The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (72 page)

I gaped, mouth hanging open like a cretin, as the trio passed slowly before my eyes and up the narrow staircase to the
piano nobile
while I remained fixed to the spot, stunned.

When he returned to the
sala
some moments later, Lord Pirro’s greeting to me was punctilious to the point of coldness. As if we had never met, he introduced himself to me as a personal envoy from the King of France. My honorable husband had borne the rigors of the journey with much courage and strength, he reported. A doctor consulted at Milano had predicted he would recover completely albeit slowly. A Venetian doctor should be brought in to confirm that opinion. Regretfully, he was unable to see to that last task as he had not yet paid his respects to the Doge. But with my permission he would return that evening. Then like a wraith he disappeared, leaving me to question if indeed it was he who had carried my wounded husband into my house or a figment of my imagination.

Later that morning the Venetian doctor came and pronounced his opinion. Maestro Judah had been treated skillfully at Marignano. There was no inflammation of the wound, no fever. All the patient needed was rest and plenty of licorice tea, licorice being beneficial for the brain, and to keep his head swathed in a wet bandage soaked in a tisane of comfrey and linden leaves.

“And do not worry yourself if his mind seems to wander,” he cautioned me. “The shock will wear off in time and he will regain his senses and his balance.” Would I? I wondered.

I will not dwell on the balance of that day, the longest day I have ever endured. Two apprehensions vied for my anxiety: first, that Lord Pirro would not return; second, that he would. Teetering like a rope dancer between these two possibilities, I so wore myself out that by vespers I was entirely overcome by fatigue. And I did indeed withdraw to my room and ready myself to retire. But I did not get into bed. Instead I placed myself on the sill of the window wrapped only in my
gamorra
, peering out into the
rio
from behind the half-open shutter, allowing the soft mists of the descending night to cool my fevered body.

Just after dark I heard the soft swish of paddles under my window. Mercury himself must have put wings on my feet, for I dashed down the stairs so quickly that I arrived at the gates before our porter.

I cannot imagine what that sedate old man made of the scene — his mistress in a loose
gamorra
, her hair flying, her feet bare, leaning out into the black water like a deckhand to grab the rope from the gondolier while he whose task it was to secure the vessel stood by at a loss.

“Off with you,” I muttered to the porter. And the old fellow discreetly took his leave. Just in time. A moment later, I hurled myself into the arms of the descending passenger, knocking his
berretta
into the canal and almost catapulting his own precariously balanced body after it.

What I write for you now are the secrets of a woman’s heart. I invite you into my grotto, my secret place, the place where my most beautiful and dangerous memories are kept. Come back with me in time and learn of the exquisite, tender, powerful currents that swept you into being.

Up, up we went. Up the stairs. Past the room where sleeping Judah lay, forgotten. And there in full view of all Venezia — for neither of us had the presence of mind to close the shutters — I undressed him and reaped for my services a cadenza of kisses on the neck, the ears, the mouth, the breasts, as I unlaced the doublet, then the
camicia
, then knelt to the task of removing the boots; he all the while draining my lips of their sweetness the way the hummingbird sucks the nectar from the deep throat of the nasturtium flower.

I kissed his toes. He kissed my ears. I squeezed his calves. He caressed my shoulders. I stroked his thighs, those marble pillars that I had adored from first sight. He cupped my breasts in his hands and buried his head between, folding them with little, delicate wanderings of his fingers.

We sank to the floor. And there on the cold stones he took me over, master to slave, pounding my willing body ceaselessly into the hard tiles as if his Venus rod were a hammer.

We did not speak. We simply lay face-to-face, our fingers soothing each other as if to smooth out the coruscating lines that unappeased longing had etched on our two spirits. Then slowly the pace quickened. Gentle fingers gave place to not so gentle teeth, nibbling, nipping, biting. Arms, legs, belly, ass, every part of me was rubbed and kneaded until no part was left unexplored.

Then it was my turn to play coachmaster. And I rode him the way Pantesilea, the Amazon queen, rode her charger into battle against the Greeks — free and wild, using my long plait as a whip to spur him on.

After many hours, when the field was drenched with sweat and spent seed, I left him and went in search of wine and rose water and fresh linen. When I returned we drank together and washed each other all over, part by part, limb by limb, cleaning and oiling those poor worn orifices that had been so well used.

And then a vagrant phrase from the pen of Koheleth came to my mind: “Stay ye with me, dainties. Refresh me with apples, for I am lovesick.” And I brought a bowl of small fruits to the bedside and some jelly that I myself had made out of quinces. For a lark he dipped his fingers into the jar and dabbed some of that jelly on my nipples. Not to be outdone, I brushed it on his lips and kissed it off. Then we fell into an orgy of dabbing and licking in every sweet place there is, and laughing at our foolish selves licking up jelly with our two tongues like greedy rabbits. And still we had hardly spoken a word to one another excepting for the formal salutations of the day before. But we needed no words to tell us that our hearts were as firmly entwined as our bodies.

Toward dawn I placed my sticky fingers over his eyes so that he might enjoy a brief sojourn in the arms of Morpheus. But the moment his eyes closed, my hands found their way back to his outstretched body, and with Koheleth again as my tutor I reached for a jar of sweet oil beside my bed and began to anoint him with it, running my fingers back and forth in the grooves between the toes, then circling the ankles, next the calves which curved into my hand as if made to fit there, then the thighs, and finally his private instruments of pleasure, squeezing and teasing them back to life with the oil but also now with little licks and nips until he awoke and taking me firmly in his muscled arms laid me upon my back, and thus we ended our long night as we had begun, with him the rider and me under his great weight, utterly mastered by him. A steed, true, but a triumphant one.

When two equals join in giving pleasure to each other, that and only that is true love, my son. The more delicate the balance, the greater the tension, the richer the pleasure. I think that, that night, we came as close as imperfect beings can come to perfect equilibrium. Should I regret the achievement of such perfection? I cannot. I took it as a brief return to Eden after more than twenty years of being cast out. And so God must have meant it. For the seed of that sowing which came into flower nine months later was you, my son.

There is little more to tell of this blessed encounter. At dawn we dressed so as to present a correct picture to the household, and spent a brief time sipping watered wine and saying our farewells. There never was the slightest doubt that we would say goodbye. We both knew better than to ask for more than one night in paradise. Sufficient unto the day, says the Holy Book.

But before he left, Lord Pirro did make a brief explanation of how he had come to bring Judah home to Venezia.

“I have known for a long time, Grazia, that I owed you a debt,” he began. “At Marignano I found my chance to begin repayment. The King was casting about for someone to conduct Maestro Judah back to Venezia —”

“But a lackey would have done for that task,” I cut in.

“Exactly,” he replied. “I volunteered for the lackey’s job in order to serve you. For I felt that it was not enough to give a gift or to make a speech or to ride up in full armor and sweep you off your feet . . . though I admit I thought of that often . . .” Here he reached under the table and squeezed my hand tightly. “I felt the need to humble myself before you, to truly make restitution for the indignity I had inflicted on you. And God gave me the opportunity when he put the life of someone you cherish into my hands.”

And in so doing He created a rift in my heart that no amount of time will erase, I thought.

The sun was full up by then and the boatman waiting. Our time in paradise had run out. But at the last second, just before he stepped into the waiting craft, he turned and beckoned to the gondolier to hand him a wrapped package lying on the seat.

“You are ever in my thoughts, Grazia, and will ever be as long as I draw breath. For proof I leave you this.” He placed the packet in my hand. “I spent my last penny on it when I was young and it is still the dearest thing I own.”

So saying, he boarded the craft, drew the curtains, and was whisked away.

For once in my life curiosity did not lead me into haste. I continued to stand on the landing until the gondola had disappeared in the mist. Then I took the package up to my room, where I would not be disturbed.

Slowly I peeled off the wax seals that secured the parcel. Then I untied the strings that bound it. At length the coverings were loosened and I peeled them away layer by layer. Paper on the outside. Then linen. And finally a silk jacket, gathered with a silk cord.

I sat with the silken bag in my lap for several minutes, savoring the moment. Then slowly I pulled at the cord and uncovered the object that was my lover’s most valued possession: Messer Mantegna’s portrait of me as Faustina’s twin.

From that moment until this one the portrait has never left me. It sits opposite me on an easel as I write for you the story of your beginnings. When I die it will be yours (if Madama does not get her hands on it first). Guard it well. It is a talisman of the splendor of your birth and of the great love that brought you into being.

47

F
ortuna does not offer us many opportunities to take our lives into our own hands. The moment of your conception was one such opportunity. Once I was certain of my pregnancy, I could have seized the moment to confess my indiscretion to Judah and set the course of our lives on an honest path. But instead I announced my condition as if it were an act of God and waited to see if an explanation would be demanded. None was. Judah could read the calendar as well as any man. He knew that the child growing in my womb could not be his. But, like me, he chose to treat my pregnancy as a sign that we had been forgiven our transgressions against God by being given a child.

Anything I might add to this confession of the great lie we foisted upon you . . . and Lord Pirro . . . and ourselves . . . could only be read as self-serving justification of an act that cannot be justified. When the moment of truth came, we stepped aside and let it pass in the most cowardly way. For that cowardice I beg you to forgive us. There is nothing more to say.

In March of the year you were born, a merchant by the name of Zacharia Dolphin rose up at a meeting of the Venetian
collegio
to demand that the Jews be prevented from contaminating Christian citizens. It was the presence of Jews that had brought on Venezia’s financial woes, he said, and pointed out that the moment Spain and Portugal had expelled the Jews from their lands, God showed His approval by showering on them the good fortune He had previously bestowed on Venezia.

Why had the Venetians fallen from favor? he asked. It was God’s punishment for allowing the perfidious nation of Jews to flourish in their midst. He cited a canon of the Third Lateran Council of the year 1179 which forbade Jews and Christians to dwell together. The Jews must be sequestered. Messer Dolphin had even chosen a location for them: the area of the New Foundry — the Ghetto Nuovo — in the parish of San Girolamo where, not inconveniently, he owned many houses.

When Judah brought home this news, I took it the way Jews have learned to do over centuries — with a shrug. If a Jew trembled at every Christian threat, the whole race would have palsy. Nor was Judah unduly distressed. He recalled that as far back as 1385 various
condotte
between the Jews and the Serenissima, as the Venetians called their state, had called for a place where Jews could live apart from the Christian population. But nothing had ever been done to enforce these provisos, he reminded me, and no doubt the same inaction would prevail in the future.

He did not figure into his calculations the disquiet of the people or the venom of the priests or the cupidity of the property owners. On April first of the year 1516, the Venetian Senate issued a proclamation that the Jews of Venezia were to be settled into the Ghetto Nuovo within ten days. Dolphin and his henchman, another property owner called Bragadin, had carried the Senate by eighty-six votes.

The news came to us via no less a personage than Rabbi Asher Meshullam, the one you hear spoken of as Anselmo del Banco. He came to our door on the night of the vote of sequestration, banging and shouting to be let in after we had locked up for the night. At first we mistook him for a housebreaker. But when Judah recognized the old rabbi’s voice he immediately ordered the locks undone. Meshullam, the wealthiest and most powerful Jew in Venezia, was at that time close to eighty. Nothing less than a catastrophe would have brought this frail old man out on a cold, wet night.