The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (73 page)

With Rabbi Asher came his son Jacob, one of those sons of rich men who are continually getting into trouble on one account or another but always wear a dapper smile because they know that at the final hour their rich papa will step in to save them. But tonight Jacob was not smiling.

The talk went on far into the night. Strategy was discussed. What bribes to offer and to whom. Much anger was expressed. Old Meshullam swore that he would never live behind sealed walls. “Rather live in the burned-out ruins of Mestre . . . rather die,” were his words. And his son echoed him. Judah remained silent. And I kept my counsel as befits a humble Jewish wife. But after the Meshullams had left, I did not hesitate to engage my husband.

“Are we really as threatened as Meshullam believes?” I asked.

“I think yes,” he replied gravely. “Because it is not just current events that have exposed us to danger. Or bigotry. Or greed. This crisis in Venetian affairs has been building for over a decade. Now the forces of history, commerce, religion, and geography have found common cause against our people.”

“Geography?” That inclusion puzzled me.

“Probably the most powerful factor in the equation,” he replied. “Remember, my dear, that the goods which are the stuff of trade travel over geographical terrain. For centuries wealth has flowed into the Venetian lagoon over sea routes from Byzantium, the Levant, and the Black Sea. It is in gratitude to the sea god who makes this trade possible that the Doge sails out to sea in the state bucentaur on Ascension Day to cast a gold ring into the waves. The Venetians see this ritual as the wedding of the bride, Venezia, with the god, Neptune. But about ten years ago, the Serenissima came under attack from the Italian princes and was forced to divert her attention from the sea to her holdings on the mainland, the so-called terra firma. As the mythologists would have it, the sea god proved to be a jealous mate. When Venezia lost interest in the sea, Neptune found himself a new darling, Portugal.”

“But we have prevailed in the terra firma,” I reminded him. No one who lived in Venezia could ever forget the celebration of that victory.

“Too late. By now, the arteries that pumped gold into the heart of Venezia have dried up. When Vasco da Gama found a short route around the Cape of Good Hope, geography took over. The lordly Serenissima is now no better than any other small Italian state scrapping for bits of territory in the terra firma.”

“And for this they blame the Jews?”

“Who else? They can hardly blame their own shortsightedness.”

“But surely the Venetians will not act on this monstrous plan to lock up hundreds of people who have done them no wrong.” My imagination could not conceive such a thing. “And even if they do, the Jews will soon buy their way out as they always have . . . will they not?” I asked.

“Perhaps.” He sighed deeply. “But no matter what comes of this proclamation, I fear that the climate of Venezia is no longer conducive to our good health. Tomorrow I will begin to search for a new post. The Sultan has written to me again.”

“No, Judah, not Constantinople!” I protested.

“We must go where we can, Grazia,” he admonished me gently. “I will do what is in my power to satisfy your desires, but I urge you to remember that we are not in the same position as Meshullam. He is a man of vast wealth who can pick and choose his refuge. I am a physician and scholar with vast resources of skill and intellect — which I lay at your feet — but without estates and wealth. I will go at once to beg the General to intercede on our behalf. But I warn you that if my best efforts fail we may be forced into this ghetto. Your time is close, little wife. At least there you will be with people who love you and your child will have a roof over his head.”

Judah is the seer in this family, not I. As he predicted, ten days flew by without a change of heart on the part of the Senate. On April 10, every Jew in Venezia was required to present himself at the gateway to the cannon factory in the district of San Girolamo. No exceptions. Not even our patron, General Sassatello, was able to get us excused from the order.

As a consolation the General had sent his gondola to carry us on our journey through the canals. I brought with me only one small hamper, for I knew we would be out of that place within a few days. Paddling along under the gold fringe of the General’s
baldacchino
, it was easy to think that way. But when we reached the Grand Canal and saw before our eyes the mournful cavalcade bound for the ghetto, my foolish optimism began to fade.

Most of the scows and barges that made up the flotilla bore aloft huge piles of possessions, for most of the families brought with them everything in the world they owned, including dogs and cats and birds and even whole dovecotes of pigeons. We took a position directly behind a rag seller who had managed to pack his wife, five children, and all their possessions onto one small scow. There we were joined by the Meshullam family’s train of gondolas and barges.

As the flotilla moved haltingly along the Grand Canal, I was reminded of the Venetian processions painted by Vittore Carpaccio. On both sides of the water you have housewives leaning out of their windows to view the spectacle. The bridges become the bleachers for the courtesans. Everywhere there are young boys larking about among the housemaids. And all the faces are lit up with joy to see the spectacle . . . the casting out of the hated Jews.

The pace of the procession was funereal. But after some hours, we turned off the Grand Canal and entered the district of San Girolamo, a marshy and insalubrious part of the city as far removed as one can get from the Piazza San Marco. There, many years before, had been established the cannon factory, the ghetto. The spot was clearly marked by a stone ball perched on top of the iron gateway now manned by two tall Venetian guards wearing the Doge’s insignia. The fortresslike aspect of the place was emphasized by recent repairs on the buildings that faced the canal. During the previous week all the windows on the side facing out had been bricked up. Even our gaze was anathema to the Venetians.

At the first sight of that prison — it
is
a prison for all they still call it ghetto — children and adults alike began to weep and then to sway and then to pray as we do when mourning the dead. How appropriate, since we were engaged in burying ourselves.

As the long day wound down, our craft edged slowly toward that implacable wall where we awaited our turn to disembark. Then just before sunset the decorum of the occasion was disrupted by the arrival of a sleek gondola bearing a patrician crest, which swept around the bend of the canal and sped past all the other craft like an arrogant dowager who claims the place at the head of the line as her right.

At first all we heard from under the canopy was a series of imperious commands.

“Pass them by, pass them by,” the mistress of the craft commanded her boatman. And then: “Pull up there. No, not there, ham hock. Can you not see the mud? I wish to be put off on the dry part. There. In front of that dirty barge. Tell those people to move. If they will not, ram the barge. Move, curs.” Obediently the gondolier rammed a dirty barge out of his path and maneuvered his craft into its place.

By now everyone within sight of the gondola was holding his breath, waiting for the sight of the person about to disembark.

First came a large fan, shoved out from under the canopy by an arm covered with jeweled bracelets. Next came a rather large foot bound in the highest
pianelle
I have ever seen. More like stilts than
pianelle
, they were calculated to lift the wearer at least two hands above her normal height. We now had a foot and a hand. Next, in response to a terse command from behind the curtains of the
baldacchino
, one of the boatmen leapt off the gondola and with a great flourish opened a parasol, presumably to shield the passenger’s delicate skin from the rays of the setting sun.

Now a book bound in gold and red velvet was thrust at the gondolier by the bejeweled hand. And finally the lady herself emerged, giving the crowd a fine view of her ample bosom. She was as good as naked from the waist up. Mind you, for modesty’s sake, she held a half-mask over her upper face to conceal her eyes. But I would have recognized that nose and that chin and that voluptuous mouth anywhere. It was my former sister-in-law, Ricca, followed by a wizened crone, her
ruffiana
, her female pimp . . . Dorotea, come to roost in the Venetian ghetto.

In the craft beside us, pushing forward for a better view, young Jacob Meshullam licked his lips. “Amazing, is she not?”

“Who is she?” asked his father.

“Why that is Bellina Ebrea, the Jewish courtesan, Papa,” his son explained. “You have heard me speak of her. She is the one who goes about the streets reading Psalms from her little gold Bible. It never leaves her hand. Not even at the certain moment.”

“It is Ricca,” I whispered to Judah.

“I know,” he whispered back.

With her two boatmen following, her Bible in hand, and her mother following along like a maidservant, she sailed past the officials and their clerks, tossing out orders in a deep contralto voice clear as a basset horn.

“I am to have the top story in the building at the left corner. My things will be arriving later tonight. And mark you, make certain that no harm befalls my lute. It is a treasure from the hand of Lorenzo de Pavia and is the very favorite thing of a most important gentleman of my acquaintance.”

With that she rounded the corner and was lost to our view.

“Much as I loathe them both, I am saddened by what they have come to,” I confided in Judah.

“Do not waste your pity, Grazia,” was his reply. “That woman has accomplished what few of us are privileged to do in this life. She has found her true vocation and is practicing it with notable success.”

My first look at the quarters in which I was destined to spend my confinement brought instantly to mind my mother’s birth pangs in that hellhole of an inn at Governolo long ago. Dark, cramped, and filthy, the single room meant to serve us for living, sleeping, cooking, eating, and study seemed cut off from all the light in the world. Yet Judah assured me that this suite was the best to be had at any price. We were among the fortunate. Less spacious rooms were being made to accommodate whole families. In my mind I understood I should be grateful. But my heart was flooded with despair. “They mean to bury us here,” I told Judah. “We must escape from this place or I will die here.”

But the possibility of escape retreated farther with each day’s passing. As always Judah’s faith in God’s ultimate wisdom sustained him. He was even able to discover a benevolent intent behind our incarceration in the ghetto at this particular moment.

“Perhaps being born in the Venetian ghetto is God’s way of marking your child as one of His chosen people,” he suggested. What my heart heard was that if you could not be his child, you would at least belong to his God.

You were the first boy child born in the Venetian ghetto. Was it an honor or a shame? If you are looking for God’s answer, I give you the evidence of it herewith. You were a child of the sun, born after a single night of laboring just as the first light suffused the sky. Our neighbors wanted us to call you Mithras because you had bested the sun god in entering the world. I clung to my first choice, Danilo — little Daniele — in memory of my father. But the gods had their own
imprese
to bestow: a pair of eyes bluer than the vault of heaven. All babies are born with blue eyes. But not eyes of that particular cornflower blue. And, as if they were not enough to mark your heritage, a thatch of golden hair graced your broad little brow.

“You really ought to call him Apollo,” said my neighbor, the seamstress who saw me through my labor. “He is a golden boy.”

Since we were denied the services of wet nurses in the ghetto, I nursed you myself. Why do women so easily relinquish this pleasure? I wonder. You had the habit of closing your eyes as you sucked and opening them wide when you had gotten your fill. Those were the moments I treasured, moments that made everything unbearable about the ghetto — the crowding, the racket, the stink — bearable.

Also there was kindness within that maze of hovels. And even without. Judah’s patron sent box after box of oil and wine to celebrate your birth and more wine and candles and sweetmeats to celebrate your circumcision. And he worked assiduously to help us escape into the light once more. Perhaps as a Venetian he felt shame at what he had brought us to. Whatever the cause, he wrote to Pope Leo a glowing encomium on Judah’s behalf and I am certain that it, along with others by such luminaries as Pietro Bembo, helped Judah to gain the post of body physician to the Holy Father.

When the news of the appointment arrived I literally jumped for joy, spilling out milk all over my chemise. I had tried to hide the depth to which my spirit sank each evening at sundown when the huge gates of the ghetto swung shut on us and the clang of the three massive locks announced to the world that the Jews of Venezia were safely locked in for the night. But, once we had bade goodbye to that hateful place and were sailing out the
rio
to freedom, I gave voice to my emotions and Judah in his turn disclosed to me a despair as black as my own which he had hidden for my sake.

“This ghetto has engendered in me visions that turn my blood to water,” he confided, as we drifted away from the forbidding facade with its patchwork of blind windows.

“But surely the Senate will relent in time.” I could not bear to think that others less fortunate might be immured there for all of their lives.

“I wish I could share your optimism,” he replied. “But I fear my vision of the future is much more bleak than yours. In my prospect, this ghetto in Venezia is only the first. Soon another will spring up in some other city — Parma perhaps or Trento — then another and yet another until finally there will be a ghetto in every city. At this moment Venezia is no longer a place where Jews can live freely. Soon Italy itself will not be a fit country. And not long after, other nations will follow suit and there will be no place for us in all of Christendom.”