The Last Jew (10 page)

'They say this friar has the face of a saint. But he is no saint,' Benito Martín said bitterly. 'He drew a crowd of angry men about him in the plaza when he preached against the Jews who had left. Jews had slipped away from Spain without being properly punished, he told them. He spoke of your father by name, accusing him of being a Jew who had designed a ciborium that would work terrible magic against Christians, referring to him as the antichrist who had spurned the opportunity to come to the Savior, who laughed at Him with impunity and now was about to escape unscathed.

'He whipped them into madness and then stayed behind while they went to your house as a mob and slew your father.'

'Where is Abba's body?'

'We buried him behind the house. Each morning and each evening I pray for his immortal soul.'

Martín allowed the weeping boy to mourn. 'Why didn't he come with me when he sent me away?' Yonah whispered. 'Why didn't he flee as well?'

'I believe it was to protect you that he stayed, Martín said slowly. 'If no one was in the house, they would have searched until your father was found. And then ... you would have been found, too.'

Soon Benito's wife, Teresa, and his daughter, Lucía, brought bread and milk, but in Yonah's grief he ignored them.

Benito urged the food upon Yonah, who to his shame couldn't keep from wolfing it down once he had taken the first bite, while the man and the two females watched him anxiously. Eleazar was not there, nor was Enrique Martín, and Yonah assumed the two small boys were playing somewhere nearby.

But then Enrique came into the house alone.

'Where is my brother?'

'The little boy is with his uncle, Aron the cheese maker, and his aunt, Juana,' Martín said. 'They think you are dead, as we did. They claimed Eleazar from us the morning after the trouble, and they left Toledo at once.'

Yonah stood in his agitation. 'I must go at once to Valencia, to join them,' he said, but Benito shook his head.

'They don't go to Valencia. Aron didn't have a great deal of money. I ... paid him a sum I owed your father for the silver, but ... he thought they would have better opportunity to secure passage if they went to one of the small fishing villages. They took the two horses from Marcelo Troca's field, so they could always rest two mounts while riding.' He hesitated. 'Your uncle is a good man, and strong. I believe they will be all right.'

'I must go!'

'Too late, Yonah. It is too late. To which fishing village would you go? And you have been three days in your cave, my boy. The last of the Jew ships will sail in four days. If you galloped day and night and your horse didn't die, you would never reach the coast in four days.'

'Where will Uncle Aron take Eleazar?'

Benito shook his head, disturbed. 'Aron didn't know where they would go. It depended on what ships were available, with what destinations. You must stay within this house, Yonah. Throughout Spain soldiers will be searching for Jews who may have scorned the order of expulsion. Any Jew who has demonstrated unwillingness to be saved in Christ will be put to death.'

'Then ... what shall I do?'

Benito came to him and took his hands.

'Listen carefully, my boy. Your father's murder is linked to your brother's. It is not coincidence that your father was the only Jew slain here, or that his was the only house destroyed by the menudos, when not even a synagogue was harmed. You must remove yourself from danger. Out of love for my friend your father, and for yourself, I give you the protection of my name.'

'Your name?'

'Yes. You must convert. You will live with us, as one of our own. You will have the name that was my own father's, you will be Tomás Martín. Is it agreed?'

Yonah looked at him dazedly. In one swift turn of events he had been deprived of all relatives, forlorn of every loved one. He nodded his head.

'Then I am off to find a priest and bring him here,' Benito said, and in a few moments he departed on his errand.

11

A Decision

Yonah sat in the Martín house, stunned by the things Benito had told him. For a time Lucía sat next to him and took his hand, but he was too overcome by his emotions to respond to his friend, and soon she left him.

On top of everything, never again to see his beloved young brother Eleazar, who still lived!

There was ink and a quill and paper on Benito's drawing table. Yonah went to it. He picked up a quill and was about to take a sheet of paper, but Teresa Martín moved to him at once.

'Paper is dear,' she said sourly, regarding him without joy. Teresa Martín never had taken the pleasure from the Toledanos that her husband and children had done, and it was obvious that she was not gladdened by her husband's decision to add a Jew to their family.

On the table was a drawing of the silver cup Helkias had made, one of the sketches his father had given to Martín. Yonah took it and dipped the quill and began to write on the reverse side, which was blank. He wrote the first line in Hebrew and the rest of the message in Spanish, quickly and without pause.

To my darling brother Eleazar ben Helkias Toledano.

Learn that I, your brother, was not slain by those who took our father's life.

I write to you, beloved Eleazar, against the chance that some event unknown to me has kept you and our kinsmen from embarking from Spain. Or if by the ninth of Ab you will be on those deepest seas about which we were wont to speculate in happier childish days, perhaps the time will come when as a man you may return to our boyhood home and discover this letter in our secret place, to learn what befell here.

If you do return, for your safety understand that a powerful person, unknown to me, feels a special hatred for the family Toledano. I do not understand the reason. Our father, may he rest in the eternal peace of the righteous, believed the terrible death of our brother Meir ben Helkias was to make possible the theft of the relic cup commissioned by the Priory of the Assumption. Our father's good friend, whose name I do not write lest this letter be read by one who would do him harm, is convinced Abba's death is connected to Meir's, to the silver-and-gold cup he made, and somehow to a Dominican friar, Bonestruca by name. You must take great care.

I must take great care as well.

No Jews remain here, nought but Old Christians and New Christians.

Am I alone in Spain?

Everything for which our father labored is gone. There are those whose debts to us are unpaid. Even if you should find your way back here to read these words, it will be hard for you to collect them.

Samuel ben Sahula owes our father thirteen maravedíes for three large Seder plates, a kiddush cup, and a small silver basin for ritual washing.

Don Isaac Ibn Arbet owes six maravedíes for a Seder plate and two maravedíes for six small silver goblets.

I do not know where these men have gone. If it is the Lord's will, perhaps your paths someday may cross.

Count Fernán Vasca of Tembleque owes our family sixty-nine reales and sixteen maravedíes for three large bowls, four small silver mirrors and two large silver mirrors, a gold flower with a silver stem, eight short combs for female hair and a long comb, and a dozen goblets of which the cups were massy silver and the bases were electrum.

Abba's friend wishes to make me his Christian son, but I must remain our father's Jewish child though it be my ruin. Should I be hunted down, I shall not become a converso. If the worst may occur know I have been united with our Meir and our beloved parents and rest with them at the feet of the Almighty.

Know also that I would risk my place in that heavenly kingdom if I could but embrace my small brother. Ah, I would be your brother again! For all thoughtlessness, for any hurt I may have done you through careless word or act, my vanished and cherished brother, I beg your forgiveness and your love through eternity. Recall us, Eleazar, pray for our souls. Remember you are a son of Helkias, of the tribe of Levi, the direct descendants of Moses. Each day recite the Shema, knowing that saying it with you is your grieving brother,

Yonah ben Helkias Toledano

'My husband shall not buy your father's house now, of course. The house is ruined.' Teresa frowned at the paper. She was illiterate but she recognized Hebrew letters at the top of the page. 'You will bring disaster to this house.'

The thought chilled Yonah and awakened him to the fact that in a brief time Benito would return with the priest bearing holy water for his baptism.

Agitated, he took the paper and went outside.

The sun was sinking and the day cooling. Nobody stopped him, and he walked away from there.

His feet took him back to the ruins of the house that had been his home. Behind the house, he was able to see where the earth had been turned to make his father's grave. Strangely dry-eyed now, he said the mourner's Kaddish and marked well the location of the grave, promising himself that if he lived, one day he would move his father's remains to consecrated earth.

He remembered the dream he had in the cave and it seemed to him now that in the dream his father had been trying to tell him to remain who he was, Yonah ben Helkias Toledano, the Levi.

Inside the house, he did a search despite the gathering dusk.

All the silver mezuzahs, the amulets containing portions of the Scripture, had been torn from the doorposts. Everything of value was gone from the workshop, and the floors were torn up. The intruders had found what money Helkias had been able to gather for the voyage out of Spain. But they hadn't found a cache of small coins behind a loose stone in the northern wall of the house -- eighteen sueldos that Yonah and Eleazar had saved as their personal fortune. It wouldn't buy much, but it would buy something, and he fashioned a small bag from a dirty rag and placed the coins inside.

On the ground was a piece of parchment that had been torn from one of the mezuzahs and discarded, and he read the Scripture: 'And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee today, shall be on thy heart.'

He started to stow the parchment in the bag with the coins. But he was thinking with cold clarity now, and it came to him that discovery of this scrap in his possession would result in his death. He folded the fragment and placed it, with the letter to his brother, behind the stone where he and Eleazar had kept their coins. Then he walked from the house.

Presently he found himself passing the field of Marcelo Troca. Uncle Aron had taken the horses but the two burros his father had paid for were tethered and eating garbage. When he tried to approach the larger of the burros, it shied and kicked. But the other, a smaller and dubious-looking animal, peered at him placidly and was more tractable. When Yonah slipped the tether and mounted, the beast trotted off obedient to his kicking heels.

There was just enough daylight left to allow the burro to make his surefooted way down the steep cliff trail. When they forded the river the outcroppings of purple shale were like menacing black teeth in the last bit of light.

The burro's digestion was very bad, perhaps because of his garbage diet. Yonah had no destination in mind. His father had said that the Almighty would always guide their paths. This present path was unpromising, but once Yonah was away from the river he dropped the reins and let the burro and the Lord take him where they would. He felt neither like a bold merchant traveler nor a knight. Riding friendless into the unknown on a farting beast was not the kind of adventure of which he had dreamed.

For a moment he halted the burro and looked back at Toledo, high above. Oil lamps glowed warmly through several windows, and someone was carrying a torch while walking the familiar narrow street next to the cliff. But it was no one who loved him, and in a moment he nudged the burro with his knees and didn't look back again.

Part Three

THE PEÓN

Castille

August 30, 1492

12

A Man with a Hoe

The Ineffable One and the small burro moved Yonah southward all night under a round floating moon that kept them company and lit the ass's way. Yonah dared not stop. The priest who had come to the Martíns' house with Benito surely had reported at once that an unbaptized Jewish youth was at large, threatening Christianity. To save his life, he meant to go as far as possible from Toledo.

He had been in open country since leaving Toledo behind.

Now and again the shadowy outline of a finca, a farmhouse, appeared off the trail. Whenever a dog barked, Yonah kicked his heels to produce a trot, and he drifted past the few habitations like a burro-borne spirit.

In the first graying light he saw he had moved into a different type of land, less hilly than the terrain at home and host to larger farms.

The soil must be very good; he rode past a vineyard and an enormous olive grove, and a field of green onions. He had a great hollowness and he dismounted and gathered onions and ate hungrily. When he came to another vineyard he picked a bunch of grapes, not yet ripe but full of sour juice. His coins could have produced bread but he dared not try to buy it, lest questions be asked.