Incantation (8 page)

He’s a teacher,
I had told her.

Catalina had looked suspicious.
Teachers don’t teach in the middle of the night.

Now I wanted to find out the answer to that question myself. We were not just Marranos; everything my grandfather did and believed was against the church edicts.

When my grandfather came upstairs, he had blood on his clothes. Señor deLeon and the other man had left through the garden door. My grandfather had expected a sleeping house, and I startled him so badly that he dropped everything he was carrying in a clean cloth—knives, thread, needles, things that looked like little axes and little saws, a vial of the bitter liquid that was so strong a person’s life could end if he swallowed too much of this elixir for pain.

Get me some water,
my grandfather said to me, and I did what he asked.

We stared at each other, and my grandfather said nothing. But when I went to leave, he nodded for me to sit down. My hands and legs were shaking. I pretended we had sat like this together every day of our lives. I sat there politely.

You were downstairs?
My grandfather said.

I nodded.

What did you see?
he asked then.

Nothing,
I told him.
Because nothing is what you wanted me to see, though the man on the table might disagree.

My grandfather looked surprised. I had managed to tell the truth while admitting nothing.

Good answer,
he said.

My grandfather got up and cleaned his hands with brown soap over the washing bowl. Then he came back to sit across from me.

How much do you know about who you really are?
my grandfather asked me.

I know nothing because that is what I’m supposed to know, though my grandmother might disagree.

My grandfather nodded. I had pleased him in some way, without even trying.

Good answer,
he said once again.

We were silent for a while; then I told him what I thought.

Maybe a hundred years ago our people should have run away from this place,
I said. It was a bold, maybe even rude thing to say, but I had been thinking about this a great deal.

And then run from the next place and the next place and the place after that? You run once, what makes you think you won’t have to run all the rest of your life?

Good answer,
I said.

My grandfather threw his head back and laughed. That surprised me more than anything. That he could laugh. So I dared to say the next thing to him.

But there are other answers.

My grandfather looked at me as though he’d never seen me before, and maybe he hadn’t. He nodded and gave me another answer.

We live moment to moment,
my grandfather told me.
Everything changes. One minute we are part of the river, and the next we are joined with the sea.

If you can stitch a man together with a needle and thread, isn’t that magic?

It’s medicine. Surgery.

I’ve heard people say the Jews have magic schools.

It’s our way of reaching out to understand the mysteries of God. It’s called
Kabbalah.
It is the way to learning the way to be one with the world. The way of light and of knowledge.

The ten gates that lead to the garden,
I said.
The ten mysteries of the Tree of Life.

Who told you that?
More than surprise now. Shock that I should know such things.
Your mother?

I dreamt about them. I thought you might have books that dealt with such things in that room.

What room are you talking about? I thought you saw nothing.

My grandfather was hiding the fact that he had a smile inside him, but I saw it.

True enough. I was just thinking about what I could see, if I ever did see anything.
I smiled right back.

You’re a smart girl,
my grandfather said.
Smarter than I thought you were.

He took me to see the room downstairs.

Just so you know,
he said.

He opened the door with a metal key that was hidden under the last stair. The room was small and filled with books. From the floor to the ceiling. I had not known so many books existed, let alone in our house. This was where he taught his students. On a desk were notes concerning the
Zohar,
the radiant book, the Book of Splendour, the book of true knowledge, a guide to the gates.

What will you say if anyone ever asks you if you’ve been inside this room?
my grandfather asked.

I thought of all the learning that had gone on here, right under my feet. I thought of the people who had been stitched together and healed. I felt something about my grandfather I hadn’t felt before. I understood why his students looked at him the way they did.

What room?
I said.

I knew it was a good answer; I didn’t need anyone to tell me that. Good enough to make Jose deMadrigal, the greatest teacher our town had known, look at me with different eyes.

Sit down,
my grandfather told me.
We’ll start with the alphabet.

T
HERE WAS
a quiet in town, but the quiet was like the silence before a torrential downpour. Too still. Too unnatural. Even the birds didn’t sing.

On Sunday, at mass, the Friar spoke about how we must have faith in heaven but how we also must be prepared to deal with the evil on earth. I looked around at the people in our congregation. I saw that we were all the same. Marranos. Our truest selves were hidden. And I saw more: We were all frightened. We knew that bad things came together, one after the other, and that some secrets could never be kept. My grandfather had begun to whisper some of these secrets. He taught me about
el Diva del Pardon,
the Day of Pardon, when we atoned for our sins, and about Queen Esther, for whom I had been named, a queen who hid her Jewish heritage to save her people.

I studied with my grandfather nearly every day. I’d always thought I was foolish, yet somehow I learned. There were basic prayers, and there was the radiant way. The way to clear the inside of your head; with chanting, it was possible to bring oneself closer to the all-knowing and all-powerful God. I began to understand that the deeper you looked inside yourself, the more you saw what was infinite and eternal.

One day my grandfather called me to him, there in his study beneath the house. He had been up all night, and his face was pale. His eyes were damp and red. He locked the door and took out some papers. I felt as though the books lining the shelves in his study were alive, breathing, fluttering like doves. I thought I was there to study, but my grandfather kept the books closed.

If anything happens, there are things I want you to know,
he said. He handed me a piece of paper with a name and address.
This man in Amsterdam can help you get onto a boat.

I nearly laughed.
I don’t know where Amsterdam is. I’m here to learn Hebrew. Give this paper to Luis, or to my mother.

You’ll be the one who goes.

Right away, the feeling of laughter left me.

My grandfather was teaching me about the most powerful book, the way of All Light, the Zohar,
ideas he said I would not begin to understand until I was a very old woman, and even then they would still be a mystery.

I have chanted all night long, and now I see what the answer is. It will be you,
my grandfather said.

No,
I said.
It won’t be.

Nothing is easy in this world,
my grandfather said.
That’s why there are ten gates to pass through before you reach the garden. If life were easy there would be one gate. There would be no gates at all.

What are the gates made of?
I asked.

Crown, Wisdom, Intelligence, Love, Judgment, Compassion, Endurance, Majesty, Foundation of the World, Kingdom.

In my dreams, they seem real,
I told my grandfather.

They are made of whatever and however you see them. The gates are always different, but the garden is always the same. And the Tree of Life that grows there is truth. It’s joining with the force that is the heart of everything. You name the gates, then you go through them. You walk right through if you are able.
He looked right at me.
If you dare.

S
OON AFTER
, a letter came from my brother. I had never received a letter before. I had to go down to the Duke’s palace and officially sign for it. I paid the soldier in charge of posting letters a few coins to thank him. I went to the well and sat on the edge. My grandfather had sent Luis a coded message telling him that I was now my grandfather’s student, even if I was only a girl.

My brother could not write much in his letter; someone at the seminary or in the Duke’s palace might decide to open it up and read it. But he told me he was proud of me. He told me our path was dangerous and true and that the most important thing of all was to remember the history of our people.

Every time someone forgets, someone else disappears,
my brother wrote.

When I finished reading his letter, I took it home and burned it in a ceramic bowl. That was the best way to keep a secret. Keep it inside your head.

The burning singed the white-and-blue design of the bowl, but to me the pattern looked more beautiful.

What have you done to my bowl!
my grandmother cried when she saw the burn marks.

Those are my brother’s words burned into it,
I told her.

Instead of punishing me, my grandmother used the bowl to serve our dinner. It was adafina, chicken and dumplings, my favorite supper and my brother’s favorite as well.

T
HAT NIGHT
, I had a dream about Catalina. I was on one side of a gate, and she was on the other. She was looking for me, calling out my name, but I didn’t answer. She was falling; all I had to do was reach out to her to save her, and yet I didn’t. This time the gate was made of black feathers, and I knew if I moved, the entire gate might fall apart, that’s how fragile it was. So I stayed where I was, silent.

All that day I felt terrible about my dream. Catalina and I no longer went together to the well on the Plaza on Fridays. I decided to go look for her. Maybe I could make things right. I took the wooden buckets in the yard and went to the Plaza. It was not as crowded as it had been before the riots, but there were people coming and going. At the well there was a group of girls my age. Catalina was among them.

As I approached, Catalina spied me. She turned her face away. One of the other girls, Rosa, nudged Catalina. They both looked at me and laughed.

Did you want something?
Catalina asked as I approached the well.
There are no pearls to be found in this water. For that you have to go to the seaside.

I was looking for you,
I said.

Well, don’t bother. Andres isn’t with me.

The girl named Rosa hid her face, but I heard her laughter.

Not him. You,
I said.

Well, now that you’ve found me, you’d better run home. Otherwise I might slap your face. Andres is an idiot. You think you’re so much better than I am!

I don’t think I’m better than you,
I said as I let the buckets down into the well. I drew them up quickly, so that much of the waters splashed out.

Good,
Catalina said.
I don’t think you are either. I don’t know what you are. You don’t even cross yourself the way we do.

I looked up from the well and saw the way Catalina was staring at me. It was late in the day and the sun was huge. I thought about the man with the red circle on his clothes. I thought about the way things burned and disappeared into the air.

As I reached for the water buckets, I could see our reflections in the deep water, floating. There was my friend and there was I.

I saw quite clearly, we looked nothing alike.

W
HAT IF
I wasn’t who you thought I was?
I said to Andres later when we met.

We were beneath the olive tree, the special one. It was late at night, and we were supposed to be in our houses, sleeping. Instead we were here, dreaming out loud. We had sneaked out, and it felt as though we were alone in the world. But we were not.

You are,
Andres said.
You’re the girl I’ve been waiting for.

At this hour, there were creatures in the field I’d never seen in the daytime. Bats, quick little mice, the nightingale I’d heard during the daylight hours, still singing a mournful song.

Maybe I’m not even who I thought I was,
I said.

You can be anything at all and it won’t matter to me.

How many men had said that to how many women in this world? How many girls had believed such things, only to be left waiting in a doorway?