The Thief of Venice (26 page)

And therefore Homer and Mary made the move too, bringing along their half-packed suitcases.

As always at the end of a journey there were too many things to wedge into the bags, too many guidebooks and museum catalogs and presents for nephews and nieces. And then at the last minute Mary appeared with something else, a large mysterious object tightly wrapped in paper and tape.

"My God," said Homer, staring at it, "what's that?"

"Oh, nothing," mumbled Mary. "It's just—well, it's a mirror." She laid it on the bed and unwrapped it. The mirror was large and ornate, bristling with ornamental gold arabesques, a thing as unlike his wife's normal tastes as anything Homer had ever seen.

He gaped at it. "But, Mary dear, it won't match anything in our house. It won't go with the river or the Canada geese or the cattails. And how in hell will we get it home? It's too big."

"I'll carry it in my arms," promised Mary, close to tears. "I like it, Homer. I mean, it will remind me of Venice every day for the rest of my life."

So the mirror was one of the half-packed things to be lugged on board a vaporetto and transported to Lucia's house in San Polo. And there, half settled in, living out of their suitcases for the last few days of their Venetian holiday, Mary was pleased to watch the befriending of little Ursula by Lucia.

At first Mary had worried that the child might never come out from under the dire influence of her grandmother Wellesley. She wondered aloud to Homer, "Do you think the poor little kid is doomed? Will she ever get over it?"

"You forget," said Homer. "There are anti-mentors as well as mentors. If an anti-mentor says something's wrong, you know it's right. Mrs. Wellesley was very useful in her way."

"I see," said Mary. "Well, good. I hope Lucia can handle it. I don't know how she'll connect with a little girl. She's such an important dignitary and scholar."

But then Mary was amused to discover that Lucia had a talent for something other than civic administration. She was an expert in the old-fashioned domestic arts of sewing and embroidery, skills learned from her grandmother. "No man will marry you," Lucia's grandmother had warned her, "without a trousseau,
un corredo da sposa
."

It had been a long time since
corredi da sposa
were in fashion in Venice, but under her grandmother's guidance Lucia had laboriously created one, and she had forgotten nothing. She taught Ursula to crochet squares in colored wool and make embroidered lazy-daisy stitches in the corners of handkerchiefs. She took her to morning mass in the Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. She teased her gently in English and Italian. She found her a new school.

Ursula's sad little face brightened and turned pink. At school she found a friend, and at once she and Maria were inseparable. They giggled behind Ursula's bedroom door. One day Lucia found them playing with Ursula's saints. The little figures were lined up in a wedding procession on the floor, where Saint Francis was marrying Saint Clare.
 

*57*

Of course Richard Henchard lost his treasure. The Bessarion manuscripts now belonged to the city of Venice, as the great cardinal himself had long ago intended. Sam welcomed the two heavy volumes into the Biblioteca Marciana with pomp and ceremony, along with the Aldine
Dream of Poliphilius
, another great prize.

The Raphael painting was handed over to the Accademia, at least temporarily. But when the superintendent discovered to her chagrin that the Cracow museum still existed, the one from which the painting had originally been taken by the Germans in 1940, she had to give it up.

The curator of the Polish museum went out of his mind with joy. He called the superintendent and raved ecstatically in three languages. "The last of the three! It's the last of the three!"

The superintendent held the phone away from her ear, wishing the man would control his gloating rapture. "The three? What three?"

"The Germans took three favorites from our collection for themselves, a Leonardo, a Rembrandt, and a Raphael. The first two came back to us after the war, but the Raphael was never found. Thank God we have it at last! Our magnificent Raphael! Praise be to God!"

And to me
, thought the Accademia superintendent a little sourly.
After all, I did not have to be so generous. I could have kept it right here in Italy where it belongs.

There was no question about the ritual vessels and the Torah scrolls. They were to be returned at once to Armando Levi's own synagogue, the Scuola Spagnola in the Ghetto Vecchio. The Venetian newspaper,
Il Gazzettino
, made much of the story.

"Look at this," said Homer, "there's going to be a special service." He showed Mary a photograph of one of the candlesticks on the front page.
"Una cerimonia di celebrazione."

Downstairs they could hear Lucia calling good-bye to Ursula. Mary glanced out the window and saw her wave as Ursula trotted away to school. She heard Sam call, "Lucia?" He was about to go off for the day himself, commuting by vaporetto along the entire length of the Grand Canal, all the way to San Marco and the Marciana. Mary saw Lucia hurry back into the house to say good-bye. There followed a long and tender silence.

Mary poured coffee from the electric pot. "When is the celebration? Do you think we could go?"

"Um—
il sabato ebraico, Novembre 23
, that's tomorrow." Homer folded the newspaper and sipped his coffee. "Sure we can go. Why not? For heaven's sake, you deserve to be there. If it weren't for you, that bastard would have melted everything down by now. Think of it, all that gold."

Mary picked up the paper. There was another picture, a sixty-year-old photograph of Doctor Armando Levi, and an article with a heading in large print,

ARMANDO LEVI,
EROE EBREO,
VENEZIA 1943

"What's
eroe
?" asked Mary, frowning.

Homer looked at her pityingly. "It means hero. Armando Levi, Jewish hero."

"Oh, of course." Mary looked up. "Homer, I've just thought of something. Why didn't the two people who witnessed his will come back to the hiding place after the war and rescue everything?"

Homer was about to drink his coffee. He put down his cup. "Can't you guess why?"

"Oh, oh, of course. How terrible." Mary jumped up and hurried into the bedroom. Rummaging in a suitcase, tumbling the contents this way and that, she found the book she was looking for. When she picked it up, the torn pieces of her snapshot of Richard Henchard fell out and fluttered to the floor. She picked them up and tossed them in the wastebasket. Then she took the book to Homer at the breakfast table.

"There's a list," she said, turning to the last few pages. "This is the book I bought in the Hebrew Museum. It's got a list of all the Venetian Jews who were deported." Homer watched as she ran her finger down the page. Then her finger stopped, and she read aloud the names of the two witnesses to Armando Levi's will. "Baruch Basevi and Beatrice Basevi."

"So they were taken away," murmured Homer sadly, "before they could tell anyone else."

Mary slammed the book shut. "Listen, Homer, I know we've got to finish packing, but there's something else we've got to do first."
 

The Hebrew cemetery was on the Lido. They took a vaporetto across the lagoon.

The iron gates of the cemetery were closed, but when they rang the doorbell a caretaker came at once and let them in. In answer to Homer's question he looked thoughtful.
"La tomba di Armando Levi?"
Then he grinned.
"Si! Penso sia possibile trovarla. Seguitemi, per favore."

"What did he say?" murmured Mary, as the caretaker turned his back and walked away.

"He thinks he can find it. Come on."

It was a beautiful cemetery. The gravestones were set among tall cypresses. Mary and Homer walked along the narrow paths after the caretaker, stopping occasionally to see stones dedicated to other victims of Nazi extermination.
"Non sono tombe,"
said the caretaker.
"Solo monumenti commemorativi."

This time they both understood. These were not graves, only memorials, because there had been no bodies to bury. These people had never come back.

Levi's monument was a grave. The caretaker left them looking down at the flat stone.

At first the inscription seemed illegible. The letters were half-covered with lichen. Mary knelt and ran her finger over them, deciphering a word here and there about the sorrow of sons and daughters, the grief of the city of Venice. The sense of a timeless tragedy crept up into her hand through the spreading moss and the patches of yellow lichen.

In every synagogue in Venice a lamp is lit before the Holy Ark.
Within stands the Torah, inscribed with the first five books
of the Bible.
 

*58*

Next day was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, the day of the ceremonial return of Armando Levi's treasure to the Scuola Spagnola.

People were pouring into the synagogue. "Ah, yes, I recognize the doorway," said Homer. "It's the one in your picture."

They were met on the doorstep by the chief rabbi. He beamed at Mary. "Ah, signora, we have met before. Permit me to thank you"—he paused, having used up all his prepared English remarks, and finished in Italian—
"personalmente, con sincerita profondissima."
He clasped her hand and shook Homer's vehemently up and down.

Modestly they followed him in the door, to be introduced to smiling members of the congregation. One was a very old man who remembered Armando Levi.

Haltingly Mary tried to say she wished Doctor Levi had lived to be with them today, but the old man shook his head and said in his weak old voice,
"No, no. Dottor Levi era molto vecchio nel 1943."
He threw up his frail hands.
"Oggi avrebbe centoquaranta anni."

Homer was bending far down to listen. He nodded with exaggerated wobbles of his head to show he understood. "He'd be one hundred and forty years old! My goodness!"

"Look, Homer," whispered Mary, nodding at the display of Armando Levi's golden treasures, now brought so triumphantly back into the synagogue from which they had been removed more than half a century before. They sparkled on a table, the plates leaning upright, the cups and menorahs gleaming and glistening, the silver pennants of the spice boxes blowing east, west, north, and south.

Mary and Homer moved on into a magnificent high chamber, sat down in one of the side-facing pews, and looked up at the splendor of the glittering chandeliers and the tall windows.

There was a rustle as everyone stood up, and a general soft murmur and a jingling of bells. Mary stuck her elbow into Homer and whispered, "Here they come."

At first the golden dazzle was blinding, as the procession of rabbis approached in a flood of sunlight. Then the dazzle diminished until it was only the familiar brilliance of the tall crowns of the Torah scrolls. They too had found their way home at last.

The service began with chanting and singing. In their shawls the men of the congregation stood sideways and bowed toward the Ark. After a prayer of thanksgiving by the chief rabbi, there were speeches by dignitaries honoring the memory of Armando Levi. Then the members of the congregation turned the pages of their prayer books, chanting in Hebrew. There was more singing and chanting.

Homers mind was elsewhere. It was a grimmer elsewhere. He was trying to tie together the two loose and fraying ends of a cord. Armando Levi was at one end, along with the synagogue in which they were sitting and the whole history of the Jews in Venice. At the other end dangled the relics of the True Cross.

Tied together, the two ends made a circle. It was not a pretty circle, not a wreath of fruit and flowers. Woven into the story of the crucifixion of the man called Jesus Christ were two thousand years of anti-Semitic persecution.

That was the circle. The Christian relics, those precious fragments that had been so long regarded as miraculous in healing, were like accusing fingers. For two thousand years Jews had been herded into ghettos and thrown out of Christian countries and tormented and put to death because of a grisly misunderstanding.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on, and damn the Jews, please, at the same time.

Homer remembered the open mouths of the singers in the monastic church of the Frari, he remembered the words echoing from the walls and rebounding from the vaulted ceiling,
Let him be crucified, let him be crucified. His blood be on us, and on our children.

For whatever reason, and Homer knew there were historical reasons for the crude violence of the Gospel accounts of the trial before Pilate, those very same Gospels had been like a curse echoing down the ages, condemning the Jews of the world to centuries of suffering, as though Jesus had not been a Jew himself but a pink and prosperous Christian.

"Get up, Homer," whispered Mary.

"Oh, right," mumbled Homer, and he got to his feet because everyone else was standing. But he hadn't yet carried his thought to its conclusion. Staring dreamily at the reverent faces on the other side of the splendid room, he decided that Venice carried both things on her back, not only her hundred beautiful Christian churches but also this Hebrew ghetto created by the might of the Christian Republic, this island neighborhood that had once imprisoned its people like beasts. And of course that was why Shakespeare's Shylock had felt the need to proclaim his humanity—
Hath not a Jew eyes? If you prick us, do we not bleed?