The Serpent of Venice

“What are you on about?” said Jessica.

“What?” I didn’t know she was still there.

“About you shagging some sisters and being a massive tool?”

“I said that aloud?”

She nodded.

“Well, why are you lurking like a burglar in the dark, anyway?”

“I’m sitting at my own kitchen table. It’s daylight. The window is open. Look, there’s the sea.”

“Fine, I was just having a loud ponder. If you did any thinking yourself you would have recognized it and excused yourself.”

“I’ll get you into Antonio’s quarters, Pocket, so you can be the tool you yearn to be.” She giggled.

CHORUS: And so the bitter and shallow fool learns that it’s not quite so funny when the soliloquy that is walked in upon is his.

“For the love of God, shut the fuck up!”

“I didn’t walk in. I was sitting here the whole time.”

“Close the shutters. Maybe he’ll go away.”

CHORUS: And thus, the shutters of Shylock’s kitchen are closed, and many things in the house may transpire, unobserved by anyone of importance.

Upon Jessica’s urging, Shylock sent me to Tubal’s house an hour before sundown, and I was met by two great hulking Hebrews dressed in the same dark gabardine and yellow hat as myself. Called Ham and Japheth, they were certainly the largest Jews I had ever seen.

“Ham, you say? Can’t say our people lack a sense of irony, can you? Surprised your brother wasn’t called Bacon or Bangers. Ha!” I amuse myself sometimes.

“We are named for the sons of Noah,” said Should-Have-Been-Bacon.

“Of course,” said I. “That’s what I meant—great meaty blokes like you two in a city surrounded by water. Like Noah’s sons.”

They were young, just coming into their beards, it appeared, so they did not further question my balderdash. This is why we send youth to war: spotty lads possessed of passion but void of purpose will cleave to the most slippery species of bullshit. Ham and Japheth would make fine filler for the sausage grinder of war. But for now, they would do as guards for gold.

Tubal directed us from the dock in front of his house, where a broad-beamed boat waited with oarsmen standing at each end. He was still in his dark gabardine, but without his yellow hat he had a great explosion of curly black and gray hair that was broken only by a shiny white bald spot in its center, as if an albino turtle was hiding down a mine in the dark. “This boat will take you to the dock in front of Antonio’s house, which faces the Lido, so you will not have to go into the canals of the city. You, Lancelot, Shylock says you have seen Antonio’s men. Let the boatmen come into the dock only after you recognize them and confirm that they are ready to receive the gold. You jump to the dock and assure the way is clear all the way up the stairs to Antonio’s apartments and that he is in residence. Only then may Ham and Japheth leave the boat and carry the gold up the stairs to Antonio’s apartments. Turn it over to Antonio himself, and offer to stay while he counts it. Then have him mark this receipt before you return. It must be signed or the law will not support the bond.”

Tubal gave a rolled-up parchment to Ham, who tucked it into his gabardine.

“Go. Go, go, go,” said Tubal. “They will be expecting you.”

Ham and Japheth wrestled the heavy chest into the boat, which settled lower into the water with the weight of the gold and the two huge Jews.

The boatmen rowed us eastward around the outside of La Giudecca, around the island of San Giorgio Maggiore (the dot on the “i” of the long island of La Giudecca) and across the mouth of the Grand Canal, where even at dusk, the boats moved like a flock of confused ducks maneuvering for bread crusts thrown in their midst. The water of the lagoon had taken on a silvery sheen from the setting sun, which blocked the view beneath, but some small fish broke the surface perhaps fifty yards to our right, and I could see the wave of whatever large creature was below the water chasing them, moving parallel to our boat, toward Arsenal.

“Tuna,” said Ham, catching my eye and probably seeing the alarm there. “Sometimes they come into the lagoon in the evening. Maybe a dolphin.” He smiled and slapped my shoulder to comfort me and I returned his smile.

I did not think it was a tuna, or a dolphin.

“Relax, Lancelot,” said Japheth. “The threat to our task will not come from the sea, but from such sharks as walk the land, and we are ready for them.” He pulled aside the fringe of his gabardine and I could see a heavy oaken club hanging from his belt. I looked to his brother who grinned as he revealed an identical cudgel that he’d concealed.

I shrugged. “Say, what say ye, just for sport, instead of giving Antonio the gold, you two surprise him by bludgeoning him to pulp, perhaps a few of his cohorts, then we take the gold back to Tubal and have a drink and a good laugh over it?”

Really, what good was it to have two huge Jews with clubs if you couldn’t use them to bludgeon your enemies to meaty paste? Granted, it wouldn’t be the slow, ironic retribution that Shylock was hoping for, but I thought he might recover from the disappointment and would deal somewhat better with a more unpleasant surprise he was about to receive.

“That would be wrong,” said Japheth.

“Wrongish,” said I, making the sign of tipping scales with my hand. “Not like it’s written in stone, is it?”

“Actually—” ventured Ham.

“Oh, all right—it’s like sailing with an ark full of fucking lawyers with you two. Fine, we’ll just deliver the sodding gold and leave Antonio unbludgeoned.”

There were four men waiting in front of Antonio’s house. The boatmen brought their craft into the landing bow first, allowed me to hop off, then backed off, as they had been instructed. I was agile on the tall chopines now, and only someone who was looking for it might have noticed my gait to be unnatural, less nimble than on my own tender feet. I nodded to the four, three I’d recognized from the Rialto that afternoon: Gratiano, the tallest; the handsome one, Bassanio, the one for whom the gold was meant; and two other shorter, rounder fellows who might have been the same person, if not twins, brothers, and although I had seen one of them on the Rialto, I couldn’t have said which one.

“Lorenzo?” I asked the closest.

“Salarino,” said he.

“Then you are Lorenzo?” I asked the other.

“Salanio,” said the other.

I looked from one to the other. “You’re joking?”

“I told you, Jew,” said Gratiano. “We will see Lorenzo later.”

“Right,” said I. “I’m to check the stairwell for more scoundrels, then I’ll be back down to signal for the gold.”

“Top floor.” Gratiano grinned and gestured to the doorway of the nearest building.

Off I went.

“Hey, what did he mean by more scoundrels?” said Salanio, or perhaps the other one, as I entered the building.

I was up three floors in two ticks, but the wooden chopines were making such a racket, I moved to the edge of the stairs and threw my weight on the banister before going up the last flight. Then I heard the voice.

“Don’t worry, Antonio, if there is no one to collect your bond, you shall be free of it, regardless of the fortunes of your ships.”

Iago. My body reacted with a shiver despite my resolve of spirit. I had had no such reaction to seeing Antonio, but then he had never seemed the dangerous one.

“We would just, well, assassinate the Jew?” Antonio sounded shocked. “Everyone would know.”

“We are starting a war, Antonio. You can’t run the whole thing on cynicism and profit. At some point blood will be spilled. There will be killing.”

“I know, but I thought it would be far away, unpleasant, but removed, like a rumor.”

“I will see your hands stay clean, Antonio.”

“The gold is here,” said Antonio.

He must have looked out on the lagoon and seen the boat.

“Rodrigo has been

to Belmont,” said Iago. “Nerissa says there is no way to discern the correct casket. Several of Brabantio’s lawyers, as well as a senator, watch over the process. Suitors come in from many ports. Princes and dukes.”

“We will find a way. The lady Portia yearns to be wed to Bassanio. She is her father’s daughter; I have full confidence in her cunning.”

“It will be on you, then. Rodrigo and I are bound for Corsica after the Michaelmas Carnival to see to the undoing of the Moor and Cassio. When next we meet, I shall be a general and you shall own a senator.”