The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  My grandmother refused his choice with a decisive shake of her head. Thus he was encouraged to select a heavier stick. This one must have measured at least the girth of a man’s ring finger.

  Having selected the whip, Giorgio then dipped it into a basin filled with salted water, the better to make the welts sting. Again La Nonna nodded her silent approval.

  He stood waiting his final orders.

  When they came, the import shocked all other thoughts out of my mind.

  “Strip her,” the old woman ordered.

  “Papa. Mama. Save me,” I shouted, but to no avail. The steward, well practiced in this procedure, neatly took up the hem of my gamorra and raised it high over my head, exposing my bare back to the rod.

  Now I did indeed feel the symptoms of terror: a falling of the stomach as if to the center of the earth and a terrible shortness of breath.

  After an eternity of time, I heard my grandmother order, “Stroke the first.”

  The first stroke hit my back. A scream escaped me inadvertently.

  The second stroke drew blood. As I crouched there against my grandmother’s knees, I felt a rivulet of the warm stuff trickle down between my legs.

  More than anything I wanted to fall in a swoon and lose my senses. But God showed me no mercy. I remember it all: the terrible third stroke, more painful than the other two in that it intermingled its own pain with that of the two before it; the untying of the rope and the modest drawing of my chemise over my bloody ass; no word from either of those two monsters but for a curt “Off with you now” from La Nonna; and finally the painful limp down the corridor to my room, where I burrowed deep into the pillows of my grand canopied bed like a wounded cur.

  After some time Papa found me out. Even though some part of me longed for comfort, I could not bear to be looked at, and when he made a move to pull back the coverlet I screamed out a “No!” so piercing that he stopped the effort at once and crept out.

  Later that evening he returned, with questions. But I had no heart for a dialogue. I merely placed my hand on his mouth to silence him as I had seen my mother do. I had nothing to say to him. He who should have protected me against his bullying parent had left me instead to her mercy. I never forgave him for it. I do not say that I never loved my father after that. Or even that my love for him lessened. But never again was he a god to me or any kind of a hero.

  Each evening he would come directly from prayers and sit silent, squeezing my hand from time to time in a mute plea for forgiveness. But I, stony-hearted, withheld it.

  One evening, he brought with him a pearl pendant that had belonged to Mama and fastened it around my neck on a gold chain. Whereupon I unlatched the clasp and placed the offering back in his hand without a word.

  Zaira was the one who rescued us from this sad impasse. It was she who suggested to Papa that he ought to read to me. Of course, he took up the suggestion with alacrity — anything to avoid my reproachful eyes. And I responded in spite of myself for he had cleverly selected my favorite — the Aeneid.

  “This is a tale of arms and of a man,

  The first to sail from the land of Troy,

  And reach Italy, displaced by destiny . . .”

  At first I remained aloof. But by the time Papa reached Juno’s declaration of war against Aeneas, a passage dear to me, I found myself reciting along with him.

  “I, vanquished? I, abandon the fight?

  The fates forbid me. They never stopped Minerva

  from gutting the Argives’ fleet by fire

  and drowning all of them . . .”

  Who could resist Virgil’s oratory? By that conduit the terrible silence between me and my father was bridged and we took to passing the book back and forth and reading alternate passages to each other every evening.

  It was during one of these readings that I first noticed Papa stealing glances at Zaira and she at him. Through my sleepy eyes and ears, I discerned the current that flowed between them, sluggish at first but rising to great turbulence as the weeks went by.

  Alert behind my closed eyes, I could feel on my own skin the flush that suffused Zaira’s flesh. And my sharp ears caught the crackling hush in the air between their murmurs.

  I never saw them touch. I do not believe they ever did embrace. For two worldly people — and both had seen and done much in their lives — they were remarkably innocent in pursuit of their love . . . much good it did them. All kinds of lewd behavior was later hinted at by La Nonna and her cohorts. But that was yet to come.

  For the time, the affair was secret to all but me. In my dreams I saw Zaira lying beside Papa in Mama’s old bed in Mantova, the two of them as beautiful as ancient statues in their nakedness. Those were sweet dreams to me.

  But by day my spirit languished. Since the day of the beating I had been possessed by intermittent nausea and an inability to keep solid food on my stomach. Never a plump child, I had begun to resemble a wraith clad in my black mourning garment. Still, I could not abide the thought of being seen by one of La Nonna’s doctors. Each time Papa brought up the subject, I wept so wildly that he did not have the heart to pursue it.

  My salvation came from a most unexpected quarter: Papa’s ailing brother, Joseph, whom I hardly knew as he had been confined to his room by chronic ill health since we arrived. Then one day he took a sudden turn for the worse and on his account the finest doctor in all of Italy was invited to attend him. “The finest.” That is how my grandmother characterized the prodigy when she requested the entire famiglia to be present for his examination of my uncle.

  As long as he was not about to lay hands on me, I was eager to get a good look at this paragon reputed to combine the genius of physician, philosopher, and scholar within his one sagacious person. I had heard him lauded for the philosophical dispute he engaged in all over the peninsula as frequently as for his miraculous cures. And all this was doubly amazing since he had not yet attained the age of thirty years.

  The prodigy did not disappoint. A giant of a man, his berretta barely cleared the lintel when he entered the sickroom. Even La Nonna’s hefty Giorgio, who ushered him in, was dwarfed by the august presence presented to us as Leone del Medigo.

  His first move, after making a courtly bow to the crowd assembled to see him do his magic, was to stride to the window and throw open the shutters. The effect was as if a thunderbolt had hit the room. Everybody knew that Uncle Joseph’s windows must never, never be opened for fear that in his weakened state a chill might carry him off.

  Aunt Dorotea rushed across the room and fairly threw herself at the window in an effort to shut it tight once more. But the great physician prevented her by simply placing his massive girth between her and the opening and thus barring her way to the shutters.

  “But he will die, he will die of the chilly air,” she cried.

  “Nonsense, woman,” he corrected her, leaning out to fasten the shutters so that they would stay open. “The fetid air in this room will kill him faster than any draft. Let the poor man breathe.”

  “But maestro, my husband’s weak chest . . .” she protested.

  “No buts, madonna,” he cut her off. “God has given us the early-morning air so that we may breathe in its freshness. We must allow the patient to do God’s will. From now on, Joseph is to sit in a chair outside in the morning sun each day for an hour.”

  “But he cannot walk,” Aunt Dorotea protested.

  “My son’s limbs are weak,” La Nonna added.

  “He can walk if you help him to walk,” the physician retorted firmly. “What you are helping him to do now is to become an invalid by keeping him a prisoner in this bed. Like all other members of the human body, the limbs are meant to be used. When Nature sees that any member no longer serves the body, she causes that useless thing to atrophy. If you wish to keep your faculties, you must exercise them. Use it or lose it,” he quoted from the Latin
, then immediately focused his penetrating stare upon La Nonna once more and asked in his most stern manner, “Why do you suppose that men no longer have tails or horns?”

  “That is God’s doing, maestro,” she replied. “And not for us to question. But I hear little of God from you. Where is He in all this talk of Nature?”

  “Remember that He created Nature in all of her wonder in six days,” the physician replied patiently, as if instructing a backward child. “And that He looked around on the seventh day and was pleased with what He saw. What He saw, madonna, was Nature. And, since Nature pleased Him so well, do you not agree that Nature should please you and me equally well?”

  After that a small, almost cursory nod was all it took to clear the room. Aunt Dorotea was allowed to stay, and one serving maid. The rest of us filed out obediently, my grandmother as meek as the rest.

  The moment we were alone together, Zaira embarked on a paean of praise to the great physician — his sagacity, his kindness, his authority. “If ever I have need of a doctor, I pray to God to send me Messer Leone. Did you see his eyes, Grazia? So wise. So kind.”

  Of course I had noticed those extraordinary eyes. But what impressed me most was the way he stood up to La Nonna, and I said so. “He wasn’t disrespectful, either. Nor disputatious. Yet he made her look a perfect fool,” I noted.

  “Such a giant of a man he is, yet so gentle.” Zaira continued her rapture. “I wager you he has the touch of a woman.”

  “How can you tell that?” I inquired.

  “Did you see the way he held his hands? Drooping slightly. That always indicates a gentle touch in a man,” she informed me. “A doctor like that would never hurt his patient. And they say that when it comes to diagnosis he is the finest physician in all of Italy. It was Maestro Leone, you know, who treated Lorenzo dei Medici in his last attack of gout and stopped the pain. Such an honor for the Jews.” She paused and stared at me fixedly. “Yes, Leone del Medigo is a physician I would trust with my life.”

  Her words echoed a chord already plucked within me. This amazing giant would cure me of my dyspepsia and melancholy. I knew it.

  “I would indeed be a fool to refuse if he agrees to see me,” I told her with full confidence. “Please take him the message that I humbly request his attendance.”

  Then I sat back to await the prodigious physician in whom I had recognized my guardian angel.

  7

  The renowned Leone del Medigo arrived at my sickroom followed by a much smaller retinue than had accompanied him on his visit to Uncle Joseph. Only my father and La Nonna, Aunts Dorotea and Sofronia, two servants, and Zaira accompanied him.

  Taken by a fit of shyness, I buried my head in my pillows at the sight of them.

  “I hear you have not been well of late, Madonna Grazia.” His voice came to me in a tone quite unlike the resonant one he had employed when addressing the famiglia, a low tone meant for my ears alone, which won me over at once.

  Without being asked, I turned my face from the pillow and looked up into those heavy-lidded, all-seeing eyes.

  “May I try to help you overcome your debilitation?” he asked with an air of grave courtesy owed to a duchess at the very least.

  I bobbed my head up and down to signify my agreement.

  “Very good. Now then . . .” He turned to the assembled company. “You may go about your business, all of you. But you . . .” He pointed to Zaira as if he had selected her quite at random. “You will please stay in the room for modesty’s sake.”

  They stood rooted to the spot, not so much recalcitrant as stunned. To dismiss La Nonna in such a manner was unheard of. But he appeared to be quite unmindful of the irregularity of his behavior. He simply repeated, “Go now, all of you. Out!” — like a kindly schoolmaster shooing his charges out to play.

  Of course, they went. Certainly his fame as a healer lent him authority. But it was his fame as a scholar that gave him gravitas. Why else do we train physicians at universities but to add wisdom to their skills and thus to distinguish them from surgeons, who are, after all, nothing more than butchers of human bodies?

  Mind you, it did not detract from the great man’s presence that he knew how to dress to perfection the part of the celebrated physician-scholar. No shabby or threadbare dog fur for Messer Leone. Only the finest ermine trimming for his capacious robe, a full-length garment of rich black stuff trimmed with bands of scarlet. On his fingers, heavily begemmed rings. And on his feet, gilded spurs like a knight’s. This was the imposing personage who sat down beside me on the bed and asked after my state of health.

  “Do you suffer pain?”

  I answered shyly that I did not suffer pain.

  “Lassitude? Cramp in any limb? An ache in the belly?”

  “Only this wretched nausea,” I explained. “And then I vomit.”

  “In the morning or evening? Or at dawn?” he asked, waiting patiently for my answer and listening attentively when I gave it. This scrupulous attention to the patient formed the core of Judah’s famous “bedside manner,” sought by princes and kings, an intensity of interest rivaled only by the rapt attention of a lover in contemplation of his love. And, as with all Judah’s patients, it brought out such trust in me that I found myself blurting out before I knew it the fear that had been gnawing away in me since my malady began, and which I had confided to no one.

  “Do you think I have gravel and stones like Uncle Joseph?” I asked him. “Or a tumor in my belly? Is that why I am wasting away?”

  “A tumor? Not likely. Growths and crystals rarely appear in people as young as yourself. How old are you, little madonna?”

  “My name is Grazia, sir,” I replied, as I had been taught to do. “And I am nine years old . . . almost.”

  “My name is Judah.” He did not volunteer his age. No matter. Anyone over fifteen years of age was old to me.

  “Now that we have introduced ourselves,” he resumed, “we will get down to business. In a moment, I will ask for a sample of your urine. There is much to be learned from that . . .”

  “And my blood, sir. Will you bleed me?” I asked, uninhibited now in the expression of my secret fears. “Will you cut into my veins . . .”

  “I don’t believe so,” he answered quite matter-of-factly. “The urine sample will tell me what I need to know. And an examination, of course.” He gestured to Zaira to pull back the coverlet. “You have my word, I will not hurt you.”

  The examination was indeed painless. Even more remarkable, it was not humiliating. Judah did not touch my body with love, as the sentimental would have it, but with respect. And even when he probed my most intimate orifices, he performed that examination with such care that I did not — as is almost always the case with medical examinations — feel I had been violated.

  When he finished, he ordered Zaira to cover me again and asked for a basin so that he might wash his hands. Now we were ready for the next phase: giving up the urine sample. Another potential humiliation. For try as I may, I could not squeeze out more than a drop or two. The damned stuff settled tenaciously in my bladder, refusing to come out no matter how I exhorted it. With a delicacy uncommon in physicians — or in men in general, for that matter — Judah chose that moment to leave the room, ostensibly to see to a remedy for Uncle Joseph but, in truth, to spare me the embarrassment of voiding my bladder in the presence of a stranger. Once he left, the task was accomplished expeditiously and I was able to greet him on his return with a full yellow beaker.

  He went about his analysis of my urine in the same careful, patient manner that he had adopted when examining my body. First he placed the beaker directly under his nose and inhaled its aroma deeply. Next he dipped his finger into the liquid and dabbed a taste of it on his tongue; then another; and then another, licking his lips after each taste as if searching for some hidden essence.

  Next, he poured a dram of it into a crockery dish
and, withdrawing from his bag a vial of deep purple stuff, carefully poured exactly two drops of the purple liquid into the yellow. And he smiled when the mixture went green, just as the magician does when his turn is brought to a successful conclusion.

  “I can assure you there is no tumor,” he announced after all this was done. “Nor is there gravel or stone in your belly.”

  “But why then do I vomit up my food?” I asked.

  “Ah, my dear.” He sat down beside me once again. “If I knew the answers to all the questions beginning with ‘why,’ I would be Jehovah Himself and not a humble physician.”

  “But if you do not know what ails me, sir . . .” My voice trailed off. It seemed tactless in the extreme to say what was in my mind, that is, if he did not know the cause of my ailment, how could he cure it?

  “Not to know the cause does not mean that one cannot effect a cure,” he admonished me.

  This was a form of thinking I understood well from my study of Aristotle’s logic.

  “How then shall you cure me, sir?” I asked, bolder by the minute.

  “For one thing, I will prohibit all nasty-tasting medicines. No purges are to be allowed in this room. Not so much as a drop of cassia or rhubarb.” Now a pen was secured, and ink and vellum, and I was ordered to copy my own diet. It was my first task as a scribe. And I still remember how he led off, almost gravely, as if to underline the importance of the undertaking. Item — a daily addition of galinga for its stimulating and heating properties and to warm and comfort the brain. Item — cinnamon in the wine, for it greatly comforts both a cold and humid stomach and a cold liver and expels the humors of the stomach.

  Here he added in his most matter-of-fact tone that a liberal intake of cinnamon would encourage menstruation. “And the sooner the better for your health and spirit, little woman.” I had no idea what he was talking about, never having heard the word “menstruation” before — it certainly had not come up in Aristotle, Cicero, and Pliny — and I was too embarrassed to ask the meaning of it.