The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (63 page)

“Then I must take care not to get caught.” He grinned.

I could have kicked him for his arrogance, and might have done so but for an interruption that put a halt to our debate: a series of taps on the ceiling below us as if someone was signaling with a long stick. And to be sure, Jehiel responded to the signal by walking over to the edge of the roof, where he lay down on his belly so as to lower his head safely over the side and, from that position, to conduct a whispered conversation with someone in the room below the eaves.

“My wife,” he explained tersely when he returned to my side. “Like you, she objects to my study of the stars. It takes me away from my marital duties.”

“But is she not keeping watch over La Nonna tonight?” I asked.

“She says the old lady is too much out of her senses to notice us and that conjugal life must go on. She has even prepared a pallet for us on the floor.”

“She plans to copulate with you tonight with La Nonna lying hard by?” I asked, unable to believe what I thought I had heard.

“My wife cannot settle into sleep until I have done my marital duty by her at least once each night . . . sometimes more than once. Sometimes more than twice,” he added. Was he complaining or boasting?

“Are you happy with your life, Jehiel?” I asked.

“Plato said that no man can call himself happy until the moment of his death,” he replied with a shrug.

“
Sophocles
said that no man can call himself happy until the moment of his death,” I corrected him. “Plato said that no man can call himself free. But my question stands. Are you happy?”

“Happy with what? With my wife? With my life? With my work?” He bit on his lower lip thoughtfully. How full it was. How luscious. And his eyelashes, a double row of them that framed his velvet eyes like black lace. And the way he carried his body. Even standing casually up here on the roof, he fell naturally into the graceful contrapposto pose of a Greek nude. What a figure he must cut at the Este court, I thought. Beauty is much admired at courts. And sought after. And rewarded.

“I hear you have become an intimate of the young prince Alfonso,” I remarked.

“He is my patron,” he replied simply.

“And just what in you does he patronize?” I asked.

“I have constructed a cunning little astrolabe that he can take around and hold in his hands,” he replied. “And I have built a telescope for him. I am his Leonardo.” There was an edge of mockery in his tone.

“Leonardo does not sell amulets,” I retorted.

“You pay too much attention to gossip, Grazia,” he answered calmly. “The truth is, there is more magic in jewels than in amulets. And more profit. If you like I will get you a turquoise that will protect you from all accidents, especially when riding a horse. I also have a stone which makes fountains spring up overnight.” My face must have mirrored my disbelief, for he added, with some urgency, “I have done it, Grazia. I have the gift.”

“The gift of what?”

“The gift of prophecy. The gift of magic. I have an angel in my head.”

Now Jehiel may have been reckless and naive. But he never was a liar. If he said he caused a fountain to spring up overnight, he had.

“What other magic do you perform?” I asked.

“I concoct certain potions with the aid of an apothecary of my acquaintance. But I prefer not to discuss that part of my work with the wife of a doctor. The medical profession seems to feel it holds a God-given right to dispense remedies.”

“Do you have a remedy for barrenness?” I found myself asking.

“Why do you ask? Do you long for a child?” He asked the question in a voice quite new to me who had known him all his life. It was the voice of a sibyl issuing from a cave and it called forth in me the recognition of what I had never yet admitted: that I
did
long for a child, not only in memory of Diamante, nor in imitation of my female acquaintance, but to fill something in me that stood empty. “Yes,” I confessed, “I do long for a child.”

“Do you wish me to help you?” he asked, in the same distant, sepulchral tone.

“Yes,” I answered in spite of myself.

“Very well then. But first I must read you.”

“The Tarot cards?” I shivered.

“Perhaps. Perhaps the palm. Perhaps the face. I must think about it. Meanwhile, duty calls. I do have an angel in my head, but I also have a wife in my bed.”

As if on cue the tapping started again below, this time more urgent than before. Not a tap, tap this time but a bang, bang.

“Go to your wife,” I said. “I will stay here and look at the stars through your glass. Who knows? Maybe I too can find some profound truth up there in the vault of heaven.” My remark was not entirely specious. Even though Judah refused to give credence to the influence of the stars, I knew that many wise men took an opposite view.

I leaned down to fasten my eye against the eyepiece of the instrument. The Chair of Cassiopeia loomed up, stunning me with its brightness. I could almost feel the cold northern rays of the double star entering my head, bending my mind.

Then a voice spoke within me. “Everything a man is to believe must be traced to three categories,” it said. “First, things which can be proved by mental processes, such as mathematics and geometry; second, things of which the five senses can convince us; third, things known by tradition through the prophets and wise men. Only a fool would believe anything beyond these categories.”

Those words of Maimonides came back to me with all the force of my father’s adoration of that great sage behind them and reinforced by Judah’s imprimatur. Compared with their clear, steady light, the brilliance of Cassiopeia paled. I set the instrument aside and scuttled off to bed, determined that if Jehiel proposed to me any further excursion into magic or astrology I would refuse.

But the next night when he whistled down to me, I went again to meet him on the roof. As if the moonlight had clouded over my reason, I took my place obediently on the little stool he had brought there and allowed him to proceed with his reading.

In preparation he had wrapped himself in a long tunic of white cloth, passed a red belt around his waist, and put on a helmet garlanded with drawn snakes that looked alarmingly lifelike in the moonlight. Then, setting a marble vase in front of him and lifting a sponge tied to a man’s leg bone in his left hand, he drew a deck of playing cards from under his cloak, muttered some weird incantation, knelt, kissed the tiles, dipped the sponge into the vase, and whispered, “Let us trace Pluto’s circle with this dragon’s blood.” Whereupon he proceeded to draw a large circle on the tiles with his reddened sponge.

I knew all this to be nonsense. Yet I waited, subdued, obedient — caught up in the magic.

Now began the laying out of the cards. First he divided the deck card by card, discarding a good number. “Those are the common cards of the Minor Arcana,” he explained. “They are unsuitable for divining.”

“What are they suitable for?” I inquired, ever curious.

“For gaming, what else?” he answered impatiently. “Any fool can place a bet on a ten of staves, sister, but few men can read the future in the Tarot.”

The explanation was meant to put me in my place and it did. I remained quiet while he shuffled the cards of the Major Arcana, all the while mumbling some odd-sounding gibberish. Gypsy talk?

Finally he ceased to shuffle and mumble. “Draw five cards,” he ordered me, “and lay them out in the shape of a Greek cross.”

I did as I was told.

“Now you must turn them over one by one, starting at the top and going around the clock.”

“And the one at the center?” I asked.

“That is the one which will seal your fate.”

Before you judge me a gullible fool, think of the scene. The pale backs of the cards glowing within the blood-red circle. The telescope standing by as a conduit to the stars. My brother, solemn, white-robed under the vault of heaven, suffused with that serene certainty that emanates from saints and fortune-tellers. And I, your mother, desperate to fill my barren womb with a child.

I reached down and turned over the top card. It showed a man and a woman, their hands joined, under the sway of Cupid, blindfolded and nude, preparing to launch an arrow.

“This Card of the Lovers shows the struggle between sacred and profane love,” my brother advised me. “It forecasts the coming of a test. You will subject yourself to a trial. Turn the next card.”

When I turned the card over to lay it in position, I saw that it was upside down and began to turn it right.

“No!” Jehiel snatched it from my hand and laid it down as it had lain in the shuffled deck. “You must not defy Fortuna, Grazia. An upside-down card reverses the meaning.”

“Is that bad?” I asked.

“In this case, yes. The obverse meaning of the Lovers is delay, disappointment, and divorce.”

“Divorce?”

“I do not create these portents, Grazia,” he advised me sternly. “I merely divine them. Delay, disappointment, divorce,” he repeated. “That is what threatens you, unless . . .”

“Unless?”

“Turn the next card,” was his answer.

Now appeared an amazing card, much decorated, with a winged, blindfolded figure at its center turning a golden ring balanced on the back of an aged man in a ragged white garment, his stockings worn through, and festooned with the legend “
Sum sine regno
” — “I do not rule.”

“This is the Wheel of Fortune,” Jehiel explained. “It tells you to believe in the signs. You are not the master of your own fate, no matter how much you wish to be.”

The fourth card revealed a youth in green hose hanging upside down by one foot, whom Jehiel identified as the Hanging Man. “He predicts reversal of the mind. Rebirth. He orders you to reverse your thinking and to prepare for the approach of new life forces. He orders you to surrender.”

“To what?” I asked.

“To Venus,” he answered without hesitation. “You and your husband have incurred her wrath. How you offended her I do not know. Look up, Grazia,” he instructed me. “She is there among them, looking down, cursing you with barrenness. Ask her what you must do. Repeat after me, ‘I conjure you, luminaries of heaven and earth . . .’”

“I conjure you, luminaries of heaven and earth,” I repeated.

“‘And in the name of the twelve hours of the day and the three watches of the night and the thirty days of the month and the thirty years of
shemitta
and the fifty years of Jubilee and the name of the angel Iabiel, who watches over wombs, and of the angel Anael, ruler over all manner of love, to look into her mirror and find there a child for me.’”

“. . . and find there a child for me,” I repeated.

“Now touch the last card and kiss it,” he ordered me. I did.

Then he placed the card faceup in the middle of the red circle and I saw staring up at me a golden woman, big and luminous, with green hands.

“This is the Empress,” he announced. “She stands for fruitfulness and fertility. But she demands powerful purification.” He paused, breathing deeply as if preparing to deliver himself of some awesome truth. “Fortuna smiles on you, sister. I have recently made a similar reading of the cards for the wife of my Duke, the lady Lucrezia Borgia. Like you, she longs for issue in her new marriage. Like you, she has offended Venus and remains barren. With the help of a chemist, I mixed a potion for her of secret ingredients handed down from the ancients. I will bring home a vial of it for you to take. Once you have purified yourself Venus will be propitiated. Both you and the lady Lucrezia will produce healthy sons.”

Of course it was out of the question for me to take up his offer. Even had I wished to test the efficacy of the remedy, for the wife of a celebrated physician and observing Jewish scholar to accede to the power of magic even by swallowing a potion was unthinkable. That I could even have considered it proved to me that the time had come for me to go home. My life with Judah may have been joyless. But life in this house was mad.

One thing remained for me to do. I must see my grandmother for the last time. Much as I detested her, she was my father’s mother and I knew he would have wished me to maintain filial decorum toward her, as he always had.

I presented myself at the door to her room just before dinner and announced to Dorotea that I wished to see La Nonna.

“She is resting and cannot be disturbed,” was the answer I got. “Perhaps this afternoon.”

Of course that afternoon I was told that the old woman was too agitated to see anyone. At dusk, the doctor was with her, and by nightfall, a sleeping potion had been administered. In between my attempts to storm the citadel I packed my baskets and washed my head in preparation for my departure. Now that I had made up my mind, I could not wait to shed the heavy conspiratorial air of the place. But I was determined not to leave without first seeing my grandmother.

Next morning I confided my plan to Asher. Not only did he prove sympathetic, he offered to come with me. “It is my duty to visit my grandmother as well as yours, Grazia,” he informed me in that endearingly serious manner of his. “I might have remained remiss had it not been for this suggestion of yours.” Then he added, shyly, “You are always in the forefront when it comes to courage and probity.” Interesting that each of us thought the same of the other.

Even with Asher doing knightly service at my side, it was no easy thing to gain access to La Nonna. Dorotea and Ricca formed a solid phalanx across the portal. But Asher possessed a formidable battering machine: Grandfather’s will had named him custodian of all bequests. Always alert to the main chance, his mother and sister both knew that their future depended on his goodwill.

From within we heard the unmistakable rasp of La Nonna’s voice shouting. “Grazia! Grandson! Come to me! Respect! Respect!”

“You see, she’s deranged,” Ricca announced. “Nothing she says makes sense.”

“Do I not hear my grandson? Is it Asher?” the voice rasped out from behind the curtained portal.

“Yes, Nonna,” he shouted back, loud enough to be well heard through the thick curtain. And to his sister: “Step aside, Ricca. Else I shall be forced to lay hands on you.”