The Last Jew (43 page)

'Inés. Is it you?'

He dismounted clumsily and she fell back in fear. 'No, señor.'

'You are not Inés Saadi Denia, daughter of Isaac Saadi?' he said stupidly. The girl was staring at him.

'No, señor. I am Adriana. I am Adriana Chacon.'

Of course, he was a fool, he told himself. This was a young woman. When last he saw Inés she was little younger than this girl, and since then all the hard years had passed.

'Inés was my aunt, may her soul rest in eternal peace.'

Ah, Inés was dead. It gave him a pang to hear that she was gone: another door was closed. 'May she rest,' he muttered.

'I remember you,' he said suddenly. He realized this woman had been the child Inés had cared for, the small daughter of her older sister, Felipa. He remembered walking with Inés in Granada with that little girl between them, he and Inés each holding one of her hands.

The woman was looking at him uncertainly.

Yonah turned at a shout that said his presence was discovered by others. Men were running toward them desperately, three men from one direction, two men from another, holding work tools like weapons they would use to kill an invader.

38

The High Meadow

Before the running field workers could reach them, a spare, robust man came from one of the nearby houses. He had aged, but not so much that Yonah did not at once know Micah Benzaquen, who had been the Saadis' friend and neighbor in Granada. Benzaquen had been middle-aged when Yonah had met him; now he was still vigorous, but an old man. He peered at Yonah for a long moment, and when he smiled, Yonah saw that Benzaquen also recognized him.

'You have matured well, señor,' Benzaquen said. 'When I knew you last you were an enormous and ragged young shepherd, all hair and beard, as if you had a bush about your head. But what is your name? It is like the name of a beautiful city ...'

Yonah saw that during the brief time he would remain in this remote place it would be impossible to insist he was Ramón Callicó. 'Toledano.'

'Yes, Toledano, by my soul!'

'Yonah Toledano. Well met, Señor Benzaquen.'

'Where do you live now, Señor Toledano?'

'Guadalajara,' Yonah said, aware that he did not dare associate the name of Toledano with Saragossa. To his regret, the woman had lifted her bucket of water and made her escape as he and Benzaquen exchanged greetings. The running men had slowed to a walk, having noted that the stranger's sword and knife remained sheathed. By the time they arrived, still carrying farm implements with which he could have been skewered and hacked, he and Benzaquen were standing at ease and talking amicably.

Benzaquen introduced Pedro Abulafin, David Vidal, and Durante Chazan Halevi; and then a second group, Joachim Chacon, Asher de Segarra, José Diaz, and Fineas ben Portal.

Several men tended to Yonah's horse while he was led to the hospitality of Benzaquen's finca. Leah Chazan, Benzaquen's wife, was warm and gray-haired, with all the virtues of a Spanish mother. She gave him a bowl of hot water and a cloth and brought him to the privacy of the barn. By the time he was washed and refreshed, the small house was beginning to fill with the scent of baking spring lamb. His host awaited him with a jar of drink and two cups. 'Visitors to our little valley are extremely rare, so this is an occasion,' Benzaquen said, pouring coñac, and they drank to one another's health.

Benzaquen had noted Yonah's Arabian horse and the excellent quality of his clothing and weaponry. 'You are no longer a ragged shepherd,' he said, and smiled.

'I am a physician.'

'A physician? How fine!' Benzaquen said. Over the excellent meal soon served by his wife, he told Yonah what had befallen the converts after they and Yonah had taken separate paths.

'We left Granada in a caravan, thirty-eight wagons all bound for Pamplona, the principal city of Navarre, which we reached after agonizingly slow and difficult travel.'

They had stayed in Pamplona two years. 'Several of our people married there. Including Inés Denia. She became the wife of Isadoro Sabino, a carpenter,' Benzaquen said delicately, for both men had unpleasant memories of their discussion concerning Inés Denia the last time they had met.

'Alas,' Benzaquen said, 'for those of us from Granada, our joyous times in Pamplona were vastly overshadowed by tragedy.' One out of every five of the Granada New Christians had died in Pamplona of burning fever and bloody flux. Four members of the Saadi family were among those taken cruelly and swiftly in the terrible month of Nisan. 'Isaac Saadi and his wife Zulaika Denia died within hours of one another. Then their daughter Felipa sickened and died, and finally both Inés and her new husband, Isadoro Sabino, who had been married less than three months.

'The people of Pamplona blamed any newcomers for bringing death to their city, and when the pestilence had run its course those of us who had survived knew we must flee again.

'After much discussion we determined to cross the border into France and attempt to settle in Toulouse, although the decision was controversial. I, for one, was unhappy with both the route and the destination,' Benzaquen said. 'I pointed out that for centuries Toulouse had had a tradition of permitting violent acts against the Jews, and that we were separated from France by the high Pyrenees, through which we had to take our wagons, a prospect that seemed impossible.'

But some of Benzaquen's fellow conversos had scoffed at his fears, pointing out that they would come to France as Catholics and not as Jews. As for getting through the mountains, they knew that in the village of Jaca, which lay ahead, there were professional mountain guides, conversos like themselves, who could be hired to bring them through the passes. If the wagons could not get through the mountains, they said, they would take their most valuable possessions into France on the backs of pack animals. And so the chain of wagons had set out along the trail to Jaca.

'How did you locate this valley?' Yonah asked.

Benzaquen smiled. 'By accident.'

On the long, wooded mountain slopes, good camping sites for so large a party were hard to find. Often the travelers slept in their wagons, the vehicles strung out along the side of the trail. On such a night, between their sleeping and rising, one of Benzaquen's draft horses -- a valuable animal, and needed -- pulled its tether and wandered away. 'As soon as its absence was discovered in the first gray light, with four other men I set out to search, cursing the beast.'

Following flattened brush and broken branches, an occasional hoofprint, and droppings, they found themselves on a kind of natural stony trail that dropped downhill alongside a rushing stream. Finally they emerged from the woods and saw the horse grazing on the rich fodder of a small, hidden valley.

'We were immediately impressed by the good water and grass. We returned to the caravan and led the others to the valley because it offered a safe and sheltered resting place. We had only to widen the natural trail a bit in two places, and move several large rocks, and then we were able to bring the wagons down.

'At first we thought to stay only four or five days, to allow humans and animals to rest and restore their energy.' But everyone was struck by the beauty of the valley, and by the obvious fertility of the soil, he said. It wasn't lost to them that the place was wonderfully remote. To the east, it was two days of difficult travel to the closest village, Jaca, itself an isolated community that drew few travelers. And to the southeast it was three equally difficult days' travel to the nearest city, Huesca. Some of the New Christians noted that people might live here in peace, without ever seeing an inquisitor or a soldier. It occurred to them that perhaps they should go no farther, but stay in the valley and make it their home.

'Not everyone concurred,' Benzaquen said. After a great deal of argument and discussion, of the twenty-six families that had left Pamplona, seventeen decided to stay in the valley. 'Everyone pitched in to help the nine families who were going to Toulouse. It took the morning and the better part of the afternoon to get their wagons back up to the trail. After the embraces and a few tears they disappeared over the mountain, and those of us who had refused to go with them went down into the valley again.'

Among the settlers were four families whose members had earned their living from farming. In arranging the transfers from Granada to Pamplona and then to Toulouse, these farmers had been abashed, leaving the planning and decisions to the merchants whose travel experience and sophistication had stood the group in good stead.

But now the farmers became the leaders of the settlement, exploring and plotting the sections of the valley, determining which crops would be planted, and where. All over the valley grew rich, healthy fodder, and from the start they called the place Pradogrande, the High Meadow.

The men of each family worked together to divide the valley into seventeen equitable holdings, giving each plot a number, and drawing the numbers from a hat to establish ownership. Each man agreed to work cooperatively in planting and harvesting, the order of work to be rotated each year so no owner would have a permanent advantage over any other. The four farmers suggested where houses should be situated to take advantage of the sun and the shade and exist well with the elements. They built the fincas one at a time, everyone working together. There was plenty of stone on the slopes and the structures were solid farmhouses with stables and barns either in the lower level or attached to the living quarters.

The first summer in the valley they built three fincas, and the women and children huddled in them communally during the winter, the men camping out in the wagons. Over the next five summers they built the other houses and the church.

The four experienced farmers became the community's purchasing committee. 'They traveled to Jaca first,' Benzaquen said, 'where they bought a few sheep and some seeds, but Jaca was too small to satisfy their needs and in their next trip they went the extra distance to Huesca, where they found a greater variety of livestock for sale. They brought back to us sacks of good seeds, a variety of implements, fruit tree seedlings, more sheep and goats, hogs, chickens and geese.'

One of the men had been a leather worker and another man had been a carpenter, both skills that were blessings in the new community. 'But most of us had been merchants. When we decided to stay in Pradogrande we knew we would have to change our livelihoods and our lives. At first it was discouraging, and difficult to accustom tradesmen's bodies to the ruder demands of labor, but we were excited about the possibilities of the future and eager to learn. Gradually, we toughened.

'We have been here eleven years, and we have broken the ground for fields and established crops and orchards,' Benzaquen said.

'You have done well,' Yonah said, truly impressed.

'Darkness is about to fall, but tomorrow I shall take you through the valley so you may see it for yourself.'

Yonah nodded absently. 'The woman Adriana ... Is her husband a farmer?'

'Everyone in Pradogrande is a farmer. But Adriana Chacon's husband is gone. She is a widow,' Benzaquen said, cutting another slice of lamb and urging his guest to take advantage of the opportunity to eat good meat.

'He says he remembers me when I was a child,' Adriana Chacon told her father that evening. 'How curious, for I don't remember him at all. Do you recall him?'

Joachim Chacon shook his head. 'I do not. But perhaps I met him. Your grandfather Isaac knew a great many people.'

It seemed strange to her that this newcomer in the valley could lay claim to memories about her that she couldn't share. When she thought back to her childhood it was like trying to peer across a vast landscape from a mountaintop, the closer objects sharp and clear, the earlier ones fading into the remote distance until they couldn't be seen. She had no memory of Granada and only a few memories of Pamplona. She remembered riding for a long time in the back of a wagon. The wagons were covered against the sun but became so hot that the caravan did most of its traveling in the early mornings and late afternoons, the drivers stopping their horses in the midday heat when they came to shade. She remembered the hard and constant jostling of the wagon over difficult trails, the creaking of leather harness, the sound of plodding hooves. The eternal gray dust that sometimes gritted between her teeth. The grassy smells of the round droppings that spilled out behind the horses and the burros, to be compacted by the wagons that came after theirs.

Adriana was eight years old then, desperately bereft as she rode alone and yearned for her loved ones who had recently died. Her father, Joachim Chacon, treated her tenderly when he thought of it; but most of the time he sat up front and drove his horses in silence, almost sightless with his own grief. Her recollections of what happened after they entered the mountains were muddled; she remembered only that one day they had come to the valley, and that she had been content to stop traveling.

Her father, who in another life had bought and sold silk cloth, did his share of the farming now, but in their first Pradogrande years he had worked at building their houses. He had become a creditable mason, learning to fit stones so they embraced one another and made sturdy walls. The houses, built of river stone and timber, were allotted in turn to the largest families. Thus, Adriana and her father had to live in the homes of others for five years, their house being the last one built by the community. It was also the smallest of the houses, yet it was as well built as any of the rest and seemed grandly private to her when at last they moved into it. That year -- the year she turned thirteen years old -- was her happiest time in Pradogrande. She was mistress of her father's house and as besotted by the valley as they all were. She cooked and cleaned, singing much of the time, content with her lot. It was the year her breasts began to appear; that was a little frightening yet it seemed natural, because all around her things were growing and blossoming. She had gotten her first bleeding when she was eleven, and Leona Patras, an old woman who was the wife of Abram Montelvan, had been very kind to her, showing her how to care for herself in the monthly times.