Wu Ming - Altai

“Years ago, my aunt received from Suleyman the concession to found a colony on Lake Tiberias.” Nasi’s index finger stopped on a little patch of blue between Jerusalem and Damascus. “It was her dream, and it has been mine, too. Palestine is the land promised to Moses, our land. But things haven’t gone as we hoped, and the colony can’t provide for itself.” He looked up from the map and turned towards me.

“Over time I’ve understood our mistake. I am a merchant and a banker; I invest money in commercial enterprises. Very many Jews have the same vocation, because the sovereigns of Europe have forbidden us to practice any other trade. We need not a lake, but a sea.”

His hand, outstretched and with its fingers spread, stroked the Mediterranean.

“But you already have possessions in the middle of the sea,” I said, pointing at a spot on the map. “You are duke of Naxos and the Seven Islands.”

Nasi sighed. “The Cyclades are a handful of little rocks. Beautiful and polished, and it’s nice to hold them in your hand and shake them like a rattle, but I have something bigger in mind.” He gestured with his hand, and the Cyclades were swept aside. “I imagine a land where we will be able to live in peace, do our business deals, and cultivate the vine, the olive and tolerance. A place where you could choose the residence that we have promised you. A free nation, a refuge for all of us, for the books hated by the despots, and for everyone who is persecuted. Will you help me build that place, Manuel?” It was a sincere question and I felt like answering with one that was equally candid.

“Do I have an alternative?”

“You can leave here and walk all the way to the gate,” he said. “No one has orders to stop you.”

“Why are you giving me this opportunity?”

“Because I’m not Consigliere Nordio. He asked you to be true to Venice. I’m asking you to be true to yourself.”

I swallowed. If the time I had spent at Palazzo Belvedere was supposed to allow us to get to know one another, Yossef Nasi had used that time to great advantage. In only two weeks he seemed to have plumbed the depths of my unease. “How can I choose, if I don’t know what you want from me?”

He looked satisfied. I still hadn’t left, and that was a good sign. He got up and walked around for a moment, brushing the spines of the books with his fingers. “You told Navarro that the architect Savorgnan left his work in Nicosia unfinished. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember in detail what he said to you?”

“That there wasn’t enough money to reface the bastions of Constanza and D’Avila. All eleven fortresses of the city are made of earth, then covered with stone. If they aren’t refaced they’re little more use than sand castles.”

I paused. I lowered my eyes to the map and saw the name of Nicosia, just off the Ottoman coast. “Cyprus. .” I murmured to myself, and then raised my voice as I looked at him. “The sea, of course, and a big island. Vines, olive trees, commercial ports. That’s how you plan to take your vengeance on Venice. By taking Cyprus away.”

“I have a score to settle with Venice, that’s true. But it isn’t vengeance that inspires me, and not even the Sultan wants the ruin of La Serenissima.” He put his hand in his pocket and took out a gold coin. He held it between his thumb and index finger, so that I could recognize it: a Venetian ducat. “In Constantinople the most important business deals are done with this, and no one wants to stop doing them.”

He approached me again and lowered his voice, as if to lend additional weight to every single word. “The score that needs settling is with history, Manuel. I have the money to do it and I have the support of the Sultan. He promised me the crown of the island, when it is in his hands.” He looked me straight in the eyes. “Thanks to your information, I will soon have a fleet.” He set the gold coin down on the map, in front of me, right on top of the outline of Cyprus.

On the two shores of the Adriatic, and doubtless elsewhere, too, they say the eyes are the mirrors of the soul. Of all the emissaries of our emotions, they are in fact the most sincere, the hardest to manipulate. For the same reason, others say that you can know a man by his way of laughing.

In my people’s books, on the other hand, it is the voice that testifies to the soul of a man. Indeed, voice, soul and breath and life are one and the same. In the first two chapters of the Bereshit , in which the story of the Creation is told, the voice of God rings out ten times, the same number as the Commandments.

Shemà, Israel . Hear, O Israel.

Our daily prayer invites us to welcome the words of the Lord.

I had begun to recite it again, twice a day, but now no one was forcing me to do so. And lo and behold, my voice had changed. I heard it vibrating sonorously, like a well-tuned instrument, and I couldn’t work out whether it was the effect of the Hebrew, with its guttural consonants, or because my soul was expressing its change in that way.

Nasi explained to me that soon, with my new voice, I would have to address the most eminent men in the Ottoman court. Perhaps the Great Admiral, or one of the viziers, or even the Sultan himself. He wanted to hear the information about Nicosia from me. He wanted them to ask me their questions, to convince himself that Cyprus could be conquered, with little effort and in a few months.

The wait for that meeting began disturbing my nights again. I dreamed of finding myself in the presence of the Sultan, incapable of speaking, struck by sudden muteness. I imagined Consigliere Nordio sitting on my chest and trying to pull my tongue out with his hands.

Days later, at the first sign of a clear sky, I decided to shake off those visions with a long late afternoon walk. Often certain stale thoughts need wind and fresh air to blow them off into the distance.

The palace garden was at its finest at that hour. The sun, low on the horizon, played in the branches, and the blackbirds hopped silently among the patches of snow. A group of women were collecting the refugees’ laundry, which had been hung out to dry in long, billowing lines.

I left the central avenue and took a muddy path toward the furthest corner of the park. Beyond the duck pond, a hedge formed a high barrier. I walked along it, and after a few steps I found the entrance to a kind of labyrinth, or rather a sequence of green rooms, with the sky for a ceiling and a grass floor.

After a few twists and turns, I found myself in a round clearing dotted with shrubs. The thorny branches of a climbing rose climbed an iron arch and framed a bare stone bench that resembled a great boulder. Directly behind it, a white drystone wall, no more than ten feet long, and a tree with a slender trunk.

Beneath the dark green foliage, Dana was trying to hang a goldfinch’s cage.

The bird greeted me first, then she turned round and froze, like a deer surprised while grazing in the depths of the forest.

“Welcome to my garden,” she said at last, with a hint of pride. “Everything you see here was planted by me.”

Only then did I realize that Dana, too, had changed. She no longer addressed me in polite phrases and forced replies, and when she brought me my food, the brief glances that we exchanged said that the task wasn’t entirely unpleasant to her.

She gestured to me to sit down, as if I were a guest on the doorstep of her house, then sat down beside me on the bench, and it was the first time we had been so close to one another since that first night.

“It’s growing quickly,” I said, pointing to the little tree. “You’ve been here for four years, and you’ll be able to enjoy its shade this summer.”