Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice (20 page)

“I am Sister Moon and Sun,” she says in English, with a strong Italian flavor. Whereupon she throws her skirts up in the air to reveal a shaven quim, painted all around with a golden sun. “My sun explodes with love!” she coyly says.

Next comes another nun, also in white but with a bird's mask on her face—a strange, fantastical bird, half peahen, half owl, with blue peacock's feathers all around, like another sun. She turns round on the ladder, shows the gentlemen her comely bum, and laughs uproariously, but says nothing.

Next comes another nun, also in white and wearing the mask of a golden lion.

“
Je suis Leone de San Marco
,” she says, half in French, half in Italian, and when she raises her skirt it seems she has woven lavender and rosemary into her quim hairs, for fragrance and remembrance.

More and more they come—nuns in white, masked fantastically as birds, moons, suns, harlequins, clowns, lions, jaguars, rams, unicorns, basilisks, and griffins. A galaxy, a bestiary of nuns! A playhouse and a zoo of nuns! Until the little tower antechamber is full of nuns who now embrace and tease our gentlemen, leading them one by one back up the ladder to the secret room at the turret's very top.

It is larger than it first appeared from the lagoon and cunningly laid out with soft rugs of fur and skin, velvet pillows, little altars of food and wine, and glassy candelabra that give a lovely light.

Diverse nuns lead our two adventurers to pillows on the soft and furry floor, feeding them grapes and oranges (out of season, from the Holy Land), nuts, sweetmeats, marchpane, and some strong amber wine from Bassano called
grappa
.

Will's senses quite succumb to this wine, which burns his tongue, his gullet, fills his head with fancies, and obliterates all remorse, all care. Presently he finds himself entangled with the nun in the sun-moon mask, lifting her skirts to see again her shaven quim, sun-rimmed, then plunging, against his will, into her sun. Love's lance, the cock of every walk, hath a mind of its own, thinks Will as he succumbs to masked love, fueled by the fire in the blood, with this creature of sale.

The deed of darkness is quickly done, quickly repented. But this courtesan and queen of nuns will not let him off so cheaply. Up she teases him again, to die in her lap again. But when she presses for a third and he protests that the fiery fluid they have drunk hath increased the desire but taken away the performance, she brings on other nuns, her sisters, in other masks, to make desire fresh.

'Tis astounding, thinks Will, that a man may die away once, twice, thrice, with the same woman—and be done—but with several, love hath no number and he loses count. Thus doth variety pique the senses and make old ardor new. Oh for a woman, Will dreams, who could be all women in one, whose infinite variety would never cloy and who would make hungry where most she satisfied! He thinks briefly of the Jewess but then slips away even from the vision of her, for the fluid he hath drunk and spent, spent and drunk, hath obliterated all conscience, all remorse, all memory…

A night passes, half a day. Our two adventurers in the turret lie about as sleepy as Circe's swine. The nuns attend their needs, then tiptoe off—except for those few who lie with them as spent with passion as themselves.

Will wakes with a fierce headache and mouth of straw. He feels that black remorse which a man feels after having drunk too much, drained too much (and in which sinks he knows not).

He looks about for Harry, his erstwhile friend, who lies, his mouth open and dribbling spittle, on a velvet pillow near a sleeping nun who is unclothed but for her lion mask, which has slipped back above her head, topping her loosened mane, thus making it appear she has two faces: one woman, one beast.

Will groans, rolls over. His own lady love—is she the one from the night before or another in her place?—loosens an arm from under him and coughs, almost consumptively. He now perceives that this nun's lovely breasts are high, rounded, and swollen, that her nipples are brown as berries, that her belly swells upward with impending birth. Her unicorn mask has fallen back from her sleeping face, which, not more than sixteen summers old, is the face of a babe itself: purplish lids shadowed with jet black lashes, a mouth that curls as sweetly as the furled blossom of a faery flower, and hair so bluish black it makes him think of his late (and now unlamented) love Emilia.

She coughs and stirs, stirs and wakes, sleepily smiling at him with eyes that seem half child's, half woman's.

“You are great with child,” whispers Will.

“No matter, 'tis not thine,” says the girl in perfect English.

Will halts in surprise, not sure whether to ask where she got her English or where she got her child.

“My grandfather was in the courtly train of the late ambassador to your land, and brought back maids, who both suckled us and taught us your lovely tongue. I know where I got my English, Sir, but not where I got my babe. No matter, for 'tis not thine.”

Will wakes now entirely and shakes the cobwebs from his head. “I never knew a nine-month whelp conceived in one night,” says he, “or not till now.”

The girl shakes her head sadly. “For nine months I have grown to love this babe, and now must give it up to die. Last night I hoped the violence of our coupling might kill it—so that God would take that grave decision out of my hands—but now I see where it moves and kicks as lustily as before.”

And 'tis true, too, for Will can see the shadowy form of the babe's tiny limb moving in the girl's belly as a leg moves under a coverlet.

He is sure this girl cannot be the same as the one he first swived last night, but then, he cannot remember how many nuns there were. Three, four, five, seven? Can a man be so forgetful?

The girl sheds a tear and sighs. “If only my babe could live…I cannot bear to see it strangled in my sight.”

Again Will thinks of Judith, Hamnet, and Susannah, whose fate he knows nothing of, nor has for several months past. He can see in his mind's eye their baby forms, as clearly as if 'twere yesterday. When Susannah was born in 1583, tiny babies frightened him with their floppy heads and drooling mouths, their infernal mewling and puking that a man could do naught to halt but only a woman knew the remedy for. Still, by the time the twins came, a year and some months later, babes terrified not him. He examined their tiny limbs with interest. He melted with paternal pity gazing into their baby eyes, so blue and impenetrable: seeing nothing, yet seemingly seeing all. He sniffed their baby necks, smelling like nothing on this earth if not like new-mown hay mixed with the gods' ambrosia. Susannah now was nine, the twins nearly seven. What he would not give to touch their little limbs again!

“If only I could save this babe,” says the dark-haired child-woman. “If only I could send it away to lodge with strangers—if not with my own people. I would even have it baptized Jew, or sold as slave to a Mohammedon to save its budding life!” And then she bites her tongue, as if to bite back the blasphemy. “Better to have it baptized Christian, and to die,” she quickly says in remedy, but Will knows that she feels the pulse of life so strong that she would save her babe at any price.

“What is your name?” he asks.

“Giulietta,” says the girl. “My family name I dare not tell, for I disgrace my kin who are doges, dogaressas, procuratores of St. Mark, and others who nobly serve the Serenissima.”

“Giulietta,” says Will. “What a lovely name…”

“'Tis Juliet in your language,” says the girl.

“I know,” says Will, “and 'tis also the sweet name of a lady of Verona, who, 'tis said, died for the sake of a forbidden love.”

The girl looks downcast.

“She was some kin of mine,” she says, “but I should not tell that.” Whereupon she suddenly gives a sharp cry, seizes her belly, bites her lip, and stifles further cries. “My pains begin,” she says. “Look—I am starting to leak water like a wounded galley on the sea!”

And 'tis true, Will can see, her crystal fluids are leaking out of her, staining the velvet cushion whereon they lie, wetting even his own bare leg that rests near hers.

With a poet's reverence for life, whatever the cost, he says impulsively, “Come, Giulietta, where can we hide that you may have this babe out of sight of your murderous sisters?”

“'Tis no use,” says the girl. “If they find it, they'll kill it…There is no help for it…”

Then a flicker of an idea crosses her brow.

“I know a place!” she says, whereupon the pains take her again and she swoons. The poet fears all is lost now, that the girl will faint and the others will awaken before he rouses her again. But in a few minutes she recovers herself, though she pants and sweats mightily at the approach of birth.

“Come,” she says, “dress yourself and help me do the same.”

Quietly as he can, Will draws on his breeches, shirt, doublet, boots, and helps the panting girl into her shift, her robes, her wimple, even her boots. (The unicorn mask they leave behind, for no such frivolous disguise can help them now.) Stealthily, he carries his moaning burden down the worn and crazy spiral stair of the tower, fearing for his footing, fearing for her life, his legs, the babe's impending entry into this world of pain and joy…

Halfway down the tower, the girl points to a wooden panel in the wall, barred with an iron bolt.

“Beyond this door is a wooden ladder,” says Giulietta, “used only by stonemasons who repair the tower. There you cannot carry me, but I must go alone—for 'tis too narrow.”

“Can you stand alone?” asks Will.

“I do not know,” the girl says, “but I shall try.”

Will seats her on a step, where she begins to pant softly, stifling her birth sounds under the white wimple. Meantime he sets about the task of opening the iron bolt, rusted by time, corroded by the sea.

The bolt is stubborn, immobilized by rust, staining the wood beneath it with shapes that seem made of dried blood.

Will heaves with all his might, using the strength of arms trained in killing calves in his father's yard when he was a boy. He says a silent prayer to his muse, whom he secretly conceives as Clio and Venus in one, and lo—the bolt moves! With a screech that tears his ears (and also the flesh of his fingers), it slides slowly back. The door in the tower opens. The wind from the lagoon accosts their faces. Outside, the day is gray and cold; the strange creature of the fog still sits atop the basin of St. Mark obscuring the sun, promising doom to all who venture past her misty claws. At the periphery of the harbor, little boats with little sails and little oarsmen glide up, seemingly emerging from the province of the fog-creature.

“Come,” says Will to his panting, sweating paramour, whose eyes are closed in pain.

He helps the girl out of the tower and onto the ladder, where the wind whips her white habit, and she holds on for dear life. He doubts that she can make it down the tower's side, but knows past all reason that she would rather fall and die, trying to save her babe, than wait and watch her sister-nuns strangle it.

Rung by rung they descend the tower in the mist and fog. At each step, there is uncertainty and fear. Giulietta takes one step, stops, looks down, gasps for breath, faints a little at the height and her pain, then collects herself and takes another step.

“For pity's sake, do not look into the abyss!” says Will. “All things can be borne so long as one does not leap into the future, but walks deliberately in the present moment.” (A fine one he is to talk of such things, he who frets alternately about his kin in Stratford and the beauteous Jewess in the ghetto—both of whom might be galaxies away.)

At the ladder's foot, there is soft earth and grass drenched by the rain: there Giulietta collapses in a gentle swoon, her strength, for the moment, gone. Will scoops her up in his arms and carries her for a little space along a rocky path toward the sea. There she revives again and draws breath long enough to mutter these words:

“A crazed hermit lives in this lagoon, on a small island, hidden half by reeds…He is mad, and yet he loves me…If we can sail to him, he'll shelter us.”

Will looks about. The small bark that has carried them here from Venice is tied to the creaky wooden dock, which in turn is wreathed in mist. It is what the Venetians call
topo
, a little fishing boat gaily painted and bearing two oars, two sails—one lateen sail, one jib.

Will cannot sail, yet poet that he is, he has watched the boatman with an eagle eye on their sail across, and in the madness of the moment does not doubt his power to sail. Poets think they can do everything—deliver babies, sail Venetian barks, defeat death itself—and Will is no exception.

The abandoned boat lies here, tied to the dock, inviting use, and so he climbs into it, carrying the swooning girl, and puts her aboard, covering her gently with his tattered mandilion. Then he draws the oars into the bark (in case the sail should fail), unties the bark from the landing, and hoists the mainsail. Not sailor enough to know that he must drop anchor to steady the boat before he hoists the lateen sail, he is shocked to discover that the moment it is hoisted, the wind catches the boat and blows it with mighty gusts into the misty lagoon. The sailing, when the boatman did it, looked so effortless, but now 'tis clear that the wind has the upper hand, not the poet, and like a playful colossus, it is tossing the little
topo
here and there over the waters.

“Whither do we sail?” cries Will to the girl, whose eyes are shut in pain and who breathes like a dog on a hot day, though the day is cold.

“To Torcello!” says the girl. But truly the poet does not know where that place is, and they seem tossed on the lagoon toward an impending watery death.

The poet curses his stars, his stupidity, even his muse. If the babe comes soon, how will he help the girl, here in the boat, while trying also to sail? What stupidity to have commandeered a boat without knowing how to master it! Yet he feels somehow that the fate of this girl, her babe, portend somehow the fate of his own kin in Stratford.