The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (22 page)

“You are a scholar, then?” he asked.

“In a small way,” I answered modestly.

“I find nothing small about Latin and Greek, lady,” he rejoined. “In truth, I find them mountainous and far too elevated for my poor understanding.”

“It is the same with my brother,” I told him, more familiar as the minutes went on. “He is very clever at science but cannot digest a single Latin conjugation without choking on it.”

“A man after my own heart.” He smiled.

“I believe it is often the case,” I ventured, made bold by his amiability, “that boys cannot command the patience for the study of languages, especially active boys such as my brother Vitale, and — yourself.” Here I felt myself blush to a flaming red.

“Whereas girls . . .” he encouraged me.

“If girls were given an equal chance, they would take over scholarship in a single generation,” I stated flatly.

But he did not take my words ill. Instead, he smiled broadly. “I wonder what my teacher will have to say when I tell him that,” he teased.

“Oh sir, please . . .” I begged. God knows what reprisals might come back to me from my careless boasts.

“Never fear, little one,” he consoled me. “I would not dream of repeating your remark, not only for your sake but for my own. If I were to make such a statement to my teacher — or even in his hearing — I should surely feel the touch of the rod for it.”

“He beats you?” I asked.

“For such an impertinence, he might. For he never tires of warning us against women, their wantonness, inconstancy, and proneness to folly. Women have their being in this world, he claims, for no other purpose than to serve men and to bear them many children.”

“And do you agree, sir?” I asked.

“I have before me in my family the example of women of great learning and virtue,” he replied, suddenly serious. “I would betray their trust if I did not espouse the cause of female scholarship.”

The sweetness of his countenance when he spoke of these kinswomen melted my heart. Until then I had dreamed of him as a phantom lover; now, I began to see him as a young man — a man of sentiment and honor.

“But if I do not put my books in pawn, what must I do for my living?” he inquired of me. “For even a student must eat, lady.”

“Have you not some articles of equal value but of more trivial importance?” I asked. “Search your mind.”

“I could bring my silver bowl and pitcher. But then I might never wash myself. Do you believe cleanliness to be trivial?”

“Not at all, sir. Our Jewish sage Maimonides tells us that hygiene is a sacred duty. Have you no tapestries or fine garments that you can spare for a few weeks?”

“Not my clothes, lady. Spare me nakedness and the chill.”

“If you were a woman, you would have a needle case,” I persisted.

“Alas, I am no needleman . . . but I do believe . . .” And in a moment he was out the door, gone without a word of explanation.

He returned within the hour, carrying an inlaid ivory box. This he set upon the table and with a flourish raised the top to reveal an exquisite set of chessmen, each group of pieces carved from a different gemstone. The bishops were fashioned from a dull onyx as befitted their solemnity, the knights from an elegantly striated sea-green malachite matching their occupational flamboyance; the queen was chalcedony and the king carnelian. They all stood on little gold feet. Taken as a whole, that set was an object of grace such as we rarely saw in our small
banco
. “But this is magnificent!” I exclaimed.

“Magnificent, yes,” he replied. “But as you say, lady, trivial compared to the pursuit of Latin.”

Thus we made our contract: twenty gold ducats at twenty percent for the chess set, to be reclaimed within a year or else sold with all profit accruing to the
banco
.

“But of course such a thing cannot happen,” he assured me, “for I mean to reclaim my chessmen within the month. Meanwhile, take care of them for me. This set was a gift from my kinsman Alfonso d’Este for my service at his wedding. I treasure it above all my other goods and trust you not to sell it out from under me.”

I promised faithfully to keep the chessmen under my eye, and since we had no more business to transact, made as if to bid him farewell.

But he was not done with me yet. “One thing more,” he insisted. “You have given me a lesson today, lady, for which I am grateful. And I should like to do some small service for you in return.”

“Your kind words, sir, are payment enough,” I replied.

“Is there no small thing I can do for you? Think on it . . .”

“There is a thing . . .” I hesitated. “But no . . . I dare not . . .”

“Out with it!” he boomed. “The lady who does not dare to utter her own thoughts will never take over the world of scholarship.”

Reassuring words. “You are a student at the great University of Bologna, are you not, sir?” I ventured.

“Indeed I am,” he replied.

“I hear much of this university,” I told him. “But we live very retired and I go out rarely . . .”

“You wish me to show you the university?” he asked.

“I long to see it and to pay my respect to its great fame,” I replied.

But dare I risk the scandal? Dare he? Jewish girls had been burned for doing not much more than taking the arm of a Christian gentleman on a public street. Certainly young men had been expelled from the university for the offense of keeping company with “Jewish whores.” I could tell from his gaze that these dangers occupied his mind as they did mine. But none of this was spoken of. He simply bowed to the floor and announced, “Lady, you have but to speak your will and it shall be done. I am at your command.”

Within moments, I had bidden the clerk watch over the
banco
and was out in the
vicolo
at the side of my knight.

I had never before walked out in a public street unaccompanied by some relation or servant. That first moment of freedom loosened the bonds that held me to the earth and I fairly flew along beside him under the sheltering arcades of the town.

Before long we entered into a narrow street, where he stopped before an imposing house decorated with what I recognized as the Gonzaga
imprese
: a dove on a dead tree trunk with the motto
Vrai amour ne se change
. The door was unlocked by a page who flashed the Gonzaga colors on his sleeve. Could this be the famous University of Bologna? It looked much more like an opulent private house.

Leaving the page behind, we walked through two reception rooms and a library to a large lozenge-shaped room that ran the full width of the house at the back. The frescoes that adorned the walls and ceiling and the emptiness of the place marked it as a ballroom. But, to my surprise, my companion presented it as a lecture room. “Here is where the professor dispenses his wisdom,” he told me.

“And where do the students sit?” I asked.

“The lucky ones on chairs and benches. The rest on the floor,” he answered, then added, “Bleeding piles are the occupational disease of the university student, you know. It comes from sitting for hours on cold tiles.”

“How long then are these lectures?” I asked.

“They seem to last an eternity,” he answered.

“And how often are they given?” I asked.

“All depends on the fancy of the professor. Sometimes we do not see him for weeks on end. Then all at once he will turn up daily at the crack of dawn and devil us until the sun sets and expect us to learn the stuff overnight into the bargain.”

“Where then do you study?” I asked.

“Come.” He beckoned me on. “I’ll show you.”

Onward he led me through a sweet little courtyard, up an imposing marble staircase, and thence, straight up to the third story of the house, the kitchen floor. There we made for a series of small rooms, one giving onto the next, until we came to the last one. “Here we are,” he announced.

It was a sparsely furnished room with a bed, a chest, and a trundle meant for a servant but currently occupied by a small brown and white mongrel on a satin pillow.

“This is my study,” he informed me, “and that,” pointing at the dog, “is my tutor, Fingebat.” At the sound of his name the little dog sprang to life and began to prance on his hind legs.

Now ordinarily the diminutive performer would have delighted me. But in this setting he only confirmed my suspicion that I had been taken in by a ruse.

“Where am I?” I cried. “Where have you brought me to?”

“I have brought you to my cousin’s house, to my chambers where I live. Did you not see the Gonzaga colors painted on the doorpost?”

“But you promised to bring me to the university and this is not the university at all.” I was beginning to repent my impulse. “And the
sala
is not the lecture room either.”

“But it
is
,” he insisted. “You can depend upon it. I am no liar, lady. Perhaps a bit of a trickster but no liar. You see, what we have here is a jest. Better still a conundrum. The university is both here and not here.”

“But that is impossible. Your own Thomas Aquinas tells us that no thing can be both here and not here,” I reminded him.

“Well, this university both can be and is both here and not here,” he responded confidently, quite unimpressed by the learned Christian. “Forget Aquinas and think for yourself. What if it is elsewhere?”

“Then it cannot be here,” I replied, firmly committed to the Christian position.

“But what if sometimes it is here and sometimes it is elsewhere . . .”

“The university is a movable feast!” I finally grasped what he had been getting at.

“Bravo!” He clapped me on the back heartily. “You’ve guessed the riddle. In truth, the university is no place. Or every place. We gather where we can. If there are too many students for anyone’s salon, we meet in a field. Or we meet in the professor’s lodging. Some days, you will find us in the Piazza del Nettuno or here in my cousin’s palace . . .”

“You mean that this famed University of Bologna has no buildings of its own?”

“As I am the son of my father, Luigi Gonzaga,” he swore.

As soon as he spoke the phrase, I realized that we had never been introduced. “You are cousin, then, to the lords of Mantova?”

“I am descended from the cadet branch of the family, the Gonzagas of Bozzuolo. Allow me to introduce myself, lady. Pirro Vincenzo Gonzaga, at your service.”

He then conducted me on a whirlwind tour of the university which was, in effect, a tour of the city, for the University of Bologna is indeed everywhere, just as he said.

That hour of freedom in the streets, with Fingebat dancing along beside us while we joked and laughed and dared the powers that be, gave me a tantalizing view of what life must be like for those less hampered than myself.

It is a hard thing to relinquish one’s freedom after such a brief taste. When we reached the
banco
I scooped up little Fingebat and hugged him to my breast for comfort. And, do you know, that clever fellow repaid me with a shower of wet kisses and an outpouring of sympathetic whinnies.

It took an effort of will to hand him back to his master. And when I did, to my delight the young lord waved me off. “You keep him, madonna. An impoverished student makes a poor master. Besides, I can see how happy he is in your arms.”

Then, before I had time to think it over, my knight had tipped his hat and was whistling off down Jew Street. “Fingebat will guard my chess set until I return for it,” he shouted over his shoulder as he rounded the corner. “Within the month.”

I stood for many minutes at the door with the dog in my arms, reluctant to reenter our tiny dwelling. From the first day I saw that house I had loved it. Now, I felt the tiny structure close in on me as if to smother me. All at once, I knew the doll’s house for what it was, and what it must have seemed to Papa — a prison.

Fly. Fly. Birds are pushed out of the nest. Cubs are tossed out of the lair. But girls never leave home. And Jewish girls rarely venture beyond Jew Street. During the days after my escapade, I could think of nothing but the wind whistling through the arcades and the strength of my cavalier’s forearm as he danced me along the streets. Nights I snuggled next to Fingebat, my token for his master’s return. Within the month, he had said. But many things can happen in the space of a month.

March brought another letter from Ferrara. This time, Papa did not read it aloud. But he was smiling when he finished the letter. And his good humor continued through the days that followed.

That same week, he took himself to the barber and had his unkempt beard shaved off. We had not seen his countenance exposed for more than a year, and what we saw when it was revealed by the razor caused me more than a few pangs. His round cheeks were sunk in; deep furrows drew the corners of his mouth down toward his chin, what the face readers call lines of disappointment. In less than two years, my father had turned the corner into old age.

But he himself was not at all sad. He ceased to frequent the wine cupboard in the afternoons. His step lightened day by day. Finally, on the day that the purpose of the letter was revealed to us, he appeared to be absolutely jaunty.

It was late on a Friday afternoon, always a hectic day in any
banco
, for on Fridays Christian clients suddenly need cash to finance their weekend festivities and, at the same time, we Jews are pressing to close shop in good time for our Sabbath meal. Thus the
banco
was in the usual state of hubbub this Friday and all of us too busy to pay much attention to the cart that pulled up outside. Only when the door opened and the visitor stood before us did Jehiel and I recognize him as our cousin Asher.

I could not have been more astonished if he had descended from the sky in a chariot. On the other hand it was plain that Papa had been forewarned, for he greeted my cousin with great aplomb and seemed overjoyed to see him.

After the Sabbath supper, we sat by the light of the candles and took turns reading from the Holy Book under Papa’s direction. It was the first time we had observed a religious ritual since arriving in that house. This gesture led me to believe that my cousin had brought with him some promise of reinstatement for Papa. But he made no mention of it. And I held my questions.