The Last Jew (16 page)

Yonah perceived that he had landed among a group of singular people, and he asked many questions that Mingo answered with good humor.

The caves were in a hill named the Sacromonte. 'The Holy Mountain,' Mingo said, 'called that because Christians were martyred here in the early days of the religion.' The small man said his people, gypsies of a tribe called the Roma, had dwelt in the caves since coming to Spain when Mingo was a boy.

'From where did the Roma come?' Yonah asked.

'From there,' Mingo said, waving his hand in a circle that indicated the entire world. 'Once -- long ago -- they came from a place far to the east, where runs a great sacred river. More recently, before coming here they wandered in France and Spain. But when they reached Granada they settled, for the caves make wondrously fine homes.'

The caves were dry and airy. Some were no larger than a room, while others were like twenty rooms strung in a row, deep within the hill. Even someone as unmilitary as Yonah could see that the site would be easily defended if attacked. Mingo said that many of the caves were connected with one another by fissures or natural passageways, offering means of concealment or escape should that ever become necessary.

The plump woman in Mingo's cave was his wife, Mana. As she brought food, the small man told Yonah proudly that he and Mana had four children, two of them grown and living away from their parents.

He could see the question Yonah dared not ask, and he smiled.

'All my children are full-sized,' he said.

Yonah met the Roma all through the day. Some straggled up from a meadow they owned below, in which they kept horses. Yonah gathered they were horse breeders and traders.

Some went to employment nearby, and still others worked at tables outside one of the caves, mending broken cooking pots, utensils, and tools they had collected from homes and businesses in Granada. Yonah watched the metalworkers with pleasure, the tapping of their hammers reminding him of Helkias Toledano's workshop.

The Roma were affable and welcoming, accepting Yonah at once because Mingo had brought him to them. Throughout the day members of the tribe came to the small man to solve their problems. By midday Yonah wasn't surprised to learn that Mingo was what they called voivode, chieftain of the Roma.

'And when you are not governing them, do you work with the horses or mend broken pots with the other men?'

'I was trained early to do those things, of course. But until recently, I worked down there,' he said pointing.

'In the town? What sort of work?'

'In the Alhambra. I was a fool.'

'How do you mean, a fool?'

'A jester in the sultan's court.'

'In truth?'

'In truth, of course, for I was jester to Sultan Boabdil, who ruled as Muhammad the Twelfth, last Moorish caliph of Granada.'

Once one became accustomed to the misshapen body, the voivode of the Roma was a man of presence. There was dignity in his face, and the men and women of the tribe plainly regarded him with respect as well as affection. It made Yonah uneasy to hear that so kind and intelligent a person had played a fool to earn his bread.

Mingo was able to discern his embarrassment. 'It was employment I relished, I assure you. I was good at it. My dwarfish and ill-made body helped my people to prosper, for while at court I was able to learn early of possible dangers the Roma should avoid, and impending opportunities for their employment.'

'What sort of man is Boabdil?' Yonah asked.

'Cruel. He was little loved when he was sultan. He lives in the wrong century, because today Islam's military power is gone. The Muslims came from Africa to invade Iberia almost eight hundred years ago, and made all of Spain Islamic. Soon afterward, the Christian Basques fought fiercely to reestablish their independence and the Franks drove the Moors from northeastern Spain. That was the beginning. After that, through the centuries Christian armies regained most of Iberia for Catholicism.

'The Moorish sultan of Granada, Muley Hacén, refused to pay tribute to the Catholic monarchs and in 1481 launched a war against the Christians, seizing the fortified town of Zahara. Boabdil, Sultan Muley Hacén's son, had a falling out with his father. For a time, hunted by his father's forces, he sought asylum in the court of the Catholic monarchs. But in 1485 Muley Hacén died, and with the help of loyal subjects Boabdil came to occupy the throne.

'It was only a few months later,' Mingo said, 'that I came to the Alhambra to help him rule!'

'How long did you serve as his jester?' Yonah asked.

'Almost six years. By 1491, only one Islamic place remained in all of Spain. In the preceding years Ferdinand and Isabella had seized Ronda, Marbella, Loja, and Malaga. They could not tolerate that Boabdil the Muslim sat on a throne with Mingo Babar at his feet, beguiling him with witty advice. They laid siege to Granada and soon within the Alhambra we were having hungry days. Some of the population fought bravely on empty stomachs, but by the end of the year the future was plain to see.

'I recall a cold winter night when a great silver moon shimmered in the fish pond. Only Boabdil and I were in the throne room.

'"So you must guide my life, wise Mingo. What must I do next?" the Sultan asked.

'"You must lay down your arms and invite the Catholic monarchs to dine well, sire, and be waiting in the Court of Myrtles to greet them graciously and conduct them into the Alhambra," I said.

'Boabdil looked at me and smiled. "Spoken like a true fool," he said. "For now that my moments of ruling are almost at an end, my majesty is more precious to me than rubies. They must come and find me sitting here in the throne room like a monarch, and for those last few moments I shall behave with pride, a true caliph."

'That is what he did, signing the pact of surrender in his throne room on January second, 1492. When he fled into exile in Africa, from which his Berber ancestors came so long ago, I and others found it prudent to leave the Alhambra as well,' Mingo said.

'Have things changed a great deal for Granada, now that Christians are in power?' Yonah asked.

Mingo shrugged. 'The mosques are now churches. Men of every religion believe they alone have the ear of God.' He smiled. 'How puzzling that must be for the Lord!' he said.

That evening Yonah saw that the Roma dined communally, both men and women at their fires, cooking and roasting meat and fowl that ran with savory juices and filled the air with their aroma. They ate well, and the full skins that were passed held pleasant, musky wines. When the eating was done, instruments were brought from the caves, drums, guitars, dulcimers, viols, and lutes, and were played to produce a wild music that was new to Yonah, as was the free and sensual grace with which the Roma danced. He felt a sudden rush of happiness to be in the company of men and women again.

The Roma were comely. They wore clothing of bright colors and had swarthy skins, with handsome dark eyes and curly black hair. He found himself drawn to these strange tribal folk, who seemed able to find and savor all the simple pleasures of the world.

Yonah spoke gratefully to Mingo about their friendliness and hospitality.

'They are good people, unafraid of the gadje, which is what we call strangers,' Mingo said. 'I myself was a gadje, not born into the tribe. Have you noticed that my appearance is different from theirs?'

Yonah nodded. Both knew Mingo wasn't referring to height. Some of the hair on his large head was gray, for he was not a young man, but most of his hair was almost yellow, far lighter than the hair of the other Roma, and his eyes were the color of a bright sky.

'I was given to the People while they camped near Rheims. A gentleman came to them with a new child who had been born with long arms and short legs. The stranger gave the gypsies a fat purse to take me as theirs.

'It was my good fortune,' Mingo said. 'As you know, it is common to strangle a child at birth when he comes as misshapen as I. But the Roma honored their bargain. They never kept the details of my origins from me. Indeed, they insist I am doubtless of high birth, perhaps even of French royal lineage. The man who surrendered me had fine dress and armor and weaponry, as well as an aristocratic manner of speech.'

Yonah thought the small man indeed had a noble face. 'Have you never regretted what might have been?'

'Never,' Mingo said. 'For though it is true I might have been a baron or a duke, on the other hand it is also true that I might have been strangled at birth.' His fine blue eyes were serious. 'I did not remain a gadje. I drank the soul of the Roma into my body with the milk of the wet nurse who became my mother. Everyone here is my kin. I would die to protect my Romani brothers and sisters, as they would die for me.'

Yonah lingered with the People day after day, bathing in the warmth of their fellowship, sleeping off by himself in an empty cave.

To repay the tribe's hospitality, he sat with the pot repairers and joined their work. His father had patiently taught him the basics of metalwork when he was young, and the Roma were delighted to learn several of Helkias's techniques for joining metal with tight, even seams. Yonah also learned from the gypsy craftsmen, observing techniques they had passed down from father to son for hundreds of years.

One evening, after the merriment of their music and dancing, for the first time in more than three years Yonah picked up a guitar and began to play. He was tentative, but soon his fingers grew certain with old skills. He played the music of piyyutim, the chanted psalms of the synagogue: Yotzer, in the first blessing before the morning Shema; Zulat, sung after the Shema; the Kerovah, accompanying the first three blessings of the Amidah; and then the haunting Selihah, sung in contrition on the Day of Atonement.

When Yonah finished playing, Mana touched his arm tenderly as the people drifted off to their homes. He saw that Mingo's wise, grave eyes were studying him.

'Those are Hebrew melodies, I think. Played sadly.'

'Yes.' Without disclosing his own lack of conversion, Yonah told Mingo about his family, and about the terrible endings of his father Helkias and his brother Meir.

'Life is glorious, but it can be counted on to be cruel,' Mingo said finally.

Yonah nodded. 'I would greatly desire to recover my father's reliquary from its thieves.'

'There is small chance of that, my friend. From what you say, the work is unique. A piece of high art. They could not sell such an object in Castille, where people would be familiar with its theft. If it has been resold, no doubt it is gone from Spain.'

'Who would deal in such objects?'

'It is a specialized sort of theft. Over the years I have heard of two groups in Spain who buy and sell stolen relics and the like. One is in the north, and I do not have a name for anyone there ... The other is in the southern section, led by a man named Anselmo Lavera.'

'Where would I find this Lavera?'

Mingo shook his head gravely. 'I cannot even guess. If I knew, I would be reluctant to tell you, because he is a very bad man.'

He leaned forward and looked into Yonah's eyes. 'You too must give thanks that you were not strangled at birth. You must forget the bitter past and make the future sweet.

'I wish you a restful night, my friend.'

Mingo assumed he was a converso. 'The Roma also belong to a pre-Christian religion,' he confided, 'a faith that worships apostles of light who struggle against apostles of darkness. But we find it easier to pray to the god of the country in which we find ourselves, so we converted to Christianity when we came to Europe. Truth to tell, when we reached the territory of the Moors, most of us became Muslims as well.'

He was concerned that Yonah wasn't sufficiently able to protect himself when attacked. 'Your broken hoe is ... a broken hoe. You must learn to fight with a man's weapon. I will teach you to use a knife.'

So the lessons began. Mingo scorned the poor dagger Fernando Ruiz had given Yonah when he had become a shepherd. 'Use this,' he said, and handed over a knife of Moorish steel.

He showed Yonah how to hold the knife palm up instead of knuckles up, so he was able to stab with a rising, ripping thrust. And taught him to strike quickly, before an adversary would guess whence the next blow would come.

He taught Yonah to watch his opponent's eyes and body so he could anticipate every movement before it was made, and to become like a feral cat, offering little target, allowing no escape. Yonah thought Mingo taught him with the insistence and intensity of a rabbi imparting Scripture to an ilui, a biblical prodigy. He learned quickly and well at the feet of a small and strangely shaped maestro, and presently he came to think and act like a knife fighter.

Their liking blossomed until it seemed a friendship of years instead of a few brief months.

Word had been sent to Mingo that he should come to the Alhambra and confer with its new Christian steward, a man named Don Ramón Rodriguez.

'Would it please you to see the Alhambra at close quarters?' he asked Yonah.

'It would indeed, señor!'

So next morning they rode down the Sacromonte together, the large and muscular young man, his splayed legs too long and his heft too considerable to allow comfort for his poor burro, and the tiny man perched on a splendid gray stallion like a frog on a dog.