The Ghost of Hannah Mendes (39 page)

And soon the Grand Inquisitor of Portugal would have been notified of the rich pickings to be had, and the many witnesses to be called, and the easy case to be made. Like locusts, they would have been upon her, depriving her of everything she owned, including her only child, including her very life.

But that did not happen. She survived. She escaped.

She had to. She had a child to protect, didn’t she? And all that her husband had worked for, given his life for, the wealth to buy their freedom?

She was twenty-six years old when he died. The same year the Inquisition was established in Portugal.

Catherine opened her eyes, filled with nausea and a growing sense of anguished discomfort.

How had she survived?

29

It was an ancient garden, the kind that seemed to have been there always, with man and woman arriving much later and being of little importance. The palms, like bearded old men, touched the broken clouds, and the majestic eucalyptus peered down with the indifferent calm of fairy-tale giants. The sea, empty and calm as a wise blue eye, winked.

Gabriel held Suzanne’s hand in both of his as they sat looking out at the wide horizon, watching the moments pass through the changing light and color of the sky. And as they sat, people turned their heads to look at them.

Wherever they went, people stared. They were the kind of couple that made you smile and secretly feel a bit desolate, so perfectly were they matched: the height, the slim, angular beauty, the flawless features. They seemed like a kind of natural aristocracy selected by forces that couldn’t be argued with. Even their hair—his dark blond, hers coppery gold—seemed touched by mythic crowns.

He smoothed back her hair and kissed her at the temple, his warm lips making the sound of her beating heart suddenly loud and real in her ears.

“Suzanne, marry me!”

She reached up, holding her palms against his cheeks, staring into his eyes. And then she turned away from him.

“When I was a little kid, I had a garden,” she began, leaning her back against his chest, the top of her head touching his chin. “It was just a small patch of ground in front of the house. But the soil was good and I watered it well and almost everything I planted grew.

“I remember the seed packets—all kinds of strange and exotic plants from Australia and Africa and South America. I used to just open them up and fling them on the ground like dust, without digging any kind of neat furrows or sticking in little signs. And every spring I would see strange little green heads cutting through the earth, and I never knew if it was the beginning of something wonderful or just weeds, so I couldn’t bear to tear anything out of the ground. I kept waiting and watering, hoping they’d bloom. Sometimes I was disappointed, but mostly not. The colors of the flowers were unimaginable: periwinkle blue, deep apricot, mauve, scarlet, wild plum. And every single one that bloomed was a surprise and a gift.

“Eventually, of course, the weeds just got out of hand. They choked the old plants, and wouldn’t let the new ones root deeply enough.”

He touched her face, turning it toward him. His eyes were troubled.

She took a deep breath. “There have been so many beginnings in my life. Things sprouting and full of promise. So many of them have turned out to be weeds.”

His eyes were touched with fear. “What is it?”

“I just don’t know…I don’t know if I can do this. If I can be the person to fill that place at the table and in the front pews of the women’s section…”

“You don’t like my family?”

“I do! I do like them all! But that doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? I’ve been fighting this my whole life. I don’t want to sink into some little round hole that’s been dug out for me. I can’t just commit myself to doing things out of a love for you. It has to be real. To be me.”

“You have to know I would never force you to do anything you didn’t want to! But I can’t change who I am, or the things that matter to me. Suzanne, Suzanne, what are you afraid of?”

I don’t know, she thought. Not really. Except that everything was moving so fast in a direction she had long ago rejected.

She pictured her apartment in the village; the faces of the different men she had known over the past year; Oreo cookies and ratty bathrobes. None of it made sense if she attached Gabriel to the picture.

“I don’t want to be a rich Jewish doctor’s wife who shops at Harrod’s! I don’t know if I want children! And if I do, I’m not sure I’d want them dressed up in white shirts and skullcaps, standing at the front of the synagogue getting a heavy scroll of law dropped on them.”

“And if nothing at all is demanded of a child, if nothing at all is handed to him, is he better off?” he asked her quietly.

She dropped his hands and stood up tensely. “Look, you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

He stretched his legs and put his hands in his pockets, looking down at the ground. “I was never handed anything, except maybe tennis rackets and croquet sticks! Sports. Now that was important! Every child gets something thrown at him. At home, we behaved like lapsed Anglicans. I didn’t even know I was Jewish until after my mother’s death and meeting Aunt Claudina. My parents thought it was irrelevant—more—embarrassing.

“The week after my mother died, my father took me to Gibraltar to be with her family. We sat on the floor, we lit candles and had study sessions for her soul. It was like being pulled down into some quicksand of primitive emotion. I felt as if I was going to suffocate. But then something happened to me. It wasn’t so much participating in the rituals themselves as it was the feeling of being part of a tribe; of feeling for the first time that I was involved in something authentic, instead of all this outward posturing at being the perfect Etonian, English gentleman. This was my place. These were my people. My culture. Who I really was. I want my…our…children to have that.”

She turned to him, and his solid reality almost broke her. It was laughable, really, the audacity of thinking she still had a real choice. She couldn’t imagine being parted from him. But just at the moment when her whole being was ready to give in, something deeper took hold: a stubbornness that screamed “foul” like an enraged and discarded mistress.

She walked away, looking out at the sea. Then, suddenly, she turned to face him: “Gabriel, why isn’t your father here?”

“My father,” he swallowed hard, “is not welcome here.”

There was a short, stunned silence.

“Why not?”

“After my mother died, he remarried. The woman was of a different faith. To please her, he converted.”

She shrugged. “What difference does that make?”

He stared at her, and for the first time in their relationship, his eyes were cool.

“What difference does it make if the few remaining bald eagles mate with swans and die out? Read the statistics. We’re a dying breed.”

She didn’t know what to say.

“I knew about your mother’s intermarriage,” he continued, “and about your upbringing when Marius suggested setting us up to meet. It worried me. But Suzanne, I saw you this weekend. You’re as much a part of all this as I am. If you’d just stop fighting it…”

She stood stock-still, the color draining from her face.

“Marius set us up?” she said dully, her eyes glassy with shock.

“Well, indirectly. It was actually your grandmother’s and Alex Serouya’s idea.”

“My grandmother…. You mean, none of this was an accident? That night when you came to our restaurant…?”

“I thought you knew,” he said, his tone taking on a slight edge of caution as he watched color suddenly flood her pale face.

No! she thought. No, no, no, no, no…. She looked across at him, her eyes full of tears. Then she laughed, almost hysterically. “And I thought it was destiny, a ghost!”

“Suzanne, don’t!” He tried to gather her in his arms.

“NO!” She shrugged him off.

“I don’t understand. Why are you so offended? This is very usual among Sephardic families. Everyone in Gibraltar gets married this way. Is it so uncommon in your country?”

In my country, she thought. In New York City, in the Village, where the phrase “Sephardic family” gave off the same musty, anachronistic odor as “Plains Indian.” Oh, yes. All the time. “Did the matchmaker get his fee already? I hope you paid him well. After all, what a find!” she said with frozen contempt, “Not only a Nasi, but also a da Costa!”

“Suzanne! You’re being foolish! There was no question of that after we’d met! It would have made no difference to me who your family was. Suzanne!”

But she was already halfway down the road, hailing a taxi.

“Suzanne!” he called, disbelieving, unable to move. He could see her stiff back flinch as she climbed into the backseat, slamming the door behind her.

30

Loose manuscript pages, wrapped in newspaper, inside an old leather backpack filled with tangerines carried by Juan Martinez Ortega as he crosses the border to Portugal on his way to the docks of Lisbon to await an outward-bound freighter.

We had seen conversos butchered in Gouvea, Alemtejo, and throughout the land of Portugal after the earthquake that hit Lisbon in 1521, destroying the city of Santarem. The priests had blamed it on those who continued to Judaize, and King João had seized the unrest to press his purpose: the introduction of the Inquisition into Portugal
.

I saw the handwriting on the wall. The time had come to keep the sacred oath I had made to Francisco as he lay dying. Nothing but G-d’s Almighty hand itself would stay me from my purpose
.

It was no simple task. Royal decree forbade us to leave the country if our destination be some land where the hand of the Church held no power. Sea captains risked losing their lives, as well as their ships, if New Christians were found aboard heading for the lands of the Moors, or those parts of Italy outside the Holy Roman Empire
.

We gathered our belongings—those treasure chests of jewels and gold that were the fair profits of the House of Mendes in Lisbon. The rest—our great household—we left behind, intending to
transfer it at a later date. Passage was duly booked for myself, Reyna, my sister, Brianda, my nephew Joseph, and several servants
.

My sister was included in our party not because of any mutual desire on either of our parts. She’d agreed to come simply because she disliked her life in my brother’s household, with its many children and chores. I agreed to take her because I understood my duty: Brianda was still of marriageable age. It was my obligation to save her from some disastrous Old Christian attachment that might come about were she left to her own devices
.

More important, I had a duty to the family. Like wolves, Inquisitors would invariably pounce upon a New Christian family’s most vulnerable member, in the hope of easily frightening them into a betrayal of all the family secrets. What might Brianda reveal at just the mere sight of the rack?

And I must admit, I harbored some soft, foolish hope that under more positive influences, Brianda might yet be redeemed from that disastrous tutoring that had made her the most selfish, foolish, and gold-loving of young women
.

For good or ill, Brianda was my family. Her worthiness or lack of it did not come into play. What I did for her, I did for my own flesh, my own blood. Even when she turned on me like the bitterest enemy, endangering my child, my life, and everything I owned with her cruel and foolish deeds, I always tried to remember that
.

Diogo had been living in Antwerp for many years, managing a branch of the House of Mendes. And it being a Christian country, and I having recently inherited half the House of Mendes, it was both expedient and natural for me to join him there as a first step toward achieving my goal
.

How strange a light time casts upon our memories, transforming them with the translucence of knowledge. I cannot look back and see my nephew Joseph as the thin young boy he must surely have been when my brother, Miguel, entrusted him to my care. Even in memory, he seems a tall and comely lad of graceful features and handsome form, someone upon whom I leaned rather than a child I must surely have embraced with my support
.

I was only twenty-six years old when I left my birthplace and the only life I had ever known; a sheltered, pampered daughter who had become the adored bride of a wealthy, generous man. Little did I suspect what harshness lay in the world, what cruel and insidious dangers. And as I look back and see myself waving goodbye, I feel a great wave of pity and of pride in the foolish courage that allowed me to dream that I might actually succeed
.

The Antwerp branch of the Mendes trading house had long overtaken its mother branch both in activity and in profits. This success was entirely due to Diogo’s remarkable abilities. His brilliant strategy was to establish a number of alliances. The first was with the great mercantile House of Affaitati in Cremona, Italy, through whom our spices were marketed throughout Europe. Soon, company agents were operating in England, Italy, France, and Germany, and the spices that had once graced only royal tables became part of every prosperous burgher’s household. This partnership soon allowed the House of Mendes to buy entire consignments of spices from the King of Portugal: six, eight, or even twelve hundred thousand ducats’ worth a year, and to dispose of them throughout northern Europe
.

The profits were so enormous that even now I would surely awaken the Evil Eye were I merely to describe them. Thus, I will say but this alone: G-d, in His Infinite Mercy, saw fit to bless the House of Mendes with such wealth that Diogo could not possibly employ more than a mere fraction of his capital in the firm’s own mercantile business. To put the profits to best use, he concluded another alliance with Fugger of Ausburg, the greatest banking house in Europe. Through Fugger, Diogo loaned out his profits to the money-hungry and profligate rulers of the world
.