He had walked to Granada. That he had been able to thread his way through the inquisitorial police guards and leave Seville was a miracle; that he had walked all the way to Granada was unbelievable. Perhaps not. He seemed like a shadow of a child to all of us. So insubstantial as to be nearly invisible. The hollow look in his eyes, haunted by visions he could never express, he was more phantom than flesh and blood. But finally the hollowness began to leave his eyes. At first Luis could not grasp the safeness, the security of our beautiful city. He could not believe that Jews could go anywhere, practice openly their religion. He badgered Papa to teach him more Hebrew. Indeed he reveled in the Jewish traditions of our household. My papa’s family, the Cardozos, had lived for generations in Granada and had never been forced to convert. When Luis told me how his family had given up the Catholic faith and returned to their old faith—begun to secretly practice Judaism—it seemed so bizarre and strange. They knew so little. They pieced together the traditions, but it was like a blanket with immense holes in it. It was unbelievable when he told us the story of his first Seder. He had never known what the fourth question was until my youngest brother, David, had spoken it in a clear voice: “On all other nights we eat either sitting or reclining, but why on this night do we recline?”
That was not all Luis learned. When my other grandmother, who is now dead, baked the bread for the Sabbath dinner, she always took a pinch of dough and threw it into the oven while murmuring a brache, a blessing. When he had asked what the blessing was about, she told him the story. She explained that the bread was offered to remember the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The small piece of dough, about the size of an olive, was burned in the oven as a kind of sacrifice. “We diminish our joy,” she said, “in memory of the destruction of the Temple.”
Papa loved teaching Luis and not just about being Jewish. Papa said he had never seen such a quick mind as that of Luis, and he arranged for him to be apprenticed to our cousin Jacobo Cardozo, who was a court physician. But most important, Luis had impressed Yusuf Hassan, the court herbalist, who let him into the forbidden gardens of the Alhambra, where he cultivated his rare plants. Jacobo Cardozo said that Luis was the most extraordinary student he had ever had, and now Luis, who is barely twenty-four, has been called in to attend King Boabdil and the royal family. But here is the problem. King Boabdil and his Moors have been defeated by the imperial forces of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. And I can assure you that Luis shall never serve in the court of the monarchs who burned his parents.
“Abuela, can I touch your bald spot?”
“David!” Mama scolds.
But Abuela has wakened up. She blinks as if the sun is too strong. The little ones, Emmanuel and David, love to touch the bald patch on her head. David tells her that it looks like a map he has seen in Papa’s cousin Jacobo’s house. Oh, now Jacobo is coming up to her to say something. She wrinkles her nose. He always eats lots of garlic. Poor Abuela out here on the balcony, hearing crowds cheer the monarchs she couldn’t care less about, waves of garlic washing over her, David patting her bald spot, his fingers still sticky with candy—no wonder she pretends to sleep.
Oh well, as long as I am out here, I might as well watch with the others. I’ll stand right beside Abuela and make sure she is all right. I bend down. “I am right behind you, Abuela Miriam,” I whisper softly in her ear. A ghost smile passes over her face, perhaps for the ghost girl who had to die when she left Seville those long years ago.
Although our own house is on the Street of the Nasrid, we still have a good view of the main avenue by which the monarchs will make their entry into our city. It has been just two months since King Boabdil, the last ruler of the Nasrid dynasty of Moors, capitulated to the Spanish monarchs. Ours was the last Islamic stronghold in the kingdom of Spain. And now it has fallen. The Moors who practiced the religion of Islam were always our best friends. But they are no longer in power, so I wonder what will happen to us. My mama had to leave Toledo when she was a little girl on the day of her First Communion. Her whole family came here. It was one of the few safe places in Spain, and the royal family and the court promised it would always be safe in Granada. But it was a different king then. And Isabella was just a girl. Little girls change.
And cities will change. Our lovely Granada, perched on the edge of a beautiful valley, forever has insulated us from the ugliness of the rest of Spain, from the Inquisition, from the hatred. I am a spoiled rich girl. I know nothing of discomfort. I have never really feared, and now I fear coming out of this silken place I call a cocoon, this haven. I fear it terribly. I have seen nothing and yet in a sense I have seen it all—in the eyes of my dear cousin Luis. I am deeply in love with Luis and he with me. We had planned a life here, to be married in Granada, where I have lived my entire life. He was to be a physician in the court of King Boabdil. But all that is changing.
The crowd roars. I stand on my tiptoes to catch a glimpse of this queen. She is supposed to be very tiny, but they say she rides on a high throne placed within her carriage. My eyes flinch. There is a blinding dazzle of sunlight and gold. I glance down. What is Abuela clasping in her hand? Ah, the perfume vial that King Boabdil gave to Luis the time Luis treated him for the gout. Luis gave that to me. But Abuela had so loved the scent of the lime oil that I gave it to her. She keeps it in the small reticule that always hangs from her wrist. A dozen times a day she takes it out to sniff the scent.
There is another roar from the crowds. In the distance I can see the white horses of the monarchs, clad in their golden battle carapaces. What must Luis be thinking, feeling? To see once more the monarchs who had sent his mother and father to the stake. My beloved Luis! I must go stand beside him. I can see that his knuckles grip the rail of the balcony so hard they are white. I lace my arm through his. “I am here, Luis. I am here.”
The queen passes by. Even from here we can see that the queen does not wear her years well. Stout and slightly bent, she raises a jeweled hand to wave at the throngs of people. The king looks much younger by comparison. Luis has been silent all this time. Then he speaks. “You see that man riding in the carriage behind the monarchs?”
“Yes,” I say.
“That is the queen’s confessor—Torquemado.”
There is a thin smile on the man’s face.
Luis’s hand clasps my hand more tightly now. He begins to speak in a low voice. “It is Torquemado who tells the Muslims not to fear anything. He says that the queen gives them guarantees of full liberty to practice their religion. To protect their property and customs. He says that Ferdinand and Isabella took a solemn oath promising this. I don’t believe it. The queen and king are weak and stupid. Torquemado will turn them, despite their oath.” Luis’s face has turned deathly pale.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
He turns his dear face to me. “Would I kill them if I could, Esther? Would I kill the queen, the king, and their confessor, Torquemado, who are responsible for my parents’ deaths? I am a physician now. I am pledged through my oath to save lives at any cost. But I do hate.” His nostrils pinch together and I know what he is thinking, no, not thinking, smelling. He told me about it once. I had begged him not long ago to tell me all about what had happened in Seville. I felt that I must somehow share his burden, the burden of his parents’ deaths. So he told me about the stench of those fires sizzling with the flesh of his parents. How the stench of the burnings every day for more months than he could remember finally drove him from Seville. He ran not simply to save himself but to escape the terrible fumes of burning flesh.
“How in God’s name do I heal myself of hatred, Esther? If it becomes like the life blood that courses through my veins, that pumps through my heart, how am I then any better than Torquemado?”
I cannot answer him. Then behind me I hear the clatter of a small object falling on the tile of the balcony and the sweet scent of lime oil fills the air. “Abuela!” I scream.
And then Abuela, in a very clear voice, almost tha
t of a little girl, says a most peculiar thing. “Don Solomon! Adecuado por…” I do not even have time to wonder who this Don Solomon is, for the words die on my great-grandmother Miriam’s lips as the lime-scented oil spills from the vial.
Luis was right. No promises were kept, no guarantees respected. Indeed, my memory of our second-to-last night in Granada was not that of Luis’s and my wedding held in the synagogue on the Street of the Jews, but of clapping my hands over David’s ears as the voice of a town crier called out the news: Six Jews and two Conversos had confessed to performing an “act of conjuration” by tearing out the heart of a Christian child they had crucified on Good Friday a week past.
Blood libel. So now it had come to Granada. Luis had told me some stories that he had heard in Seville and other towns he had passed through years before, on his way to Granada. The most famous case had been the Holy Child of La Guardia. A body was never found. A child was never reported missing yet eight people were arrested, tried, and executed for a crime that never happened. It was all part of a strategy, Luis said. When it could not be proven that Conversos were secretly practicing Judaism, the officers of the Inquisition, the tribunals, began to spread myths about Jewish religious crimes, such as ritual murder or the desecration of the host. And these accusations had the added benefit of not just striking at the Conversos but the professed Jews as well.
The first story of blood libel in Granada was made public on March 28. Two days later, on March 30, in the council chamber of the captured Alhambra, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand signed the decree that drove into exile every Jew in Spain. We would have until the end of July to leave.
Now our family has been on the road for many days traveling west toward the frontier of Portugal. They say that there is no Inquisition in Portugal, that there are no tribunals. We must just pay a certain number of Portuguese cruzados for a tax and they will allow us to settle. I am tired of riding in the wagon next to Mama, who is still crying about Abuela Miriam. So sometimes I get out and walk. I cannot cry for her. I think she was an old lady of over one hundred years when she died. She had moved from Seville to Toledo, from Toledo to Granada—why in God’s name should she have to move to Portugal?
“Will we be allowed to settle anywhere in the country, Luis?” I ask.
“So they say,” Luis replies in a distracted manner.
We are approaching Guadalquivir River, the river that begins in Seville. I must keep talking. This part of our journey will be unbearably hard for my dear husband. Too many memories. Although it has been hard for us to leave Granada, I believe with every step it takes me and Luis away from a vile country and two demon monarchs to a better place. The glorious kingdom of Castille, the jewel of Spain, to me is an obscene place. If Luis and I are blessed with children, I would never want them born on Spanish soil.
We climb to the crest of a hill now. Below, the sinuous river flows into the port of Palos. All the wagons are stopping, for the view is grand. The sight in the harbor below us is an arresting one. Three ships with royal banners flying bob silently on their anchor cables.
“So that is the grand enterprise,” Papa says as he walks over to us.
“Yes, the ships of Columbus.” Luis sighs. “He saved my uncle’s life.”
“Who, Columbus?” Papa and I both say at once.
“Christopher Columbus. He seeks to sail to the Indies. My Uncle Tomás was released from prison after he was arrested with my father because he, along with Luis Santangel, the king’s exchequer, had argued Columbus’s cause to the king and queen and raised much of the money. And Tomás’s daughter was to marry Santangel’s son.”
“So they seek a new world,” Papa says softly.
“A new world to make filthy,” I hiss.
The sound of tambourines swallows my words. It is the two rabbis who have been a half kilometer behind us. They refused our offer to ride in the wagons but insist on walking side by side with the people singing songs, chanting prayers, telling stories. Emmanuel and David have walked with them for several miles. I am suddenly ashamed of my bitter words. I must be like these two rabbis—cheerful and ready to encourage. I am a spoiled girl. There is no room nor time for spoiled girls now.
This world that I am leaving will begin to fade. Could there be some way of keeping the good parts and forgetting the bad? I will remember our Sabbath dinners, the light dwindling in the sky, my father’s mother lighting the Shabbos candles. In the summer there was the smell of the wax swirled with the scent of the jasmine that blew in from our walled garden. I remember the first time that Abuelo Cardozo told me that some believed that the Sabbath came as a bride, a beautiful bride, dressed I then imagined in a gown of lace like the lace of my great-great-grandmother Doña Grazia Sanchez. And I shall of course remember always the splendor of the Alhambra, where we were sometimes invited by the court apothecary to come visit. There were the gardens, the pavilions, and the pools. But what had fascinated me the most was the filigreed stonework and plaster that made the palace and all the buildings seem as if they had been constructed from lace. I must think of these things now. They will take my mind away from the heat, the soreness of my feet, the tedium of this endless journey to Portugal. I remember how Papa would play a game with me and Avraham. We would stand in front of one of the stone walls that had been pierced to make a seeming infinity of designs—rosettes, entangled figures, a myriad of geometric shapes—and then he would ask us to find the patterns. It was like a treasure hunt. I was very good at it. Papa told me that I had a lace maker’s eye, just like my great-great-grandmother Grazia Sanchez.
I have with me in the trunk that was once Abuela Miriam’s some of the pieces of lace that Doña Grazia made so long ago in Seville. And in my pocket is the perfume vial. I run my fingers over the vial, and even without seeing find the patterns. I know the loveliness of the designs. How could God create a human mind capable of conceiving such subtle and intricate patterns and one that could invent as well the atrocities of blood libel? How for that matter could the Inquisition have been invented, the quemaderos, the machines of torture that I have heard rumors and whispers about that lurk in the dungeon prisons beneath the great cities like Seville and Toledo and Madrid?
I must stop walking for a second. The sun beats down on my head, through my scarf to that patch I always scratch. The sun feels like a hammer on an anvil that is my head. My bad habit, that patch! How long have the women in my family been doing this? How many have scratched themselves bald? I don’t like to think about it. I press my hands to my eyes. Sunspots and little broken curly designs dance on the insides of my eyelids. A pattern…a pattern. I shall look for a pattern. In the trunk there is a small piece of lace, stained, but with a pattern like that of the scales of a dragonfly’s wings. I close my eyes tighter and try to picture its delicate design. But suddenly I know that the stain is blood. It is blood and it is spreading. The lace is becoming drenched in blood. Blood lace, blood libel. The words swirl in my head. An inconceivable notion like a shadow crosses my mind: Is it possible that there is no God? Or worse, is it possible that God has simply left us, abandoned us on this dusty road? Has God really forsaken me? That is my last thought as I slowly crumple to the ground and breathe in the dust of the road.
Chapter 18
IT WAS FRIDAY NIGHT. Jerry was dressing with care. She tied her hair back with a velvet ribbon and put on a pretty blouse that Constanza had bought her for Easter. She tucked it into some new gray wool slacks that she had bought on a recent shopping trip and thought were too nice to wear for school. There was a deep silence in the house. So deep that any little sound seemed to pop out with an exclamation mark. And what Jerry heard now was the rasp of a match being struck. Jerry paused. These were not Lenten candles. These were Shabbos candles, candles just like the ones Esther had watched her grandmother light in Granada. But Aunt Constanza didn’t know this. Her aunt spoke the truth. She simply did not know. And who did know, for when a custom, a tradition, is cut off from its roots or practice
d so long in secret, it begins to disintegrate. It becomes lost or turned into something it was never intended through some strange process of denial. Jerry imagined these things, these traditions like tattered remnants, unintelligible, or shattered pieces like fossils smashed on the desert of what once had been a rich faith, then picked up again, perhaps unrecognizable and patched into something else. A crazy quilt of faith and gods and ritual.
Constanza’s back was facing her as she came into the kitchen. Outside the light was dwindling in the sky. She could smell the wax, the wax as it mingled with the sagebrush. How far had they come? Why do I know, Jerry thought, why she lights these candles, and she does not? Why do I know why she throws the piece of dough in the oven, and she does not? Why do I know that this time between time, this holy time that happens every seventh day and arrives like a mystical bride veiled in lace to be welcomed on the Sabbath day, is called Shabbos, and she does not?
The light drained from the sky, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains—minutes before red and feverish—turned violet and then a dusky blue. The first stars pierced the sky as Jerry and Constanza sat down to the roast chicken.
Constanza looked out the window over the two flickering candles. “Ah, Estrellita.” She sighed, and a look of utter peace settled upon her face.
“What?” Jerry asked aloud.
“Estrellita—‘little star.’ You know estrella, that is ‘star’ in Spanish, but these first stars are called estrellitas. My great-great-oh, so many greats-grandmother’s name was Estrella. Lovely name. And when she was little, they sometimes called her Estrellita—little star. I liked that so much I had a dolly that I called Estrellita.”