The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (30 page)

Something of the sweetness of Christ’s love was revealed to me at that moment and I was able to answer, with a full heart, “Yes, Father. It is a small price, to be sure.”

For this, I was rewarded by a smile of delight such as one sees on the faces of Fra Angelico’s angels.

“Now listen carefully to what I have to tell you, Grazia,” he went on. “Nowhere more than in the food you eat, the pallet you sleep on, and the company you keep with lesser souls will you learn more quickly to grasp the heart of the Christian faith, the transformation of flesh into spirit. I will lead you. You must trust my way. I will teach you. You must learn. But learning is not enough. You must come to know Christ in your own blood and your own flesh. Only then can you truly embrace Him.”

He took me in his arms like a lover and fixed my eyes with his own. “Embrace the bleeding, beating heart of Christ, my child, I implore you.” Moved by some passionate religiosity, he fairly threw himself into a spasm of submission. “
Il cuore del Cristo!
”

With this final cry, he subsided into deep silence, and after a while, without another word, he released me from his embrace and left the cloister.

In due course, Cateruccia appeared. Inspired by Fra Pietro, I took her arm in the friendliest manner. Then we started off on our rounds, Cateruccia emitting hoarse sighs as she lumbered along beside me and I muttering, “The meek shall inherit the earth,” five times at each corner. By the end of it my hunger pangs had subsided and I walked up to my cell with a firm tread and an inner assurance that I had chosen the right path.

19

L
ife in the
casa del catecumeni
. Dreary. Harsh. Up before dawn in my cell. Most mornings a layer of ice has formed in the jug. I crack it with my fist, splash the frigid water on my face. (Jewish habits of sanitation die hard.) I ask myself if the addiction to washing is another indulgence of the flesh. Make a note to ask Fra Pietro. But I see him rarely. He is in constant attendance on Madonna Isabella. The court has moved to Marmirolo and he with it.

I have not seen Lord Pirro since the first day of my incarceration in this place. Nor have I heard a word from him. Or from the
illustrissima
. The plan for the
disputa
must be forgotten. Have I too been forgotten?

I write every day to my love, but I know that these letters are not delivered since Fra Pietro is not here to put his stamp of approval on them. Kneeling on the cold stones of the Church of San Andrea, which we do, Cateruccia and I, four times each day, I do not feel Christ entering into me. I feel cold entering into me. And hunger. And disappointment. And disgust. (I do try to overcome my revulsion against Cateruccia but it retains its hold on me.)

Food is delivered here for me every day — white bread and buttery cheese and figs. My family brings kosher food to the
casa dei catecumeni
to keep my Jewish soul free of the taint of the pig, should I change my mind about converting.

Every day at dinner this banquet of Jewish delicacies is put at my place beside the watery soup. So far, I have resisted eating it. But with every day that passes, my resolution weakens. I know it is only a matter of time before I give in to the cravings of my belly.

They have taken my Virgil away. Also my grammar books. In their stead, I find beside my bed a tattered printed version of
The Imitation of Christ
. I try to read it. The words of the saint make no sense to me. I make a note to ask Fra Pietro why he gave me this particular book. If I ever do see him.

What holds me in this place? Why do I not run off? Quite simply, I have nowhere to go. I have bound myself over. I am a slave to Christ.

Yet I am also, and always was, a creature of hope. And when, on an afternoon some two weeks after my incarceration began, Cateruccia informed me brusquely that I was wanted below, I took heart at once. My love had not forsaken me, after all.

No reproaches, I promised myself. I would exhibit only my most engaging face to him. I would hide my disappointment and express only my joy to see him again. Full of resolve, I passed through the portal that led to the cloister and searched in the dusky light for the familiar broad shoulders and the raffish
berretta
.

In the farthest corner my eyes discerned a shapeless form huddled against a pillar. Moving closer, I could see that it was not a single body but two. They were shrouded in dark cloaks and bent over as if they carried the world’s troubles on their shoulders. I could not make out the faces. But as I approached, they revealed themselves to be my father and his wife, Dorotea.

“Papa!”

He turned, arms outstretched. He wrapped himself around me like a swaddling blanket and I snuggled into his body, a child again. Then I caught sight of Dorotea, her eyes reproachful, her stance rigid, unbending; and the bile began to course through my body, black and bitter. I withdrew from my father’s embrace.

“We tried to come before, Grazia.” Papa’s tone was conciliatory, even suppliant. “But the visit took some arranging. Do you receive your food regularly?”

“I do, honored padre,” I replied, every bit as respectful — and every bit as distant — as Dorotea’s code of conduct demanded.

Her attention went to Fingebat. “They allow you to keep that flea-bitten mongrel in the house?” she inquired, pointing contemptuously at the little creature at her feet.

“Why yes, honored stepmother.” I bent to pick him up. “Jesus loved all living creatures great and small. He placed them under the special protection of Saint Francis.”

“What about those pigs they go around slaughtering by the hundreds? And the deer and the fowl they kill for the sport of it? Whose protection are they under?” she snapped back.

“Please, Dorotea . . . this is no way . . .” Papa placed his hand on her arm as if to restrain her nasty tongue, but he never was a match for her.

“You must take care not to place yourself beyond redemption by eating the forbidden flesh of the pig and other such unclean stuff.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “If you set yourself against God’s commandments, it will go all the harder for you when you return to us.”

“I will never return to you. Never.”

“You say that now . . .” She sniffed. “They will tempt you with dainty morsels.” I smiled to myself at what Dorotea would make of the watery soup that constituted my tempting Christian diet.

“It is also very important that you do not eat fish without scales such as the eels these Christians dote on.”

The more she hectored me, the more I became convinced that Fra Pietro was correct in his condemnation of the Jewish obsession with things of the flesh. Could the woman talk of nothing but food?

When she finally finished her peroration I got my chance to speak.

“What news of my brothers?” I asked. “Are they well?”

“As well as can be, considering the shame they feel —”

“They are well, daughter,” Papa cut in. “But they miss you mightily. They ask every day when you will be home again.”

“I miss them too,” I answered. “Possibly even more than they miss me. For they have each other . . .”

“Why do you not come home with us now, daughter?” Papa reached out and took my hand in his. “Give your sad eyes the treat of the sight of those who love you so much.”

Sadly I nodded my refusal.

“Why not, child? What have we done to make you so bitter and so obdurate? How can we make amends?”

Before I could even consider whether I might risk an honest reply, Dorotea made up my mind for me. “Do not lower yourself to beg her, honored husband. She is not worth it.”

Those words concluded the interview. I quickly excused myself and left the cloister without even saying goodbye.

If Dorotea’s intent had been to drive me farther into the arms of Christ, she could not have done a better job of it. The next morning, I fairly bounded out of bed in my effort to be first at the church, determined as never before to taste Christ’s blood when I was offered the wine and to feel His flesh between my teeth when I chewed the consecrated wafer. If belief was a requisite for baptism, I would believe. If it killed me, I would believe.

Did this fit of faith come from the heart? Christ must have thought so. For not too long after my parents’ visit, another visitor came to me in the cloister. Not shrouded or bent over, this one. Oh no, this caller shone with the aura of Saint George himself, decked out as he was in gold spurs and chains. My knight had come to fetch me.

But oh, I looked a fright. My newfound religiosity had led me to neglect my personal habits. I was dirty. My hair hung down greasy and lank. As for my garments, a coarse, black hooded cloak had become my second skin.

To my astonishment, my drab and disheveled appearance seemed to inflame my lover’s ardor rather than to cool it.

“Look at you. So thin. So pale. Oh, my love, what you have endured for my sake. You have deprived yourself of all comfort, all adornment . . . Oh, my angel . . .”

Locked in my lord’s arms, clutched, cosseted, kissed, and caressed, I fell back into the fleshly world without a backward glance. My only reverent thought — if you can call it that — was that all my sacrifices had been well worth this moment.

The visit was short. He had ridden more than twenty leagues at full gallop from the Gonzaga country place at Marmirolo and must return before sunset on pain of his kinswoman’s extreme displeasure, “. . . for I am her favorite partner at
scartino
excepting only her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Urbino, who is not with us this season,” he explained.

Still keeping a firm hold on my waist, he began quickly to tell me all that had transpired in his world since we parted.

“Since the court moved to Marmirolo I am expected to ride out with Marchese Francesco every morning . . . a pleasant duty, I must admit. Do you hunt, my love?”

I confessed that I had never had the opportunity.

“But you do ride, do you not? Something other than elephants?”

“It is my greatest pleasure, after Virgil,” I answered, happy not to disappoint him.

“After Virgil, of course,” he repeated with one of those sly smiles of his. “I keep forgetting that in addition to your unbridled spirit and your hot passions you are also quite the lady scholar.”

“Would you prefer me light-minded and bird-witted?” I inquired, with just a touch of the tartness I always felt when he teased me for my bookish preoccupations.

“Soothe those ruffled feathers, lady. I bring good tidings. Madonna Isabella has invited you to Marmirolo.”

“For a
disputa
?” I asked anxiously.

“No. That is forgotten, as I assured you it would be. Now we are all agog for country pursuits — music, games, dancing, and the hunt.”

“Oh dear. The hunt.”

“Never fear, my love, you are not invited to that. To be offered a place close to the Marchese’s dogs is the highest honor of all at the Gonzaga court. No, this is merely a fete. But Madonna Isabella herself issued the invitation and that counts for something. I will come for you at dawn on Saturday. Be ready.”

But I could not be ready. Readiness was not possible. Tearfully, I told him that my attendance was out of the question.

“You refuse the Marchesana’s invitation?”

“Oh sir, I know that Jews do not say no to princes. My father taught me that. But I cannot go to this party. You see, I have nothing to wear. They have taken away my clothes.”

“Then they must bring them back.”

“But my hair . . . there is no one to wash my head.”

“The slave girl will do it.”

“Oh no. I dare not ask Fra Pietro.”

“Perhaps you do not dare, my love, but I do. Pta Pietro sits next to me every day at dinner in the country. It is his good report that has put you back in Madonna Isabella’s favor. He tells us you are his most compliant
conversa
.”

“He does?”

“Yes, my little scholar. You are not unobserved here. Or uncared for. Did you think you were?”

I hung my head. In truth I had thought just that.

“Now then, do we have any other problems to solve? For I must be off.”

“So soon?”

“You know that my cousin the Marchese is a demanding taskmaster,” he answered.

“Do you not sometimes wish to be free of this servitude?” I asked. “To be your own man rather than his?”

“Few of us are vouchsafed such liberty, my love,” he answered. “Even my cousin is not his ‘own man,’ as you put it. He is the hired captain of the Venetians and that makes him their creature much as I am his. They pay his living just as he pays mine. Remember your Plato. No man is free. Is that not what the old Greek pederast taught?”

“If the revered sage ever said such a thing, I am not aware of it,” I snapped back.

“‘Destiny waiteth alike for them that men call free and them by others mastered,’” he quoted with perfect accuracy, putting my nose completely out of joint. Then he swooped me up in his arms and pressed me to him tight enough to squeeze all the starch out of me. Not content with mastering me in that way, he then whirled me around the little courtyard until my head swam with vertigo and, for a last tease, took a nip out of my ear that made me squeal with pain. In revenge, I had at his chin with the hard right fist I had cultivated wrestling with my brother. I wager that old cloister had never witnessed such merriment or such tumult. Oh, we were hellions, both of us, ready to jettison prudence at a moment’s notice and abandon ourselves to our fancies and passions.