The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (15 page)

My confessions touched the old man’s heart. I became like a son to him. He assured me he has no designs on our state. He asks only for enough to feed his men as they march through on their way to Lombardia.

I have written to the Holy Father to acquaint him with my version of this meeting before he hears of it from someone not well disposed toward us. I added my advice — and I solemnly urge you who have the Pope’s ear to press this point upon him yourself — to make his peace with the Emperor and pay off these German landsknechts now. If he is as hard-pressed for ready money as he says, let him sell off a few red hats. But let him not hesitate. He must act before this new Imperial army is grafted onto Bourbon’s force at Milano.

You have known my cousin, Bourbon, since he was a child. You know he is not a man to be contained by any siege for very long. Sooner or later, with or without Frundsberg’s aid, he will break through the Milano blockade and the two halves of the Emperor’s army will be joined. From that moment on, all Italy stands in peril, even the holy city where you now reside. Believe me, Roma carries no sacred weight in the hearts of the landsknechts. They call themselves Christians but what they are is Lutherans who hate the Holy Catholic Church and mean to bring it down.

Most respectfully, Excellency, it is time for you to think of returning to Mantova, before any of these dire possibilities come to pass. This suggestion comes from one who cherishes you and would not for all the world see you exposed to danger.

Your loving son, Federico. (Written in cipher in his own hand)

Mantova, November 25, 1526.

9

L
a Nonna was not one of those who perpetrate cruelty for its own sake, nor was she uncharitable. She and my grandfather tithed themselves rigorously to help poor Jews, widows and orphans. Her harshness came not out of a lack of generosity but out of an excess of zeal in the cause of righteousness.

A humanist education might have taught her to heed the old Greek motto “Above all, no zeal.” But she was uneducated and priest-ridden. To her the Greeks and Romans were degenerate pagans and Moses’ law was revealed truth. With the connivance of the ignorant rabbis with whom she surrounded herself she came to feel that she was one of those chosen to regulate, judge, and punish those who came under her scrutiny.

Had she been less resolute she would have been less effective — thus, less cruel. But alas, nature had endowed her with a strong will and a shrewd mind. When she undertook a campaign she was invincible. What a general she would have made! Her strategy was faultless, her timing impeccable. She did not need Caesar’s
Commentaries on the Gallic Wars
to tell her that spring is the best time to launch an offensive.

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.