The Harem Midwife (8 page)

Her gaze fell on his face. There was swelling over his right eye. Grazia believed it had been caused by a blow to his head on the corner of the table as he toppled to the floor after his heart gave out. When Grazia found him, he had one leg folded underneath him, the other rotated at an awkward angle.

Cesca passed a hand over his eyes but they would not close. They resisted her, staring sightlessly—as dark and cold as they had been in life. This was why mourners placed coins on the eyes of the dead, but she had none, and even if she had, she would not have wasted them on Leon. Studying his cooling body, she wondered at herself
having been frightened of him—his pale, lashless eyes that had tracked her as she dusted, swept, polished, and set the table with silver and crystal, all the while feigning interest in the account books he kept for his business as a moneylender, brow furrowed in a scholarly frown.

In fairness, Cesca had also watched Leon. One afternoon she was quietly trimming candlewicks when Leon thought she was at the market. When she heard the hinges of his strongbox squeak nearby, she fastened her eye to a knothole in the baseboard, which gave her a view of the study.

The only light shone from high above his head—a lumpy and ill-made candle. The wick was braided from the worst class of rags, cast-off cotton perhaps or a charred scrap of linen. It was hard to imagine the exemplary Grazia—her feather-light pastry, her flawlessly straight seams and crisp table linen—fashioning such a thing. No matter, Leon did not care as long as no tallow fell on his gold.

He had lifted the lid of the chest wrapped in iron bands, which was set high on a simple wooden platform to protect it from water damage—the Tiber River flooded the Jewish Quarter during the rainy season each year, rendering the main floors dank and wet. He removed a canvas pouch from the chest. As the rough boards of the floor dug into her knees and hands, Cesca heard the clink of coins and watched as Leon opened the pouch. Next, she saw the flash of gold as Leon counted his money, letting the coins trickle between his fingers. Once counted, he replaced them in the pouch and locked them in the chest.

With the thought of that gold so close at hand, her
movements quickened. She washed Leon’s armpits, the inside of the elbows, the veins etching a trace of blue on the pallid grey skin. She finished, then let the arm drop and moved to the other side of the bed.

When she lifted the other arm his jagged fingernails caught on her dress and pulled at her bodice, as though he were clutching for her breasts one last time. His nails were so long that they curled under. Cesca found a small pair of scissors in a drawer and began to trim them. She would toss the parings in the fire so that his spirit did not return to seek revenge.

Out of the corner of her eye, through the window, she saw Foscari. He was talking to Grazia, his face the very picture of sympathy. Then, he reached high into the apple tree and plucked a fruit from its branches. As he ate, he leaned forward so the juice did not drip on his jacket. Foscari had arrived the first time one rainy night last week to borrow money from Leon. Cesca had overheard Leon tell Grazia that Foscari needed ten ducats to cover some gaming debts.

Cesca grasped the corpse’s right hand. The gold wedding ring set with a diamond caught the light, gleaming. The nail beds were as deep and rectilinear as a coffin. Ink stained the callus on his middle finger where he had grasped his quill. The broad webbing between Leon’s fingers made his ring easy to slip off, and the diamond flashed as she dropped it into her pocket. Once the body was wrapped in the winding-sheet, no one would know the ring was missing.

Seeing Foscari wipe a drop of juice off his chin made Cesca hungry. When she was a child, there had been three
years of abundant harvest, then one year of terrible famine—“the starving time,” her mother called it—a time when they ate bark, roots, grass, acorns, white clay, even boiled up leather shoes and boots. A memory floated to the surface of her mind. She was a child, perhaps four or five years, holding her mother’s hand in the middle of a square in Rome. Cesca wore a tattered green dress with an uneven hem.

Surrounding them was a huge, jostling crowd. The man next to her, a tanner judging by the stink of him, nearly trampled her in his haste to get to a scaffold. It was so high in the sky that she could barely see the hanged man swinging from the noose. The ravenous mob surged forward. Her mother swung Cesca to her hip and, making swift jabs of her elbows, shoved her way to the front of the crowd.

The tanner got there first and began hacking at the body. With his skinning knife, he severed a piece of leg and crammed it into his mouth. When Cesca’s mother begged him for a taste, he tossed her a bloody hunk of thigh. Her mother held it to Cesca’s lips. “To live, you must eat, my darling.” When Cesca averted her face, her mother coaxed her, cupping her hand under her mouth, speaking to her in a murmur until she eased in a small piece, encouraging her to chew and swallow. At first she wanted to spit it out, but the blood was warm and salty, the flesh springy and dense. Cesca’s throat relaxed. She swallowed and then, like a fledgling in a nest, opened her mouth for another morsel. Never had she felt her mother’s love so strongly.

Cesca returned to the corpse, swabbing Leon’s white, hairless thighs. His flaccid penis lay between his legs. She had not seen it in the light of day. Under the quilt, there had been only an unseen shaft of flesh, pushing and insistent. Leon imagined she enjoyed these encounters. And so she did, but not in the way he thought. Their grapplings were a welcome respite from scrubbing pots and dipping candles. In Leon’s bed her mind could wander. She could dream of the country, of hills and wheat ripening in the sun, of orchards heavy with cherries, peaches, and apples. Of her future.

From the pile of rags in the corner she took a long strip of muslin and tied his jaws together, heedless of whether his tongue was tucked into the back of his throat. She poured herself a glass of wine from a jug on the floor and drank it down. Then, crossing herself, she fumbled about under the shroud and, head turned aside, stuffed balled-up bits of rag into his orifice.

Cesca searched his room for the knife she knew he kept there. She picked it up. With the tip of the blade, she nudged his phallus into the valley between his legs, below the soft hillock of his belly. Then she gave it a jab. Leon had no more use for it than he had for his ducats. A pretty little farm in Bassano del Grappa, just a few rolling hectares. What an obedient little donkey I appear to be, Cesca thought—one of those biddable beasts who labours without complaint for years for the pleasure of kicking my master once.

CROUCHING ON THE
ledge with the knife upraised, Leah slashed at her head with jerky, erratic movements. She flung down more and more hair to join the pile on the floor, pausing only long enough to hurl a curse at Hannah in Hebrew to the effect that Hannah and all of her family were the offspring of promiscuous, fornicating pigs who rutted without regard to prohibited degrees of consanguinity.

“It is a delight to hear Hebrew spoken so fluently,” said Hannah. She had an idea. “I know what it is like to be a stranger in a strange land.” Was it her imagination or had the girl lowered the knife a little? Hannah was afraid to
move, but spoke in a steady voice, eyes fixed on the girl. “Like you, I came to this city because I had no choice. It was difficult at first—the language, Osmanlica, from which all vowels have been stolen, the odd provender stuffed with pistachio nuts and cinnamon, the Sephardic Jews who are so different from the Ashkenazi that they hardly seem to be Jews at all. But I have made my life here and so must you. Every day will become easier, until one day you will regard the harem as your home. You will be taught many things—embroidery, the rules of etiquette, not to point one’s feet toward one’s elder, never to speak first to one’s superior. You will, in time, become accustomed to your new surroundings.” How hypocritical Hannah felt urging such a life. The harem offered luxury and privilege, petting and cosseting, but would Hannah want such a life for her daughter should she be blessed with a girl one day? To be pampered but to be as useless as the flightless silk moths Isaac carried on heavy trays to the garden—fluttering, quivering, diaphanous creatures that beat their wings in the afternoon sun, then spun their cocoons and died at night?

Could the odalisques not be taught something more useful than never-ending embroidery to decorate cloths that required no further embellishment? Every scrap of fabric in the harem was replete with idealized landscapes of pavilions, gardens, cypress trees and water, birds, tulips, carnations, trailing vines and peacocks, fruits and nuts. To expend such time and patience on items destined for a baby’s bottom or for the declivity between a woman’s legs as a menstrual pad! It all seemed such a waste.

“Will I be taught to write Osmanlica? I would like that,” Leah said, finally lowering her knife.

“Mustafa does not permit it.” He would not condescend to give a reason, not that anyone would dare ask, but Hannah had guessed: he feared the girls would write love letters, tie them to pomegranates from the trees in the garden, and toss them over the harem wall for young men to find. And likely these bored young females would do exactly that. Who could blame them? Wouldn’t Hannah do exactly the same thing in their place?

“Where is your family?” Leah asked.

“My husband and son are here. The rest of my family live in the ghetto in Venice.” Hannah had a few cousins and a younger brother, Samuel, all of whom she missed. Her sister Jessica had died tragically before Hannah left Venice, under circumstances Hannah could barely bring herself to think of.

“You are better off than me,” said Leah in a small voice. She peered at Hannah from behind the gauzy curtain. Her beautiful face was in need of a good scrubbing. “What do you miss the most about Venice?”

Everything
, Hannah thought but didn’t say. Isaac claimed that with the passage of time, her vivid imagination had transformed Venice from a city of fetid canals and Jew-haters to an earthly Babylon. Hannah noticed the girl’s posture had relaxed, though she made no move to leave the promontory of her window ledge.

“The ghetto is what I miss. The smell of cooking—sardines in brine, baby artichokes fried in garlic, warm bread and pudding. Here in Constantinople all I smell is
the reek of sheeps’ entrails, the cloying stink of overripe persimmons, and beef tripe rotting on the butchers’ tables—” She caught herself. This kind of talk would not assist the girl. “I have been cursed with an oversensitive nose. The smells here are no worse than the ghetto at home, just different. When I was a child, my father used to tease me by saying that had Jews been allowed such an occupation, I would have made an excellent perfumer. He was right, but I am happy to be what I am—a midwife.”

“You are a kind woman.”

And you, dear heart, could use some kindness, Hannah thought. You have suffered more than most women twice your age and yet, look at you. Not bowed, not broken, feisty as an alley cat.

“Leah, you cannot control your life any more than you can control the tides. When you flail and thrash and growl and grumble, when you struggle against the inevitable, you will drown. But, if you let go and float, you will be borne aloft. Allow me to help you.”

Hannah heard the exhalation of long-held breath. She climbed onto the stool and softly touched one of the girl’s ankles, pressing her thumb on the knob of the delicate bone. As she did so, she said, still speaking in Hebrew, “No one here will harm you if you obey. Come down before the eunuchs arrive. They will not be as gentle as I will.”

Now that she was closer to the girl, Hannah could see her heart-shaped face and trembling mouth. Through the worn material of her shift, Hannah noticed her delicate clavicles. The girl was far too thin, her belly distended from
malnutrition. Her skin was stretched as tightly over her kneecaps as hide on drums.

“Come down,” Hannah said. “Even a mountain lion must eat. I have a peach in my bag.”

Hannah released the girl’s ankle and held out her arms, listening for sounds of further throat clearing or, worse, the whoosh of a knife slicing through the air. There was only silence. Hannah stood on tiptoes. The girl bent over slightly, and Hannah took her hand and squeezed it.

“Be a good girl now.”

There was a flash of iron and the knife hit the tile floor and skittered against the wall.

Leah eased herself to the rim of the window ledge and held out her arms. Hannah swung her down and set her on the floor. She weighed more than Matteo but not by much.

Then Hannah took the white peach from her bag and held it out to Leah. The girl snatched it, sniffed it, and then began to take huge bites, letting the juice trickle down her chin.

“From my garden,” said Hannah. “The first of the season.”

They heard the sound of the door bolt being drawn back and Mustafa entered, flanked by two eunuchs in blue turbans.

“They will not be necessary, Mustafa. Leah is tranquil, as you can see for yourself.”