The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  Now Gershom began to whisper urgently into Papa’s ear, so quietly I could not make out what was being said. On and on he talked, becoming more agitated by the moment. No response from Papa.

  Then all at once, before I could stop him, the little boy took my father’s frail body by the shoulders and began to shake it wildly. “Say something, Papa. Talk to me. Please.” And would you believe it, my father’s eyes opened wide and he spoke. “Gershom, my son.”

  “Oh, Papa, I love you so much. I do not want to leave you. But Grazia says I must go to Ferrara. Must I go, Papa? Must I? Cannot I stay here with you and Grazia? I do not want to go on this journey.”

  “Nor do I, my son.” I swear I saw a trace of a smile on Papa’s lips as he uttered these ironic words. “But when the call comes . . .” His voice drifted off. Then just as he was sinking into a doze he roused himself up and held out his arms. “Kiss me, Gershom.”

  My little brother’s name was the last word my father ever spoke. When Jehiel came in a few moments later with Ricca, Papa remained in his doze with nothing but an occasional twitch to indicate that he had not already passed over the bar.

  Within the hour, all of them were gone: Dorotea, the children, and Asher, who was to see them as far as a bucentaur at Borgoforte and then return to my aid. And I was left with my dying father and two frightened servants. From the day they learned that we had been put out of our house by order of the bargello, they had quaked at every shout in the street and paled at every knock on our portal. When they realized that nothing stood between them and the bargello’s pikes but a dying man and a defenseless woman, the last vestige of courage left them. By the end of the day I had had my fill of their bitten lips and twitchy eyes and told them to go.

  So it happened that I was quite alone with my father when he breathed his last. He passed over so peacefully that I never knew the exact moment of his going. At about the fifth hour I took hold of his wrist to feel the pulse and felt — nothing. His heart had stopped beating.

  37

  My father died three days before the time allotted him by Marchesana Isabella. You might say he skipped away early so as not to inflict the embarrassment he would cause if he stayed too long at the feast.

  I sat all night alone with him in the empty house in the Via San Simone. Some of the time I talked to him. And I believe I kissed his dear face many times and held his cold hands in my warm ones. Not with any idea of reinfusing life into him. Nothing so foolish as that. I did not even believe — or hope — that my words would reach him as he floated up to heaven. A born Jew does not think overmuch of the hereafter. I spoke to my dead father simply because my heart was full to overflowing and needed spilling.

  When dawn came I kissed him for the last time, covered him with a soft blanket, and walked alone across town to the Finzi house. The old man Finzi stayed true to his word. A minyan of ten men — members of his famiglia — would be at the Casa dei Rossi for morning prayers, he assured me. And these mourners would form a procession that afternoon to see Papa to his last resting place.

  A funeral is a funeral, no matter what creed you subscribe to — twenty percent grief, eighty percent arrangements. When I returned home from the Finzi house my first act was to turn the mirrors to the wall. Next I prepared a vat of pure water and a pile of clean cloths for the women who would wash my father’s body. That was for God. For myself I took out all the candleholders in the great chest that held our family’s treasures. I wanted my father’s house blazing with candlelight on his last day there.

  It was while I was searching for candles that Maestro Andrea’s son appeared at the portal. His father had sent him to fetch me. My portrait was finished and I must come at once to see it. The fact that I was preparing my own father’s funeral seemed not to register with him. After one or two verbal skirmishes, I gave up the struggle to make him understand why I could not come and shut the door in his face. Maestro Andrea would have to wait.

  The funeral procession set out from our house at the eighteenth hour, just after noon. One of the Finzi sons offered me his arm but I preferred to walk alone through the streets, hoping against all sensible expectations that Asher would come flying back from Borgoforte in time to stand by me. And by God, he did. As we were crossing Saint George’s bridge I caught sight of the familiar bandy legs flashing along the Porto Catena road. By the time the procession reached the end of the bridge, he was at my side, cloak flying, berretta askew, panting from exertion but there.

  I leaned on him heavily during the brief service at the graveside and even more heavily on the way back to town. That night he helped me to prepare the house for mourning. We might have only one day for it but I was determined to render my father every last shred of his rightful respect.

  Together, Asher and I took down the tapestries and draped the doors and windows with black cloths. Now we put away out of sight the cups and vases that adorned the mantel and all the candelabra I had put out the day before. Once the body is in the ground nothing must shine.

  Soon after sunrise an assemblage of men — every adult male Jew in Mantova, I do believe — filtered quietly into the dark house for morning prayers. “Yisgadal v’yiskadash,” I heard them chanting from upstairs where I had retired. Women have no place in this ritual. The rabbis expect us to busy ourselves with more appropriate tasks: cleaning, tidying, cooking for the mourners. Very well. For the sake of my father’s memory, I would find a suitable domestic task to occupy me while the men went about the serious business of mourning my loss.

  Most of our domestic valuables were already laid out for the Finzi agent who would be arriving early next day to make his appraisal. But my father’s personal effects remained unexamined. What better task could a loving daughter undertake than to catalogue her father’s effects and consign each to its rightful place? “Yisgadal v’yiskadash . . .” I muttered as I reached into the cassone that held his clothes, determined to pray over each item and thereby cheat the men below of their exclusive right to petition God on my father’s behalf.

  His fine linen shirts must be packed up to be used by Jehiel and Gershom when they grew older. And Asher, I added mentally. My father had told him he was like one of his own sons. I must treat him as one. I put two of the shirts aside to pass on to him when I saw him later in the day.

  Next I turned to the small velvet box where Papa kept his most valued possessions. And it was there, nestled in the folds of his prayer shawl, that I found his will. In the confusion and haste of his last hours all thought of it had fled my mind. But I knew what it was the moment I laid my hands on it. Tightly rolled with a velvet band, secured with three different wax seals, there was no mistaking it. But I had no heart to read it. Let it wait, I thought. Papa would be a long time dead.

  My father was not an acquisitive man. He left few mementos behind aside from his books. All that remained to be carried with us to Ferrara were his silver Kaddish cup, a diamond-studded gold plaquette which I had not seen on his hat in a decade, and a fine filigree amulet made in the shape of the temple of Jerusalem. Not a single finger ring or a gold chain did I find. Poor Jehiel. It would have pleased him to adorn himself with his father’s jewels. Unlike his brother, Gershom, he had not inherited our father’s disinclination for ostentation.

  Once the men had finished praying, the women began to arrive and I was permitted to take my place downstairs among the neighbors who had come to comfort the bereaved family. Young people tend to regard mourning as a sham; purists, as a pagan ritual. Do not fall into this trap, my son. Every word of condolence, every recollection, every compassionate gesture, nourishes the seed of memory. For in the nature of things, memory fills the gap left by loss. Which makes mourning one of the few genuinely humane acts we are given to perform. Heed me. Do as the Torah commands. Never neglect the obligations of mourning.

  As a final courtesy to Papa, old Davide Finzi came himself next day to appraise our household goods. Old
men know about dying. That old man knew that to have some bumbling boy underfoot chattering as he toted up the sum of my father’s worldly goods would have broken me. In the gentlest of voices he asked me if I would please mark for him those items we meant to keep out for ourselves so that they could be packed separately.

  “Begin in the sala,” he advised me, experience having taught him that most of the sentimental objects would reside there. “After that, the rest will be easier.”

  I let the old man guide me through the entire house, pushing me firmly past the shoals where sentiment lay in wait to engulf me, until at last nothing was left to deal with except my father’s bed, the bed he had died in.

  “I wish to sell it,” I announced firmly.

  “Your father’s best bed?” The old man was shocked. “You are certain?”

  “The bed. The hangings. The linens. Everything. I am certain. I will sleep in this bed tonight. Tomorrow your men can take it away. But see that they come early. For the bargello is due first thing in the morning.”

  “You are certain that you want to see strangers sleeping in your father’s best bed?” he insisted.

  “We have no use for it,” I answered. Dorotea had refused to share that bed when Papa most needed her. Why should she have the good of it now that he was gone?

  I did not disclose these thoughts to old Finzi. Instead I haggled with him over the price, a pastime which put me back into some kind of spirits. We were two of a kind in that. Now all that remained was for him to make his inventory and tote up the appraisals we had agreed upon.

  “You may rest here while I do it, little lady,” he offered. “Or go out for a stroll in the fine day. I will send my man to escort you if you like.”

  Why not take a stroll, I thought. It was my last day in Mantova — my last chance to visit the house where I grew up, to walk through the great squares, to cross the Mulina bridge one last time. And on the way I would pass Maestro Andrea’s strangely constructed house and — Maestro Andrea! Until that moment I had completely forgotten his summons to come and view the portrait that would immortalize me forever.

  My clothes were laid out for the next day’s journey. In a moment, I had them on and was urging Finzi’s servant out of the house with the tip of my sunshade, much to old Finzi’s amusement. “You’ll have to run to stay even with this little lady, you lazy scullion,” he shouted after the lad as we tumbled out the door.

  I found the Maestro’s studio as dirty and cluttered as I remembered it. He was also unchanged. “I sent for you two days ago,” he growled.

  “My father’s funeral . . .” I began to explain. But he would have none of it.

  “Did my son not tell you the portrait was finished?”

  “How could it be finished without me?” I asked.

  “I am an artist, madonna,” he replied gruffly. “Not a monkey. I have a mind to remember with. Only an oaf needs to paint entirely from life. I could have done without you after the first two sittings.”

  “Then why did you keep me coming back?”

  “I enjoyed the sight of you,” he answered simply, as if his own pleasure was quite enough justification for my inconvenience.

  “And may I see it now?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “But you said it was finished.”

  “Finished and gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Sold to a gentleman.”

  “But you promised that I would see it, maestro.”

  “The gentleman who bought it was adamant. He must have it then and there, that very day. No delay. He was leaving Mantova. He made me an offer I could not refuse.”

  “You broke your promise to me for money, maestro.”

  “No, madonna. Not for money. For beauty. Did you not hear what I told you? That he made me an offer I could not refuse? Here. See for yourself.”

  He went to his table and picked up a handful of coins.

  “Look!” he ordered me.

  I looked and beheld four matching coins of the Roman period, each emblazoned with the face of Faustina.

  “She looks like you,” was all he said. Not a word of regret or apology.

  For a moment my temper flared. Then I thought better of it. To me the portrait had seemed a chance at immortality. To him it was merely a thing he had made, a work of his own hand, not comparable to the work of one of the ancient masters he revered. He had traded my portrait for something finer.

  But perhaps there was still a chance I might see it, if I could find the purchaser. “This gentleman who bought my portrait . . .” I began.

  “My portrait,” he corrected me firmly.

  “Yes of course, your portrait of me, maestro. The gentleman who purchased it, could you please tell me his name?”

  “No.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “You may not. But I will tell you. My silence was a part of the bargain. I am sworn not to reveal his name or anything about him. Besides, the matter is not your concern. The gentleman saw the portrait, fell in love with it and wanted it, a not infrequent occurrence with my works, I assure you.”

  “Did he not inquire about the sitter?”

  “He did not, lady. He has all of you he wants in my picture. Women never understand these things.”

  I walked back from Maestro Andrea’s house at a meditative pace much more to the liking of my lazy escort than the breathless dash that brought us there. When I stopped at the gates of the Reggio and announced to him that I meant to sit on one of the stone benches for a few moments, he even spread his cloak for me.

  What an ugly pile it was, this mismatched agglomeration of disparate buildings that I had once thought the most elegant in all the world. But my stay in Firenze had trained my eye. Now, Brunelleschi’s harmonious proportions were so embedded in my skull that I would never again be able to look upon the barbarisms of the Dark Ages without a shudder.

  Yet there was strength here. The sheer weight of the stones compelled respect. Ahead of me, Saint George’s loomed up like a fortress out of the Reale di Francia. As I gazed up, the old magic began to work its spell on me. Mind you, I had not forgotten that beneath one of those elegant coffered ceilings, my happiness had been disposed of like a soiled rag. “My illustrious husband has made other plans for Lord Pirro.” Their cruelty is so casual; their power to inflict it, so great. And yet, as I stood looking up at the candlelit windows, I was taken over by a longing to pass through the gates and enter into the golden world inside the walls, to find myself dancing one more frotilla in Lord Pirro’s arms with a thousand candles flickering around us and beauty everywhere.

  By the time I returned to the Via San Simone, Finzi’s wagons were already loaded in the courtyard. Inside, the sala grande was bare. Before me on the mantel lay a sheaf of papers — the inventory. One large iron cauldron, ten bolognini. Three ladles, three bolognini . . . I never got beyond the first page. Asher, I thought. Asher would check up on old Finzi for me.

  I found my cousin in the banco leaning against the shutter, lost in grief.

  “Come away, cousin.” I drew near to take his arm. “You must sleep and so must I.”

  I steered him across the courtyard and into the sala, a gloomy cavern now that all of its innards had been removed.

  “Come upstairs,” I urged him. “Old Finzi has left us the bed to sit on.”

  He hesitated. “Would it be proper, Grazia?”

  “It would,” I assured him, and led the way. “Papa would not want us to sleep our last night on the cold floor.”

  Darkness was falling fast and with it came the chill that descends on Mantova from its surrounding circle of lakes.

  “You are shivering, cousin. You must get into bed and cover yourself over,” he said.

  “And what of you?” I asked. “Are you impervious to the night’s vapors?”

  �
�I will manage,” he replied.

  “You will manage to catch catarrh,” I corrected him. “Come and lie by me. I insist.”

  I could see in his eyes that he longed to join me in the cozy warmth of the covers but modesty held him back.

  “Please, cousin,” I urged. “I do not wish to journey forth tomorrow in the company of sniffles and coughs. Come.” I patted the pillows invitingly. “Bring the candle. I have Finzi’s inventory here. We can examine it together. Then our last task will be done.”

  The suggestion of duty moved him. He did as I asked. And we did sit together and examine the inventory. At least, he did. I merely went through the mummery for his sake.

  I have vowed to be honest in this ricordanza. Very well, honesty you shall have, to the best of my ability to reconstruct the events of that night. The initiative was mine. I was the one who intrigued my cousin into my bed on the pretext of working over the Finzi papers. I did believe, when I proffered the invitation, that I meant nothing more by it. But once I felt the weight of his body beside me and the warmth of his breath on my cheek, I began to feel stirrings.

  At this point I could retreat into metaphorical vagueness and tell you that what happened between my cousin Asher and me was the assertion of the life force in the face of death. All of us court poets are masters of that sort of twaddle. But looking back, I understand that I wanted to lie in a man’s arms that night; I wanted to be possessed by another, stronger being; I wanted to feel my weakness surrounded by a pair of strong arms, to be taken away, out of my sadness and loss. Asher struggled manfully against temptation. But he was no match for my desperate need to be loved.

  It all happened quite easily. Quite naturally. Knees touch. Bones thrust. Bodies adjust, closer together with every move. I bury my head in my cousin’s broad shoulder. Softly, he smooths my hair. I raise my face. He kisses my forehead. My cheek. He groans. I open my eyes. The longing in his eyes is unbearable. I kiss his lips. His teeth are clenched tight. Slowly I feel them open to the soft pressure of my tongue. His mouth is liquid. I drink in the nectar, tasting each drop with my tongue.