Shylock Must Die

SHYLOCK MUST DIE

WHEN MARCO POLO sailed home from the East, he returned with many novelties. Among them were manuscripts written in unreadable pictograms on strips of palm leaf. Each strip was about a metre in length, and as wide as a thumb from tip to base. They were bound together by cord, which was threaded through holes on either end of the leaves. On the top and the bottom were thicker slats of wood, which served as protective covers.

As soon as merchants began to trade with China, they brought back many more of these manuscripts, some twice the size of Polo’s originals. Poor Venetians hung these impenetrable stories on their walls in place of tapestries. My father had a brighter idea: he hung his over the windows. Later he devised a way of altering the angle of the leaves, so that he could control the amount of light that entered his office. He liked the chiaroscuro effect that this created. It resembled life, he said, in which some things are revealed and others hidden. He called his invention a Venetian blind. When friends asked him how they too could make a Venetian blind his answer was always the same: You poke his eyes out.

As far as our family is concerned, he said to me, the more blind Venetians the better. He made his living by seeing what they could not see, by penetrating darkness and mysteries on their behalf. He was their private eye.

When I was nineteen he passed on one of his cases to me. He said it would be easy, and would provide an instructive introduction to the profession.

It is a commonplace that a man never forgets his first time with a woman. I remember my first client in the same way. Signora X was not a beauty, but I retain the image of her sitting in my office in the late afternoon. It hangs in my memory like a portrait by Titian. The sun squinted through the blinds my father had fashioned, and transformed her body into a staircase of light, which my impolite eyes ascended. I vowed inwardly to defend her against all enemies. The foremost of whom turned out to be her husband.

She told a sad tale of betrayal and obstinacy, while tears slithered down her cheeks like glass snails (an effusion she ascribed to the sun). In short she had married a pig. Of course he did not regard himself as such. On the contrary, he thought of himself as a pious Jew. He did not beat her, but every morning after prayers, he cursed God for giving him such a shrewish wife. He claimed that was why he no longer lay with her. But she was convinced that he was keeping a mistress somewhere in the Ghetto. She confronted him with her suspicions, which he did not deny, and yet he refused to offer her a divorce, to grant her the infamous get, without which she would be unable to remarry. In despair she commissioned me to find irrefutable proof of his infidelity.

I laughed when I set eyes upon this Romeo. He was as bald as a ball of mozzarella. It seemed to me that he was lucky to have found a wife, let alone a mistress. But he did have one. And to prove it was childishly simple. The cleric I chose as my witness was Rabbi Leone Modena. We stood together beneath the woman’s casement, which she made no attempt to shutter, and watched as she entertained my client’s unfaithful spouse. He turned out to have as little backbone as he had hair. When confronted by the rabbinical authorities he burst into tears. His wife got her get. I believe she has since remarried. My father congratulated me on the success of my initial investigation, but cautioned me against over-confidence. Of course I did not heed his advice, and came to bitterly regret it.

****

My next client was none other than Rabbi Leone Modena himself, a man of wisdom, and some ten years my senior. He had been impressed, he said, by the exemplary discretion I had shown in my dealings with Signora X. He took a seat. The light wrapped itself around him like a prayer shawl.

Imagine me a Sicilian ruffian, he said, quite prepared to cut out your tongue if you should gossip about his predicament.

I replied that such imaginings were redundant, since the code of my profession counted the office of a private eye on a par with the confessional of a priest.

Are there many private eyes in Italy? said the Rabbi.

At least two, I said. Tubal Sr and his son. To the best of my knowledge.

My predicament is this, said the Rabbi: I owe money to a loan shark. You are thinking such a creature is as kosher as a lobster. But to whom else could I turn? To a member of my congregation? Usurers are always Jews, loan sharks are anything but. This was their advantage to me. But they have drawbacks too: usurers are talmudic in their appreciation of contractual obligations, whereas loan sharks favour muscle and steel. One is hated, the other is both hated and feared. And I am greatly afeared.

I asked the obvious question: Why did you need the money?

I have a weakness, which my wife calls an addiction, said the Rabbi. I am a gambler. But a very poor one, alas, and my losses multiplied. Thanks to the loan shark I have paid off those creditors. Only to find myself in deeper waters. The loan shark has bigger appetites, which I cannot satisfy. Last week his myrmidons took my son – the apple of my eye – and threatened that I would not see him again unless I cleared my debt – which increases by the hour – within the week.

The loan shark is acting outside the law, I said, why not report him to the authorities.

The Rabbi laughed: I should report him to himself?

Can you meet his demands? I said.

Only thanks to Shylock, he said. He is one of us. His profession may stink like yesterday’s fish, but he is a mensch.

What do you want of me? I said.

To help redeem my first born, said Rabbi Leone Modena.

Two nights later we met again by the Ghetto’s locked gate, and bribed the guard to let us trespass. Calle Vallaresso, our destination, was full of gambling dens, out of which rakes and prostitutes tumbled like dice. Our rendez-vous was at its darker end, deserted and dead-quiet, save for the sound of the water gently slapping the banks of the stinking canal.

Young Tubal, said the Rabbi as we waited, you must prepare yourself for a shock. After I collected the money from Shylock, I begged the Eternal One for the strength to resist temptation. But in his wisdom he turned a deaf ear.

How much remains? I said.

About half of what is needed, he said.

In which case your boy is in grave danger, I said.

I trust that the Almighty will spare my son, as he did Isaac, said the Rabbi, perhaps with your assistance.

Out of the darkness three figures emerged; two men nearing thirty, flanking a boy not yet thirteen: Zebulum. The man on the right was holding a lantern, which paved the canal with cobbles of gold. Because they were dealing with Jews they did not bother to hide their faces.

Here is your boy, said the man with the lantern. Where is the money?

Here is one half, I said.

And the other? said the man with the lantern.

You will have that tomorrow, I said, handing over the satchel.

Antonio, said the man without the lantern, these Jews take us for fools.

So saying he silently slipped a stiletto from its scabbard and sliced open the boy’s belly, as if he were a trout. I will not describe the Rabbi’s lamentations, which I hope one day to forget.

Bassanio, said his partner, what have you done?

I have taught the Christ-killers a lesson, said the murderer. For half the money they get the boy, but drained of blood; that is forfeit, for this earthly and that other eternal debt.

Shylock, on the other hand, immediately wrote off the ducats he had advanced the Rabbi. What, he said, I should slaughter another of his chicks?

From time to time I heard of Rabbi Leone Modena, who had become a wanderer; some claimed that they had seen him play the fiddle at a wedding, others that they had seen him preach a sermon. Some claimed to have read books that he had written, among them an autobiography, and a polemic against gambling. Readers may have been converted, but not the writer: he gambled away his daughters’ dowries. There were rumours that his wife had gone mad. If tragedy strikes, if fortune turns ill, he was reported to have said, What can I do? Let me imagine I lost it at play.

I could never forgive myself for what happened to the Rabbi’s boy, though I did not know what I could have done to prevent the butchery. But if only I had done something, I would not have felt so bad. The murderer acted with impunity, because he guessed – correctly – that the Rabbi’s bodyguard was unarmed. So I took to carrying a dagger. The weapon sent out a message: If you prick us, you too will bleed.

****

Years passed. I was no longer Young Tubal, but Tubal proper. I married, and – thank God – we had sons. Others, like Shylock, were not so fortunate. Near my father’s age, he was blessed with only one child, a daughter, before his beloved wife, Leah, had been taken from him. She died of the influenza. If she had lived she might have saved him from the folly that destroyed his good name. But she was not spared.

It began one Saturday, after services in the synagogue.

Shabbat shalom, Shylock, I said, kissing his cheek.

He looked me in the eye. Business is good, is it not, Tubal? he said.

I nodded: Sinners are never in short supply.

In which case you will have no problem in lending me three thousand ducats, he said.

Has the world turned upside-down? I said. Have lenders all become borrowers?

I have such a scheme, Tubal, he said, that should it come to pass will make good an ancient grudge. But to finance it I need not credit, which I have in plenty, but gold to raise up the gross. Seeing that I was not yet convinced he added: It will be an act of healing, a tikkun olam.

The Ghetto is full of usurers, I said, why have you come to me?

Because you are one of those who suffered the wound, he said, one of those who are not yet fully healed.

Then he told me his plan.

You are familiar with Antonio, of course, said Shylock, pacing back and forth, that honourable man, that saint among merchants. When I pass that paragon on the Rialto I always step aside, to evade his phlegm, or the kicks he aims to clear unclean dogs like me from his path. But yesterday was different: in place of kicks there were handshakes. It was as if I had suddenly become human in his eyes. Of course there was a reason: he needed three thousand ducats. His best-beloved Bassanio is to go a-courting, and must fit out a ship. I agreed, Tubal, I agreed. Said that I only wanted his friendship, and his love. Said that I would let him have it without a minim of interest. Then I said, as if in jest, that all I required, should the bond become forfeit, was a pound of his flesh.

I said that he was mad, and that I would not advance him so much as a ducat.

Listen carefully, Tubal he said, grabbing my gaberdine in both his hands. We both know that Antonio is a murderer. We also know that no judgment will ever be passed against him in Venice. Nor is my scheme likely to alter that. For he has three or four argosies on the high seas, any one of which will make good the debt three-fold. But if it should happen that all four are destroyed, then surely we can detect God’s hand at work. It will be a sign that I am acting with His blessing, that His hand is guiding mine as I finally extract justice for Zebulum. Ha! With the court’s permission! Can you not acknowledge the beauty of it? And, yes, the irony, the blessed irony of it. They will curse me as a blood-thirsty Jew, as I cut out Antonio’s heart, little knowing that I am the agent of divine justice. Ho, Tubal, to hell with them all.

What else could I do? I promised him the money.

****

Shylock collected the ducats on Monday. On Tuesday he handed them to Antonio. By Wednesday he was my client.

Also on Tuesday – the night of his departure for Belmont – Bassanio organized a farewell dinner, to which he invited Shylock. Why did he invite Shylock? Perhaps because Shylock’s money – actually my money – had enabled the whole enterprise; because he was the key, the