The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  “Perhaps. In the evenings.”

  “This very evening if you like, Papa. But what of the days? I have come all this way to serve you. You must give me something to do.”

  He sighed and paused, a pause so long that I thought he might have let go the thread of our conversation. But at length, he picked it up. “I hate to ask this of you, Grazia. You are a married woman now. With a position to uphold. The wife of a great scholar . . .”

  “Tell me, Papa,” I interrupted him. “Whatever it is, tell me and I will do it. I assure you Judah would want me to.”

  “I do not wish you to demean yourself. Your position in the world . . .”

  “Anything, Papa,” I insisted. “Do you wish me to wash your feet? Comb the lice out of your head? The lowliest task would give me pleasure . . .”

  He held up his shaking hand to stop me. “Nothing like that, daughter. It is the banco I am concerned about. Francesco Gonzaga is about to be reappointed Captain-General of the Venetian army. He will need ready cash to tide him over until the Venetian gold starts to flow. The Gonzagas are shrewd bargainers, especially the wife, Madonna Isabella. And I fear I have not the strength for a battle. I am asking you to take my place in the banco and deal with him when he comes to us, which he is sure to do. Asher is a fine young man and willing, but inexperienced. You are the only one I can trust to deal with the Gonzagas.”

  “But I will adore to do that, Papa. Am I not a pawnbroker’s daughter born and bred and trained by you?” As I spoke I could feel the weight of the coins in my fingers and the itch of the horsehair cushion I sat on in the little banco in Bologna where I had been daughter, student, helper — everything — to my father.

  “I will miss you at my side, Papa,” I told him.

  “And I you, daughter.” He reached up and touched my cheek. “So beautiful.” His fingers felt dry and cold on my flushed skin. “You have become such a fine woman. Your mother would be proud of you.”

  “You would not always have said so, Papa,” I chided him gently.

  “Oh yes I would,” he corrected me, more spirit in that one denial than in all his conversation with me thus far. “Many times in the past you have rubbed my patience like a rough burr. But you have never shamed me.”

  Unthinking, I bent on one knee and lowered my head before him as I had been taught to do by the Christians when blessed. Indeed my father’s benediction was to me as hard-won as God’s and twice as treasured.

  When I left him a few moments later, I found my friend Penina waiting for me on the landing.

  “Come.” She took my hand and led me up a narrow flight of stairs to her attic chamber. It was a room with rafters so low that even I, who am not a tall woman, could hardly stand straight without bumping my head on them. “My bed is yours to share if you wish it, Grazia,” she offered.

  It was a tempting offer. But I knew that if I was to achieve any authority in this house, I must command a space in which I could stand tall. A household is like any other establishment, be it a royal court or a chicken house. Certain stations count for more than others. The place one occupies at table, the place one sleeps — these bespeak authority more eloquently than words. In case you have not noticed, duchesses do not sleep in attics. With heartfelt regret I refused Penina’s offer and set forth to pick myself a fine bed and a proper place to put it.

  The bed I chose with Asher’s help was only the second-best one in our warehouse. The best bed was a heavily carved thing from Marchesana Barbara’s time, when things German were the fashion in Mantova. My choice was more modern but with enough gilt carving on it to proclaim its owner’s consequence.

  The next decision: Where should I establish my command post? After considering the possibilities I chose the sala piccola where Dorotea sat to her sewing with the women of the household. How better to establish one’s place in another woman’s house than to take over her sitting room?

  Leaving a porter to see to the hauling, I then went to search for some fine linens and a coverlet. A red satin one caught my eye at once, but I resisted — I was growing up — and selected a cover of Persian wool from the place they call Cachemire. Very soft and elegant. And warm too.

  When I returned to the house with my treasures, I found Dorotea standing in her sala beside my bed, hands on hips, shouting at the top of her voice for the porter who had put it there to take it away.

  “I ordered it put here,” I informed her sweetly. “It is my bed. And this is to be my room as long as I live here.”

  No explanation did I give. No excuse. No apology. Time had taught me something about dealing with bullies.

  That afternoon, I resumed my old seat in the banco. For a moment when I first climbed onto the strongbox to sit behind the green-covered table, the years fell away and I was again that raggedy creature girdled in paste jewels who sat dreaming that a knight would stride in and carry her away to an earthly paradise. But one look at the faces around me wiped that image from my mind. What I saw reflected in their admiring eyes was a fashionable young woman in a fine wool gamorra, low-cut in the Florentine style, her hair caught up in a golden filet — a gift from Diamante — gathered on her forehead by a fine, large pearl — a gift from Judah. And in truth, I was an ornament in that dreary little provincial banco. The envy in Ricca’s eyes when she came in and beheld me enthroned on my high banker’s chair was especially delectable to me.

  In the evening, old doctor Portaleone came at my bidding, bringing along his fellow croupier in the game of life and death, Rabbi Abramo. The interview was protracted and acrimonious. Taking the longest way around, they informed me that my father was suffering from an incurable tumor and that he would die within the year. Perhaps within months. That from the physician. And from the other one, a reworking of the old saw “God is just and everything He does is for the best.”

  Every time I hear that phrase I could spit in God’s eye. My father was a man who had never harmed a soul intentionally. I could not accept the sentence so easily pronounced on him by the very ones charged with saving his life. I ranted. I raved. In the end I told them both to go to hell and wrote off a long letter to Napoli begging Judah to come at once and save my father from the jaws of death, because this doctor and this priest together would surely kill him.

  There remained Dorotea to deal with and I proceeded to the task with relish. I found her in the garden.

  “Why did you not tell me that my father was knocking on death’s door?” I berated her.

  “I did not have the heart.” She sniffed and dabbed at her nose.

  “You did not have the wit is more like it. What if we have left this tumor to fester there too long? What if he could have been saved?”

  “Maestro Portaleone told me that there was no hope. It is God’s judgment on us for our sins. This house is cursed,” she went on. “I castigate myself every day that I agreed to move here.”

  “It was not your wish?” I asked.

  “Your honored father was bound to have it. And you know him when he sets his mind on something.” Indeed I did. All it took was a nudge from the right elbow to dislodge him. The woman was lying in her teeth.

  “Well, it seems Papa is being repaid for his obduracy,” I remarked, baiting the trap. “And I shall chide him for it when I see him.”

  “No. Do not do that.” She clasped my sleeve urgently. “Do not mention this cursed house, please, Grazia. It will only add to his misery.”

  Now I was in no doubt that this grand house had been bought at her instigation.

  “Tell me about this curse,” I urged her.

  “It is a long terrible story . . .” she temporized.

  “Start,” I ordered. And after some sniffing of the bubble on the end of her nose, she began.

  “This house was the property of a Christian silk merchant called Pagano. His business fell on evil days. He needed money, hundreds of ducats to cover
his debts. He came to the banco to borrow it. But he had no security, only this house. So I said to Daniele —” She caught herself short and started again. “I said to Daniele, ‘Do not buy the silk merchant’s house, honored husband. It is out of the district of our friends where we are safe. And much too visible a residence for a family of Jews.’”

  “But he insisted?” I prodded.

  “Yes,” she sighed, and moved on quickly. “Now this Pagano was one of those Christian scoundrels who steal and cheat all week, then light expensive candles on Sundays for forgiveness. You know how they do it, Grazia . . .” I let the comment pass.

  “Well, Pagano must have pulled off some monstrous cheat,” she continued, “for not only had he given money to all the convents in town, he had hired an apprentice from Messer Andrea Mantegna’s workshop to paint a likeness of the Virgin over his door with a little shrine under it. That was the one thing about the house that your father disliked.”

  What about the marble halls and the carved friezes above the portals? Had my father suddenly in the thirty-eighth year of his life developed a taste for ostentation? I doubted it.

  “Daniele swore he would not live under the sign of the Virgin even if he were offered the entire Reggio as his palace,” she went on. “He said that to do so was a double offense to God since it broke two of His commandments.”

  The reference to the commandments sounded as if it had come out of my father’s mouth. It was her way to weave in a strand or two of truth with the lies so that one could not pick them apart.

  “And what did you answer to that, Dorotea?” I asked innocently.

  “I told him we must take steps to remove that Virgin,” she replied.

  “Easier said than done,” I remarked.

  “We sought permission directly from the Marchesana Isabella so that there would be no trouble afterwards.” Again Madonna Isabella. Would I never be free of the woman?

  “Why did you not approach Marchese Francesco?” I asked.

  “He is rarely at home these days. He is raising an army to fight the French king. The Venetians have named him General of the Holy League.”

  “And does he leave all decisions to his wife, then?” I asked.

  “The girl rules Mantova like a queen. Imagine a twenty-year-old lording it over all the graybeards at the Reggio. It’s amazing.”

  Knowing Madonna Isabella, I was not amazed at all. She certainly had the bearing for it. And the nerve.

  “And what did the illustrissima say to your petition?” I asked.

  “She sent us to the bishop and he gave us permission on the spot to have the image erased, in return for several fine chalices we held in pawn.”

  “And plenty of ducats into the bargain, I’ll wager.”

  “How clever of you to guess that, Grazia.”

  No guesswork was needed. Everyone knows that all priests have their price.

  “So what is the great commotion about, Dorotea? You got the permission, erased the Virgin, and moved in. Whence comes this nonsense about a curse?” I asked. “All you’ve told me so far is a simple tale of greedy Jews who lust after lusso and fall victim to blackmail on account of it. The only mystery is how this happened to the dei Rossis. I had thought we were above such vulgarity.”

  “Oh, Grazia, I fear you blame me for our misfortunes.” Good. She recognized the portrait of her that I had just drawn. “But you are quite wrong,” she went on. “I could not have known that this house had a curse on it.”

  “What curse?” I asked.

  “The Virgin’s curse. That is what the men shouted when they attacked this house and stoned us and wounded your father. That they were avenging the Virgin.”

  Finally I understood her mysterious letter. My father’s wound, the evasions and lies that had met me at every turn, all centered on this accursed house and this accursedly acquisitive woman. “Look at me,” I ordered. And she complied.

  “It was not my father but you who wanted this house, Dorotea.” She hung her head, a tacit admission.

  “You worked on him as you know how to do. And to his discredit he gave in and agreed to buy a house he never wanted and that he must have known would bring only trouble and misery to his family. Well, now you have your heart’s desire and my father lies upstairs in what you call this cursed house, dying for your covetousness. Oh, this house is cursed all right, Dorotea. Not by the Christian Virgin. By you.” And fed to the teeth with the sight of that duplicitous face, I turned away from her and headed for the door.

  “Oh, Grazia, I fear you hate me,” she wailed.

  “No, Dorotea. When I was weak and powerless I hated you. Now that I am a woman with my own place in the world, hatred is beneath me. Now, I merely despise you.”

  33

  Judah responded to my desperate summons at once, as I knew he would. But Napoli is a far way from Mantova and I spent the weeks between my confrontation with Dorotea and Judah’s arrival suspended in time like a fly in amber, waiting, watching, hoping, and praying.

  The banco became both my fortress and my comfort. Its only defect was the constant presence of Ricca, who made herself at home there, galloping through the place like a baby elephant, braying loudly and knocking things over with her wide sleeves.

  Once I began to take notice of her presence, I observed that somehow she always managed to bump into Jehiel on her peregrinations. And then to blame him loudly for the collision and to poke and prod him until they both exploded into fits of giggles.

  High spirits, I told myself. Pranks. But one night something happened that forced me to acknowledge what I had been unwilling to admit. After putting Papa to bed for the night, the famiglia had gathered to enjoy the cool of evening in the garden. Jehiel was sitting on the bench next to me with Ricca on his other side. The days are long in June and dusk comes late. In the half-light, I saw him reach over and press his index finger into the nipple of one of Ricca’s half-exposed breasts, laughing while he did it. And she laughed too. They must have thought themselves hidden by the gathering dark. But Penina, sitting beside me, gasped. And I saw Asher, who was sitting on a little bench some distance off, half rise in response to what he had seen, then sink back into the shadows. But Dorotea did not sink back. She smiled.

  After that, there was no way for me to avoid the truth nor, I felt, my responsibility to act on it. As we were leaving the garden I grasped Dorotea’s hand tightly and asked her to stay behind. I think she knew she had gone too far in so openly encouraging what could only be construed as lewd behavior. She pleaded a headache and made as if to take her hand away. But I held firm.

  “It is important, Dorotea,” I told her. “Your headache will have to wait. Something must be done about Jehiel and Ricca.”

  “Why so?” she asked, forcing her heavy-lidded eyes into an openness that would convey innocence. “I believe it is a matter for rejoicing that they get on so well. A brother and sister. Just as it should be.”

  “A brother and sister on the verge of tumbling into bed together,” I advised her. “Perhaps you mistake where you are. This is the household of Daniele dei Rossi, not Rodrigo Borgia.”

  “You shame yourself to say such things, Grazia.” Her thick eyelids made a clumsy attempt at a flutter. What do men see in these coarse-grained vulgar women? One look at the swing of those plump asses tells the whole story. In some sense all men are bulls and all women cows.

  “Jehiel has become a true brother to my Ricca,” she advised me proudly. “Your honorable father and I take that as a blessing.”

  “For Jehiel to be a brother to Ricca certainly is a blessing,” I replied. “To be a lover is incest.” There, I had said the word. To my surprise she took it most mildly.

  “They are cousins, not brother and sister,” she informed me.

  “First cousins,” I added. “And Ricca is three years older than Jehiel. He is a child. A boy.”
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br />   “He is close to fifteen years old. Old enough to marry.”

  “Marry!”

  “You forget that time passes, Grazia,” she went on. “Boys grow into men. If anything were to happen to your honored father, Jehiel would be the head of this family.”

  So that was the strategy. To wait until my father was dead, then to marry Jehiel off to Ricca so that she and her mother might enjoy the lion’s share of Papa’s estate.

  I left that garden saddened and dismayed. Of course, I would attempt to talk some sense into Jehiel. But what proof were my arguments against Ricca’s bulging breasts and hot lips? As I mounted the stairs to Papa’s room I heard a scuffling sound from under the stairwell. Then a moan of pleasure. It was my brother and his whorish cousin, for sure. I turned back, intending to upbraid them for their wantonness, then stopped myself. Anything I did now to deprive Jehiel of his pleasure would only exacerbate his appetite for it.

  Wearily, I trudged up the stairs to look in on my father. He lay still. But as I watched, he turned slightly and the wrench of that turn forced a moan of pain from between his lips. Down the stairs the son moaned with pleasure. Upstairs the father moaned in pain. And I stood suspended between the two, powerless to hinder or to help. Come soon, Judah, I thought. For I cannot bear this alone much longer.

  Judah rode into Mantova within a week, a ghostly apparition, his black cloak grayed with dust, his face pale with fatigue and pain. For my sake, he had forsworn his mule in favor of a horse, a way of sitting that always anguishes his backbone.

  As I sat beside his bath pouring warm water over his head, I observed that his hair had turned quite white. And the heavy lines in his forehead had deepened into furrows. With a great toss of his giant frame, he called for a towel and within minutes was combed, dried, and dressed in clean linen, ready to visit my father.

  It was a most peculiar examination even for a physician with unorthodox methods. Judah did not so much as touch my father except to kiss him on the cheek. Nor did he inquire after Papa’s condition but merely passed the time in idle chat, talking of the French king’s pursuit of pleasure in Napoli, and of the new papal alliance that was forming against the foolish Frenchman, instigated by, of all the unlikely supporters, the King’s sponsor and best friend, Lodovico Sforza of Milano. “Apparently the Duke’s eyesight has been restored,” Judah commented wryly, “and he can now recognize the face of Italy.” Which brought a smile to Papa’s wan countenance.