Wu Ming - Altai

All this went on for a long time: I dreamed about getting up and saw myself asleep, useless, defenseless, while the audience laughed, until I felt drawn upward, toward the ceiling, and I awoke.

I didn’t know how long my stupor had lasted. No light entered the room; the air came in through little openings above the architrave of the door, which had been closed for the night. Now I could move my body, and I raised it up, fearing this might only be a new episode in the nightmare. But no, I was me, alive and awake.

I closed the window halfway and washed my face with water from the basin, then tipped it over my head. I dried myself, got dressed and leaned against the door.

“I know you’re there. I want to leave.”

No answer.

I cautiously opened the door. There was no one there. The light hurt my eyes. The day had begun long before.

The smell of food rose from the courtyard of the palace; someone among the Jewish refugees was having breakfast. I felt pangs of hunger, and that forced me to go downstairs.

A group of men were sitting around a low table. I didn’t know what language to speak to them, but the oldest of them anticipated me, talking to me in Italian.

“You look like someone who hasn’t slept well, Signore.”

A strange answer came to my lips: “The bed is a hard battlefield.”

I had spoken under my breath.

“I’m sorry?” He was a serene-looking old man.

“I was saying I had a troubled night.”

He gestured to me to sit down next to him. “Please meet my brothers and sons-in-law.” I sat down without thinking and was offered bread, cheese and olives. “Where are you from?” the man asked. The question left me dumbfounded, and my reply came instinctively: “Venice.” They all nodded, to show that they understood. “Don’t worry,” the old man continued. “Here you find sleep. This place will protect you.”

I didn’t say a word, with last night’s thoughts still echoing vaguely in my head. I bent my head over my plate and, along with the others, ate the bread of the man I saw as an enemy.

I couldn’t think when I had last had a good night’s sleep. I’d spent the night of the Arsenal fire awake, and since then Morpheus had vanished, to be replaced by Cerberus, the three-mouthed dog, guarding the threshold to keep me from leaving hell.

Weeks of horrible dreams, sudden awakenings, pain from the beatings I had received in Ragusa. Then everything changed. After dining with the refugees, I went back to my room and it was a relief to realize that I was going to sleep, calmly, without fighting. As in the Aeneid , someone had thrown Cerberus “a sop, in honey steep’d, to charm the guard,” and now “long draughts of sleep his monstrous limbs enslaved.” Virgil, my father’s favorite reading. That was my last conscious thought after I crossed the threshold and left Hades behind me.

I slept, slept, and slept again.

The next day passed slowly, drifting on a lazy breeze. I watched it floating above me like a white cloud, one of the dense, clear, nimbus type, ice vessels floating in the blue of the sky, on those afternoons that you spend in a field with your nose in the air and a blade of grass between your teeth. Afternoons that seemed endless to me as a boy. How long had it been since I had had one like this? My mother took me to play outside the walls, we ran together, we picked flowers.

For the whole of that day I didn’t see Yossef Nasi or David Gomez. Dana made a fleeting appearance, just a flash and a trail of perfume. She left my dinner in my room, but I took the tray and went back down with it into the drawing room, to share a table with the old man and the other refugees.

It was there that Nasi found me, less than an hour later, when he bustled in with Gomez, followed by a troop of servants. He stopped in the middle of the room and spoke in a loud voice: “Listen to me. Some of our brothers and sisters need help from whoever is capable of giving it. It’s not far from here; please come with us.”

With the exception of the infirm, the aged, and mothers nursing babies, almost everyone moved right away. Little knots of people dissolved, people who were sitting down got to their feet, even children left their games. Gomez walked toward the door along with the servants, and everyone else followed after him. Before setting off himself, Nasi glanced at me. I was still at the table, startled by the turn that events had taken.

“You come too, De Zante,” he said. “It’ll do you good.”

Flights of gulls, low, risky parabolas among the masts of the mooring barge and the roofs of the houses by the water. We approached, and the ship slowly came alongside. I began to make out the faces of the people on the deck; on land, the men responsible for mooring the boat were organizing two gangways. Nasi and David Gomez quickened their steps, followed by the little crowd. I stayed behind, confused.

We hadn’t exchanged a word. The sense of expectation was palpable, and the loquacity and affability of my fellow guests seemed to have vanished in the cold air of Ortaköy. Nasi was bustling about on the dockside, issuing orders. Gomez helped him to set up a gangway, and the first people prepared to disembark in the lashing wind.

The men’s faces were ashen. An old man came forward, supported by his children and grandchildren. Nasi had a word of comfort for each of them, and pointed to a building behind us. “In there you will find hot tea, dried figs, and bread.” His firm tone was reassuring. “There are also beds where you can rest. If one of you is ill or in pain for any reason, a doctor will be called.”

I heard people speaking Ladino and Italian, as the servants distributed water and blankets. A middle-aged man who had just come down the gangway stepped forward.

“ Shalom . Are you Don Yossef Nasi?”

“I am.”

The man, his features distorted with fatigue and excitement, leaned forward and kissed his hand. In my mind’s eye I can still see the image of his dirt-blackened fingers gripping Nasi’s white ones. “What they say of you is true,” the man said. “May the Lord allow you to protect us at all times.”

Nasi smiled at him and led him to the shore. “You’re safe now. Go and warm yourselves. Later you will be accompanied to your lodgings.”

In front of me was the Great Enemy, concerned about people he didn’t know, people he had never seen before, as if they were his children, parents, cousins.

Then I saw the woman and the child. Among the last to disembark; the little one, six or seven years old, clutching his mother’s skirts. They walked cautiously, and there was profound weariness in the woman’s eyes. The child was very fair, and looked around in terror. On the last step, just before they touched dry land, they stumbled.

I leaped forward and gripped the woman’s arm. The child hurried to hide behind her.

The words came to my lips unbidden: “ No tened miedo, you are safe.”

The woman thanked me and was helped on her way. I stood where I was, looking out toward the sea, filled with a surge of emotion that swelled my chest and veins. I had just witnessed an ancient scene. I had played my part in a performance that had been going on for centuries, for more than a thousand years.

I felt tears trickling down my cheeks, all the way to my lips, and tasted their bitterness. A hand fell on my shoulder. I still remember the sound of Nasi’s voice, which brought me back to the present, amid all the noise of the ship’s landing.

“Welcome back, Manuel Cardoso.”

The window frames the roofs of Cannaregio. I’m sitting at the table, waiting for the servant to bring in the braised meat, but instead Rizzi comes in with his favorite kind of game: well-roasted Jews on a spit.