The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (67 page)

“And when will I see what you have made of me with your wicked pen, Madonna Ecritus?” she asked playfully. But I detected an urgent undercurrent beneath the casual question. We all wish to know in advance what will be said of us by our historians — and to make editorial revisions if we are allowed. But I was not about to fall into that trap.

“One of the great disadvantages in undertaking biographies of living people,” I explained to her (as if she did not already understand this), “is that they may claim the right to censor what one writes. Dead people are too moribund to do much else but turn over in their graves.”

She laughed thinly at the jest.

“In fact,” I went on, “if I were not able to enjoy as much freedom in writing of the quick as I can when writing of the dead, I would give up on the living entirely.”

“I see.” She rubbed her little finger up and down against the side of her nose several times, a habit she has when she is making calculations. “Well . . .” The rubbing stopped and a new decisive tone took over. “In that case I wish you luck in your ventures and look forward to seeing the completed manuscript before we are both too old and weak-eyed to read it.”

43

P
ermit me to introduce to you Messer Aldus Manutius: scholar, printer, self-appointed guardian of textual integrity, founder of the celebrated Aldine Press of Venezia. Like many men of prodigious accomplishment, Ser Aldo was consumed by a single overwhelming passion: to publish on his new printing machine all the great works of the Golden Age, not only Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero but also lesser-known writers whose manuscripts had lain moldering in the libraries of ancient abbeys during the Dark Ages. His passion to find and publish these lost texts was exceeded only by his will to publish them in faultlessly authentic translations.

This obsession led him to establish his press in Venezia where he hoped to find a bottomless pool of translators, grammarians, and copy readers. But he quickly learned that although there was such a pool, it was hardly bottomless. Thus he was forced to spend whatever time he could spare from the press trolling the canals for Greek scholars to aid him in his noble endeavor.

From the moment we arrived in Venezia, Judah became Ser Aldo’s quarry. Through his humanist friends the printer approached Judah for a new translation of Plutarch’s
Moralia
. Judah declined the commission, explaining that his duties to his new patron, the General, prohibited such a vast expenditure of time.

Undaunted, Ser Aldo lowered his sights. He had heard of Judah’s translation of Hippocrates’ veterinary treatise. Might not that translation be acquired by the Aldine Press? Judah doubted Francesco Gonzaga would be willing to share the secrets of that arcane work with other breeders. The truth was that Judah wanted no commerce with printed books, which he viewed as a means of duplicating the most stupid ideas in a moment and spreading trash throughout the world, to use his own words.

What Ser Aldo finally had to settle for was Judah’s membership in the
Neakdemia
, that group of earnest patricians who met regularly at the Aldine Press to converse in the ancient tongues. One among them was Pietro Bembo, then a rising star in the humanist firmament. It was to Bembo that Judah mentioned his learned wife, Grazia, and her immaculate hand.

Now this Bembo was neither better nor worse than others of his stripe — that is to say, haughty, snobbish, and prejudiced against Jews. Yet at the sound of the word “Greek,” his bigotry evaporated and he became as eager for information of me as a besotted suitor.

“Does this wife of yours write Greek as well as Latin?” he asked Judah.

“Impeccably,” Judah replied proudly. “I taught her myself.”

“Then she is the one we need for Ser Aldo’s edition of the poems of Sappho. A woman’s delicate touch would not go amiss in that maze of ambiguities. Besides, you will be there to assist the work, for you need only walk across your bedchamber to correct your scribe.”

This suggestion put Judah into a quandary. To mix the roles of provost and husband, he felt, was to court disaster in both endeavors. “If my honorable wife wishes to take on the task, I have no objection,” he told Bembo. “But you must find her another editor. When it comes to scholarship, Madonna Grazia is, so to say, her own man.

Looking back, I realize what a generous gesture Judah made that day. A different husband would have kept his wife bent over her script as if over a spinning wheel and then taken all the credit for the product of her labors . . . and the payment as well. By forcing me to meet Ser Aldo on my own, Judah laid the basis for any reputation which I now enjoy as a scholar. I see that now. And I praise him for his generosity of spirit and purse. But at the time, my insight was clouded by my timidity. I had no wish to be my own man.” I was flattered by Judah’s confidence in me of course. But I was also intimidated by the stern air of pedantry that hung over the Aldine circle. I would be honored to do the work, I told Judah, but I was truly terrified by the prospect of coming face-to-face with the formidable Aldus.

“Aldo is not the bear people take him for,” he assured me. “He is a man with a mission. A man on fire. And, occasionally, those who approach him closely may get a bit singed. But never burned, Grazia.”

“Scorched is more like it, from what I have heard,” I replied. “They say that this Aldus exhibits a
terribilita
of temper equal to that of Michelangelo Buonarroti.”

“There is only one way for you to find out,” he answered. “Meet with the man. See for yourself. Then make an independent judgment. I have arranged for you to call on him this coming Monday. He expects you at the stroke of noon.”

“But what shall I say?” I wailed. “What shall I do?”

“Do and say whatever comes naturally to you,” he answered, quite untouched by my perturbation. “Haggling over wages is no different from haggling over a tapestry or a goblet. Believe me, Grazia, in the matter of bargaining, Aldo is a child in comparison to you. And besides . . .” He leaned forward and tapped me playfully under the chin. “You and he have something in common. You both believe that the printed book will be the salvation of the human race.”

His arguments were persuasive. But even more enticing to me was the promise that a gondola would be hired to take me to the appointment. We were living on the island of Murano then and the prospect of being whisked across the lagoon and wafted past the great palaces on the Grand Canal lured me into agreement.

The Grand Canal did not disappoint. Bordered like a Byzantine illumination by shimmering golden palaces called Ca’ d’Oro or Ca’ Rezzonico (
ca’
being short for
casa
in the Venetian dialect), that waterway is surely the most magical in the world, especially when the sunlight dances on the surface, as it did that day.

At the time, Venezia was a city of women. Courtesans of both high and low estate constituted some ten percent of the population of the city. As soon as my gondolier turned off the canal I began to see women hanging out of windows, their bare arms perched on velvet pillows, their strong perfume wafting down to the water below, their ever-present songbirds perched beside them in golden cages, echoing the seductive serenades of their mistresses.

In due course we made a sharp turn into the small
rio
spanned by the renowned Ponte delle Tette, the Bridge of Tits, which I had heard much of but had never seen.

The Ponte delle Tette lives up to its reputation. Try to imagine layers of women stacked in rows from one end of the bridge to the other, each one naked from the waist up, their jeweled white hands cupping their milky breasts, thrusting them out at all comers as if to say, “Come and suck, you sons of women.”

Observing my distaste, the gondolier was quick to inform me that this spectacle was sanctioned by the Venetian Senate. “It brings trade to the city,” he explained, as if the benefits of trade excused any transgression of morality or taste. There speaks a Venetian.

Hardly had I begun to recover from my astonishment at the bridge than we drew up before Maestro Aldo’s establishment. Here a shock of a quite different sort awaited me. Nailed to the post that served to anchor the gondolas that came to his establishment, the proprietor had posted a notice printed in the elegant cursive script for which the Aldine Press is celebrated, and addressed to Whoever You Are. It read: “
Aldus begs you once and for all to state briefly what you want and then leave quickly, unless you have come, like Hercules, to support the weary Atlas on your shoulders. For that is what you will do when you enter this door.
”

Not encouraging. But I gathered my courage and jangled the bellpull. No response. I tugged at the thing again. Again no one answered. Altogether I had to signal four times before the door curtain was pulled aside.

There stood a man, slim and sprightly, with bright eyes, round spectacles, and a very bushy head of wiry hair which stood out in all directions. I introduced myself and was invited to enter by this person, who did not seem to recognize me even when I identified myself as the wife of Leone del Medigo. But when I mentioned Greek, the bright eyes lit up.

“Oh yes, the lady scholar.” Suddenly, he was all attention. “Welcome to Aldo’s domain, madonna
ebrea
. I hear you are a meticulous grammarian with an immaculate hand.”

Of course I went tongue-tied at the compliment like a bashful milkmaid. But I needn’t have worried about what to say to Ser Aldo. He took care of all the talking. Words flowed forth — gushed is more the accurate word — from his lips like a spring torrent, almost all of them complaints. He was, he explained, beset by two main problems — “among six hundred others,” to use his own hyperbolic term — which interrupted and hindered his studies.

“First of all, there are the numerous letters of learned men from all over demanding answers. If I were to reply to all of them, I would spend the rest of my days and nights on earth writing letters, do you see?”

I nodded my understanding.

“Then,” he went on, “there are those who visit me. Some come to greet me. Some come to find out what is new. Others — and this is by far the largest number — come for lack of anything else to do. ‘Let us go and visit Aldus,’ they say. They come in droves and Sit around idly like leeches that will not let go the skin until they are engorged with my blood.”

I interrupted with an offer to leave at once if that would release him for his more pressing duties. But he brushed aside the suggestion and went on with his laments.

“I pass over those who come to recite their poetry or some prose composition they want published by our press, and this very often clumsy and unpolished since they cannot brook the toil and tedium of the file.” He stopped suddenly. “You do not have a poem you wish me to publish?”

I assured him I had not.

“Nor a prose piece?”

“Nor that either,” I answered, a not entirely genuine answer since I did secretly harbor a draft of my
Book of Heroines
in my
studiolo
. But I kept this information to myself and shook my head energetically back and forth to deny that I was in any way, shape, or form an author.

“Thank God.” He breathed a deep sigh of relief and took my hand. “You, madonna
ebrea
, will allow us to say these things to you since you are at once very learned and very kind.”

I opened my mouth to deny these exaggerated compliments but was cut off. “When I speak to you,” he went on, “I speak to one into whose hands these books of ours may come.” He turned away and, without ceasing to talk for a moment, grabbed a sheaf of proofs in what seemed to be a totally haphazard way. “Read the brief introductory discussion I have written for the books of Cicero.” He pressed the sheaf of papers into my hand. “And do not judge me reproachfully as Hannibal did Formio. For I have been more pressed and harassed than usual these past two months. So let me off kindly when you have read them.”

In this circuitous way, I was given to understand that my first task for the Aldine Press would be to correct the proofs of the writings of Maestro Aldus himself. No mention was made of payment. I was ushered out as volubly as I had been ushered in, the gentleman exhorting me to the end. As we sailed out of the
rio
his strong, passionate voice rose above the waves. “Remember, madonna, that those who cultivate letters must be supplied with the books they need. Until this is done, we cannot rest . . .”