The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  Come back with me now to the spring of the year 1488 and watch her battle plan unfold . . .

  We are at morning prayers in the women’s gallery of the dei Rossi private synagogue. Below us, half hidden by the punched brass screen, a bright yellow turban stands out in a sea of black skullcaps.

  Who is the owner of this exotic headdress? I ask my cousin Ricca. She knows everything that happens in this house.

  “He is Maestro Gedaliah, a penumbra from Roma.”

  “A penumbra?”

  “A marriage broker. One of those who works the northern fairs looking for husbands for Jewish brides.”

  “Oh, a shadchan,” I say.

  “Haven’t you heard, stupid? Shadchans are out of fashion. A penumbra charges a percentage of the dowry and he guarantees satisfaction or your money back. A clever one can find a husband for any girl, even a goose like you.”

  “Me?” La Nonna’s plan revealed itself to me in an instant. She hated me and wished me gone. What better way to rid herself of me than through an early marriage, arranged by a Roman flesh peddler who guaranteed satisfaction or your money back?

  Goose. Ricca’s word stuck in my head. Like a goose before the skewering, I was to be cleaned and stuffed for presentation at the marriage table.

  All through the day I felt Maestro Gedaliah’s eyes following me. When we came back from our morning ride, he was at the door of the banco peering out as if searching for me. Halfway through our lessons, he appeared in the schoolroom.

  Now there were many cozier places in the dei Rossi house. Why else had Maestro Gedaliah elected to climb up to the attic and visit the schoolroom but to scrutinize me? All through my recitation from the Kiddushin I felt his hovering presence, an angel of death preparing to carry me off.

  Due to our mourning we did not celebrate Purim with the usual games and plays that year. But at the modest supper La Nonna put out in honor of Esther’s triumph over Haman, I noticed that Maestro Gedaliah had been accorded a place of honor between my grandparents, a clear indication that they had serious business with him . . . such as the marriage of a granddaughter. And sure enough, halfway through the meal I heard my name called out by my grandmother. Dio, I was about to be auctioned off at Lübeck like a cow or a pig. My life would be over before it had begun, terminated in the marriage bed of some old, smelly German.

  I walked the length of that table feeling like Persephone being borne off to the underworld, with the sound of Ricca’s giggle filling in for the call of the Sirens. Desperately, I cast about for someone to save me. But Papa was absent in Padova that week. And my next-best comfort, Zaira, was helping in the kitchen.

  “Grazia, my dear.” My grandmother’s hand fell on my shoulder like an iron weight. “Maestro Gedaliah is most impressed by your accomplishments.” The little man bobbed up and down in energetic agreement. “He tells me that your mastery of the Hebrew tongue is quite remarkable for a girl of your age.”

  This may have been the first time in my life — it certainly was not the last — that I wished myself rid of my damnable brains. What good were my accomplishments if all they did was raise my value in the matrimonial marketplace?

  “And of course, she will be a beauty in her time . . . just give her a year or two.” At this, the penumbra’s little red beard actually twitched.

  “Grazia . . .” La Nonna poked me in the ribs. “Do you not thank Maestro Gedaliah for the compliment?”

  Now it was my turn to bob up and down. That done, I was dismissed to wallow in my misery.

  Later, when Zaira appeared, she too was summoned to an audience with the penumbra. I was unable to hear from my place at the table. But what I saw was a dumb show that told its own story: the little Roman sniffing Zaira like a dog in heat; my grandmother, her beady little eyes narrowed with calculation; and, standing between them, Zaira, shuffling from one foot to the other with uncharacteristic want of balance and staring fixedly at the floor, almost in the style of Rabbi Abramo’s ideal Jewish maiden who never lifts her eyes to search for her beloved until he is presented to her by her father. Somehow, in the past months, the Casa dei Rossi had subdued her proud spirit.

  When Zaira was dismissed, La Nonna and Maestro Gedaliah turned as one to look after her. La Nonna was smiling a thin smile. The penumbra was eating up the retreating figure as if she were a succulent roast . . . legs, breast, cheeks. I saw Zaira consumed by that old pimp and hated him.

  That night I cried for my mother and prayed to God to take me up to heaven to be with her. I must have cried out loudly in my sleep, for when I awoke, I was in Zaira’s arms and she was crooning softly to me.

  In that moment of intimacy, I blurted out all my fears of the day. “They mean to marry me off to a German and send me away and I will never see you again or my brothers . . .”

  “Wherever did you get such an idea?” She seemed genuinely puzzled.

  “That’s why they called Ser Gedaliah. To find me a husband . . .” I babbled on.

  “No, Grazia, no. It is I who am to be married.”

  “To Papa?” Now it was my turn to be confused.

  “No.” She shook her head as if to shake off the thought. “I am to be married to a stranger. Maestro Gedaliah will find me someone suitable. That is why your grandparents brought him here.”

  “For you?”

  She nodded. “It is all arranged.”

  I must admit that my first reaction was a deep surge of relief that I was not the object of the penumbra’s services. But it was quickly followed by an equally intense surge of compassion for Zaira.

  “But you don’t have to do it,” I insisted. “You can refuse.”

  “No, no,” she replied. “It is all arranged.”

  “But I want you to marry Papa,” I insisted.

  “That is not to be. Your grandmother will not have it.”

  “And if you refuse?” I asked again.

  “I cannot. It is all arranged. They have given me a dowry of five hundred ducats, enough gold to buy me a lawyer or a doctor — a rabbi at the very least, so Maestro Gedaliah says.”

  “You’d rather have a lawyer than Papa?”

  “Oh, Grazia . . .” She paused as if about to confide in me, then shook her head again and repeated, as if she had memorized the words, “I am to be married. It is a wonderful opportunity for me, an orphan and a widow, to be endowed with such a dowry and a fine new wardrobe. Your grandparents have been most generous. They are my benefactors.”

  Sending her off to some foreign place to marry a stranger did not seem to me such a benefaction, but something in Zaira’s eyes told me that she was not an entirely unwilling victim of my grandmother’s “generosity.” Perhaps she was overwhelmed by the forces arrayed against her. Perhaps she had used up her reserves of strength during our harrowing escape from Mantova or, since then, defending us against the cruelties of the dei Rossi household. However it had happened, we dei Rossis had, I believe, taken the spirit from her and, in return, had proffered five hundred gold ducats.

  After that, nothing went as I had hoped. The evening trysts in my bedchamber between Zaira and my father ceased. Now, Zaira contrived to be otherwise engaged when Papa came to bid me goodnight. Had it not been for the air of sadness that enveloped them both, you might have concluded that they cared not a fig for each other.

  I told myself that Papa was obliged to live out the mourning period in unimpeachable correctness and that everything would change when the year was up. This fiction sustained me through the early months of spring. But although hope springs eternal in the breasts of the young, patience does not. In spite of my efforts to submit to the delay of my gratification, my soul cried out for release from the joyless prison that La Nonna had made of the Casa dei Rossi.

  By her order our seder that year ran its course unenlivened by so much as a single song. Seeing Jehiel all in black when he asked the Four
Questions — he was still the youngest in the company and thus the honor remained with him — reminded me of his gorgeous appearance the previous year at Mantova in his little red boots. Gazing around to see if anyone else shared my nostalgia, I noticed for the first time that our Mantovan famiglia had eroded gradually within the year, the way a promontory falls into the sea, stone by stone.

  Davide, our old tutor, sat even more silent than usual, barely mouthing the prayers and invocations. Dania, at his side, had grown yellow and old, humiliated by her husband’s diminished status as a tutor of girls. No longer did she interrupt Papa — for Papa himself rarely spoke. Nor was Monna Matilda there to put her in her place. That lady had died of a terrible headache early in the year and her twins had been separated — one of them sent off as apprentice to a wool merchant in Reggio, the other soon to begin his clerk’s apprenticeship at our family banco in Ostellato. Deprived of his helpmeet and about to lose the company of his last child, the shohet shuffled about the place, bewildered and out of the stream of life.

  A happier fate had visited Cecilia, the clerk’s daughter. She got her wish — a husband, one of the couriers who carried the family’s messages and goods from branch to branch. She complained bitterly that he was never home, but we had ample evidence that he must have managed to come to earth at least once, for when she left to take up residence in the Venetian territory, she was manifestly pregnant.

  Sitting at the long Passover table in the grand sala surrounded by strangers, I was overwhelmed by a terrible sense of loss. Mama, of course. Mama first. And Monna Matilda. And Cecilia, off to the Veneto. And the twins, who had never spent a night apart, torn asunder. Who would be the next to go?

  Late one day in June, Maestro Gedaliah reappeared at our gate all smiles. That evening in the garden, La Nonna made her announcement. Her “adopted daughter” Zaira was officially betrothed to a merchant of Ratisbon.

  No time for long goodbyes. The horses came to fetch her and Ser Gedaliah before sunup. La Nonna’s work was accomplished. Overnight, the last and strongest link with our Mantovan past was severed from our famiglia as neatly as if the public executioner had done the deed with his axe.

  Stunned by the suddenness of the maneuver, I stood mute as the groom boosted her up onto the saddle. She raised her arm in a salute. Then all at once, her horse reared and, although she managed to keep her seat, her riding hat, a fine, rust-colored felt with a red plume, fell to the ground. The groom reached to pick it up. Too late. The horse’s hoof claimed it first, smashing it into the mud. Zaira looked down, shrugged, dug in her spurs, and galloped off.

  All I had of her now was the hat. I grabbed for it greedily and bore it away upstairs, vowing to myself to keep it always as a memento of one who had loved me so valiantly. But the next day it disappeared from my room. I never saw it again.

  10

  Once Zaira was gone, my father refused to speak of her. My questions about her met with cold rebuffs. When her name was mentioned in company, his face went masklike, as if she were dead. And very soon he began to frequent the Duke’s court as he had in bygone days. He was at Belriguardo. At Belfiore. At the Schifanoia Palace on the edge of town. He was once again a part of the Duke’s inner circle. And the Duke and his intimati, as everyone knew, had nothing better to do with their time than to ride around the park, dabble in astrology — and gamble.

  When the calamity came, it blew up like one of those violent tornadoes that afflict the Tuscan plains, gaining intensity slowly as the skies darken until at last they swallow up all the land and everything on it.

  This whirlwind began early one morning, before the three iron locks on the front door had been unlatched, with a barrage of knocks and shouts from the street below. The shouting was so loud that even up in the schoolroom we heard the gravelly male voices below shouting, “Open up, you Jews, in the name of the Duke.”

  Famiglia and servants alike streamed down the main stairway, garments unbuttoned, faces unwashed, to discover the cause of the commotion. We reached the cortile just in time to see three armed brutes from the bargello’s department lay hands on my grandfather and accuse him of crimes against the Duke.

  When my father pressed them to name the charge, one of them raised a short dagger and threatened to cut off his Jewish nose for his insolence. Then they were off, dragging my dignified grandfather after them as if he were a sack of millet.

  My grandmother was the first to regain composure. Within moments, she had Giorgio ring his bell for silence, and after the din had subsided, she walked up a few steps of the great stair with her accustomed bold step, and from there addressed the gathering in a loud, unwavering voice.

  “I order you all — family and servants — to go to your accustomed tasks at once. The banco will open on time. The children will attend their lessons. Dinner will be prepared as usual. And I will get to the bottom of this matter. Go now and shush your chatter.” She gathered up the folds of her gamorra and ascended to the sala followed by her steward, her rabbi, and her retinue of ladies. Almost as an afterthought, she beckoned my father to follow.

  That was the last we saw of Papa for two days. He simply dropped out of sight without an explanation or even a goodbye. When we inquired, we were put off by vague admonishments to “be good children and pray” — a poor substitute for the assurance we so desperately wanted that our only remaining parent was not gone forever.

  The result? We became prey to my cousin Ricca’s wicked inventions. The evening after Papa’s disappearance, she beckoned us into a dark corridor and informed us that she knew why Grandfather was taken and our father fled.

  “Uncle Daniele has committed a terrible crime,” she whispered with a wicked gleam in her eye, “but don’t ask me to speak of it. It is too terrible . . .”

  “You must tell us, Ricca,” I begged. “He is our father.”

  “No.” She shook her head vigorously. “No. I cannot speak of it for shame.”

  Jehiel was the more effective persuader. “If you don’t tell us at once, I’ll wring your neck until you choke,” he warned her, with all the assurance of someone who meant what he said.

  To my astonishment, Ricca’s courage collapsed at the threat. “Very well,” she conceded. “I’ll tell you.” Then she added, with a dash of malice, “But you’ll wish you hadn’t heard. Your father has run away. And poor Grandfather is being held hostage for him in the dungeon of the castello.”

  “Why has he run away, Ricca?” Jehiel pressed her. “What terrible crime has he committed?”

  “That’s the shameful part.” She lowered her eyes. “It pains me so to speak of it.”

  Jehiel took her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. “Speak of it,” he ordered.

  “Your father has been keeping a woman — a Christian woman! — in a house near the public baths.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Jehiel announced. “Who told you?”

  “Our porter heard it from the bargello’s man,” she replied, then added, “I suppose you know that last year a Florentine Jew was beheaded and burned in the Piazza della Signoria for only one encounter with a Christian woman. So you can imagine the punishment for keeping a Christian woman all the time . . .”

  Had we had the wit to think, we would have recognized her story as a fabrication. If Papa had been found out keeping a Christian woman, then he, not Grandfather, would have been arrested. But reason had fled our minds. That night, I dreamed of a headless body trussed and roasting on a spit, while a fat woman with huge, pendulous breasts and a cross around her neck slowly turned the handle.

  It was my grandmother who finally, after two days of silence, rescued Jehiel and me from this miasma of rumor and fear. Dour and harsh as always, she wasted no time on words of sympathy. But, say this for her, you could believe what she told you.

  “You will want to know that your father is safe. He is,” she began. “But he has gotten us all int
o serious trouble. Once again his cursed gambling is at the root of it.”

  This explanation had the ring of truth to it.

  “It appears that he is heavily in debt to his patrician friends, and has resorted to that most heinous of all crimes — coin clipping.”

  At least he was not keeping a Christian woman in a house near the baths.

  “That is not the worst of it,” my grandmother went on. “The manner in which your father committed this offense has tarred many innocent victims with his guilty brush. Every Jewish business in Ferrara is closed by the Duke’s order. Your grandfather languishes in the dungeon at this very moment for his part in the mischief, even though he knew nothing of it and passed the coins in perfect innocence. Your father has gone to see the Duke at Belfiore and confess his guilt.”

  Was this really true? Had Papa allowed Grandfather to take the punishment rightly coming to himself? I could not believe it.

  “Do you doubt my word, Grazia?” I hung my head.

  Now came a quiet mutter from the other side of the table. “My papa would not do such a thing. My papa is an honorable man.”

  “Some fine gentleman to let an old man take his punishment for him. And that man his own father.” La Nonna’s pockmarks were showing dangerously white against her flushed skin.

  Dio, I thought, she is going to beat us. But no. The accusation with the ring of truth about it was punishment enough.

  My father returned from his audience at Beiriguardo the next morning. He galloped into the cortile, sweated and filthy from riding all night, but triumphant, having achieved Grandfather’s pardon. The old man would be released from the dungeon that afternoon. And the next morning the Jewish banchi and shops would be permitted to reopen. Papa himself was, he explained to us, “the most fortunate of men.” The Duke had granted him full clemency — an unprecedented act of mercy.