The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (35 page)

“But let us suppose that, by some unexpected — astonishing — even miraculous intervention of God’s charity, you were forgiven your transgressions . . .”

“I cannot imagine that, honored Signore Padre,” I replied.

“Imagine it, Grazia,” he ordered me, quite stern now. “Imagine yourself forgiven.”

“I cannot, Signore Padre.”

“What do you want, girl? A note sent directly from heaven and signed by God Himself?”

Before I could frame a suitable answer, he reconsidered the barb and returned to his earlier kindly tone. “You are forgiven, Grazia. Believe me. God has taken pity on you. He has given you more than a second chance. He has thrown your way a beneficence not vouchsafed many. He has sent you a husband.”

“Who?”

“A fine man. An honored Jew.”

Dio!
It was Rabbi Abramo, pressed into service by La Nonna to erase the stain on the family escutcheon.

“No!” I cried.

“No?” he shouted, giving way at last to anger. “You say no to such an honor? Even before you know who has made the offer? Ungrateful brat! God knows why he wants you,” he muttered, as much to himself as to me. Then, throwing his hands in the air, he ordered me to leave him and go at once to my stepmother. “She will explain. These matters are better left to women. Go now.” He rose and gave me a push toward the door. “And I would not be so quick to answer no, young lady,” he shouted after me as I scooted along the hall to the
sala piccola
. “You may never get such a fine offer again in your life. In fact, I’d be willing to bet on it.”

In the kitchen I found a new Dorotea, solicitous, with a cup of spiced wine, “for you are shivering with cold, poor girl,” and the offer of her own shawl.

Made bold by this welcome, I asked her straight out for the name of my suitor.

“Did not your father tell you?” she asked. “Oh, that foolish man. They are all hopeless when it comes to affairs of the heart.” She nudged me conspiratorially.

“Will you tell me, then?” I asked. “Is it Rabbi Abramo?”

“Rabbi Abramo? Did your father give you that notion? Is it his idea of a joke?” She laughed. Then her face took on a look I cannot ever forget, a mixture of amazement and envy. “My dear, your hand has been requested by no less a personage than Leone del Medigo.”

“Maestro Judah, the doctor?”

“Physician, scholar, philosopher. He has the ear of the Medici and the support of powerful Christians. He was tutor to Lord Pico of Mirandola, who seeks his counsel to this day.”

“Is he rich?” I asked, as if I cared.

“He is rich in knowledge,” Dorotea answered self-righteously. “Mind you, he does not lack for ready cash either. His great skill fetches high fees.”

“He wants to marry me?” I could not believe it.

“He made his offer this morning. It seems he is about to leave for Firenze and he wishes to take you with him as his bride.”

“Messer Judah wants to marry me?” I asked again, stupidly.

“He is coming to ask you himself this evening, with our permission, of course.” Dorotea preened.

“Is it decided, then?” I asked.

“Why do you ask? Surely you do not intend to refuse the offer.”

“He is not young . . .” I ventured.

“He has just passed thirty. Young enough for any normal purposes.”

“He is not married, then?”

“Never had the time for it, he says, luckily for you. Do you have any comprehension what a blessing has fallen upon you? Your husband has an appointment in the Medici circle. You will accompany him to Firenze. It is a high honor. Do you not know anything about the world, girl?”

Oh, I knew many things about the world. “Perhaps I cannot believe in my good fortune,” I answered truthfully.

“Understandable. And suitably modest for a Jewish bride. I shall tell your father of your reaction. It is most appropriate.” Then she leaned down and whispered into my ear as I had seen her do with her own daughter so many times. “You have my permission to rub a little rouge into your cheeks. Just a little. Not enough to attract your father’s notice. But you could use a bit of brightening up, Grazia. No man likes a pale woman. And it wouldn’t hurt you to put on a bit of flesh around the bosom and the behind. From the side, you look quite like a boy.” Oh dear.

“Don’t pout now. You will manage these things beautifully with my help. All it takes is diligence and brains and you have ample amounts of both. You will make a fine wife, Grazia.” It was the first compliment she had ever paid me.

“Always stay at home. Do not stand by the portal. Never look out the window. If your eyes wander fasten them at once on your needlework.”

“Remember to water your orange trees every day in summer or the Tuscan heat will burn them up.”

“If you need ask your honored husband for a courtesy or favor, wait until after dinner when he is well fed and content. Offer him a cup of sweet
malvasa
wine (always keep a vessel of it handy for this purpose), seat yourself on a stool at his feet, and from that humble posture, making certain that your eyes express fully the reverence in which you hold him, make your request.”

By the time Judah arrived that evening, I had mastered enough of Dorotea’s marriage catechism to pinch my cheeks until they turned rosy and to lower my gaze in reverence for my bridegroom.

“Your face is flushed, Grazia. Let me feel your forehead.” Those were his first words to me when we were left alone, hardly what Dorotea had led me to expect.

“Hmm. No fever. Why are you flushed?”

“I am blushing, sir. I am shy.” Not entirely untrue.

“But we know each other so well.”

“Oh no, sir, if you will forgive me . . .” (“Never dispute your husband or deny him,” was one of Dorotea’s dicta.) “I do not mean to sound contentious, but everything is different now.”

“That is where you are wrong,” he replied. “Everything is exactly the same. We are still friends, are we not?” I nodded my agreement. “Well then, let us dispense with this idea of wife for a moment and talk of friends, loving friends.” He took my hand in his. “Companions in learning and in life. Partners. Confidants. Walking along the road of life side by side, through sun and rain, offering each other help over the rough patches. I will soothe you with unguents. You will succor me with soft words. And we will read together. But above all, we will be loving friends. That is my proposal.”

I knew he was not young. But my memory of love, young and eager and laced with fire, was still fresh and I could not help but wonder, need marriage be so bland, so passionless as Judah made it sound? Even Dorotea’s diatribes held more promise of excitement.

“If he gives you a slave, watch her like a hawk. Tartars, especially, are beasts. You cannot trust the house to them.”

“Be sure always to seize the Sabbath bread firmly with both hands. Ill fortune will dog you all the week if each one of your ten fingers is not touching the loaf when it is blessed.”

“Keep on the alert for fleas. Search them out every day in the linens, the garments, the heads of servants. Fleas can destroy your household and your happiness.”

She fed me constantly, stuffing my mouth as conscientiously as she stuffed my head. My indoctrination did not cease until the day of my wedding. Occupied with feasts and fittings, I barely saw my groom after he made his proposal.

The week of the wedding a huge contingent of well-wishers arrived from Ferrara to be entertained and fed. They proved a welcome distraction from the pangs of unease I had begun to suffer. It was not only the spirit of the proposal that troubled me but the fast-approaching wedding night itself. When that moment came, there would be no way to hide my lapse from virtue at the Bosco Fontana. Would a man whose vision of love was a mix of unguents, soft words, and reading ever understand? Forgive?

It was not something I could discuss with my marriage mentor, Dorotea. Nor with any of the countless relations and friends who descended on us, arms laden with gifts and stomachs cursed by unappeasable hunger. They never stopped eating from the moment they arrived until the moment they departed. Fortunately, my grandparents had sent along sacks upon sacks of fresh fish, wagonfuls of capons, and enough sweetmeats to keep everyone happy.

The only bitter moment in these high spirits was occasioned by my marriage ring, of all things. I do not speak of the ceremonial ring. That I received by proxy on the day my marriage contract was read out and the rabbi himself placed a sprig of myrrh in the little golden temple at Jerusalem which traditionally decorates these heavy, unwearable amulets. My true betrothal ring, a gift from Judah, was also made of yellow gold but much more delicate and, if you recall, studded with a gorgeous, sparkling diamond.

By some ill fate, Rabbi Abramo happened to be standing by when the packet was unwrapped. The jewel shone so brightly in the morning light that the rays lit up the
sala piccola
the way a chandelier does, casting blue and silver shafts of light here and there as I moved it around on my finger.

“Is it a gem? Is there a gem embedded in that ring?” I heard the high-pitched whine of the rabbi’s voice.

He shouldered his way past the women who had gathered around me to admire the ring, and pulled it rudely from my finger.

“This ring will not do,” he announced abruptly. “You must return it at once to the bridegroom.”

Dorotea was the one who came to my aid. “But why, Rabbi? It is so beautiful. And worth at least two hundred ducats.” Her eyes glittered as brightly as the gem itself.

“Because the sages tell us that only a plain gold band will do as a wedding ring. No jewels. No gems. No decoration.”

Within moments of the time the ring was returned, the irate bridegroom was at our portal pounding angrily and demanding to see my father.

We heard Papa called out of the
banco
. Then came a loud peremptory call for Rabbi Abramo, who scuttled out of the
sala piccola
like a ferret. There followed a most contentious affray conducted at an earsplitting pitch. Like most people who are slow to anger, when he finally succumbs Judah vents his rage with torrential force.

“Do you dare to instruct me in the interpretation of the Torah?” he bellowed at the cowering rabbi.

“With all respect, maestro . . .”

“With no respect at all, I say.”

“Apologies, Maestro Leone . . .”

“Maestro
Judah
. What do you take me for, Rov? A
converso
with a new Italian name to go with my apostasy?”

“Oh no, sir . . .”

“I am Judah del Medigo and it behooves any Jew to address me by that name, no matter what the Christians choose to call me. To Christians I am transformed by my name, Judah, into the
Lion
of Judah. Hence their cognomen for me is Leone. It is as if they were to call you
Paternus
because your Hebrew name is Abraham and Abraham is the father of the race. Do you grasp the absurdity, man?”

“Oh yes, Maestro Leo — I mean Judah.”

I edged myself out from behind the curtain to feast on the sight of Rabbi Abramo being brought low.

“Very well,” Judah resumed sternly. “Now we will deal with your foolish and unsubstantiated objections to my bride’s gift.”

“It says clearly in the Talmud, maestro . . .”

“The Talmud says nothing
clearly
, fool. If any adjective in the world is inappropriately applied to the Talmud, it is the word ‘clear.’ As the great sage reminds us, the Talmud is a muddy sea which yields up its pearls with reluctance.”

The rabbi bowed to this rebuke with a series of obsequious little nods, like a poor pupil being reprimanded by his tutor.

“Now then, having settled the matter of the Talmud, we will return to the insult you have perpetrated upon me, and what is much more important, upon my bride-to-be. Poor child, to be given a gift of love and to have it whisked away by an ignorant busybody. Listen now for I mean to say this only once . . .”

By then the courtyard was full of people — clerks and maids and porters and wedding visitors (who numbered near to one hundred souls), all attracted by the promise of a juicy family fight.

“The wedding ring is never mentioned in the Torah. Never mentioned,” Judah repeated, in spite of his declaration that he would make his explanation only once. “Only one form of marriage is recognized in the Great Book — marriage by consummation. To be blunt, the only way in which the Torah tells us that a marriage is sanctified is by the act of copulation. Do you follow me?”

This time not only Rabbi Abramo but the entire assemblage bobbed their heads up and down. By some sleight of hand Judah had transformed an arena of domestic discord into a schoolroom and all the hungry gossips into wayward students.

“For those of you who are ignorant of the source” — he gave a terrific glare in Abramo’s direction on the word “ignorant” — “I commend to you the Book of Genesis, Chapter Twenty-four, in which we are told, if memory serves me, ‘And Isaac brought Rebecca’ — his bride — ‘into his mother’s tent and took Rebecca and she became his wife and he loved her.’ The ‘taking’ of the woman was enough to sanctify that marriage in the eyes of the Lord and should be enough to satisfy the rest of us, would you not agree, Rabbi?”

“But it was the ring . . .” Abramo whined.

“Ah yes, the ring. Of what significance is the ring? If all it takes to sanctify a Jewish marriage in the eyes of God is consummation, of what significance is the ring?”

No one dared to venture an opinion.

“The ring is of absolutely no significance whatsoever.” Judah answered his own question. “The only reference we have to any ring is in the story of the messenger who comes to Nahor to find a bride for Abraham’s son Isaac. There” — he pointed his finger at the little man — “in Genesis Twenty-four, I believe verse twenty-two, we find reference to a
nazem
, which is indeed a ring
but not a marriage ring
. Do you not understand the difference between a
nazem
and a
tabat
?” he thundered. But by then, the rabbi was reduced to gibbering and shivering and the entire gathering stood silent, as if they too had been rebuked for their ignorance. All except Jehiel, the irrepressible questioner.