Mary stopped to look at the cakes, which were cut in the shape of horsemen and decorated with candies and swags of icing. The horsemen were figures of Saint Martin, because today was Saint Martin's day. She walked on, thankful that this part of the city was dry. It was a relief not to be wading in shallow water.
Here on the Strada Nuova every vestige of her infatuation was gone. She flicked off Richard Visconti like a horse shuddering its skin to get rid of a fly. Suddenly ravenous, she plunged into a bar and sat down solemnly to drink a cappuccino and eat a miniature sandwich, ready at last to think about the golden apparition behind Richard's closet door.
Half the tiny sandwich disappeared in one bite. Mary closed her eyes, trying to remember, making a list in her head. There had been the wonderful painting of the young man with a spot-red fur over his shoulder, and on the floor the shapeless packages in their tragic wrappings, and leaning in the corner two or three tall scrolls with golden handles. There had also been a display of glittering cups and plates and tall golden candelabra, the kind with a lot of candles in a single row. How many candles? Seven? Eight? Nine?
Of course, of course. They were Hebrew candlesticks. The scrolls were Torah scrolls. The plates and cups were vessels for the celebration of Passover. The assembled treasure was a kind of Hebrew holy grail. It must have been hidden in that shabby apartment on the Rio della Sensa in 1943, during a time of mortal danger for the Jews of Venice. What did Richard have to do with the fate of Venetian Jews during the Second World War? He had not even been born in 1943.
Mary set down her coffee cup, snatched up her bag, and hurried out of the bar. Whatever it meant, it was infinitely more important than a feverish episode of mindless adultery. It meant something bad, something terrible. In the golden aura streaming out of Richard Visconti's closet there had been something grotesque, something that had swept her out of the room and out of the house, something profoundly awful, something that implicated Richard and dashed him out of all caringbut something unspeakably larger than Richard Visconti.
Outside the bar the street was full of shoppers, the sky was gray. Mary took out her map. It was an old-fashioned map, elaborately folded. She had opened and closed it so many times that the creases were coming apart. Now she batted it open and put her eyes close to the printed network of street names and figured out where to go.
She should follow the Strada to a biggish street called Rio Terra FarsettiRio Terra meant a filled-in canalthen turn left. Pretty soon there'd be a bridge, and on the other side she would find herself in the Ghetto Nuovo.
The Strada was empty of water, but the streets northwest of it were wet. In boots it didn't matter. She was used to wading. But when she crossed the bridge into the Ghetto Nuovo, she found it perfectly dry.
Of course the square looked familiar. She had been here before, taking pictures. She remembered the sad bronze memorials on the wall, and the trees, and the old wellhead. Mary paused under a tree to empty the water out of her boots.
Somewhere here there was a museum. Yes, there was the sign, MUSEO EBRAICO. Was it open at eleven o'clock in the morning? Yes, it was. She paid her way in.
The exhibition space was on the upper floor. Mary climbed the stairs to a display of Torah scrolls and seven-branched candlesticks and splendid ritual dishes. She was reminded of the pewter communion plates in old New England churches, but these were more elaborate, and they were incised with Hebrew words. And everything was silver, not pewter, and certainly not gold.
It occurred to her that gold, while much more expensive than silver, was more practical in one way. Over the course of years a silver vessel would tarnish and turn black, whereas gold would stay shining forever.
She stood for a long time gazing at the bright silver cups and Passover plates and the little silver vessels with tiny doors for the dispensing of incense. Someone was keeping them diligently polished. Even so, they were less magnificent than Richard's glorious golden vessels.
But there was a more significant difference. Here there was no sinister aura, no sense of suffering, no terror. It was merely a museum of beautiful sacred objects.
Mary went back downstairs and bought a book in the museum shop, attracted by the picture on the cover. It was a photograph of a crowd of people on a sunny street surrounding a man who was carrying a Torah. All the men were wearing hats, some of the women held babies. It was surely an important occasion. Somehow the picture struck a blow.
Oh, God, she was tired. She wanted to go home.
Which way to the vaporetto stop? Many plodded across another bridge and walked under a sign, GHETTO VECCHIO. It was the wrong way. She had been here before. It was not the way home. This little street led straight back to a synagogue. Last time there had been men going in and out, boys on the doorstep. Today there was no one. The synagogue was closed.