It is the silence that lures me from my bed. Long before the first streaks of orange break the horizon, the hens should be making their bruck-brucking sounds while they scratch the straw below our window as if nervously awaiting the sun. But this morning, there is only a strange stillness.
In any case I have not slept, my mind haunted by the image of Signora Granchi’s pestilent body pulled from the window above my father’s house. In the dark silence, I draw my dress and cloak over my head and tiptoe down the stairs. I step out into the alley that runs behind the hennery. I shall walk to Cannaregio all the way from San Marco, for the last thing I want to do is ask the boatman for a favor.
I know I am taking a risk, but I cannot help myself. I need to see them with my own eyes.
As soon as I emerge from Master Trevisan’s house it is clear why the birds have fallen into a stupor.
Caìgo.
It is the kind of deep fog that only rolls into Our Most Serene City once or twice a year. I step into the street and I am enveloped in a heavy cloud of white. In the thick blanket of mist, I make my way tentatively from doorway to doorway, for it is as far as I can see. The white air hangs just inches from the cobblestones beneath my feet, and I see only the toes of my shoes. Everything beside me and in front of my face is obscured in the thick cloud that has descended.
My quarter of the city, which has felt so far away these last months, should only take a short time to reach on foot. But in the nearly opaque mist, I make my way slowly from a wooden post marking the edge of a canal to the stone doorjamb of a fine house; from a wrought-iron grille of a window to the dark silhouette of a stone well-head in the middle of a small square. Dawn should have broken, but as I step through the mud around a laundry trough, the air hangs dark and heavy with wet mist that fills my lungs. My cloak feels weighted, covered in a fine, web-like mist of small droplets.
I cross over a rickety wooden bridge with no railing, looking ahead to what was always a busy thoroughfare, now quiet. The streets are barren. As I approach Cannaregio, an acrid smell of burning wood fills the air. I feel a slight alarm and move quickly across a small campo. I pull my light scarf over my head and wrap it in front of my nose to ward off the smoky smell.
I no longer care that I am at risk. I must see my family. And if the battiloro wants me, if he loves me, if he wants his child, that is all that matters. I do not know how much time we have.
I walk ahead in a daze, turning down a familiar market street I have traversed for as long as I can remember. In the early morning hours such as this, the fruit sellers, butchers, cobblers, and clothing merchants should be calling out to us, their voices casting echoes against the stone buildings in the narrow alleys.
But the streets have fallen grey and silent, devoid of life, as if everyone has vanished. There is no market. No shoppers. No fruit sellers. No one. Only a strangely familiar street now shrouded in white as if in a dream.
I move like a ghost through the maze of alleys, picking my way along the cracked stucco walls. I pass the brick façade of Madonna dell’Orto, the parish church where Father Filippo poured water on my head when I was just eight weeks old, and where, some twelve years later, in a stifling narrow booth I had confessed to the same Father Filippo about the feelings I had for another gilder’s son down the street. I pass the bakery where my father used to send me to buy bread encrusted with raisins, and where Signora Pegano was known for making the best sweet cakes at Easter. The windows are boarded and still. On the same street, Signor Fabio’s tailoring shop and the elder Signor Calvi’s cobbler’s bench stand dark and quiet, their doors boarded and their windows tightly battened.
When I arrive at the barricade, it is barely visible in the fog. I run my hands across the wood, feeling for a plank that might be loose, or a place where loved ones might have made a hole to push through food or gifts. They have already repaired the hole where I tried to hike my leg the last time. The wood feels rough under my palm, and I feel that at any moment a splinter might find its way under my skin.
“Signorina!”
The face of the young guardia appears before me, hazy in the mist. “You again!” He says. “We have already told you. You cannot go through. Official orders. Toderino!” He calls out to another guard who remains invisible in the mist.
The young man reaches out to grasp my arm. “Come with me, signorina.”
I feel the man’s fingers brush my sleeve but I turn on my heel and run with abandon into the white wall of fog.
I cannot make it far without stopping to catch my breath. I duck into a doorway and stop to gasp for air.
After a few minutes, my heartbeat slows. I no longer hear the footsteps of the guards.
Next to me is a building with a narrow lip of stones projecting over the edge of a canal. I remove my worn leather shoes and press them into the deep pocket of my shawl. I reach up to grasp the molding of a windowsill with the tips of my fingers. Tentatively, I step onto the narrow projection, feeling the cold stones under my toes. For a moment I hold my position, making sure that I can support myself with only my fingertips and the small pads of my toes. One misstep and I will splash into the coldness of the water below me.
Slowly, I begin to shimmy my way along the wall, not daring to look down at the green canal waters. The hardness of my stomach presses against the wall. I do not know how far I will have to shimmy like this on my tiptoes, as the other end of the building is shrouded in the fog.
After what seems an eternity, I see the other corner of the building, and I heave a sigh. I inch my bare foot around the edge until it touches the narrow quayside. Finally, I let go of the stones and rub my stinging fingertips along my dress.
I am inside the barrier.
For a moment, I stand with my palms on my knees, sobbing with relief and worry. My heart pounds again, uncontrollable in my chest. I draw my shoes from the pocket of my shawl and put them back on my aching feet.
I duck into another narrow alley, little more than a tunnel that is a well-worn shortcut to our street. Beyond, I see nothing, as the vista is shrouded in white, but the smell of smoke rises into the air from the Campo Sant’Alvise, the small square nearest our house. With my heightened sense of smell I seem to ingest the smoke, the dirty canal, into my very being. It smells of cabbage. Rotten eggs. Ghosts. Death.
In my head I hear the voice of Trevisan’s journeyman. “The Sanità? What can they do? They only handle matters after the fact. All they can do is take away the bodies and burn people’s belongings after they die. There is nothing they can do to prevent the pestilence from spreading across the city.”
I press my shawl over my mouth and nose to avoid vomiting. Ahead of me, a patch of white fog swirls upward, revealing the familiar crooked roofline of my childhood home. I feel a surge of hope and break into a run, turning the corner onto our street.
Then I see it.
For a moment, time is suspended and I feel that I might fall to my knees. The sound I make wells up from somewhere deep inside, but I hear it as if it came from outside of me. It is a heart-wrenching sound that I cannot believe I have made myself.
A wooden cross has been nailed over the door.