The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  “But where is nature in all this?” I asked, half to myself.

  “What you see is nature tamed,” Judah answered, his eyes bright with enthusiasm. “This is nature as the ancients treated it. Horace’s Sabine farm, Cicero at Tusculum taught us to civilize nature in just this way.”

  Like many other things Florentine that excited Judah’s admiration, the charm of the idea eluded me. I could find no relation between these well-run agricultural enterprises and Horace’s farm or Cicero’s. What was so noble about transforming wild nature into a grubby commercial enterprise for the profit of people who already had too much money?

  Mind you, not all the farms in the Mugello were equally sumptuous. As we rode along the quiet country road, Judah pointed out to me a small property called La Costa that belonged to Cristoforo di Giorgio, the doctor, and another more modest one belonging to Nando, the stonemason.

  “Only in Firenze does every citizen have his chance at the good life,” he intoned as he swayed from side to side on the donkey the Bonaventuras had thoughtfully provided for him. On this point I did not find it difficult to meet him. I have never lived in a place where Jews were treated more equitably than in Firenze under the Medici. Judah and I were provided for as well as any scholar and wife in the peninsula. And the Bonaventura family was permitted to live the life of the aristocracy in every respect. As evidence I give you the grandeur of their “farm” as it presented itself to my eyes that day.

  The Bonaventura villa was an imposing brick structure with a colonnaded central portico which qualified as a farmhouse, I suppose, by virtue of its lack of turrets, gun emplacements, and the other military accoutrements of a castle. It was bordered by a meadow on one side, a vineyard on the other, a fenced kitchen garden behind, and, Judah pointed out, several hectares of hunting land beyond that. Apparently the Florentines did admit wild nature to their world, but only on condition that it occupy its proper place in the balance of things and suffer itself to be rigidly contained.

  The entire Bonaventura clan was on hand to meet us: Diamante; her husband, Isaac (whom she called Isaachino in a most familiar way straight to his face); his parents; and several aunts and cousins and brothers and sisters I never did succeed in getting to know. Diamante took me in tow the moment we arrived, linking her arm with mine in a most sisterly fashion, and barely gave me time to visit the water closet before she spirited me off on a tour of the place. The plumbing astonished me. To have a private water closet piped out into the yard is extraordinary enough, but to have one in the country!

  The estate was palatial, but palatial in that sly Florentine way that makes them refer to their delizie as farms and to their princes as ordinary citizens. In just that spirit, Diamante’s proudest exhibit turned out to be not the stables or the horses or even her pet falcon but her market garden.

  “My husband gave this garden to me as my own territory,” she announced proudly as she led me into the walled enclosure. “And I also claim the profits from my little holding. For, as I said to Isaachino, if I am to have the responsibility then I must also reap the benefit. Here, taste this.” She pulled up a bunch of spinach. “Have you ever tasted spinach crisper or more mild?”

  I confessed that I had not.

  “That is because I use sheep manure on it. Horse manure turns vegetables strong. Did you know that?”

  I confessed that I did not.

  “You northerners do not love the land as we Tuscans do,” she declared, as if stating an incontrovertible fact.

  “But that is not true.”

  “Oh yes it is. My husband, Isaachino, has been all over Europe and he tells me that only here in Toscana do patricians toil on their land the way we do.” Then to demonstrate she yanked up her brocade gamorra, fell down to the earth on her knees, and began to dig around two long lines of slight green blades that had just begun to poke up through the soil. “When these ripen I shall send you some.”

  “Thank you,” I replied courteously. No doubt about it, the girl was sincere. But I could not reconcile this peasant grubbing in the earth with the elegant huntress who had recently abetted my escape from her gilded prison.

  “You do know what this is, do you not?” she teased, holding up a bit of green she had plucked.

  “To be candid I do not.”

  “Come down here with me then. Smell and you shall know. Come now. Do not be concerned about your skirt. Hike it up, like I do. That way the only thing to suffer will be your knees and you can get the soil off in your bath. You do bathe, do you not?”

  “What do you take me for?” I challenged her. “A German?”

  I could not have chosen a quicker route to her heart.

  “Caught me out there,” she admitted cheerfully. “I suppose I thought that since you Lombards live so close to the Germans, you may have taken up their habits.”

  “You have a wrongheaded idea of Mantova, Diamante,” I advised her. “In fact, I would say you know as little about life in the north of this peninsula as I do about growing vegetables.”

  “Touché,” she replied amiably. “Want to taste a turnip? They are not bitter, I promise you. I freeze them over the winter to take the bite out of them.”

  And so it went until she had plucked a sample of everything growing in that garden: her little onions — sweeter than mother’s milk, she insisted — and her sage and her marjoram and her borage — nothing like it to take the red out of the eyes — and her lavender, row after row of it — to keep all things sweet-smelling and repel the moths. You would have thought she was showing off her children to me. In truth, as I discovered over those two days, her garden was much more precious to her than her children. To them she displayed an astonishing degree of indifference, leaving the older boy, Bubu, entirely in the charge of his wet nurse all the time we were there. His younger brother, only a few months old — whom his mother never called by his name but only “the little boy” — had been shipped off to a nearby farm to live with his nurse for the first year of his life, just as Bubu had been. “For they do create such a ruckus with their teeth cutting through and their stomach complaints,” Diamante explained. As an afterthought she added, “I fear I am a better gardener than a mother. But fortunately we have plenty of servants to see to the little ones and as long as I drop a litter regularly, Isaachino is content to leave me to my other pursuits.”

  These pursuits, as I discovered that day, were multifarious. Once she was able to tear herself away from her garden, Diamante took me straight to the stables, and there I saw another aspect of her nature — her deep love of animals. At least here we were of one mind.

  “Well, what think you of my prince?” she inquired, pointing toward a handsome chestnut stallion. “I call him Suleiman for he is a true Turk in his temperament. Is he not handsome? Is he not the finest steed you have ever seen, Madonna Grazia?”

  “Certainly he is as handsome a horse as I have ever seen, Donna Diamante,” I replied as tactfully as I could.

  “As handsome as but not the handsomest? You have seen better, then?” she pressed. “Look here. Look at this mouth — how soft it is. Here, put your hand in.” I did as I was bid and had to admit that the horse had a sweet soft mouth.

  “And his color. A burnished strawberry.”

  “He is very beautiful,” I agreed.

  “But not the most beautiful?” she pressed.

  “Madonna, you are worse with your animals than with your vegetables. You are as bad as Francesco Gonzaga.”

  “You have seen the Gonzaga horses?” She gripped my sleeve urgently.

  “In Mantova we had permission to ride at the Gonzaga stud. We were in and out of the stables often as children,” I replied.

  “Ah, what a sight they must be.” She sighed. “Marchese Francesco rode two of his Araby stallions here at our palio last year and took away all the prizes. No wonder you hesitated when I asked you if my Suleiman was t
he most handsome. But Grazia, if you rode every day, you must be a horsewoman. Is that so?”

  “I do love to ride,” I answered, “although I have had no opportunity for it in Firenze. We do not keep horses.”

  “But we do! Both here and in town!” She clapped me on the back. “And I invite you to ride with me any day you choose. Any day at all. In truth, much as I love to ride it gets to be a lonely business without a companion. And Isaachino is much too occupied with his business to accompany me.”

  To my eye Isaachino Bonaventura did not possess either the appearance or the temperament of a horseman. Tall and shambling, with shaggy dark locks and bent shoulders, I would have bet it was lack of inclination rather than pressing business that held Isaachino Bonaventura back from his daily ride. And further acquaintance with the couple proved me correct.

  In the course of that long afternoon, Diamante and I embarked on our lifelong friendship. Our mutual love of horses gave us common cause. But she was more than simply a comrade to me. God knows she was no intellectual. Her penmanship was appalling, as I discovered after we took to writing each other notes; her understanding of the ancients was virtually nonexistent; and her want of feeling for her own children was incomprehensible to me. But when it came to friends, animals, servants, and the insulted and injured of this world, she had a ready heart.

  By the time we had tramped through the vineyard and the orchards and come to the winery, we had reached the next stage of intimacy for women — our husbands. Once again Diamante led the way.

  “Let us sit here by the casks where it is cool and talk a bit,” she began, as if we had not been chattering our heads off for the entire afternoon. “Now then . . .” She patted a place beside her on a bench against the rough earthen wall of the cave. “Tell me, how do you like married life?”

  What did she mean by married life? Did she mean what I thought she meant? I could not imagine myself responding to her engaging frankness with obfuscation. Yet it did seem to me woefully indiscreet and somehow disloyal to Judah to tell her the truth of my situation.

  “I like my house well enough,” I answered. “Although I find the servants lazy and dirty, just as my stepmother said I would. And to be truthful, my life is rather lonely. I miss my brothers.”

  “But does not your husband compensate for the loss of your brothers? I find I have all I need of men in Isaachino.”

  “You do?”

  “Oh, he is a demon in the bed, my Isaachino. Do not let that shy exterior fool you. My husband is a regular Etna. He erupts almost every night.” A coarse metaphor but, you must admit, a telling one.

  “How about yours? He is so big. A giant. Is he like that . . . all over?” She nudged me and giggled. “Do not fear to confide in me, Grazia. I am like a tomb, I promise you. All my secrets will die with me.” And when I did not reply she added anxiously, “Have I offended you with my coarse talk? The old hag says I have become as common as a whore from hanging about the stables. Is it true? Am I offensive in my bold talk?”

  “Of course not,” I assured her. “Words do not a lady make. It is by her actions that we know her. To me, you are made honorable by your noble heart. And to prove it I will confide in you. But you must not ask me for more than I can tell. For I am bound by a pledge not to speak of it.”

  “A pledge? To whom?”

  “No questions.” Her unrelenting curiosity reminded me of myself. “I will make one statement and after that, no more talk of it. Agreed?”

  “Agreed!” She held out her hand to confirm the arrangement.

  “Very well. This is something I have never told a living soul, Diamante, not my brothers or even my best friend Penina. The truth is my husband and I have not yet consummated our marriage. He believes that I am too young for those responsibilities and prefers to wait.”

  “Dio, what refinement!” She shook her hand back and forth in the air in that gesture the peasants make when they are overwhelmed by some piece of news or other. “But of course such delicacy is to be expected from a man of discernment and learning like your husband. My Isaachino never had such a thought in his life. He told me he expected to make a son with me on our wedding night. And so he did.”

  “Did you always love Isaachino . . . from the beginning?” I asked, hoping to elicit some guidelines for my own initiation when it came.

  But Diamante was never one to appreciate the nuances of feeling. “Love him?” she repeated, puzzled by my question. “Of course I loved him. He was my husband.”

  She made it sound so natural. Would I too learn to love Judah simply because he was my husband?

  Night was falling fast by the time we began our tramp through the vineyards back to the casa, a mighty distance to cover on foot. Diamante offered to send one of the cellar porters for a pair of mules to carry us back, but I assured her that exercise would serve better than any potion to give me a good night of sleep. “A long walk before bedtime is Judah’s prescription to his patients when they complain of restless nights,” I told her. “And I have found him in this as in all things to be a most excellent physician.”

  “But surely you are not planning to go off to bed without your supper, my dear Grazia,” she demanded.

  I replied that such had always been my custom.

  “Then you must change your custom as long as you are under the Bonaventura roof.” She wagged her finger with mock severity. “My husband’s honored parents would take it as a slight were you to forgo supper. And besides, you will miss half the fun.”

  “But it will be dark by the time we arrive,” I answered, still not understanding her meaning fully.

  “And since when did darkness undo hunger? My belly is fairly groaning with it. Is not yours?”

  Mine was not. It had not been trained to sup. We served but one meal each day in our household and that by the brightest light of day — at high noon. The only people I knew of who took more than a morsel of bread in the evening were gluttons and princes. Excepting for feast days of course. But the way in which Diamante expressed her appetite led me to believe that the Bonaventura family supped luxuriously every evening — like princes.

  Later when we sat down at the long table that had been laid in the grand salon, we not only enjoyed three courses after the fish; we were also serenaded by a group of musicians. And just as the roasts were being brought in, who should appear as a guest of the house but Maestro Ambrogio of Pesaro, done up just as I had seen him at the Sforza wedding in a gold-embroidered jacket and red satin hose turned up at the ends with little silver bells attached to his toes.

  To my surprise he recognized me, even going so far as to regale the company with an account of my exploit as the Jewish queen and to praise my dancing to the heavens, which although it made me blush did not displease me (for such a compliment is no mean thing coming from the foremost dancing master in Italy). Encouraged by the senior Bonaventura, I was prevailed upon to dance with Ser Ambrogio for the delectation of the company, and although my step was not perfectly practiced, I managed to acquit myself creditably enough to bring a proud smile to Judah’s face.

  After that Diamante took her place with the musicians to entertain us on the harp, which she played with uncommon skill. Then, although it had become very late, she insisted that the entire gathering must dance one final galliard, which she initiated by leading off on the arm of Isaachino in the Christian manner. Never before had I seen a Jewess dance publicly with a man other than a dancing teacher. Even at my wedding I was not permitted to dance with my own brothers. But the Bonaventuras’ rabbi looked on complaisant while men danced with women. He even clapped his hands in time to the music!

  When we at last retired and I was alone with Judah, I asked his opinion of this astounding display. “Mixed dancing.” He shrugged. “It is one of those trivial issues that keep idle rabbis scribbling responsa who could better spend their time invigorating their sodden minds with the wr
itings of Maimonides.” Then, having thus condemned out of hand a goodly percentage of the rabbis in the peninsula, he quickly moved on to hints of a surprise that awaited me the following day.

  “You will see that I too have a taste for pleasure, even a small talent for it,” he announced with the smug self-consciousness of a boy. Then, with a tender kiss, he begged off further conversation.

  I did not need more clues to the nature of the surprise he was planning. These hints and winks and tender kisses could only foreshadow one thing. No doubt about it, the time had arrived for our marriage to be consummated. The last thought that crossed my mind before I fell asleep that night was, What an original way to celebrate the feast of Purim.

  26

  It was a novelty when I dressed the next morning to find a maid at my elbow with a cup of spiced wine and a biscuit. Her blunt, flat fingers appeared more suited to the plow than to the buttonhook, but when she began to lace up my bodice those same fingers moved from grommet to grommet as lightly as a butterfly.

  As I stood being tied into my gamorra, the maid’s touch on my skin brought back memories of another touch — light, gentle, loving; and for the first time in many years I allowed my mind to dwell on Zaira and to feel afresh the pain of losing her.

  But my reverie ended abruptly when Judah stepped out from behind the dressing screen wrapped in black from neck to ankle, and pressed me to put away my doleful thoughts and follow him without delay to the sala grande.

  “This is Purim, not the Day of Atonement, wife.” He smacked me smartly on the rump. “You have long deserved some gaiety in your young life and today you will have it.”