“Not always,” she retorted, smiling. “You’re known, people talk about you. They trust you —”
His tone was cold. “But I don’t earn enough.”
“Don’t be offended! I didn’t mean to hurt you, you’ve provided for us since I was a child, but now I can provide too. And what I’m saying is that working as Hyman Golletz’s cleaner is not the way to a fortune.”
“So you have found a way to make a fortune?” Ira asked, his eyebrows raised. “Tell me, Rosella, I’m fascinated as to how you are going to fill our coffers and put us all in a palace.”
Angered, she pushed back her stool and rose.
“Don’t mock me! I’m not a child, and perhaps it’s time you realised that, Ira. I have a right to a say in this family – just as much as you do.”
“I have never said otherwise!” He snapped, his tone softening. “So what’s your idea?”
She turned to move away, then turned back, taking in a breath. “You know the painter, Tintoretto?”
“I know of him. Everyone in Venice knows of him. Why?”
“I was in the piazza last Wednesday afternoon, it was raining very hard —”
“I remember.”
“– and he approached me. Very politely. He’s rather a shy man, a little awkward. And he asked —“
“He approached you in the street?” Ira repeated, enraged. “And you spoke to him?”
“Tintoretto was very polite and begged me to forgive his presumption, but he wondered if —”
“If?”
“ – I would sit for him.”
Sighing, Ira leaned forwards with his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. “Sit down, Rosella.” She could tell from the tone of his voice that he was angry and regained her seat as he continued. “You’re seventeen years old, respectable young Venetian women of your age are kept in their homes and only enter the streets with a chaperone —”
“But we are not Venetians, we are Jews.”
“We are no less than them! You are as respectable as the daughters of the Rannuccio family or the Colonia —”
“But I have to work for a living.”
“Not as a whore!”
She flushed. “Is that what you think? That being a sitter for one of Venice’s finest painters is being a whore?”
“Titian —”
“We are not talking about Titian! We are talking about Tintoretto, and he is an honourable man. I have asked around, spoken to Hyman Golletz and others in the ghetto and I’ve heard many good things about the artist. I admit that if it had been Titian I would have been nervous —”
“You would have had every right to be nervous. Titian may well be powerful and admired, but his circle is one of the most infamous in Venice. And most of his models are courtesans.”
“But Tintoretto is not Titian.”
Ira rolled his eyes Heavenwards. “It doesn’t matter, Rosella, it’s not what it is in reality, it’s what it appears to be.”
“That’s a rabbi’s argument. So we should go without because of people’s opinion? In reality we’re poor, and that’s also what we appear to be. But this is a way for us to prosper.” She took in a breath, her eyes fixed on her brother. “I went to temple, to ask advice...”
He realised then that his sister was serious. She had not said I went to the synagogue, but I went to temple to ask advice.
“...the rabbi said it was a matter for my own conscience.”
Ira shook his head “The usual answer —”
“But it is a matter of my own conscience.” Rosella replied, “and my conscience says that I wish to do this. I trust Signor Tintoretto, he said that if I preferred I could come with a companion.”
“Would it be a waste of my breath to forbid you to do this?” She reached out towards her brother’s hand, but Ira moved it away, his expression unyielding. “We do not need better lodgings, Rosella —”
“You do not need better lodgings,” she replied. “Because you, brother, are not here for more than a few hours a day. You come in with the curfew, bone tried, and then you fall asleep. When they open the gates at sunrise, you leave. And sometimes before, because a doctor has a freedom to come and go when he is called for. You live here, but your life is beyond the ghetto, your thoughts far beyond this sticky cluster of houses crammed one on top of each other. You don’t see that the sun has to fight to make any impression on the alleys, or that the weak plaster we pack into the holes in the roof when it rains never lasts and falls off again with the next storm. Your life – your mind – is out there.” She gestured to the city beyond the ghetto walls. “And I don’t blame you for that, Ira. You’re building a reputation, something encouraged in Venice; it’s a city of reputations. Any man without an idea or a dream wouldn’t last a week. You have a dream, Ira,” she leaned towards him. “It’s a good dream, because you’re a good man…And now you pull a face at me! But I’ve heard people talk about you ‘Ira Tabat is a remarkable doctor. Amongst the finest in Venice.’ Even the Dutch like you,” she smiled, trying to coax him back into good humour. “and the Dutch seldom like anyone.”
“They are surly.” He agreed.
“But when Lijsbet comes to Venice, who does he seek out? You. You healed his leg when he could barely walk on it. Your reputation is known. Your name is spreading.”
“As it should be. I’m thirty one, Rosella, not a boy.”
“And most of the doctors in the ghetto are much older men —”
He brushed her words aside. “You’re changing the subject, this has nothing to do with Tintoretto —”
“It has, because I’ve made up my mind.” She said quietly. “I would never dishonour my name or my family, I am no whore, nor will I ever be. I have too much respect for myself. But I will sit for Tintoretto and you must trust me... You see, I want a life outside the ghetto too.”
“It is not safe outside. Not for a young woman.”
“I understand, but I will not take risks.” She assured him. “You have ambition and I want to be something more. I can’t marry a rich man, or parade like a Venetian Contessa, but I can live another way.” She held his face with her hands and looked into her brother’s eyes. “I want my escape. And Tintoretto is my escape. He is famous, his paintings are seen by thousands, people stand in awe of his work. Even if I live and die in the ghetto my life will mean something. If he paints me, I am someone. If he paints me, I exist.”
Chapter Five
Walking silently over the bridge towards the alleyway, Adamo Baptista paused at the main entrance of the Jewish ghetto in Cannaregio, then walked in. The buildings were blank faced, unlike the Venetian opulence of their neighbours, several covered stone wells breaking up the bareness of the square, a few listless trees as dowdy as their surroundings.
He was aware that he was being watched, that a small clutch of people had gathered, standing under an awning at the doorway which lead to the Kosher butcher and the synagogue above. Venetian law forbade the building of free standing temples, so the synagogue was built over the shop, above the bones and offal of the dead animals below, crushed between a boarding house and a dressmaker’s. Baptista checked the street signs, then moved towards a house with a green painted door. As he approached a man came out, glanced suspiciously at him, and then moved off. Unperturbed, Baptista pushed open the door and looked in.