The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (17 page)

“The following day, Ambrogio’s son, crazed by the overnight disappearance of his inheritance, ‘stolen’ (as he believed) by a cheating Jew, made his way to the
banco
owned by the Jew’s family. He stormed into the place waving an unsheathed dagger, and before anyone knew what was happening, he fell upon the first young Jew he encountered and stabbed him to death.”

Instinctively, I covered my eyes with my hands as if to block out the terrible picture. But Papa gently reached over and took away my blindfold, as if to say, “You wanted the truth. Now you must face up to it.” And there was more to come.

“The worst of it was,” he continued, “that in his rage for vengeance the young Christian had mistaken his victim. The Jew he killed was not the dealer with golden hands. The Jew who went down was his innocent brother. In case you have not already guessed,” he went on in a low voice, “I am the Jew with the golden hands. The boy who went down in my place was my brother, Davide, the true dei Rossi firstborn.”

The revelation struck me dumb. I looked at Jehiel. He too was speechless. But Papa had one more thing to tell, and he gathered himself together to give us the coda of his tale.

“In time the tempers of the citizens cooled. But not the bitterness of the slain son’s family toward his slayer, the gambling son with the golden hands. The daily sight of those cursed hands served only to remind them of the dead firstborn on whom all their hopes had centered. With each day that passed their loathing of the living son mounted. His very presence in the room raised a stink in their nostrils. Driven by rage and grief, they decided to cut him off from the family, as a surgeon amputates a gangrenous limb so that it will not infect the healthy part of the body. The gambler was exiled from Ferrara, sent off to a distant branch of the family bank in Mantova with his wife and his infant daughter. Before he left in disgrace, he took a solemn vow never to gamble again in this life.”

But he
had
gambled again. With terrible consequences. And now “the Jew with the golden hands” — my father — was about to be judged by the
Wad Kellilah
. What punishment they might choose to inflict, we dared not wonder.

11

W
ithin a day of my grandfather’s release from the Duke’s dungeon, the
Wad Kellilah
assembled in the dei Rossi private synagogue to judge my father. As they shuffled through the courtyard, I recognized many of them as the same people who had come a few months before to plead for Papa’s help in the matter of the Jewish badges, and later, when he had performed so excellently on their behalf, had returned bearing sweetmeats and trinkets. Now, they stared through him as if he were a pane of Venetian glass. Where was their gratitude? I berated Jehiel, having nowhere else to vent my spleen.

“It seems, sister,” he replied in his grave little way, “that gratitude is like the butterfly. It bursts out of its chrysalis, flutters, and dies within a day.” (That child knew his Pliny.)

Lest I slander the members of the council, I should point out how ill prepared they were to deal with my father’s case. Their true function was to arbitrate the civil disputes that plagued the Jewish community — mainly to allocate liability for the tax burden imposed by the Estes on the community. On the criminal side, their jurisdiction held sway over paternity suits, divorce settlements, and such domestic matters deemed sufficiently minor by the Christian authorities to leave to the Jews to settle among themselves. To stage the trial of a serious crime — and to arrive at their judgment with all Ferrara watching to see what constituted Jewish justice — must have weighed heavily on those reluctant Solomons. Certainly they hardly appeared to look forward to their task as they filed past us in the
cortile
.

The
banco
was closed that day. No lessons were given. Jehiel and I hung about the chamber as silent as two shadows, waiting for the verdict of the council. Only when the council members finally emerged at dusk did we give vent to our feelings, rushing forward to throw ourselves into Papa’s arms, weeping and hugging him with abandon. We knew such displays to be odious in that household but we were beyond caring.

Papa kept countenance through it all. With solemn dignity he gathered us into his arms and gently conducted us into a small side room that we might speak together privately.

“What I have to tell you children is not something you will wish to hear,” he began. “Nor do I wish to tell it.” Then he took a moment to wipe away my tears before he told us the verdict. “I am to be put under a
cherem
. Do you know what that means?” We did not.

“It is an excommunication from the faith — the community — the family,” he explained.

“Is it like a
niddui
, Papa?” I asked. Once in Mantova the silk merchant Mordecai had been placed under a
niddui
for forging a receipt, and I remembered the poor man clad in black from head to toe and ignored by everyone for an entire month.

“No, my daughter,” Papa replied. “The
cherem
is a longer punishment and more severe. By its terms, I am banished from all concourse with the synagogue, even denied a place in consecrated ground should I die. And you along with me, unless you agree to renounce me.”

“Renounce you?” I placed my hand on my heart, à la Dido. “Never!”

Jehiel did not even dignify the idea with a response. To him, our refusal of the offer was a foregone conclusion. “What will happen to us under this
cherem
, Papa?” he asked.

“You will be banished from Ferrara along with me. Like me, you will be prohibited from entering the sacred precincts of any synagogue for any purpose. And, like me, you will suffer the contempt of your fellow Jews.
If
you cleave to me.”

“Of course we cleave to you,” Jehiel answered with just a trace of impatience in his high, boy’s voice. “Who else would we cleave to? Poor old Uncle Joseph or Grandmother or —”

“All right, all right,” Papa cut him off. “You are decided then not to renounce me?”

We nodded solemnly.

“In that case, I must explain to you what will happen tomorrow. Since I cannot keep you from it, I had best prepare you . . .” Yet he did not speak.

In that moment of silence, the question that had been bedeviling me rose to my tongue. “Why did you do it, Papa?” I found myself asking.

“Why indeed?” he asked of the air.

“We wonder why you had to steal gold from the edges of the coins when there is so much of it in the strongboxes of the
banco
,” Jehiel explained.

“I’ve wondered about that too, my son,” Papa replied. “Why did I choose to rob the Duke rather than my parents?” He paused, bemused by his own question, then continued in a much brisker tone. “What I do know is that I was a double-damned fool to make such a choice. The Duke forgave me,” he added.

“I knew he was a good man when I played Zara with him,” Jehiel announced. Then, realizing that he had trodden on forbidden territory, he quickly added, “I never speak of it, Papa. Never.”

“Good,” Papa commended him. “Keep your silence. And stay away from dice. If I were you, I would prefer
calcio
— kicking the ball is better for your muscles
and
your purse.”

“Very well, Papa,” Jehiel agreed. “But who am I to play
calcio
with? Grazia is the only person who can kick hard enough. Asher dribbles the ball like pee-pee. And —”

“Enough!” Papa held up his hand. “Let me speak of tomorrow while I still have the heart for it. What you will see may seem cruel to you. But remember, the civil punishment for the crime of coin clipping is death by dismemberment. Do you know what quartering is?”

We were not certain that we did.

“When a man is quartered, his body is chopped into four pieces by the executioner.” Jehiel buried his face in my shoulder when he heard this. But Papa would not stop. “After his body has been divided by the axe, the head is mounted on a pike and displayed for all the world to see atop the town walls.
That
might have happened to me, had not the Duke forgiven me, as you put it.
That
is the fate I escaped. Whatever you see and hear in the community’s synagogue tomorrow, remember that I deserve it all — and more.”

We both agreed to remember. But, of course, with no clear idea of what we were about to witness.

“One last thing,” Papa went on. Would there be no end? “I have inflicted grievous shame on my parents by my folly, and not for the first time in my life. For this, I must also pay a penalty, and this time, the penalty falls upon you two as well.”

Dio mio
, I thought, we are all going to be beaten together in La Nonna’s
sala di giustizia
.

“What are they going to do to us, Papa?” asked Jehiel.

“Banishment is their judgment, my son,” he replied. “It is at their request that the
Kellilah
has banished us from Ferrara.”

“Where will we go, Papa? Who will take us in?” Jehiel bit his lip to keep from crying.

“We will go to Bologna,” Papa answered. “I have been offered a post there. As a clerk in the
banco
.”

“A clerk?” I could not imagine it. Clerks were inferior beings, only a jot above servants.

“A clerk,” Papa repeated forcefully. “But a clerk with two hands and two feet and two beautiful children. I call that a gambler’s luck.”

Of course he was right about everything — the seriousness of his crime, the extent of his folly, and the magnitude of his good fortune. Nonetheless, the next day when they led him forward in the synagogue, hooded like a blind leper, I froze with dread. And when they pulled off the hood and revealed his head completely shaven, I could not stifle a scream.

After that he was paraded up and down the aisles barefoot and shirtless while the congregation cursed him and slapped at him and spat upon him. Yes, Danilo, they spat upon my father. And I sat up in the gallery and watched the wads of spittle thicken on his bare chest.

After two full rounds of this, some of the meaner ones began to aim higher . . . at his cheeks . . . his eyes. He could do nothing to cleanse his face for his hands were bound behind his back.

When they were done spitting and cursing they sat him down to listen to the terms of the
cherem
. Words upon words washed over him. But no one of all those believers made a move to wash away the clots of yellow phlegm that covered his face.

After what seemed like hours the time came for the actual ritual of excommunication. A funeral bier was brought in. Then the cantor came down the aisle and laid upon the bier a dead cock, which continued to drip blood down the front of the casket as the ceremony progressed.

Next, a fringed tallis was laid upon the bier. With a gasp, I recognized it as Papa’s prayer shawl, the one my mother had embroidered for him with her own hands. With slow deliberation the
shammash
lit four white tapers and placed them at the four corners of the bier as is done at funerals. Then suddenly a weird cacophony broke out — a din of chanting and dancing around my father while the rabbi and his minions tossed burnt ashes over his head and rubbed them into his cheeks, all this accompanied by the cantor blowing the great ram’s horn over and over, each time louder and wilder than the last.

When the adults had worn themselves out, the children got their turn to dance around Papa, chanting curses and forcing bursts of noise into his ears from inflated bladders.

At last, the lust for spectacle having been satisfied, Papa was led to a seat below the ark. And there, the recentor, standing over him with the scroll of the law in his hand, pronounced the prayer for the dead:

Yisgadal v’yiskadash, Shmay rabo.

Byolmo dee v’hir usay . . .

As the rabbi repeated the ancient words, Papa was led out followed by his bier, the dead cock dripping blood on the feet of the pallbearers.

As far as the Jews were concerned, my father was now dead.