The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  As I stepped forward to meet them, they moved from the sun’s glare into the shadow of the door canopy. Now I could make out the hunched-over figure. It was Judah. A pale, weak-kneed figure, but alive. At the same time, a third man who had been giving orders to the other two emerged out of the glare and turned to face me.

  I rubbed my eyes to make certain the sun hadn’t tricked me. But no. The fine wrinkles at the edges of the eyes had broadened into furrows. Long days in the saddle had darkened the fair complexion. And the bronze sheen of his hair had faded to a golden brown. But the eyes were still as blue, the teeth as white, and the form as straight and sturdy as ever. The years had been kind to Pirro Gonzaga.

  I gaped, mouth hanging open like a cretin, as the trio passed slowly before my eyes and up the narrow staircase to the piano nobile while I remained fixed to the spot, stunned.

  When he returned to the sala some moments later, Lord Pirro’s greeting to me was punctilious to the point of coldness. As if we had never met, he introduced himself to me as a personal envoy from the King of France. My honorable husband had borne the rigors of the journey with much courage and strength, he reported. A doctor consulted at Milano had predicted he would recover completely albeit slowly. A Venetian doctor should be brought in to confirm that opinion. Regretfully, he was unable to see to that last task as he had not yet paid his respects to the Doge. But with my permission he would return that evening. Then like a wraith he disappeared, leaving me to question if indeed it was he who had carried my wounded husband into my house or a figment of my imagination.

  Later that morning the Venetian doctor came and pronounced his opinion. Maestro Judah had been treated skillfully at Marignano. There was no inflammation of the wound, no fever. All the patient needed was rest and plenty of licorice tea, licorice being beneficial for the brain, and to keep his head swathed in a wet bandage soaked in a tisane of comfrey and linden leaves.

  “And do not worry yourself if his mind seems to wander,” he cautioned me. “The shock will wear off in time and he will regain his senses and his balance.” Would I? I wondered.

  I will not dwell on the balance of that day, the longest day I have ever endured. Two apprehensions vied for my anxiety: first, that Lord Pirro would not return; second, that he would. Teetering like a rope dancer between these two possibilities, I so wore myself out that by vespers I was entirely overcome by fatigue. And I did indeed withdraw to my room and ready myself to retire. But I did not get into bed. Instead I placed myself on the sill of the window wrapped only in my gamorra, peering out into the rio from behind the half-open shutter, allowing the soft mists of the descending night to cool my fevered body.

  Just after dark I heard the soft swish of paddles under my window. Mercury himself must have put wings on my feet, for I dashed down the stairs so quickly that I arrived at the gates before our porter.

  I cannot imagine what that sedate old man made of the scene — his mistress in a loose gamorra, her hair flying, her feet bare, leaning out into the black water like a deckhand to grab the rope from the gondolier while he whose task it was to secure the vessel stood by at a loss.

  “Off with you,” I muttered to the porter. And the old fellow discreetly took his leave. Just in time. A moment later, I hurled myself into the arms of the descending passenger, knocking his berretta into the canal and almost catapulting his own precariously balanced body after it.

  What I write for you now are the secrets of a woman’s heart. I invite you into my grotto, my secret place, the place where my most beautiful and dangerous memories are kept. Come back with me in time and learn of the exquisite, tender, powerful currents that swept you into being.

  Up, up we went. Up the stairs. Past the room where sleeping Judah lay, forgotten. And there in full view of all Venezia — for neither of us had the presence of mind to close the shutters — I undressed him and reaped for my services a cadenza of kisses on the neck, the ears, the mouth, the breasts, as I unlaced the doublet, then the camicia, then knelt to the task of removing the boots; he all the while draining my lips of their sweetness the way the hummingbird sucks the nectar from the deep throat of the nasturtium flower.

  I kissed his toes. He kissed my ears. I squeezed his calves. He caressed my shoulders. I stroked his thighs, those marble pillars that I had adored from first sight. He cupped my breasts in his hands and buried his head between, folding them with little, delicate wanderings of his fingers.

  We sank to the floor. And there on the cold stones he took me over, master to slave, pounding my willing body ceaselessly into the hard tiles as if his Venus rod were a hammer.

  We did not speak. We simply lay face-to-face, our fingers soothing each other as if to smooth out the coruscating lines that unappeased longing had etched on our two spirits. Then slowly the pace quickened. Gentle fingers gave place to not so gentle teeth, nibbling, nipping, biting. Arms, legs, belly, ass, every part of me was rubbed and kneaded until no part was left unexplored.

  Then it was my turn to play coachmaster. And I rode him the way Pantesilea, the Amazon queen, rode her charger into battle against the Greeks — free and wild, using my long plait as a whip to spur him on.

  After many hours, when the field was drenched with sweat and spent seed, I left him and went in search of wine and rose water and fresh linen. When I returned we drank together and washed each other all over, part by part, limb by limb, cleaning and oiling those poor worn orifices that had been so well used.

  And then a vagrant phrase from the pen of Koheleth came to my mind: “Stay ye with me, dainties. Refresh me with apples, for I am lovesick.” And I brought a bowl of small fruits to the bedside and some jelly that I myself had made out of quinces. For a lark he dipped his fingers into the jar and dabbed some of that jelly on my nipples. Not to be outdone, I brushed it on his lips and kissed it off. Then we fell into an orgy of dabbing and licking in every sweet place there is, and laughing at our foolish selves licking up jelly with our two tongues like greedy rabbits. And still we had hardly spoken a word to one another excepting for the formal salutations of the day before. But we needed no words to tell us that our hearts were as firmly entwined as our bodies.

  Toward dawn I placed my sticky fingers over his eyes so that he might enjoy a brief sojourn in the arms of Morpheus. But the moment his eyes closed, my hands found their way back to his outstretched body, and with Koheleth again as my tutor I reached for a jar of sweet oil beside my bed and began to anoint him with it, running my fingers back and forth in the grooves between the toes, then circling the ankles, next the calves which curved into my hand as if made to fit there, then the thighs, and finally his private instruments of pleasure, squeezing and teasing them back to life with the oil but also now with little licks and nips until he awoke and taking me firmly in his muscled arms laid me upon my back, and thus we ended our long night as we had begun, with him the rider and me under his great weight, utterly mastered by him. A steed, true, but a triumphant one.

  When two equals join in giving pleasure to each other, that and only that is true love, my son. The more delicate the balance, the greater the tension, the richer the pleasure. I think that, that night, we came as close as imperfect beings can come to perfect equilibrium. Should I regret the achievement of such perfection? I cannot. I took it as a brief return to Eden after more than twenty years of being cast out. And so God must have meant it. For the seed of that sowing which came into flower nine months later was you, my son.

  There is little more to tell of this blessed encounter. At dawn we dressed so as to present a correct picture to the household, and spent a brief time sipping watered wine and saying our farewells. There never was the slightest doubt that we would say goodbye. We both knew better than to ask for more than one night in paradise. Sufficient unto the day, says the Holy Book.

  But before he left, Lord Pirro did make a brief explanation of how he had come to bring Judah home to Venezia.

&n
bsp; “I have known for a long time, Grazia, that I owed you a debt,” he began. “At Marignano I found my chance to begin repayment. The King was casting about for someone to conduct Maestro Judah back to Venezia —”

  “But a lackey would have done for that task,” I cut in.

  “Exactly,” he replied. “I volunteered for the lackey’s job in order to serve you. For I felt that it was not enough to give a gift or to make a speech or to ride up in full armor and sweep you off your feet . . . though I admit I thought of that often . . .” Here he reached under the table and squeezed my hand tightly. “I felt the need to humble myself before you, to truly make restitution for the indignity I had inflicted on you. And God gave me the opportunity when he put the life of someone you cherish into my hands.”

  And in so doing He created a rift in my heart that no amount of time will erase, I thought.

  The sun was full up by then and the boatman waiting. Our time in paradise had run out. But at the last second, just before he stepped into the waiting craft, he turned and beckoned to the gondolier to hand him a wrapped package lying on the seat.

  “You are ever in my thoughts, Grazia, and will ever be as long as I draw breath. For proof I leave you this.” He placed the packet in my hand. “I spent my last penny on it when I was young and it is still the dearest thing I own.”

  So saying, he boarded the craft, drew the curtains, and was whisked away.

  For once in my life curiosity did not lead me into haste. I continued to stand on the landing until the gondola had disappeared in the mist. Then I took the package up to my room, where I would not be disturbed.

  Slowly I peeled off the wax seals that secured the parcel. Then I untied the strings that bound it. At length the coverings were loosened and I peeled them away layer by layer. Paper on the outside. Then linen. And finally a silk jacket, gathered with a silk cord.

  I sat with the silken bag in my lap for several minutes, savoring the moment. Then slowly I pulled at the cord and uncovered the object that was my lover’s most valued possession: Messer Mantegna’s portrait of me as Faustina’s twin.

  From that moment until this one the portrait has never left me. It sits opposite me on an easel as I write for you the story of your beginnings. When I die it will be yours (if Madama does not get her hands on it first). Guard it well. It is a talisman of the splendor of your birth and of the great love that brought you into being.

  47

  Fortuna does not offer us many opportunities to take our lives into our own hands. The moment of your conception was one such opportunity. Once I was certain of my pregnancy, I could have seized the moment to confess my indiscretion to Judah and set the course of our lives on an honest path. But instead I announced my condition as if it were an act of God and waited to see if an explanation would be demanded. None was. Judah could read the calendar as well as any man. He knew that the child growing in my womb could not be his. But, like me, he chose to treat my pregnancy as a sign that we had been forgiven our transgressions against God by being given a child.

  Anything I might add to this confession of the great lie we foisted upon you . . . and Lord Pirro . . . and ourselves . . . could only be read as self-serving justification of an act that cannot be justified. When the moment of truth came, we stepped aside and let it pass in the most cowardly way. For that cowardice I beg you to forgive us. There is nothing more to say.

  In March of the year you were born, a merchant by the name of Zacharia Dolphin rose up at a meeting of the Venetian collegio to demand that the Jews be prevented from contaminating Christian citizens. It was the presence of Jews that had brought on Venezia’s financial woes, he said, and pointed out that the moment Spain and Portugal had expelled the Jews from their lands, God showed His approval by showering on them the good fortune He had previously bestowed on Venezia.

  Why had the Venetians fallen from favor? he asked. It was God’s punishment for allowing the perfidious nation of Jews to flourish in their midst. He cited a canon of the Third Lateran Council of the year 1179 which forbade Jews and Christians to dwell together. The Jews must be sequestered. Messer Dolphin had even chosen a location for them: the area of the New Foundry — the Ghetto Nuovo — in the parish of San Girolamo where, not inconveniently, he owned many houses.

  When Judah brought home this news, I took it the way Jews have learned to do over centuries — with a shrug. If a Jew trembled at every Christian threat, the whole race would have palsy. Nor was Judah unduly distressed. He recalled that as far back as 1385 various condotte between the Jews and the Serenissima, as the Venetians called their state, had called for a place where Jews could live apart from the Christian population. But nothing had ever been done to enforce these provisos, he reminded me, and no doubt the same inaction would prevail in the future.

  He did not figure into his calculations the disquiet of the people or the venom of the priests or the cupidity of the property owners. On April first of the year 1516, the Venetian Senate issued a proclamation that the Jews of Venezia were to be settled into the Ghetto Nuovo within ten days. Dolphin and his henchman, another property owner called Bragadin, had carried the Senate by eighty-six votes.

  The news came to us via no less a personage than Rabbi Asher Meshullam, the one you hear spoken of as Anselmo del Banco. He came to our door on the night of the vote of sequestration, banging and shouting to be let in after we had locked up for the night. At first we mistook him for a housebreaker. But when Judah recognized the old rabbi’s voice he immediately ordered the locks undone. Meshullam, the wealthiest and most powerful Jew in Venezia, was at that time close to eighty. Nothing less than a catastrophe would have brought this frail old man out on a cold, wet night.

  With Rabbi Asher came his son Jacob, one of those sons of rich men who are continually getting into trouble on one account or another but always wear a dapper smile because they know that at the final hour their rich papa will step in to save them. But tonight Jacob was not smiling.

  The talk went on far into the night. Strategy was discussed. What bribes to offer and to whom. Much anger was expressed. Old Meshullam swore that he would never live behind sealed walls. “Rather live in the burned-out ruins of Mestre . . . rather die,” were his words. And his son echoed him. Judah remained silent. And I kept my counsel as befits a humble Jewish wife. But after the Meshullams had left, I did not hesitate to engage my husband.

  “Are we really as threatened as Meshullam believes?” I asked.

  “I think yes,” he replied gravely. “Because it is not just current events that have exposed us to danger. Or bigotry. Or greed. This crisis in Venetian affairs has been building for over a decade. Now the forces of history, commerce, religion, and geography have found common cause against our people.”

  “Geography?” That inclusion puzzled me.

  “Probably the most powerful factor in the equation,” he replied. “Remember, my dear, that the goods which are the stuff of trade travel over geographical terrain. For centuries wealth has flowed into the Venetian lagoon over sea routes from Byzantium, the Levant, and the Black Sea. It is in gratitude to the sea god who makes this trade possible that the Doge sails out to sea in the state bucentaur on Ascension Day to cast a gold ring into the waves. The Venetians see this ritual as the wedding of the bride, Venezia, with the god, Neptune. But about ten years ago, the Serenissima came under attack from the Italian princes and was forced to divert her attention from the sea to her holdings on the mainland, the so-called terra firma. As the mythologists would have it, the sea god proved to be a jealous mate. When Venezia lost interest in the sea, Neptune found himself a new darling, Portugal.”

  “But we have prevailed in the terra firma,” I reminded him. No one who lived in Venezia could ever forget the celebration of that victory.

  “Too late. By now, the arteries that pumped gold into the heart of Venezia have dried up. When Vasco da Gama found a short route around th
e Cape of Good Hope, geography took over. The lordly Serenissima is now no better than any other small Italian state scrapping for bits of territory in the terra firma.”

  “And for this they blame the Jews?”

  “Who else? They can hardly blame their own shortsightedness.”

  “But surely the Venetians will not act on this monstrous plan to lock up hundreds of people who have done them no wrong.” My imagination could not conceive such a thing. “And even if they do, the Jews will soon buy their way out as they always have . . . will they not?” I asked.

  “Perhaps.” He sighed deeply. “But no matter what comes of this proclamation, I fear that the climate of Venezia is no longer conducive to our good health. Tomorrow I will begin to search for a new post. The Sultan has written to me again.”

  “No, Judah, not Constantinople!” I protested.

  “We must go where we can, Grazia,” he admonished me gently. “I will do what is in my power to satisfy your desires, but I urge you to remember that we are not in the same position as Meshullam. He is a man of vast wealth who can pick and choose his refuge. I am a physician and scholar with vast resources of skill and intellect — which I lay at your feet — but without estates and wealth. I will go at once to beg the General to intercede on our behalf. But I warn you that if my best efforts fail we may be forced into this ghetto. Your time is close, little wife. At least there you will be with people who love you and your child will have a roof over his head.”

  Judah is the seer in this family, not I. As he predicted, ten days flew by without a change of heart on the part of the Senate. On April 10, every Jew in Venezia was required to present himself at the gateway to the cannon factory in the district of San Girolamo. No exceptions. Not even our patron, General Sassatello, was able to get us excused from the order.

  As a consolation the General had sent his gondola to carry us on our journey through the canals. I brought with me only one small hamper, for I knew we would be out of that place within a few days. Paddling along under the gold fringe of the General’s baldacchino, it was easy to think that way. But when we reached the Grand Canal and saw before our eyes the mournful cavalcade bound for the ghetto, my foolish optimism began to fade.