Rialto, Venezia It took three years to build the Ponte di Rialto, and some days it feels like it takes that long just to cross it.
Today is such a day.
Venice has become the trading gateway to the world, and it seems to Tanina Perrotta that every nationality on earth is simultaneously swarming over Da Ponte's famous bridge. The shop girl works on the south side of the bridge, in Gatusso's, one of the city's oldest and most respected arts and antiquities houses. Business is booming. Every day she sells paintings and curios for prices that astound her. It's hard work, and now she's longing to be on the other side of the bridge with Ermanno, the love of her life.
At last Lauro, her genial employer, flips the sign on the front door and pulls down a shade. 'Finito. Go! Go! You've been gazing out of the window as though you were expecting the Doge himself to arrive. Is it really so tiresome working here?'
She grabs her cloak from a hook behind a drape. 'You know I consider it a joy to work for you, signor. It is merely that I am meeting a friend and must run an errand first.'
'Friend?' He gives her a paternal stare. 'Is this friend the Jew-boy from Buchbinder's?'
Tanina's moon-shaped face flushes as she tugs a sandy curl of hair back behind her ear. 'You know it is. Ermanno and I have been together for nearly two years.'
Gatusso lets out a tut.
'He is a good man!' she protests.
'The only good thing about him is that his rogue of a father had the sense to give him a Christian name.'
'Signor!'
'Tanina, you know as well as I do, if your dear parents were alive, they would forbid you from having anything to do with him.'
Hands on hips, she gives him a challenging look. 'But, alas, they are not, and I am of an age when I can decide such matters for myself.'
They glare at each other. Tempers simmer. Lauro Gatusso has been the bedrock of her independence; without his support she'd be jobless, homeless and probably even Ermanno-less. Ironically, it was Gatusso who brought them together. They met while he was delivering goods her boss had bought from an old Jewish merchant in the ghetto.
'I am sorry,' Gatusso says finally. 'It's just that the boy's father is a scurrilous ruffian. A low-life. A cheat of celestial magnitude. Old Taduch deals in dubiously sourced art and his ancestors are nothing but strazzaria – filthy rag traders.'
Tanina smiles as she edges past him to the door. Trading between the two businessmen has gone on for years – usually amicably – but their most recent deal ended badly. 'I am sorry too. You have been most kind to me, and I respect your patronage and advice. It's just…'
He waves her away with the back of his lace-cuffed hand. 'I know, I know – it's just that you love him. Love! Love! Love!' He bundles her through the door with a smile 'Ciao, Tanina. Take good care of yourself and make sure that Jew-boy gets you home safely.'
She gathers her skirts and hurries. It's already getting dark and cold. Artists have packed up their easels from alongside the canal and most street traders have gone. She crosses the bridge and winds her way through the backstreets. First east, then north, then back north-westerly away from the looping bend of the Canal Grande and out towards one of the northernmost islands.
Tanina has been aware of the Jewish ghetto – the first in Europe – for as long as she can remember. Catholics have all but demonised the place. Everything Jewish is restricted. Trade, rights, status and even the movement of the people held within its vast walls are all constrained. Yet aside from the occasional clampdown, the guards generally turn a blind eye to those who treat them well, and so life goes on regardless.
She turns into the ghetto, immediately excited by its vibrancy. The place is a cauldron of wheeling and dealing, its streets overflowing with merchants and moneylenders. Furs, cloths and carpets are trundled in and out of the warehouses. Despite the lateness of the hour, tailors, jewellers and barbers are still hard at work. Tanina almost gets bowled over by a couple of water carriers as they hurry by, having drawn a full load from their master's private well. She likes it here. Likes the energy, the danger, the feeling of being somewhere forbidden. She stops at a small shop near a coffin-maker's to buy some meagre provisions – garlic, onions, chicken cuts and bread.
Ermanno's parents' home in the Ghetto Nuovo consists of a few rooms in an overcrowded, five-storey building that lies in the permanent shadow and suffocating smell of a nearby copper foundry. Because of family loyalties, he's turned down better jobs with rivals in the other half of the settlement, the Ghetto Vecchio.
Tanina finds the love of her life studying as usual.
Great texts and drawings from Egypt, Constantinople, old Italy, Germany and France are laid out on his sagging bed and across the dusty wooden floor where he's now sitting. The books detail treasures from all the great eras and empires in the world.
'Bonsoir, ma cherie!' he enthuses as she enters. Then, in passable English, 'Good evening, my darling.' He gets to his feet, frees her hands of groceries and finishes in German: 'Guten Abend, mein liebling.' Then he presses his mouth to hers.
Tanina breaks free to catch her breath. Her eyes sparkle from the clinch. She takes a long look at him. More handsome by the minute. Dark, slim, well-muscled, with eyes that make her smile and melt her heart. She unbuttons her heavy wool cloak. 'Shall I cook now or later?'
Ermanno puts his hands to the neck of her blouse, melts her again with his eyes, and undoes the first button. 'Later. Much later.'