The Serpent of Venice

u know maths and you can read and write? Well . . .”

“Latin, Greek, and English, plus a smattering of Italian and fucking French.”

“Fucking French, you say? Well . . .”

“Oui,” said I, in perfect fucking French.

“And what would you wish to be paid for such services, Signor Lancelot Gobbo?”

“Only room and board, signor. A roof over my head and a hot meal.”

“A slave works for only room and board.”

“And a farthing.”

“A farthing? Room and board and a quarter of a penny would be your pay? Well . . .”

“Per week,” said I, pressing my terms. I saw a light flicker in Shylock’s eye, for although he would not be a slave owner, he could not resist a bargain.

He nodded, as if doing the figures and approving them in his head. “Well, then, Signor Lancelot Gobbo, I shall retain your services for a week, as a trial. You shall accompany me to the Rialto this afternoon—carry my box of papers, inks, and quills. I wish to purchase a cask of wine as well. You can carry it home for me. For this and like services, you shall receive room and board plus one farthing for the week. Are we agreed?”

“Oh yes, signor,” said I. I bowed.

“Meet me here after lunch.” Shylock pushed past Jessica and went into his house. “I would have my lunch, daughter,” he called over his shoulder.

Jessica whirled on me and whispered furiously, “Lancelot? Where did you get bloody Lancelot?”

“I thought it would explain away my English accent.”

“We all have English accents, you knob.”

“I know,” said I. “And in an Italian city. Don’t you find that strange?”

She shuddered with frustration. “Well, you’re in, at least. You’ll have to sleep downstairs in the kitchen now, though.” She reached into her bodice and retrieved a parchment, folded tightly and sealed with wax, the sign of the menorah pressed into it. “When you are on the Rialto, slip away and give this to Lorenzo. He will be with Antonio and his other partners. Ask about, everyone knows him. Give him this note. You must not fail.”

“I’ll need a year’s pay in advance,” said I. “I’m going to buy me ol’ da some lunch.”

“Ah, what a good boy he is,” said Gobbo. “Bread and fish will have to do, though. Can’t find a banger in this city to save my life. It’s like all the pork’s floated off, innit?”

“He doesn’t know where he is, does he?” I whispered to the girl.

She shook her head. “Walked off a ferry two years ago and has been wandering around the island since, thinking he’s in Venice proper. No one’s had the heart to tell him. We keep him fed.”

“Did it occur to you that his real son might be in Venice, actually missing him?”

“Oh bugger,” said she. “I never thought of that. Well, he’s your bloody father, you help him.”

An hour later I’d fed old Gobbo and on a series of fine paving stones by the dock had managed to hone a razor’s edge onto an old fish knife I’d nicked from Shylock’s kitchen. It was shit for throwing, with its thin blade and heavy oak handle, but it would thread through a man’s ribs in a pinch, open an artery if deftly flicked, and more important to my purpose, razor the seal off a letter with such subtlety that it could be replaced and leave the intrusion undetectable. I’d resealed Jessica’s letter with the tip of my blade heated on the food-seller’s brazier, leaving her seal still pristine in the wax, but its content still troubled me. There would be no time to craft clever speeches and complex plans to undo my foes. I would have to find revenge on the fly, make action my eloquence.

“Come, Lancelot Gobbo,” said Shylock, waving me out of the stripe of shade where I reclined against the front wall of his house. “I go to make a loan and secure the bond of the esteemed Antonio Donnola, merchant of Venice. Come, boy, carry my papers. Come and learn business.”

Into the very nest of vipers I’d only recently escaped. So be it.

I followed Shylock out into the afternoon, carrying a carved wooden box that held parchment, ink, and quills. As it turned out, with age Shylock had lost the close vision to read and write his own contracts, so had to have Jessica do it at home or pay a notary. My ability to read and write gave me value. I thought it best not to inform him that across the lagoon on the glass-making island of Murano, they had begun to make small lenses, called spectacles, that rested in a frame across the bridge of the nose, which might correct one’s reading vision.

We crossed the island through a narrow path, where the buildings were so close that they were buttressed over the alley on their upper floors with oak arches. It was cool in the alley, and the breeze off the Adriatic washed the city smell away, so stepping out into the sun on the city side of the alley, filled with the activity of boats and traders, was an assault on the senses. And I, disguised in the long dark gabardine, felt sweat blossom and stream down my back. The heat and humidity of the Venetian summer made me long for the green, rain-swept, sheep-flecked hills of England. At least there are no horses in Venice, and the sewage drops through the floors of homes and is washed away with the tides, so as salty and fish befouled as Venice can be, it is less odiferous than Paris or London on a summer’s day.

Shylock led me across a dock and into a gondola and gestured for me to sit across from him as the gondolier ferried us across the wide tronchetto toward the entrance of the Grand Canal. The water had a cloudy blue-green translucence that made it look as if it were lit from below. I saw something dark moving beneath the water, too deep to make out, perhaps it was just the shadow of the gondola, but before I could ask the gondolier about it, Shylock drew my attention.

“So,” said he. “You are English?”

“Aye, signor. Born and raised at Dog Snogging on Ouse.”

“I see. But old Gobbo, your father, he is Venetian?”

“Mum was English.” She was. Drowned herself when I was but a babe, but as English as St. George himself, although I thought it best not to mention that to the Jew, as the Hebrew pantheon has sod all in the way of saints.

“An English Jew, then. Well.” He stroked his beard. “You know about our people in York? The townspeople of York borrowed money from the Jews, then when the crops failed, blamed the misfortune on our people. They locked all the Jews in the castle keep and burned them.”*

“Oh, right, I was sick that day, if I remember correctly. Sad.” I looked into the well of the boat, sadly, I hoped.

“It was a hundred years ago,” said Shylock with a shrug. “They do not allow our people to own property, but they hate us for lending our moneys at interest to make our way.”

“Well, Yorkshire, county of gormless† gits, innit? Arsehole of all Blighty‡ for my money.” Dog Snogging was bang in the middle of Yorkshire of course, so if Yorkshire was the arsehole of Britain, then I, born and raised there, was—well—being less than sincere.

As the gondolier swung the boat into the mouth of the Grand Canal, which swarmed with small boats, something hit the gondola and our oarsman was knocked off his feet. He caught himself on the oar before he went in the drink, but once righted he looked around for the offending craft, but it had not been another boat that had jostled our vessel.

“Did you see?” he asked me.

I shrugged. “Rock?”

“There are no rocks in the canals.”

“Dolphin?” said Shylock.

“We see dolphins all the time,” said the gondolier. “I’ve never heard of one hitting a boat.”

“Well, they’re the most spiteful of the large fishes, aren’t they?” said I, with the great authority that comes only from countless years of knowing fuck-all about fucking fishes. I did not think it a dolphin.

“Jews,” said the gondolier, spitting into the canal, dismissing our silliness.

There you have it. Taken as one of the tribe without so much as a bug’s knuckle trimmed off the willy. I’d throw that in Jessica’s face when I saw her again—well, so to speak.

“Does a Jew not pay you?” said Shylock, evidently not enjoying my induction into the tribe as much as I.

The gondolier was suddenly very intent upon navigating to the dock by the Rialto Bridge.

“Does my Jewish money not spend in the market?” Shylock stood up in the boat and faced the gondolier, trying to get him to meet his gaze. “Would you have me give your fee, my Jewish coin, to a beggar at the dock rather than have it befoul your Christian hand? What say you?”

“No offense was meant, Shylock,” mumbled the gondolier as he churned the long boat in between two tall mooring poles. “You are my most steady fare, signor.”

“Good day, then,” said Shylock, tossing a copper coin to the boatman as he stepped off. “We will find another way home this evening.”

“Just going to wander till then,” said I, stepping onto the dock with my wooden box. “Just two Jews. Wandering.” I felt a song coming on. “Wandering Jews.” I suppressed the urge to rhyme. “Two Jews amused.” Somewhat suppressed.

“Stay close, boy,” said Shylock.

I hurried up the dock to join him in the bustling square of the Rialto, keeping my head down, my face hidden by my floppy yellow hat. As someone used to attracting attention to himself, wearing bells, and carrying a smugly profane puppet, the anonymity was more difficult than I anticipated. There was irony and mirth lurking everywhere, and it was my holy duty as a fool to point it out, nay, chase it out of the corners and poke it until it giggled.

I caught up with Shylock. “That bit with the boatman was rather Old Testament,” said I.

He wheeled on me, stopped, and assumed the posture of one about to lecture. I had seen it before. Everywhere. “Since the time we were first chosen, Lancelot, suffering has been the lot of our people, but still, we must take our lessons from the prophets. And what do we learn from the story of Moses confronting the pharaoh? When Moses did call down the ten plagues upon the Egyptians? What do we learn from this, young Lancelot?”

“As plagues go, frogs are not so bad?” I was raised in a nunnery. I know Testaments Old and New.