by Roberta Rich
Hannah and Grazia went downstairs, pausing in the kitchen where Hannah asked the maid to prepare the strong black tea that she and Isaac favoured. Matteo was playing with his ball and stealing glances at the beautiful stranger who had suddenly entered their lives.
Hannah and Grazia sat under the wisteria arbour, and minutes later Zephra emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray. Isaac joined them, taking a seat on the bench next to Grazia. For a moment, the three of them were silent. Hannah tried to catch Isaac’s eye to prompt him to ask his sister-in-law what it was she had come for. But Isaac did not so much as turn Hannah’s way. He focused steadfastly on Grazia.
“Of what did my poor brother die?” he asked. “Yehuda did not say in his letter, only that Leon died suddenly.”
“His heart gave out. His death was a terrible shock. He was at his writing desk and toppled to the floor, hitting his head.”
How unusual, thought Hannah, who said, “He was a relatively young man.”
“It was a terrible shock, but at least he did not suffer.”
“You sailed from Venice unaccompanied? Quite an undertaking for a woman,” said Isaac.
“I was not alone. I had friends on board. A couple from Rome. They were of great comfort to me. They have sailed on to Aleppo.”
“I wonder that you would undertake such a voyage so soon after Leon’s death,” Hannah ventured. If Isaac died, she would be unable to move from the house for months, never mind endure weeks on storm-tossed seas.
“I felt I must visit you,” Grazia explained. She bent forward and patted Isaac’s knee. “You and my stepson, Yehuda, are my only kin, now that Leon is gone.”
A strange and unfamiliar feeling rose in Hannah, one that was not at all pleasant. Was it jealousy or simply a feeling of being left out and ignored?
“It seems only yesterday that my father wrote me the details of your wedding,” Isaac said, putting his hand on top of Grazia’s. “And now he, too, is dead.”
“I was sixteen when I married your brother,” Grazia said. “So long ago! Ten years.”
Their marriage had been an unusual one.
“My father wrote and told me what a lovely bride you were. I was not able to travel to Rome for your wedding, but my father’s description made me feel I was there.” Isaac smiled. “My father admired the bone buttons on Leon’s coat. He wrote he had never seen anything so fine.”
Grazia reached for her tea. Hannah was glad she was no longer touching Isaac. Had Leon captured Grazia’s heart in the same way Isaac had captured hers? She would ask Grazia when they got to know each other better.
Grazia said, “Oh yes, those buttons! Leon was missing one from his frock coat. I had sewn it on, but it popped off during the meal. He was mortified.”
Isaac nodded.
“Leon ate so much lamb that night, the grease stained his suit. The Gypsy musicians played until dawn and then fell asleep on their feet like horses.” She leaned back in her chair and played with a tendril of hair at the side of her face. “Our only entertainment at the wedding, but it was enough.”
“There was something else. I am sure of it,” said Isaac.
“It was so long ago. All I could think of was what was to come that night in bed.”
Hannah looked at Isaac, but he did not react. It was a bold thing for a Jewish woman to say in front of a man, never mind a man she hardly knew. There had been rumours Grazia was carrying a baby conceived before the ketubah, the marriage agreement, was signed. The wedding had to be arranged in haste. It was not something of which to be proud. Seven months after the wedding, a baby boy was born, the birth cord wrapped around its neck.
Isaac brought a hand to his forehead. “Now I remember! My father wrote about jugglers, a troupe of five men from Edirne who tossed about lighted torches.”
“Yes, that’s right! An amusing display.” A shadow passed over her face.
Was all this talk of her wedding saddening her? No one from Grazia’s side of the family had attended, Hannah recalled, because they were so shocked by her conversion to Judaism.
Isaac blew on his tea and took a sip. “When we were growing up, Leon protected me from street toughs in the ghetto. He was so much older, more like a father to me than a brother. As we grew up he became—and there is no tactful way to say this—difficult. I loved him, and as a child I looked up to him, but he could not have been an easy man to live with.”
“He grew kinder with age,” Grazia said, taking a sip of tea. “He was very fond of you, Isaac.”
Tears filled Isaac’s eyes.
Grazia reached out to touch Isaac’s cheek. “May Leon be looking down on us as we talk.”
They were silent for a moment. Matteo brought over his ball and sat cross-legged at Grazia’s feet, leaning against her skirts. Grazia toyed with his curls with an air of familiarity, as though she had known him since birth.
Hannah folded her hands under her apron. Her skin was chapped, her knuckles swollen from stretching canvas onto the moth trays in readiness for the mounting season. When she had a moment, she would rub them with her own ointment made of beeswax, olive oil, and lanolin.
“You must give me a tour of your workshop,” Grazia said to Isaac. “They say the silk here is the best in the world.”
“May that always be true,” Isaac said, rising to his feet. “Come.”
Grazia placed her teacup on the little table next to her. The two of them, Matteo trailing behind, trooped into the workshop without as much as a glance back in Hannah’s direction. Hannah saw Möishe eyeing Grazia again. Did all men react this way to blue eyes, white skin, and a slender waist?
“Cochineal,” said Möishe, leaving the loom and approaching her for a closer look. He rubbed a fold of the sleeve between his fingers.
Hannah realized she had misjudged him. He was studying Grazia’s red dress, not the woman inside it.
“Look at this, Isaac. I have not seen this hue since I left Lucca.” He gave Isaac a nudge. “If I had some of that to work with, eh? The ladies of the harem would be clamouring for our tents.”
Isaac turned to Grazia. “Leon had some cochineal, did he not? He once wrote to tell me that he took a pouch of it in payment of a debt from a Sephardic dyer. Do you recall anything about it?”
“Leon did not discuss business with me,” said Grazia—rather tersely, Hannah thought.
“I will write to Yehuda. Maybe he knows something.”
“Oh, do not bother. I will do it myself,” Grazia said. “I must write him anyway to let him know I arrived safely.”
They spoke of this and that and soon the shadows in the garden lengthened and Zephra emerged from the kitchen to summon them to the table. Isaac and Grazia walked back to the house, arms linked. Hannah followed, trying once again to catch Isaac’s eye, but he refused to meet her glance. There were so many things that puzzled her about this unexpected visitor. Didn’t Isaac feel the same way?
After Shabbat dinner, in the privacy of their bedchamber, Hannah said, “Isaac, what on earth does she want from us?”
“Hannah, she is family. That’s what she wants from us, love and support after losing her husband. How can you be so inhospitable and unkind?”
Maybe he was right. Perhaps she was just jealous of such a beguiling woman living in her house. But then again …
“Odd that she did not remember the jugglers at her own wedding.”
“Why do we remember some things and not others? Why do you recall the details of every childbirth you have ever attended and I can hardly remember what we ate for dinner yesterday? Memory is a slippery eel. You can grasp one end, or you may grasp the middle, but you never can grasp the entire creature.”
“You defend her because she is pretty,” Hannah said. Her remark was made in jest but there was an element of truth in it.
Isaac patted Hannah’s rump. “She’s too skinny for my taste. If she was a heifer, I would graze her on richer pasture.”
Hannah was heartened by his comment. It meant
he was no longer angry about the incident at the harem and her part in it. Maybe that would just fade away and be forgotten. Hannah hoped so.
“Grazia was in a great hurry to see us. She must have departed from Rome on the first ship out of port in the spring, a week after Leon’s death, without a period of mourning.”
“There may be another reason she has come,” said Isaac.
“I do not understand.”
“I wrote to Leon last year when our silkworms died of jaundice. He lent me Grazia’s dowry money so that I could replace them. He said he could afford it, that Grazia’s family was wealthy, and that nothing would give him greater pleasure than to help me with my business … But let us go to sleep. We will talk in the morning.”
They slipped off their clothes and washed in the basin in the corner. Hannah donned her silk nightdress. Isaac put on his nightshirt.
They settled into bed together, the horsehair mattress creaking under their weight.
“That is all? Talk to me, Isaac.”
Hannah heard her husband give a sigh of resignation, knowing she would not let the matter rest until morning.
“Under the terms of their marriage contract, Grazia is entitled to the return of her dowry upon Leon’s death. It is a common provision to ensure a widow is not left impoverished. Since Leon loaned me the money, I must pay it back to her now that Leon is dead.”
So that was the reason Grazia had come. Hannah knew nothing of marriage contracts. Isaac had married her without a dowry, a fact he had the grace never to mention. “How much do you owe her?”
“A hundred ducats.”
“What?” Hannah sat upright in bed. “We can never repay that. We arrived from Venice with nearly a hundred and fifty golden ducats, more than enough to purchase the house and workshop. We had some left over, did we not?”
“Shh, not so loud. You will wake Matteo.” He met her eye at last. “I needed more. For equipment, for the ten hectares in Kadiköy to plant a mulberry orchard. When the silkworms died, I had to replenish our stock. There were only a few dozen healthy worms to be had. Prices were high. Then I had to hire Möishe. A silk shop must have an experienced weaver and dyer.”
Hannah was reluctant to say more for fear he would frown at her the way other husbands frowned at their wives, as if to say, You are merely a stupid woman. Finances are not your concern.
“Why did you not tell me?”
“I worried enough for both of us. Why should you have fretted as well?”
She knew all too well the temptation of keeping the truth from her husband so he would not worry. “So Grazia has come to collect her money,” she said. “Money we do not have and have no hope of getting.”
How complicated and ugly everything had suddenly become. Before Grazia’s arrival, before Hannah had known of the loan, she wanted nothing more than to protect Leah from the Sultan’s attentions. Now, she had a chance to earn enough to pay off this debt, but only if the coupling took place between the Sultan and Leah. Now she was in the terrible position of benefitting if the couching proceeded.
“How will we ever repay her?”
“I do not know.”
“What is the worst that can happen?”
“Grazia goes to court, gets the bailiffs to come and sell our house and everything we own.” He spoke without hesitation, so Hannah knew he had been mulling this over.
Not long ago, Hannah had given several silver coins to a neighbour, a young widow whom she passed on the street with her children, sitting among piles of clothes and baskets of food, as bailiffs carried out furniture, clothing, sacks of flour—anything of value that could be sold to satisfy her debts.
“Grazia is my brother’s widow,” Isaac said. “She will agree on a compromise. Perhaps we can pay her back slowly. We will talk to Rabbi Yakov ben Asher. He is a wise man. He will decide what is best for us all. The three of us will go as soon as possible.”
Rabbi Yakov? Hannah was about to protest but stopped herself before she said something she might regret. Rabbi Yakov’s sermons were long and tedious. His eyes were weak from poring over the Torah all night in dim light. His hands shook with palsy. She had refused to let Isaac take Matteo to him to be circumcised. A shameful state of affairs was the result. Matteo was over three years old and had yet to make his first covenant with God.
From the garden came the hoot of an owl. That sound had once comforted her, as part of the cadence of the night, like Isaac’s gentle snore or Matteo turning over in bed on his mattress or the rush of the tide entering the port at Eminönü. Now, the owl’s cry sounded to Hannah like a mourner at a funeral procession.
CHAPTER 11
HANNAH WAS IN such a state of anxiety that she felt like a mother in labour. Rabbi Yakov ben Asher had the power to make binding orders on all issues, both civil and criminal. The Ottoman government cared little about the Jews as long as peace prevailed in the mahalle and everyone paid their taxes. But the Rabbi was ill with influenza. There was nothing to do but wait for his recovery, which was taking too long. Meanwhile, during the nearly two months since Grazia had arrived, the two women moved warily through the house, neither of them wanting to discuss what was so present in both their minds. Hannah went about her daily chores and watched helplessly as both her son and her husband seemed to fall deeper and deeper in thrall with Grazia. Her influence in the household grew stronger with each passing day. She sought Isaac’s opinion on a variety of matters, from whether it would rain, to what he would like for his supper. She cooked Matteo special dishes, singing him to sleep at night. She helped Möishe set up the warp and weft on the looms. Her nimble fingers rapidly unravelled silk cocoons, a tedious task.
Isaac had begun consulting Grazia in business matters, as she had a clever head for figures. She was keeping his ledgers for him, something Hannah had once tried without success. She had no knowledge of how the long columns of figures were supposed to be arranged on the page; her addition and subtraction was neither rapid nor accurate. When she added more than ten numbers together, she got several different answers. When Hannah asked Isaac why he encouraged Grazia to sit poring over his books night after night, he said, “So she could see for herself the workshop is not prospering and that we have no money to pay her.”
It was not necessary to strain one’s eyes over ledgers. Any fool could see Isaac’s many bolts of printed silk—the entire output of his shop for the past six months—were gathering dust in a backroom just beyond the workshop. Exquisite material that shimmered like the wings of a butterfly. Fabric that would fetch a fortune in Venice languished for buyers here in Constantinople where the price was so low that Isaac could not sell it without sustaining a loss.
As for Leah, all Hannah knew—from the Valide’s messenger who had arrived out of breath on her doorstep yesterday—was that the couching would take place in three days. The Imperial carriage would fetch her. As to how the girl was adjusting to life in the harem, even Ezster, with her consummate gift for ferreting out palace gossip, had no news of her.
Hannah had not told Isaac that she was soon to go to the palace. Once, she would have confided in him. Now, he was so worried about money she did not want to add to his burden.
The couching would proceed unless Hannah could think of a means to prevent it. The thought of Leah, no more than a child, coupling with the Sultan filled her with distress even if it meant Hannah would receive the Valide’s gratitude as well as a rich reward. If only she had had an opportunity to counsel the girl, explain what was ahead of her, perhaps give her an opium pill to make the experience less disturbing.
A knock at the front door interrupted her gloomy thoughts. It was Myriam, the Rabbi’s wife, to say the Rabbi had recovered and would see them. They were to go to his study immediately. The three of them hastily donned their best clothes and left the house, walking in silence the short distance.
First Isaac, then Grazia, and finally Hannah filed into the Rabbi’s cramped study, which looked as though it had not been dusted si
nce the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem. The Rabbi was hunched behind a table piled with books. Distracted, thin from his illness, more filled with tremors than ever, he nodded as they entered the stuffy room.
Rabbi Yakov ben Asher, rabbi of the Poli Yashan shul with a congregation of a hundred Ashkenazi and Romaniote Jews, husband of Myriam, father of five daughters, three living, stroked a beard so long and sparse that it looked like a dusty cobweb tossed over the front of his black robe. He was old, at least sixty, and his hair was more grey than black. His shoulders were rounded as a soup tureen, his skin so dry his face appeared powdered with chalk. In short, he looked like a rabbi.
Isaac had once remarked to Hannah that Rabbi Yakov was so spindly it was a miracle he could stagger with the scrolls of the Torah from the Holy Ark to the bimah, the pulpit. Myriam, the rebbetzin, had told Hannah that when she and the Rabbi joined together, they did so through a hole in the coarse blanket he threw over her first. “It is as though he is forcing himself to couple with something foul,” she said through her tears. “No matter how often I go to the mikvah, I am never pure enough for him.” Rabbi Yakov was not a man who cared for women.
The Rabbi rose and hugged Isaac. He concealed the tremor in his hands by patting Isaac’s back. He looked at Hannah and Grazia, not moving to touch them. This was to be expected. He shoved some books and papers from the bench in front of his writing table.
“Sit,” he ordered, as though to a group of Yeshiva students. His suit smelled of rosemary and peppermint leaves, to repel moths. Underlying this pleasant smell was the even stronger odour of smoked herring.
Hannah sat first, her mouth so dry she would have been grateful for a sip from the water jug on the Rabbi’s desk, but he did not offer it to her. Isaac sat next to her, looking as stern as Moses. Grazia sat to Hannah’s left. She must have been apprehensive too, judging from the way her hands twisted in her lap.
From behind his desk the Rabbi fixed them with his sharp, black eyes. “Well, what can I do for you?”