloth had grown shabby now, like almost everything in the little room. Aryeh had worn the nape off the velvet at the places where his hands gripped the bimah. This did not trouble him, any more than the benches that wobbled or the floor that rippled unevenly underfoot. These things were signs of use, signs of life, evidence that human beings came here, many of them and often, trying to talk to their God.

“Magnified and sanctified may his great name be….” The voices of the mourners rose as one. Kaddish had always been one of Aryeh’s favorite prayers—the prayer for the dead that did not mention death, or grief, or loss, but only life and glory and peace. The prayer that turned its face away from burial plots and moldering remains and set its eyes on the firmament: “May a great peace from heaven—and life!—be upon us and upon all Israel, and say all, amen! May he who makes peace in his high places make peace upon us and all Israel, and say all, amen!”

Aryeh did not linger after the morning service. He exchanged just a few brief words with his congregants on the way out. Neither did he remain at home, where he feared the intuitive scrutiny of Sarai’s loving gaze. He left her, still cooking, calmly preparing the food they would eat that night, and the next day, for on Shabbat itself no work would be done. When he left, she was patiently peeling apart each onion, layer by layer, inspecting the pieces with meticulous attention lest the tiniest insect lay within. To eat such an insect, even by accident, would be to violate the commandment against consuming any of those living things that swarm.

Aryeh made his way to the home of a strazzaria dealer who had prospered enough to set aside part of his house as a library. Because Aryeh had tutored the man’s sons, he had been invited to use the room for his own quiet study. There, he carefully unwrapped Doña de Serena’s haggadah, which he had protected in a piece of linen cloth. If he were to go to her to confess his lies and theft, at least he would not go empty-handed. He would read the book carefully to determine if it was safe to submit it to the Holy Office, and if so, he would take it to Vistorini that very day. With luck he would be able to retrieve it, with the necessary words safely inscribed, and visit Reyna de Serena after the Sabbath.

He eased the silver clasps open. What a place must Sepharad have been that the Jews who lived there could make such a book as this! Did they live like princes, these Jews? They must have done, to afford such an amount of gold and silver leaf, to pay such craftsmen as the silversmith and artists of the rank of this illuminator. And now, their descendants wandered destitute over the face of the earth, looking for any safe place that would allow them to lay down their heads in peace. Perhaps there had once been many books like this one, just as fine, all ashes now. Gone and lost and forgotten.

But he could not afford to give in to lament, or to bedazzlement. No good wondering about the illuminator—surely a Christian? For what Jew would have learned to make images such as the Christians made?—or about the sofer, who had inscribed the text in such a lovely and accomplished hand.

These stories, intriguing as they were, he had to put from him. Instead, he had to put himself into the mind of Giovanni Domenico Vistorini, a hunter’s mind, fierce in pursuit of the slightest hint of heresy. A suspicious and perhaps a hostile mind. Aryeh hoped that Vistorini, the scholar, would appreciate the book for its beauty and its antiquity. But Vistorini the censor had burned so many beautiful books.

So Aryeh turned the pages of illumination until he arrived at the first pages of Hebrew text. “This is the bread of affliction….” He began to read the familiar story of the Passover as if he were encountering it for the first time.

Vistorini raised the glass to his lips. Not bad, the wine the Jew had brought him. He did not recall drinking kosher wine before. He took another swallow. Not bad at all.

No sooner had he set his glass down than the Jew reached for the wineskin and refilled it. He noted, with pleasure, that it was a very large wineskin, and that the Jew’s own glass stood, barely touched, glowing red in the low afternoon light. He would have to draw this business out, that would be the wise thing. For, once he had said what he proposed to say, the Jew would leave, and likely take his wineskin with him.

“This book of yours, are there many like it, hiding under bushels in your Geto?”

“None that I have ever seen. Truly, I think very few such books have survived from the community of Sepharad.”

“Whose book is it?”

Aryeh had expected the question, and dreaded it. He could not betray Reyna de Serena. “Mine,” he lied. Aryeh hoped to use whatever modicum of friendship or its simulacrum that stood between himself and the priest.

“Yours?” The priest’s eyebrow rose skeptically.

“I had it from a merchant who came here from Apulia.”

The priest gave a short laugh. “Did you so? You, who are always crying poor? You could afford to buy a codex as fine as this?”

Aryeh’s mind raced. He could say he received it for a service, but that seemed unlikely. What service could he do that would be of such a value? Because his sin was at the forefront of his mind, he blurted out the next thing that came into it. “I won it from him, at a game of chance.”

“Strange stakes! Judah, you amaze me. What game?”

The rabbi colored. The conversation was veering rather too close to the marrow. “Chess.”

“Chess? Hardly a game of chance.”

“Well, the merchant had a rather inflated view of his skills. He took a chance in wagering his book upon them. So in his case, yes, one might say that chess was a game of chance.”

The priest laughed again, this time really amused. “Words. To you, they are just sweetmeats in your mouth. I forget that, when I do not see you.” He took another large swallow of wine. He was feeling more warmly toward the rabbi. What had it been that had irritated him so on their last meeting? He couldn’t now quite recall it. Pity he had to disappoint the fellow, really.

“Well, I am glad to hear that this was the way of it. For what comes by chance will be the more easily let go.”

Aryeh sat up, rigid in his chair. “You can’t mean…? You don’t mean to say that you will not pass this book?”

The priest leaned across the desk and placed a hand on Aryeh’s shoulder. It was unlike him to willingly touch a Jew. “I regret to say it, but yes, that is precisely the situation.”

Aryeh shrugged off the priest’s hand and stood up, anger and disbelief animating him.

“On what possible grounds? I have read every page of text, every psalm, every prayer, every song. There is nothing, not one word of it, that contravenes the Index in any particular.”

“You are right. There is nothing of that nature in the text.” Vistorini’s voice was low and calm.

“Well, then?”

“I do not speak of the text. There is, as you say, nothing against the church in the text.” He paused. Aryeh’s pounding heart seemed loud to him in the silence. “There is, I regret to say, a grave heresy in the illumination.”

Aryeh covered his eyes with his hand. It had not even occurred to him to closely study the illuminations. He had been dazzled by them, but had not lingered to parse their meaning in any detail. He sat down again, heavily, in the priest’s carved chair.

“Which one?” he said, his voice a whisper.

“Oh, more than one, I am afraid.” The priest reached across the desk for the codex, bumping his wineglass as he did so. Aryeh put out a hand, reflexively, to steady it. Then, in the vain hope of mellowing the priest, he reached for the wineskin and filled the glass to the brim.

“One need not look far,” said Vistorini, opening the book at the first set of illuminations. “See, here? The artist tells the story of Genesis. He gives us the division of light from dark. So, and very nicely done, the severe contrast of the white and black pigments. Austere and eloquent. Nothing there of a heretical nature. The next one: ‘And the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters.’ Lovely, the use of the gold leaf to indicate the ineffable presence of God. Again, nothing heretical. But the next, and the next, and the three that follow. Look, and tell me: what do you see?”

Aryeh looked, and his head became light. How could he have not seen? The earth on which the Almighty created the plants and the animals—in each and every illumination, it was shown as an orb. That the earth was round, and not flat, was now the opinion of a majority of theologians. Interesting that this artist of a century earlier, when Christians were being sent to the stake for this belief, espoused it. But that, alone, would not condemn the book. The illuminator had ventured further into dangerous territory. In the top right corner of three of the paintings, above the earth, was a second gold-leafed orb, clearly meant to be the sun. Its placement was ambiguous.

Aryeh looked up at Vistorini. “You believe this implies the heliocentric heresy?”

“‘Implies’! Rabbi, don’t be disingenuous. This is clearly in support of the heresy of the Saracen astronomers, of Copernicus, whose book is on the Index, of that man in Padua, Galileo, who will soon enough be brought before the Inquisition to answer for his errors.”

“But the drawings—one need not read them that way. The orbs, the concentric rings, they might be decoration, merely. Surely, if one were not looking for it, the implication could pass unnoticed….”

“But I am looking for it.” Vistorini drained his glass, and the rabbi, distracted, refilled it. “Because of that man Galileo, the church is now especially concerned with the promulgation of this heresy.”

“Dom Vistorini, I implore you. For any kindness I may have done you in the past, for the many years we have known each other. Please, spare this book. I know you are a man of learning, a man who respects beauty. You see how beautiful this book is….”

“All the more reason to burn it. Its beauty might one day seduce some unwitting Christian to think well of your reprehensible faith.” Vistorini’s mood was elevated. He was enjoying this. The rabbi was entirely in his power. The man’s voice, that mellifluous voice, was breaking. Vistorini had never known him to care quite so passionately about one book. He had a sudden idea that would prolong the pleasure of this afternoon. He held up his empty glass to the window, as if studying the fine curve of the goblet.

“Perhaps…but no. I should not suggest it—”

“Father?” Aryeh leaned forward, his eyes avid. He fumbled for the wineskin and filled the priest’s glass.

“Well, I might redact the offending pages.” He ran his finger over the vellum, flipping it back and forward. “Four pages—not so very many—and then there would still remain the key drawings, of the flight from Egypt, that is the main point of the work….”

“Four pages.” Aryeh imagined the knife detaching the vellum folios. He felt actual pain in his chest, sharp, as if the knife were stabbing him.

“Here’s an idea,” said Vistorini. “Since you say you won this book in a game of chance, what do you say if we play another to determine its fate? You win, I will redact and spare the book. I win, it goes to the flames.”

“What game?” Aryeh whispered.

“What game?” Vistorini sat back in his chair, sipped the wine, and pondered. “Not, I think, chess. I have a premonition that you would best me there, as you did the merchant from—where did you say?”

Aryeh, tense and upset, could not for the moment recall his fabrication. He feigned a coughing fit to mask his confusion.

“Apulia,” he blurted at last.

“Yes, Apulia. So you said. Well, I do not want to risk emulating the fate of that unfortunate man. Cards, I have none, nor die to cast.” He continued, idly, turning the pages. “I have it. Let us play a version of lots, but fit the game to the wager. I will write the words of censor’s permission, Revisto per mi, each one on a slip of parchment. You shall draw them blind. As you draw them, if the order of words is correct, I will inscribe that word in the book. If you draw the word out of order, I will not complete the inscription, and you lose.”

“But that means a game in which I have to win a three-to-one wager three times. The odds, Father, are too steep.”

“Steep? Yes, perhaps so. Say this, then: if your first draw is correct, you may remove that slip from the second draw. Then your odds improve to even. I think that sounds a fair game.”

Aryeh watched the priest’s hand inscribe the longed-for words on parchment scraps and drop them, one by one, into an empty coffer on his desk. His heart skipped as he noticed something the priest, who was already quite drunk, had not perceived. One of the scraps he had chosen was of a lower grade than the other two, just a little thicker. It was the scrap on which Vistorini had scrawled the middle word, per. Aryeh thanked God. Suddenly, his odds were much improved. He prayed to God to guide his hand as he reached within the box. His fingers quickly identified the thicker parchment, and rejected it. Now it was even odds. Right or wrong. Light or dark. The blessing or the curse. Therefore, choose life. He closed his hand on the scrap, drew it out, and handed it to the priest.

Vistorini’s expression did not change. He placed the scrap facedown on his desk. Then he reached for the haggadah, opened it to the last page of Hebrew text, dipped his quill, and wrote, in a fine hand, the word revisto.

Aryeh tried not to let the joy show in his face. The book was saved. He had only to select the thick scrap and this terrible game would be over. He reached again into the coffer, this time giving silent thanks to God.

He handed the thick scrap to Vistorini. This time, the priest’s face did not remain impassive. The corners of his mouth turned down. He pulled the haggadah toward him, angrily, and wrote the next two words: per mi.

Then he glared at Aryeh, who was beaming. “It is worth nothing, of course, unless I sign and date it.”

“But you…but we…Father, you gave your word.”

“How dare you!” Vistorini stood up suddenly, bumping against his heavy oak desk. The wine lapped in his glass. The liquor had worked in him to that sour point at which anger banishes euphoria.

“How dare you talk about ‘my word.’ You come to me with this implausible fabrication—this, let us be frank, this patent lie on your lips about winning this book, and you talk about the giving of my word! You presume on my goodwill, you dare to infer we are friends. Would that the boat that carried your accused forebears here from Spain had never reached dry land! Venice gives you a safe home, and you do not keep within the few rules she requires of you. You set up printing houses against the laws of the state and pass around your filth about our Blessed Savior. You, Judah, God has given you wit and made you learned, and yet you harden your heart to his truth and turn your face from his grace. Get out of here! And tell whoever really owns this book that the rabbi lost it in a game of chance. That way you will spare them the thought of all that fine gold leaf going up in flames. You Jews love your gold, I know that.”

“Domenico, please…I will do anything you ask…please….” The rabbi’s voice was ragged. He could not get his breath.

“Get out! Now. Before I charge you with promulgating heresy. Do you want to serve ten years on a galley with your feet in chains? Do you want a dark cell in the Leads? Get out!”

Judah fell to his knees and kissed the priest’s cassock. “Do what you will to me,” he cried. “But save the book!” The priest’s only answer was a shove that sent the rabbi sprawling. He rose to his feet with difficulty and staggered from the room, down the hall, and outside, into the canaletto. He was weeping and gasping, tearing at his beard like a man in mourning. All around him, pedestrians turned to stare at the mad Jew. He felt their eyes, their hatred. He began to run. The blood eddied, trapped and sluggish, in the fissured chambers of his breaking heart. As his feet landed on the hard stone, fists seemed to strike his chest, the blows of a giant.

When the boy came with the taper, Vistorini had just poured the last glass from the now-empty wineskin. At first, in dim light and in his drunkenness, he thought it was Aryeh, come back to beg from him, and he snarled. But then the boy swam into focus, and Vistorini signaled that yes, he should light the candles on his desk.

When the boy went out, he pulled the haggadah into the pool of light. He began to hear the voice in his head, the voice he didn’t usually allow himself to hear. But at night, sometimes, in dreams, and when he’d had too much to drink…

The voice, the dark room, the sense of shame, the prickling fear. The carved Madonna in the niche to the right of the doorstep. The child’s hand, enfolded in a larger, calloused one that guided the tiny fingers to touch the polished wood of her toe. “You must do this, always.” The blowing sand of that desolate town. The voices: Arabic, Ladino, Berber? He did not know any longer which language. And the other one, the language he must not speak.

“Dayenu!” He cried the word aloud. “Enough!”

He dragged a hand through his greasy hair, as if he could drag the memories from his mind and cast them away. He knew now, perhaps he had known always, the truth of that past about which he must not think, must not even dream. He saw the smashed foot of the Madonna, the small roll of parchment that fell out. He had been screaming, terrified, and struggling in some rough grip, but through his tears, he had seen it. The Hebrew script. The hidden mezuzah. Through his tears, he had seen the words “Love the lord thy God with thy whole heart….” He had seen the Hebrew letters, crushed into the dirt beneath the boot of the man who had come to arrest his parents and put them to death as crypto-Jews.

There had been a haggadah, also; he was sure of that. Hidden in that secret closet where they went to speak the forbidden language. Her face, when she lit the candles. So lined, so weathered in the flaring light. But her eyes, so kindly when she smiled at him. Her voice, when she sang the blessings over the candles. So soft, just a whisper.

No. This was wrong. It never was so. Too many Hebrew books had addled his mind. These were dreams, merely. Nightmares. Not memories. He started to pray in Latin, to drown out the fragments of the other voices. He lifted the glass. His hand shook. Wine spilled onto the parchment but he didn’t even notice. “I believe in one God, the father almighty….” He tightened his grip on the glass, raised it to his lips, and drained it. “And in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord…. Begotten but not made…and in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins….” His cheeks were wet.

“Giovanni Domenico Vistorini. I am! Giovanni. Domenico. Vistorini.” He murmured the name, over and over. He reached for the glass. Empty! His hand tightened. The thin Venetian glass shattered, and a shard pierced the fleshy part of his thumb. He barely felt it, though the blood dripped and mingled with the wine stain already blooming on the parchment.

He closed the haggadah, smearing the russet stain. Burn it, Giovanni Domenico Vistorini. Burn it now. Do not wait for the auto-da-fé. I will go to the altar of God. I, Giovanni Domenico Vistorini. I will go, because I am. Giovanni Domenico Vistor—I am…I am…Am I…am I? Am I Eliahu ha-Cohain?

No! Never so!

Suddenly, the pen was in his injured hand. He flipped the pages until he found the place. He wrote: Giovanni Dom. Vistorini. That is who I am, in this Year of Our Lord 1609.

He flung the pen across the room, laid his head down on the desk, on the cover of the haggadah, and wept as his world spun and whirled.