Hearing the squeal of the metal hinges as I throw open the door, the gastaldo lurches forward in his seat. “Signorina Maria!” He pulls the leather strap that holds his spectacles and props it to his brow, making wisps of grey hair stick straight up on top of his head. “You gave me a scare!” His eyes light up for a fleeting moment, then the gastaldo’s face turns dark. “But you should not be here, cara. The ban... You are risking yourself by coming to the neighborhood.”
I stand frozen in the doorway. For a few moments I cannot find my voice. The gastaldo and his sons in the back of the workshop watch me in expectant silence, but I am unable to speak, as if the floodgates are dammed.
The gastaldo clambers up and staggers across the space. “You must not be here,” he says again, taking my hands in his. His palms feel thick, warm, and rough. “You risk catching this horrible disease. More streets have been blocked and the guardia has sent more men... You are breaking the law.” He stops and looks into my eyes. “Maria... Madre di Dio, what has happened?”
“Where are they?” Finally my voice emerges, scratchy and small in my ears. “Where is my family?” His face registers confusion. “I am sorry but I could not stay away,” I say. I begin to feel the hot tears run down my cheeks. I feel the gastaldo’s warm, rough hands as he squeezes my own. “There is a cross on the door.” My voice comes out as a squeak.
“What in God’s name? Dio.” He pauses, letting the information soak in. “Why have the signori not come to inform me?” He lets go of my hands and rubs his palms over his face as if trying to wipe it clean.
“It is hardly the only one,” the younger son says. “There are more crosses on doors in this neighborhood than there are cats. Surely they cannot be bothered to report them all.” The gastaldo casts his son a dark look.
“I beat on the door, even tried to pry the wood off with my bare hands,” I say, “but all I heard was silence. So… I found a way in through the root cellar.”
“You went inside! San Rocco,” the gastaldo says under his breath. “It can only mean one thing. They have been transported to the Lazzaretto Vecchio.”
I feel the tears roll down my cheeks. “What? And when were you going to tell me?! Signora Granchi… It must have come through her.”
“Maria, I did not know. I tried to go check on them a few days ago, but they would not let me pass through the barricade,” he says. “How on earth did you get through?”
“I... It took a few tries.”
The gastaldo sighs and pounds his fist on the worktable. “The representatives are supposed to inform me of such things, but I have not seen them in days. Perhaps Father Filippo can tell us something. His presence is required along with the health officials whenever someone is found sick.”
“That old priest is probably staying at home trying not to get sick himself. Or under ban already. Who would want to read rites to the plague-ridden?” the younger son tries again.
“What is there to discover?” the older son says. “You must know that it is the procedure for those who are sick. They are transported to the old pesthouse—good as dead.”
This time the gastaldo does not hold his tongue. “Basta!” he says sharply to his sons. “That is enough. The poor girl.” The gastaldo grasps a large iron ring heavy with keys from a hook by the door. He pauses to look into my eyes. “I must go see the neighborhood representatives. I promise I will get to the bottom of it.”
I feel my body shudder, and the gastaldo takes me in his arms. I press my face into his vest, which smells of leather and smoke.
The gastaldo grasps my cheeks in his hands and turns my face to his. “Maria, it is not a death sentence. Those who recover—as I am sure will be the case with your family—are eventually transported to the Lazzaretto Nuovo. That is also the place where family members who seem well and have not shown signs of the plague go.”
“You are going to need to restock your house, no doubt,” the older son says.
“Yes.” The gastaldo fingers the keys in his hand. “Unfortunately, Maria, they require that all the belongings—especially the linens, be taken out of the house. Some things are burned right away in the campo. The more valuable objects are transported to the lazzaretto with their owners. There they are aired out with the hopes that they will no longer spread the contagion.”
“None of it matters,” I say. “We have nothing of value beyond our tools and whatever gold leaf was left unused. I am only concerned about their health.”
“Of course. I am sorry.” The gastaldo places his hands on my shoulders and looks into my eyes again. “I want you to feel certain that they will get well. Once they are better they will transport them to quarantine until they are no longer contagious. The authorities are requiring those released from the lazzaretti to stay there for forty days to ensure they show no more signs of the pestilence. Then they are released back home. You must hold out hope for that.”
The information seeps into my being, and I feel my shoulders fall. I must accept the fact that I may not see my family for some time. “We must look for the good,” the gastaldo says. “I am grateful that this twist of fate has brought you to the painter’s house, for it means that you have been spared. It must mean that God has something else in store for you.”
“If you had stayed in your house you would also be in the lazzaretto now,” the younger son says.
The gastaldo nods. “On that count my son is correct. You yourself would have been there now had it not been for the fact that you were safely housed with Master Trevisan,” he says. “As long as you stop sneaking back into this neighborhood you will be fine. Now please, for the love of God, go back to the painter’s house before you end up in the lazzaretto yourself.” His eyes, surrounded by wrinkles, look kind and sincere. “Come,” he says. “I will walk back to San Marco with you.”
I nod, wiping another hot tear from my cheek with the back of my hand. I step back out into the street, strangely quiet and still, the air filled with the overwhelming dry smell of smoke from the square. The gastaldo offers me his arm and I gratefully take it, for I feel that I might fall to my knees. He does not try to make small talk. He only pats my hand in the crook of his arm and leads me quickly into the street that will take us out of the quarter and toward the painter’s house.
If the gastaldo is right and God has something else in store for me—if he is listening at all—I do not know what it is. We make our way quickly down the quayside in the direction of San Marco, where the white blanket of fog has finally lifted. The sun’s rays pierce through the clouds, making sparkling patterns across the basin of the lagoon. I cannot begin to imagine my own future and the fate of this life growing inside my body, under the layers of my dress and my giant smock.
A blanket of silence has fallen over the painter’s house.
The painter’s wife uttered a shriek of despair when the gastaldo shared the news of the cross over the door and my father’s empty house. After that, only hushed conversations and the squeals of the children fill the house.
“Maria, you must feel free to take as much time as you need,” the painter told me.
“That’s very kind of you, Master Trevisan, but I prefer to work,” I said.
He nodded knowingly. “Understood.” Then he returned to his easel and left me to prepare the surfaces of the new gondola lanterns with my jar of gelatinous primer.
The journeyman, without words, placed his hands on my shoulders and squeezed. I gave him a thin-lipped but sincere smile, for there are no good words for such a time.
Now, I press down the leaves of gold just as my father showed me when my fingers were hardly big enough to do it. Just as he did. Just as his father and his father before him. In a contemplative state, I honor my father with the skills that he taught me. Without thinking about it, I hold my breath while I separate the gold sheaf from the vellum, for a whoosh of breath, a sneeze, a laugh could send it spinning to the floor. Better to keep my hands and my mind occupied. It is the best that I can do.
For a moment, I dare to hope that when my father returns home from the pesthouse, I will be able to give him the gilded box under the table, or a better one that I have made in the weeks while they are convalescing.
When Master Trevisan and his journeyman begin to fill in the outlined spaces on our gilded panels with the brightly colored pigments, I practice working with them, too. Rosso, vermillione, azzurro... They used to sound like a foreign language, feel strange loaded on the brush in my hand. But I am getting better.
At night, I lie in bed and beg for sleep that will not come. I stare at wavering patterns on the ceiling made by moonlight on the canal far below our window.
“You are not alone,” Antonella says in the dark, placing a tentative hand on my shoulder. When I do not respond or turn toward her, she tries again.
“My cousin says that some of the people who perish do not suffer very long. They just break out in black boils or vomit blood, and within a day—just like that—they are gone. The suffering does not last.”
She cannot see me press my eyes closed. I only wish I could close my ears, too.