I hardly recognize my father’s house.
In the weeks that I have been in the convent, the quarter of Cannaregio has begun to come back to life, but the house remains a silent shell of what it was. My father’s worktable still stands under the window, and a few tools remain scattered across the surface, small pots overturned, the evidence of ransackers who came through in a haste and, finding nothing of value, left. The pillagers have taken what meager vegetables were put away in the root cellar. I stand alone in the middle of the barren room, the first day of the rest of my life, and I try to fathom where to begin.
A warm swath of sunlight pours through the open door of the workshop, and an orange cat tiptoes into the pool of yellow. It bends its body around the doorjamb and squints at me through orange eyes. After a moment another feline head appears in the doorway. The second cat, with stripes of grey and black, slips around the orange cat and trots across the floor toward me with its tail held high in anticipation. The striped cat weaves its way around my ankles, and I feel its skinny, warm body begin to vibrate against my leg.
As I make my slow inventory of my father’s workshop, the cats follow me, the striped one eager, the orange one more tentative. I suspect that they must be among the cadre of felines that once occupied old Signora Granchi’s quarters upstairs. Bereft of their mistress, most of the ragged animals seem to have wandered off in search of better prospects, but these two, at least, have lingered. The cats leap onto my father’s worktable and settle themselves there, watching me sweep grey ashes from the hearth.
The gastaldo, after recovering from the initial shock of seeing me back in my father’s workshop, began soliciting help. He has already arranged for a boatman from the traghetto to fetch my trunk from the painter’s house. The gondolier, an old man with a limp, helped me press the trunk—now holding all of my earthly belongings in it—against the wall where it always stood in the days before I left my father’s house. This small gesture brings me some comfort, and I lift the lid.
On top of the small heap of clothing, I find a collection of tools that someone—perhaps Master Trevisan’s journeyman—has gathered from my workbench in the back of the painter’s workshop. There are also the tin molds that Trevisan taught me how to use on the gilded boxes. I remove them, running my fingers over their bumpy surfaces, then lining them along my father’s nearly empty workbench.
I push the striped cat aside as I examine the small glass jars containing our powdered pigments lined up along the wall. The bench has been toppled over. As I return it to its proper position, an image flashes through my mind of my father sitting on this very bench, firing the bellows to melt gold and solder jewelry when our gilding work slowed. A small pot of gesso that we use to prepare panels is also left intact. I unpack my meager gilding supplies from my trunk and lay them out on the table alongside my father’s. The orange cat paws at one of the palette knives, then stops to scratch his ear vigorously with a back leg, sending flecks of dust and orange hairs spinning into the wash of sunlight.
Earlier in the morning Signora Gardesano, the wife of another indoradòr across the alley, has stopped at my doorway to let me know that more than half of the neighbors on the street have gone to the World to Come. “Our guild will take care of us,” she tells me. But I know that she is trying to make me feel better. The guild saves our dues for such unfortunate events, but its coffers have been depleted by the number of people who have perished in recent months, and the number of families that need assistance.
“My husband says that they have buried those of our guild—including your father and cousin—not in one of the mass pits for plague victims, but rather in the cemetery on one of the outlying islands where many of our fellow painters are laid to rest. Thanks be to God for that, cara. At least in that you may take some comfort.” Signora Gardesano then pressed a meager stack of linens in my hand. “I embroidered them with my own hands,” she tells me.
“I am grateful,” I said.
She crossed her arms over her ample breast and continued. “The walls are chattering with the news, you know.” Her eyes passed over my midsection, but she forced herself to return her gaze to my face. I resisted the urge to bring my hand to my stomach.
“I am prepared,” I said. “I am going to be all right on my own.” I do not tell her that even though I know leaving my baby in the convent is the best thing for him, it has taken everything in me to do it.
The gastaldo has told me that the guild will provide funds to help me buy what I need to replenish my father’s house. It is meager but the bereavement payment is to be expected in such circumstances, he has told me. Beyond that, it is up to me now to try to reestablish our patrons and make a living for myself. If I am to make a life from this place and carry on my father’s trade, it will be up to me.
The next time I hear a knock at the door, I am startled to see the painter’s wife.
“There she is!” she exclaims, running her eyes over me up and down. “Look at her, poor dear.”
“Signora Trevisan,” I say. I put down the horsehair cloth I have been using to sand the new alder wood box on my father’s worktable. Her midsection seems to have deflated, but her cheeks are still flushed with pink just as when she was with child. I cannot help but observe beautiful blue satin trim at her waist and neckline, and the pearls entwined in the fine piles of hair she has arranged around her face. She carries a brown woven bag under her arm.
“Dio, but you are brave!” says the painter’s wife, stepping across the threshold and scanning the space with her wide eyes. “Having a child and then going back to reclaim your father’s house! Where is the little one? I came to lay eyes on the baby!”
“He… He is with the sisters,” I say, feeling my heart pound at the sight of her. “It seemed the right thing to do… under the circumstances.” My eyes land on a pair of large dust motes in the corner and I wish that I had swept.
“Ah,” she says, and I see her face fall. “A sensible arrangement, under the circumstances, as you say. Well, God bless him. And to you. Auguri.”
“That is very kind of you,” I say, watching the painter’s wife’s eyes scan the cramped room. She places her bag on the table, then runs her eyes from the low wooden beams on the ceiling to the worn desk under the window, to our modest hearth. I am acutely aware of the cobwebs in the window and our bare furnishings.
“Congratulations are in order to you, too, signora?”
Her face lights up. “A little girl,” she says. “Benvoglio was perhaps disappointed, but no matter. She is healthy, as am I. That is what is important.”
“Thanks be to God. I would like to offer you something to eat,” I manage to say. “Forgive me. I would have been better prepared if I had known you were coming.”
“Figurati, there is no need,” says the painter’s wife. “I am here to help you, my dear, not the other way around. But I will sit.”
“Of course,” I say, rushing to pull out one of our rickety wooden chairs.
The painter’s wife heaves herself onto the chair and sighs audibly. As soon as she sits, the two cats, who seem to have taken up residence with me even though I have nothing to feed them, weave their way around Signora Trevisan’s ankles. She ignores them. From a ceramic pitcher on the table, I pour well water into a chipped ceramic cup and hand it to her.
“I walked all the way from San Marco,” she says. “And in this heat! But how else was I to get here? Who would want to ride in one of those filthy boats from the traghetto? Ha!” Signora Trevisan swallows the water in a single gulp. “When the gastaldo informed us that you had returned to your father’s workshop, well, I insisted that we come to see you right away,” she says. “I am sorry that my husband was not able to join me. He is occupied, as you know, with his many commissions.” Her fingers fidget nervously around the cup.
I feel heat flash across my cheeks. The painter and I have not set eyes on one another since that night when I ran from him in the church and he left for terra firma. “Of course,” I say.
“He asked me to convey his best wishes,” she continues.
“Master Trevisan has returned home,” I venture.
“Yes,” she says. “He came back home as soon as he received word of the... surprising events... that occurred in our home.”
I am not able to find the words to respond. I refill the ceramic cup with water, grateful to have something to do with my hands. Mercifully, the painter’s wife continues to talk.
“We did not want you to go away feeling that we harbored any ill will,” says the wife. “We did not hold you responsible for... the things that happened.” She is looking at my stomach now, refusing to lift her eyes to my face. “What I mean to say is that what happened with our servants, well... none of it had anything to do with you. And the matter with the gondola... It is unfortunate that you were caught in the middle of such a turn of events.” It is unlike the painter’s wife to hesitate like this, and I wonder if her husband has planted the words in her head.
Finally, unable to restrain herself, the painter’s wife throws up her hands and meets my eyes. “Antonella and that evil boatman seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I knew we were wrong to trust them.”
“Master Trevisan’s beautiful gondola,” I say.
“The gondola maker and his sons from the Squero Vianello came to help us fish the boat out of the water,” the painter’s wife says. “By the time they arrived it had sunk nearly all the way to the bottom of the boat slip! They had to get the rocks out of it to pull it up,” she says.
“What a shame.”
“Now it is upside down on trestles in the boat slip. The gondola makers offered to repair it right away but my husband does not seem to be able to bring himself to do anything with it. A shame, you are right. It was a beautiful boat but I doubt that my husband will have it repaired, at least for now, for he is unlikely to hire a new boatman,” she says.
“The boatman and Antonella…” I venture.
The painter’s wife shakes her head vigorously as if to rid the image of her servants from her head. ”At first he seemed to be such a capable young man. Almost too good to be true. But I knew it was a mistake to bring him back. I knew not to trust that boatman. He was marked by fire already, for the love of God! Surely Benvoglio should have heeded such a sign. But Antonella... That took me by surprise. I never would have thought of the two of them together. Such a transgression of my trust! I confided everything to her, even my own children.”
“They have not been caught?” I ask.
The painter’s wife shakes her head. “The signori di notte looked for them for a while, but never found them. Then my husband got word that they were seen on terra firma trying to pawn off the box to a second-hand broker.”
The striped cat makes a tentative move to jump into Signora Trevisan’s lap, but she stands. Thwarted, the cat rubs himself along my leg instead.
The painter’s wife takes my hand. “But enough about us,” she says. “You, my dear, look one step away from the pesthouse yourself, if I may say it! Have you nothing to eat? My goodness, a girl like you, all by yourself. How will you manage?”
“The gastaldo is helping to arrange my father’s affairs,” I say. “I will be fine.”
“But how will you get along?” She gestures around the barren studio. “When we heard that you had left the convent... Well, we just could not imagine that you would try to come back to your father’s workshop all by yourself.”
“The convent was not for me,” I interject, “and… well. It seems that neither was marriage.”
The painter’s wife examines my face. “The baby’s father?”
I shrug. “He perished in the lazzaretto with my father and cousin. That is the only conclusion.”
The painter’s wife nods, and the two of us fall silent. Signora Trevisan’s eyes scan the meager tools on my father’s worktable. Finally, she says, “It will take some time for you to establish yourself.”
“I know my father’s patrons,” I say, “though I must rebuild those alliances. It will take some time, but above all I want to carry on my father’s legacy.”
“Very honorable. That reminds me,” she says, and I wonder if I see her eye twitch. “My husband has asked me to tell you that he will continue to send you gilding work as you are able to do it. Anyway, he has sent you something.”
From the dark woven bag on the table, the painter’s wife dumps some two dozen new metal molds onto my worktable. I gasp, then finger each one, examining the small forms of women, men, decorative designs, animals, and plants. I imagine the numbers of different gilded boxes that I might make with the molds.
The painter’s wife then produces a leather book from the bag. I recognize the stamped binding immediately. It is the book of engravings that I thumbed through so many times in the painter’s studio. The value of such a book might amount to two times what my father and I might earn in a year.
“Oh no!” I say. “I could not accept this, Signora Trevisan. It is too precious.”
“It is the least we could do for you, cara. After all, it is thanks to you that my dowry has been preserved.” She shakes her head. “If that boatman had made off with all of that gold… Well, I can hardly stand to think of it.”
“I do not know what to say.”
She waves her hand. “My husband insisted. He says that he retrieved the molds from his cousin’s studio when he was visiting his ancestral lands near Padua. He has little use for them. He thought you might use them, and the book will help you get started,” she says. “Benvoglio says that on terra firma they are successful in selling these gilded boxes to new brides. “Perhaps they will help you earn a living once you get a few of the boxes out there. Maria,” she says. “This path you have chosen will not be easy for you. Cavolo, look at this place!”
I feel both insulted and ashamed, though she does not seem to notice. I pick up the orange cat and stroke the silky fur between its ears, as if this small act might soothe the affront. “It is not the same as your husband’s workshop, signora,” I say. “But it never was, even in our most prosperous time.”
The painter’s wife grasps my arm. “No. That much is true. And even so, I would change places with you,” she says, giving me a thin-lipped smile. “I can see that you belong here with the gold, that you are strong enough to do well here in your father’s studio on your own. Truth be told, I envy you.”