The Last Jew (40 page)

He had been ordained eight months before. 'I shall be leaving here in a few days. One of my teachers, Padre Enrique Sagasta, has been made auxiliary bishop of Toledo. He has arranged for me to be assigned as his aide. He is a noted Catholic scholar and historian, and he encourages my wish to follow his path. So I am about to begin an apprenticeship, as you had done.'

'Your father would be proud of you, Padre Espina.'

'I cannot thank you enough, señor. You have given my father back to me,' the priest said.

'May I return tomorrow to see my patients?'

Padre Espina was visibly uncomfortable. Yonah knew he didn't wish to appear ungrateful yet was unable to grant too much lest he bring trouble to himself. 'You may come in the morning. But I warn you, it may well be the last visit that will be allowed.'

When he appeared next day, he learned that Doña Sancha Berga had died during the night.

Don Berenguer received the news of his mother's death stoically. 'I am glad she is free,' he said.

Each surviving member of the family had been notified that morning that they were formally condemned for heresy and would be executed at an auto de fé in the near future. Yonah knew there was no delicate way to broach what was burdening his soul.

'Don Berenguer, burning is the worst way to die.'

Between them there flashed shared knowledge of horrible, drawn-out pain, of flesh as charring meat, of blood boiling.

'Why do you tell me so cruel a thing? You think I am unaware?'

'There is a way to escape it. You must reconcile yourself with the Church.'

Berenguer looked at him and saw a disapproving Catholic he had never noted before. 'Indeed, must I, Señor Physician?' he said coldly. 'It is too late. The sentence is cast in steel.'

'Too late to save your life, but not too late to buy a quick end from the garrote.'

'You think I cut my flesh on an idle whim, and bound myself to my mother's faith only to renounce it? Have I not told you of my determination to die a Jew?'

'You can die a Jew in your heart. Merely tell them you repent, and buy release. You are forever a Jew, because by Jewish law consecration to the faith is passed from mother to child. Since your mother was born of a Jewish mother, so were you. No declaration can change that. By the ancient law of Moses you are a Jew, and by stating that which they are eager to hear, you will gain a quick strangling and avoid the torture of a slow and terrible death.'

Berenguer closed his eyes. 'Yet it is a coward's way, robbing me of the one noble moment, the single satisfaction I am able to find in my dying.'

'It is not cowardly. Most rabbis are agreed that it is not a sin to accept conversion at the point of a sword.'

'What do you know of rabbis and the law of Moses?' Berenguer stared at him. Yonah could see realization manifest itself in the other man's eyes.

'My God,' Berenguer said.

'Are you able to have contact with the others of your family?'

'Sometimes they lead us to the courtyard for exercise at the same time. It is possible to exchange a few words.'

'You must tell them to seek Jesus and gain the mercy of a quicker end.'

'My sister, Monica, and her husband, Andrés, are devout Christians. I shall advise my brother, Geraldo, to do as you suggest.'

'I am not to be allowed to see you again.' He walked to Berenguer and embraced him, and kissed him on both cheeks.

'May we meet in a happier place,' Don Berenguer said. 'Go in peace.'

'Peace be with you, Yonah said, and called for the guard.

*

That Wednesday evening, in the middle of a game of draughts that Yonah was winning, Friar Bonestruca left the game board and began to caper in front of his children. For a little while it was charming. Bonestruca made wry faces and soft merry sounds as he leaped this way and that. His children laughed and pointed. Squinting, Dionisio ran towards his playful father to see him better and threw a small wooden ball at him.

On and on the friar frolicked. His smile vanished, the sounds grew less merry and more guttural, and still he capered and leaped. His face grew rosy with effort and then dark and bitter, yet still the tall figure caroused and whirled, his black habit billowing, his bobbing face become ugly with rage.

The children grew silent and frightened. They huddled away from him, watching wide-eyed, the girl Hortensia open-mouthed as if soundlessly screaming. María Juana, their mother, spoke to them quietly and herded them from the room. Yonah wished he could go too, but he could not. He sat at the table watching the terrible dance as it slowed and slowed. Finally it ceased, Bonestruca dropping in exhaustion to his knees.

Presently María Juana came back. She wiped her friar's face with a moistened cloth and left again, this time to return with wine. Bonestruca drank two glasses and then allowed her to help him back to his seat.

It was a while before he looked up. 'I am taken sometimes by spells.'

'I see,' Yonah said.

'Do you, indeed? And what is it that you see?'

'Nothing, señor. It is a manner of speech.'

'It has happened in the company of the priests and friars with whom I carry on my duties. They are watching me.'

Was it the sick man's imagination? Yonah wondered. 'They have followed me here. They know of María Juana and the children.'

It was probably true, Yonah decided. 'What will they do?'

Bonestruca shrugged. 'I think they are waiting to see if the spells are a passing thing.' He frowned at Yonah. What do you think is the cause?'

It was a form of madness. Yonah thought this but couldn't say it. Nuño had told him once, when talking of insanity, that he had noted a commonality in the history of some of the persons whom he had treated. The shared fact was that the afflicted person had had malum venereum when young and had become mad only after years had passed. Nuño had not drawn a theory from this observation, but he had found it interesting enough to pass on to his apprentice, and now it came to Yonah's mind.

'I can't be certain, but ... perhaps it has to do with the pox.'

'The pox, is it! You are wrong, Physician, for I have not had the pox for ever so long. I think it is Satan, come to wrestle for my soul. It is grievous labor fighting the Devil, but I have managed to drive off the archfiend each time.'

Yonah was speechless but he was saved by Bonestruca's attention being reclaimed by the draughts board. 'Was it your turn to land a blow with your soldiers or my own?'

'It was yours, señor,' Yonah said.

He was disturbed and played poorly the rest of the evening, while Bonestruca appeared to be refreshed and clear-minded. The friar ended the game in short order and was cheerful and content with his victory.

Despite what Padre Espina had said, on the following day Yonah went to the prison and attempted to see Don Berenguer, but in Espina's place there was an older priest who looked at him and merely shook his head, sending him away.

The auto de fé was held six days later. The morning before the executions, the physician Callicó left Saragossa and rode far away, going to visit patients at the far edge of the district, a trip that forced him to spend several days away from home.

He had fears that this time he had overstepped, and that under torture Berenguer might reveal the presence and identity of another Judaizer, but it did not happen. When Yonah returned to Saragossa there were those among his patients who were happy to fill him in on the details of the act of faith, which had been well attended as always. Each member of the Jew Bartolomé family had died in a state of grace, kissing the cross held to their lips and then strangled before the burning by quick rotations of the screw that tightened the steel garrote.

36

Draught Games

When next Yonah appeared at the finca by the river for an evening of draughts, he saw that María Juana had a large, fresh darkening under her swollen left eye and covering most of her cheek, and he also noted bruises on the arms of the little girl named Hortensia.

Bonestruca greeted him with a nod and spoke little, concentrating so that he won the first game after a close battle. During the second game the friar was sullen and played badly, and soon it was apparent that the game was lost to him.

When the baby, Filomena, began to wail, Bonestruca leaped to his feet. 'I want silence!'

María Juana picked up the baby and ushered her children hastily into the other room. The two men played in a quietness broken only by the clacking of the stone pieces against the wooden board.

Presently, during the third game, María Juana appeared to serve a plate of dates and fill the wineglasses.

Bonestruca regarded her moodily until she left the room. Then he looked at Yonah. 'Where is it that you live?'

When Yonah told him, he nodded. 'That is where we shall play draughts next week. Is it agreeable to you?'

'Yes, of course,' Yonah said.

It was less than agreeable to Reyna. She knew the visitor when he appeared at the front door. Everyone in Saragossa was aware of this friar and knew what he was.

She ushered him into the house and seated him comfortably, then announced his presence to Yonah. When she served them with wine and refreshment she kept her gaze down, and she withdrew as soon as possible.

It was obvious that it frightened her to see Yonah consorting with Bonestruca. The next day, he saw puzzlement in her face, but she didn't ask him any questions. She was never the least bit unclear about their roles; she knew that it was his house and she was a servant every place but in bed. But a week later, she went to her village for three days, and when she returned she informed him she had bought a house of her own and would be leaving his employ.

'When?' he said, dismayed.

'I don't know. Before too long.'

'And why?'

'To return home. The money Nuño left has made me a very rich woman by my village's standards.'

'I shall miss you,' he said truthfully.

'But not terribly. I am a convenience for you.' When he started to protest she held up her hand. 'Yonah. I am old enough to be your mother. It is nice to feel tenderness when we share a bed, but more often I think of you as a son or a nephew of whom I am fond.'

She told him not to fret. 'I will send a strong girl to take my place, a young girl who is a good worker.'

Within ten days a boy from her village drove a donkey cart to Yonah's house and helped her load it. The belongings she had accumulated while working for three maestros made up a sparse collection that easily fit into the small cart.

'Reyna. Are you certain you want to do this?' Yonah asked her, and she made the only gesture that broke the servant-and-master convention under which they had lived. She reached out and placed her warm palm against his face, and the look she gave him contained tenderness and respect, and also an unmistakable farewell.

When she was gone there was a stillness in the rooms, and it seemed to Yonah as though the house had been emptied.

He had forgotten the bitter taste of loneliness. He threw himself into work, riding out ever farther to care for those in need, lingering in the homes of patients for a few more minutes of human contact, chatting at length with shopkeepers about business, and with farmers about crops. On his own property he pruned a dozen more of the old olive trees. He spent more time translating the Avicenna; he had already translated a major part of The Canon of Medicine, and that fact excited him and spurred him on.

True to her word, Reyna sent him a young woman, named Carla Santella, to serve him as housekeeper. She was a stocky girl who worked willingly and kept the house clean, but she never spoke and he disliked her cooking. After several weeks, he sent her away. Reyna sent as a replacement Petronila Salva, a widow with facial warts; she cooked well but distracted him by talking too much, and he kept her only four days.

After that, Reyna sent no one else.

He was fast coming to dread his weekly mock wars with Bonestruca over the draughts board, not knowing whether the friar would appear as a brilliant competitor or as the dark-tempered man in whom reason and stability were fast slipping away.

On a Wednesday evening when they were to play at the friar's finca again, María Juana let him in and motioned him toward the inner room, where he found Bonestruca seated before the table, which held an open book instead of the draughts board. The friar was studying his own face in a hand mirror.

For a moment he didn't acknowledge Yonah's greeting. Then, still gazing into the mirror, he said, 'Do you see evil when you look at me, physician?'

Yonah chose each word carefully. 'I see a most comely face.'

'Gracious features, would you say?'

'Most handsome, señor.'

'The face of a just man?'

'A face that has stayed remarkably innocent and unchanged by time's passing.'

'Do you know the long poem called The Divine Comedy, by the Florentine, Dante Alighieri?'

'No, señor.'

'Pity.'

He turned his eyes on Yonah. 'The first section of the poem, called Inferno, is a portrait of the lower reaches of Hell.'

Yonah had no reply. 'The Florentine poet has long been dead, no?'

'Yes ... he is dead.' Bonestruca continued to peer into the mirror.

'Shall I get the board and lay out the pieces?' Yonah suggested. He stood and walked to the table. Seeing the back of the mirror for the first time, he realized it was made of silver, greatly tarnished. He could see the silversmith's mark, near the top of the handle: HT. And knew it for one of the mirrors his father had made for the count of Tembleque.

'Fray Bonestruca,' he said. He recognized the betraying tension in his own voice, but Bonestruca didn't appear to have heard. His eyes were on the mirrored image but unfocused, like a blind man's, the gaze of someone sleeping with open eyes.

Yonah was unable to resist rashness in an attempt to examine an object made by his father, but when he tried to take it from Bonestruca he found that the friar's hands were immovable. For a moment he struggled to free the mirror until the thought came to him that Bonestruca was pretending to madness and aware of everything. Yonah abandoned him in terror and made his way through the door.

'Señor?' María Juana said as he entered the outer room, but in his perturbation he walked past her and fled the finca.

The following afternoon when he rode back to his own house after visiting patients, he found María Juana waiting for him near the barn, nursing her baby in the shade produced by her tethered donkey.