The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  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.

  “What is the difference between a nazem and a tabat, Maestro Judah?” he inquired, quite unintimidated by the maestro’s display of ill temper.

  “Tabat is the word for a finger ring, my son,” Judah answered him sweetly, now every inch the scholar/teacher. “But the word in the text, nazem, is the word for a nose ring, which I hardly thought suitable to bestow upon your sister.” At which my brother laughed heartily and the crowd, seeing that Judah was not offended, joined in.

  “What the messenger gives to Rebecca is a gift of jewelry, a golden nose ring of half a shekel weight and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight. They are gifts, proposals if you like, of marriage as is my gift to your sister. Nothing more. The marriage is sanctified by consummation. And the marriage contract is made binding by the bride’s acceptance of the marriage contract, the ketubah. Neither of these long traditions has anything to do with rings. And let that be the end of the matter.”

  My wedding was attended by friends and neighbors from around the peninsula and several kinsmen of our family. Along with their prodigious appetites they brought gifts of a magnificence to equal our hospitality, all of which will come to you in the fullness of time. Among the treasure, I commend to your especial care a small porphyry bowl (easy to miss but very precious) etched with a profile of the Great Philosopher, sent to Judah by Count Pico of Mirandola and his fellow members of the Platonic Academy in Firenze, and six hand-painted plates, a gift from my dei Rossi grandparents, who found themselves too frail to make the journey, or so they said. My dear friend Penina brought with her from Ferrara a most beautiful embroidered coverlet in blackwork. “I was keeping it for my own wedding,” she admitted to me. “But since that day may never come . . .”

  Seeing her again was one of the most delightful aspects of the occasion. But my pleasure in her company was somewhat marred by her evident unhappiness. Our first night together, she confided in me that there was a young rabbinical student in my grandparents’ service at Ferrara whom they had all but decided upon as husband for her and whom she, poor
sentimental child, did not fancy, she told me, “. . . although he is very kindly, Grazia, but stooped, you know, and pale. And he has been trained at Padova by the Germans, so he never bathes.”

  Her lack of enthusiasm for the match had incurred my grandmother’s wrath, doubly terrifying to an orphan without kin to defend her or fortune to protect her and whose entire happiness depended on the mood of a capricious old woman. Now La Nonna had taken the opportunity to withdraw her offer of a dowry, saying that if the ungrateful girl did not appreciate her guardian’s choice, then she could make her own — and make her own dowry as well. As a result Penina feared that she would never marry, for no man worth having would marry a girl without a dowry.

  A lesser being than Penina might have succumbed to envy. If anything, she drew closer to me and even struck up a friendship with Jehiel, just a year her junior. At table they took to sitting side by side. At calcio he invariably kicked the ball in her direction and she in his. And at odd times of the day I would find them huddled in a corner, heads close together over a book, voices low. What they were planning or confiding I never knew. They always straightened up and became mute when I approached. Like conspirators — or lovers. But that was foolish. They were children.

  The day of my wedding I awoke to find Penina at my bedside with a cup of spiced wine. “A libation for the virgin bride on her wedding day,” she announced cheerfully. It was on my tongue to confess to her then and there that I was no virgin, as a sort of rehearsal for the confession I knew I had to make to Judah that night. But before I could get the words out, Jehiel made his appearance through the curtains. Forgoing the politeness of a salutation, he thrust Penina aside and demanded in a low, insistent voice, “Do you wish to give your husband mastery over you, Grazia?”

  “What a question! Of course not.” Of all times for him to interrupt with one of his bits of nonsense.

  “Listen to me, Grazia. I know you think me young and foolish. But I have read forbidden books. And I know things . . .”

  “He does. He does,” Penina echoed behind him.

  “What things?”

  “While the seven blessings are being said, all your husband needs to do to attain mastery over you forever is place his right foot over your left foot.”

  “I have no time for superstitions, Jehiel. This is my wedding day.”

  “Exactly why you must pay attention. Once he has done it, there is no undoing it and he will rule over you all of your days and you will harken to all his words and bow to his will in all things whether you like it or not, for you will be under the spell.”

  “What must I do, then? Would you have me cripple him before the ceremony so that he cannot step?” I asked.

  “All you need do is set your left foot over his right as soon as the rabbi begins to recite the blessings. Then you will rule over him all of your days. Will you do it, Grazia?”

  “I am to put my right foot over his left . . .”

  “Your left foot over his right,” he corrected me. Then, to Penina: “It is no use. She will never remember. And he will have dominion over her all the rest of her days.”

  “Of course I will remember, Jehiel,” I answered. “I am to put my . . .” But I had paid scant attention to his instructions and now could not remember them.

  “Dio, what use is all my learning?” He raised his hands to God. “I am dealing here with a half-wit.”

  A clatter on the stairs interrupted this desperate prayer.

  “Try to remember, sister,” he urged me. “For your own sake . . . the left foot.”

  “Yes, sweetheart.” By now the genuineness of his concern for my happiness had overcome my irritation.

  “. . . even if you forget, all is not lost.” His voice wafted back to us as he fled down the corridor. “You will have a second chance when the marriage is about to be consummated. At the certain moment you must ask him for a glass of water. That will give you dominion over him all the rest of your days . . .”

  But what will I say to him when he sees no blood on the sheets? I thought. Instruct me on that trick, brother.

  On the day of my birth my parents had planted an acacia tree in our garden in Ferrara. It was this tree which provided the poles for my wedding canopy and at some cost, I can tell you, since the Christian to whom we sold that property became unaccountably attached to the tree the moment he knew the purpose for which it was wanted, and nothing less than twenty ducats could assuage his acute sense of loss when he sold it back to us. I would have taken the twenty ducats and been married under a canopy made of some old aspen growing by the roadside. But my father became intensely sentimental at the time of my marriage, talking often of my mother and the happy days of old, and it was he, actually, who insisted that my grandparents send us the tree from our former garden.

  As soon as Judah took his place under the canopy, the rabbi showered ashes on his head — a reminder of the destruction of Zion — and then conducted me to my place at his right, facing Jerusalem. Then my brothers and some other men took the corners of Judah’s hood and placed it over my head to form a second canopy. Whereupon the rabbi proceeded to read the seven blessings, during which Judah’s right foot never came near my left.

  Now came the wonderful moment. Having offered a sip of wine to Judah and then to me, the rabbi gave the cup itself over to Judah, who whirled about to face north and threw it with all his might against the wall, sprinkling wine everywhere and initiating an explosion of “Chaim!”s and “Mazel!”s.

  Then came the feasting and the music. But at last the well-wishers saw us to our chamber and left us to ourselves. My moment had arrived.

  “Sir, there is something I ought to have told you that I must tell you now,” I began.

  “A confession is it?”

  I nodded my head, hesitant to begin.

  “Perhaps you will allow me to speak first. For I too have something to say to you.”

  Again I nodded, only too happy for the reprieve.

  “It is about the conversation we had on the day of our betrothal, about friendship,” he began. “Do you remember?”

  Yes, I remembered.

  “I think that perhaps I did not make my proposal sufficiently clear in every aspect. Things were left unsaid, unexplained. Now that we are on the threshold of our marriage, I wish to rectify that omission.” He cleared his throat — was he slightly uneasy, or was it my imagination? “You are delicate, child. And have been through a lot for one of your age. As a physician, my prescription would be rest, good care, peace . . . time for the wounds to heal . . .” Again he cleared his throat. “What I am proposing is that we delay our consummation of this marriage for a time. A few months, perhaps a year. Until you are ready.”

  How strange.

  “You look puzzled, Grazia. Does not my solution suit you?”

  “Oh no, sir,” I assured him. “I am relieved.”

  “Good. Then it is agreed. For now, loving friends and nothing more.” A nod of satisfaction. “I have brought with me a sack of cow’s blood,” he went on, once again his usual confident self. “Sometime in the night, as I cradle you in my arms, I will break open the sack to bloody the sheets for the benefit of the morning well-wishers. I suggest we keep this arrangement as our secret, do you concur?”

  I fell asleep on my wedding night happy and contented in my husband’s arms. Sometime before the first light I awoke to see him, a giant figure in the dim light, rummaging around in his bag. After a moment he returned to my side clutching a small soft sack. It felt cold against my back. Then I heard a thin pop as if a bubble had burst.

  Why, I do not know. But when that vessel released its measure of cow’s blood onto the sheet below me, I turned to face my husband and, in my most pleasing voice, asked if he would please fetch me a glass of water.

  24

  From the moment we put Mantova behind us Judah did not cease to sing the pr
aises of our future home. Firenze was a model republic of scholars, built to the measure of man, a symbol of the rebirth of knowledge and culture, a new Athens. As we worked our way down the peninsula the classical perfection of Brunelleschi’s dome, Giotto’s bell tower, Maestro Ghiberti’s miraculous bronze doors, and Ser Donatello’s perfect figures played in my ears in basso rilievo against the clip-clop of the mules’ hooves.

  Casting my mind ahead, I saw myself wandering through classical temples dwarfed by majestic columns, and taking the air in vast open forums. Encouraged by Judah’s rhapsodies, I created a city after Mantegna’s model in his “Triumphs” and named it Firenze. You can imagine my astonishment when we first looked down on the actual place from the hills of Fiesole and beheld a typical city of the old-fashioned kind with spiky towers sticking up into the sky as a reminder that the world was a dark and unsafe place and that man’s first need was for defense.

  The closer we approached, the less Firenze resembled the city of my dreams. Once inside the gates, we found ourselves traversing one mean little street after another, streets so muddy and rutted you would have thought yourself back at the beginning of the century rather than in its final decade. This was the year 1493. Already, in Ferrara, Ercole d’Este was ripping out the dark smelly hovels that surrounded his castello and had begun to lay out the Herculanean addition with its broad streets and spacious palaces. And I had counted more columns on my visit to Belriguardo — a mere hunting lodge — than I was able to locate in the whole of Firenze the first time I rode through it.

  Yet the place put Judah into a state of rapture. When he pointed out Brunelleschi’s dome his eyes shone. At Giotto’s tower he bowed his head in reverence. And the facade of the Ospedale degli Innocenti brought tears to his eyes. To me a dome was a dome, and a bell tower a bell tower. I had seen plenty of bell towers in my short life. Every town I ever stepped foot in boasted more than one. And I, ignoramus that I was, could not perceive the difference between an indifferent example of the species and a sublime one.