Casanova's Women by Judith Summers Page B

scurrying across the floor and even leaping terrifyingly on to the beds. No one ever changed the blood-flecked sheets or washed the children’s filthy clothes, and no one ever saw to it that they washed themselves or even brushed their hair. If he did not die from the squalor in the house, Giacomo feared that he would die of starvation. Although he had never had much of an appetite before, at Signora Mida’s he was always ravenous, for there was never enough to eat, and what little there was tasted disgusting. Since there were no separate plates or glasses to drink from, he was forced to fight his room-mates for spoonfuls of the foul-smelling soup which was dished up in a single, communal tureen. The lovely silver cutlery which his grandmother had given him had been locked away, and the only utensils available were a few old wooden implements. Whenever Giacomo complained to Signora Mida that things were not as they should be in the house, she scolded him violently and beat the maid.
    After six months of torment, in which the only saving grace of his life proved to be Dr Antonio Gozzi, the young, dedicated schoolteacher whom Signora Mida had found for him, Giacomo wrote three desperate letters home: one to Giorgio Baffo, another to the priest Grimani, and a third to his grandmother. Since she was illiterate, Marcia Farussi asked Baffo to read the letter to her. She was appalled by what it said. Although she was far from wealthyherself she had always been house-proud and kept a decent table. In her home, as in most houses belonging to the labouring classes in Venice, ‘cleanliness and honest sufficiency reigned’. 7 Never before in his life had her sickly grandson gone hungry, or been treated unkindly. Now the little weakling was living in squalor with strangers, and being treated worse than an animal! And this was supposed to be good for his health? Since Zanetta was in Verona, Marcia took matters into her own hands and boarded the next
burchiello
down the Brenta Canal, determined to see for herself exactly what was going on in Padua.
    The following noon she arrived unannounced at Signora Mida’s house, took one look at the hideous hag and demanded to see her grandson. So changed and filthy was Giacomo that for a moment Marcia did not recognise him among the scruffy urchins fighting for food around the kitchen table. However, the moment he saw her he flung himself at her neck and burst into tears. Weeping herself, Marcia sat down and drew the boy on to her lap, where he sobbed out a woeful tale of starvation and abuse. Controlling her fury, she inspected the house. There in the attic were the unwashed sheets Giacomo had complained of, crawling with the vermin which had bitten him.
    Marcia took the boy away from Signora Mida’s immediately. Back at the inn where she was lodging she watched in astonishment as Giacomo devoured plate after plate of food. In the past few months he had grown taller and skeletally thin, and the curls she had once tended with care were so matted that they were beyond saving and had to be cut off. Yet, undernourished as he was, he glowed with good health. For the first time ever he appeared lively and talkative, as if his brain had at last woken up from its long sleep. Marcia summoned his schoolteacher, Antonio Gozzi, who had suggested that his pupil lodge at his parents’ house in future. The handsome twenty-six-year-old priest and teacher immediately impressed Marcia with his good sense, his modest, respectful manners and his literal interpretation of the Bible, which was so similar to her own: in his opinion ‘the Flood had been universal,before the disaster men had lived for a thousand years, God conversed with them, Noah had taken one hundred years to build the ark, and the earth, suspended in the air, remained fixed at the centre of the universe, which God had created out of nothing.’ 8 Equally impressive was the fact that Gozzi was plump and cleanly dressed,