Sixty-seven days. I have marked off each one on the hem of my linen shift with a piece of coal that I found burned in the pyre. Each day I fold back the hem and count the marks over again, just to be sure. Sixty-seven days since I laid eyes on Cristiano. He is alive. And I am still alive. Nothing else matters.
From the creaking deck of the plague ferry I look beyond the broad back of an oarsman onto the emerging vista of Our Most Excellent Republic. The sun glints off the small peaks of water, its hot beams searing through the haze that has settled over the surface of the water overnight. As the white fog begins to clear, the walls of the Arsenale shipyard come into view, then two crooked church towers. A few small cargo boats make slow progress across the canal, their metal fittings flashing in the emerging white light.
And from here, the low, tile roofs of Cannaregio come into view.
Home.
The cloud that has hung over me for the darkest season of my life begins to lift.
Around me, several dozen people sit on benches or stand against the wooden handrails. Some press their backs against the railings, taking shade from the beating sun under a canvas cover that flaps loose on one side. Others mill around nervously, waiting to be released back into their lives from their journey to Hell and back. A heavy silence falls over the ferry, the weight and anticipation of it all beyond words.
There are women, men, children of all classes. A few of us have survived the Lazzaretto Vecchio, graduating to the Lazzaretto Nuovo for convalescence. Others—mostly family members of the sick and dying who never developed signs of the pestilence—have only sojourned at the Lazzaretto Nuovo until the doctors cleared them of danger. A handful of health officials and priests who have had contact with the sick have also been forced into quarantine. Most of them carry large sacks of linens, clothing, and other belongings that have been boiled in the steaming pots and aired out in the great fields of the lazzaretto.
As for me, I only have the dull linen shift that covers my depleted body. The orderlies gave me this shift when I disembarked from the ferry that carried me from the old lazzaretto to the new one. They herded us women into a large room where they gave us new gowns, loading the old ones onto a cart headed for the pyre in the center of a large campo. It was the last vestige of what we left behind at the Lazzaretto Vecchio.
Those few of us who were fortunate enough to have improved were sent on a dilapidated ferry across the lagoon to the Lazzaretto Nuovo on the island they call Vigna Murata. There we were freer to roam than in the old pesthouse, and I spent the days restless, wandering the open fields, the storehouses with their stacks of medicinal herbs and the closely guarded rows of goods offloaded from the merchant galleys that had been fumigated with smoke and pungent concoctions.
I did not wish to befriend anyone among the families of the infected. I sat on the far end of the great hall where they served our meals, listening to the strange tongues of the men from the merchant ships moored in the lagoon, who were, along with the rest of us, forced to share the same forty days of Purgatory while we waited to return to our lives.
I hear the rattle of the chain that secures the ferry’s wooden gate. I look up to see a restless crowd forming around the quayside. I hear shrieks, laughter, cries of disbelief. There are joyous calls for those who have come home alive, tears for those who have not come home at all.
I feel my heart clench. All that matters is that I go home. Will he be there in my father’s house, waiting for me as he has promised? I want to go back to Cristiano, back to my father’s house, back to my work. It is all I have ever wanted.
The boatman pushes his way through the crowd to the side of the boat, lashing the encumbered craft to a piling at the quayside. I press into the mass of people waiting to disembark. A slight woman, little more than a waif, is the first to step through the open gate. Behind her, there goes another, then another is released into the crowd of people waiting for their loved ones. One by one, their sunken eyes search the campo for a familiar face. I hear shrieks and cries of relief.
Finally, it is my turn, and I step out into the blinding light.