The Last Jew (18 page)

'Was it not a good business, perhaps?'

'My father was a wonderful silversmith, much sought after. His name is well known in that trade.'

'Ah.'

Zulaika Denia blew on live coals kept in a metal container and then ignited a sliver of wood which she used to light three oil lamps before darkness fell. Then she lit candles in the next room. Sabbath candles? Who knew? Zulaika Denia's back was turned to Yonah and he heard no praying. At first he couldn't tell whether she was renewing the covenant or supplementing illumination, but then he saw the almost imperceptible swaying.

The woman was praying over her Shabbat tapers!

Saadi had noticed him watching. The host's thin, angular face was tense. They sat together and conversed uncomfortably. As the scent of baked vegetables and potted fowl filled the little house, the rooms darkened and the lamps and candles took over. Soon Isaac Saadi led Yonah to table, while the girl Inés brought bread and wine.

When they were seated, it was apparent to Yonah that his host still was disquieted.

'Let our guest and new friend offer the invocation,' Saadi said, shrewdly turning over the responsibility to Yonah.

Yonah knew that if Saadi were a sincere Christian, he could have thanked Jesus for the food they were about to eat. The safe way, which Yonah fully intended to take, would be simply to thank God for the food. Instead, when he opened his mouth, almost without volition he took another way, responding to the woman who had imperfectly disguised her prayers. Lifting the glass of wine, Yonah began to sing in husky Hebrew, welcoming Sabbath, queen of the days, and thanking God for the fruit of the vine.

As the other three adults at the table stared silently, he took a sip of the wine and passed the loaf to Saadi. The older man hesitated, then he tore bread from the loaf and began to chant his thanks for the fruit of the earth.

The words and melodies unlocked Yonah's memory, providing pain to accompany his pleasure. It wasn't to God that he called out in the berachot but to his parents, to his brothers, to his uncle and his aunt, to his friends -- the departed.

When the blessings were finished only Felipa looked bored, annoyed at something her child had asked in a whisper. Isaac Saadi's wary face was sad but relaxed and Zulaika's eyes were wet, while Yonah saw that Inés regarded him with interest and curiosity.

Saadi had made a decision. He set an oil lamp in front of the window and the three women served dishes Yonah had been dreaming of, the tender stewed chicken and vegetables, a rice pudding savory with raisins and saffron, pomegranate seeds steeped in wine. Before the meal was finished the first person summoned by the light in the window had arrived. He was a tall, handsome man with a red mark like a crushed berry on his neck, just below the jaw.

'This is our good neighbor, Micah Benzaquen,' Saadi told Yonah. 'And this young man is Yonah ben Helkias Toledano, a friend from Toledo.'

Benzaquen told Yonah he was well come.

Presently a man and a woman came and were introduced to Yonah as Fineas ben Sagan and his wife, Sancha Portal, and then came Abram Montelvan and his wife, Leona Patras. And two more men, Nachman Redondo and Pedro Serrano. The door opened more quickly now, until nine more men and six females had crowded into the small house. Yonah noted that everyone wore work clothes so as not to call attention to themselves by dressing formally on the Jewish Sabbath.

He was introduced to everyone by Saadi as a visiting friend.

One of the neighbor's boys was posted outside to serve as a lookout, while inside the house people already had begun to pray as Jews.

There was no Torah; Micah Benzaquen led the prayers out of memory and the others joined in, both fearful and exalted. The praying was conducted in little more than whispers, lest the sound of liturgy escape the house and undo them. They recited the eighteen benedictions and the Shema. Then in an orgy of melody they sang hymns, prayers, and the wordless traditional chanting known as niggun.

The fellowship and the experience of group prayer, once so commonplace to Yonah and now so proscribed and precious, had a profound effect on him. Too quickly, it was over. People embraced and exchanged whispered wishes for a peaceful Sabbath. They included the stranger who had been vouched for by Isaac Saadi.

'Next week in my house,' Micah Benzaquen whispered to Yonah, and he nodded gladly.

Isaac Saadi ruined the moment. He smiled at Yonah as people slipped from the house one or two at a time. 'Sunday morning,' he said, 'shall you wish to accompany us to church?'

'No, I cannot.'

'Then perhaps the following Sunday.' Saadi looked at Yonah. 'It is important. There are people who observe all of us closely, you understand,' he said.

In several days that followed, Yonah kept a close watch on the silk-seller's booth. It seemed a very long time before Isaac Saadi left his daughter to tend the shop alone.

Yonah walked to her casually. 'Good day, señorita.'

'Good day, senor. My father is not here ...'

'Ah, so I see. No matter. I stopped merely to thank him again for the hospitality of your family. Perhaps you will extend my gratitude?'

'Yes, señor,' she said. 'We ... You were most well come to our home.' She was blushing furiously, perhaps because he had been staring from the moment he had approached. She had large eyes, a straight nose, a mouth not as full-lipped as some, but quite revealing of her emotions, sensitive in the corners. He had been afraid to look at her overly long in her father's house, lest her family take offense. In the lamplight of her home it had seemed to him her eyes were gray. Looking at her now, in the light of day, they seemed to be blue after all, but perhaps it was the shadows in the shop.

'Thank you, señorita.'

'For nothing, Señor Toledano.'

*

The following Friday he participated again in the Shabbat services of the little group of conversos, this time in Micah Benzaquen's house. He kept stealing glances at Inés Denia, who was among the women. Even sitting, she had excellent posture. And such an interesting face.

The following week he continued to go to the marketplace and watch her from afar, but he knew his skulking would have to stop. Some of the merchants gave him hard stares, perhaps suspecting he was planning a robbery.

Then he went to the marketplace late in the afternoon instead of in the morning, and to his good fortune he arrived in time to see Felipa replacing her sister in the silk shop. Inés walked through the market with her little niece, Adriana, shopping for food, and Yonah contrived his route to meet them.

'Hola, señorita!'

'Hola, señor.' The sensitive mouth displayed a warm smile. They exchanged a few words and then he hovered while she bought lentils, rice, raisins, dates, and a pomegranate, and he went with her to another greengrocer's booth for two white cabbages.

By then her sack was heavy. 'Allow me, please.'

'No, no ...'

'Yes, of course,' he insisted cheerfully.

He carried the laden market sack home for her. On the way they made conversation, but afterward he couldn't recall what had been said. He had a great desire to be in her company.

Now that he knew what time of day to go to the marketplace, it was easier to contrive to see her. Two days later he met her in the marketplace again, walking with the child.

Soon he was meeting Inés and the little girl regularly.

'Good afternoon,' he said gravely each time he saw her, and she would reply with similar gravity, 'Good afternoon, señor.'

After only a few of their meetings the little girl, Adriana, came to know him. She would call Yonah's name and run to meet him.

He thought Inés was interested in him. He was stunned by the intelligence in her face, moved by her shy charm, tormented by thoughts of the young body beneath her modest clothing. One afternoon they walked to the Plaza Mayor, where a piper sat against a sunny stone wall and played.

Yonah swayed to the music and began to move as he had seen the Roma dance, suddenly able to say things with his shoulders, his hips, and his feet, as the gypsies did. Things he had never expressed before. Amazed, she watched him with a half smile, but when he held out his hand to her she didn't take it. Still, he imagined that if her young niece weren't there ... If they were somewhere private instead of being in the public square ... If ...

He scooped up the little girl, and Adriana squealed as he whirled with her, around and around.

Afterward they sat not far from the piper and talked while Adriana played with a small, smooth red stone. Inés said she had been born in Madrid, where her family had converted to Catholicism five years ago.

She had never been to Toledo. When he told her his loved ones either were dead or gone from Spain, her eyes filled and she touched his arm. It was the only time she touched him. He sat without moving, but quickly she took her hand away.

The next afternoon Yonah went to the marketplace, as had become his custom, and strolled among the booths, waiting for Felipa to free Inés from the silk shop. But as he passed the booth of the seller of fowls, he saw that Zulaika Denia was there, conversing with the merchant. The fowl seller spied Yonah and said something to Zulaika, and Inés's mother turned and looked at Yonah sternly, as though they had never met. She asked the fowl seller a question, and after she had listened to him, she turned again and went directly to the silk shop of her husband, Isaac Saadi.

Almost at once she reappeared. This time her daughter was with her, and Yonah realized the truth he had been avoiding by concentrating on the proud way Inés held her body, or on the mystery in her large eyes, or the charm of her sensitive mouth.

She was very beautiful.

Yonah watched them walk quickly away, the mother holding the daughter's arm like an alguacil marching a prisoner toward her cell.

He doubted that Inés had mentioned their meetings to her family. Whenever he had walked her toward her home she had reclaimed her shopping sack before her house was in sight, and they had parted. Perhaps a trade person in the market had said something to her mother. Or maybe an innocent remark of the little girl, Adriana, had brought Zulaika's wrath down on them.

He had not brought dishonor to Inés. It was not so terrible a thing for her mother to learn they had walked together, he told himself.

Yet when he went back to the marketplace two days in a row, she wasn't in the silk shop. Felipa worked in her sister's place.

That night he lay sleepless and burned to imagine what it would be like to lie with a beloved woman. To have Inés as his wife, joining bodies to obey the commandment to be fruitful and multiply. How strange yet fine it would be.

He tried to gather his courage to speak to her father.

But when he went to the marketplace to do so, Micah Benzaquen, neighbor to Isaac Saadi's family, was there, waiting for him.

At the older man's suggestion, they walked to the Plaza Mayor.

'Yonah Toledano, my friend Isaac Saadi believes you have taken note of his younger daughter,' Benzaquen said delicately.

'Inés. Yes, it is so.'

'Yes, Inés. A jewel beyond price, no?'

Yonah nodded, waiting.

'Comely and accomplished in business and in the home. Her father is honored that the son of Helkias the silversmith of Toledo, may he rest, has blessed Isaac's family with friendship. But Señor Saadi has now a few questions. Is this agreeable?'

'Of course.'

'For example. Family?'

'I am descended from rabbis and scholars on both my mother's side and my father's. My maternal grandfather--'

'Of course, of course. Forebears of distinction. But living relatives, perhaps with a business the young man might enter?'

'I have an uncle. He left at the expulsion. I know not where ...'

'Ah, unfortunate.'

But the young man, Benzaquen observed, had mentioned to Señor Saadi a skill taught him by his father the silversmith. 'Are you then a master silversmith?'

When my father died I was soon to become a journeyman.'

'Oh ... merely an apprentice. Unfortunate, unfortunate...'

'I learn easily. I could learn the silk business.'

'I'm certain that is true. Of course, Isaac Saadi already has a son-in-law in his silk business,' Benzaquen said thinly.

Yonah knew that a few years earlier it would have been a most fortunate match for the Saadi family. Everyone would have applauded, Isaac Saadi above all, but the reality was that now he was not an acceptable suitor. And they weren't aware that he was an unchristened fugitive.

Benzaquen was staring at his broken nose. 'Why do you not attend church?' he said, as if reading Yonah's mind.

'I have been ... occupied.'

Benzaquen shrugged. With a glance at the younger man's threadbare clothes, he didn't bother to ask Yonah about his personal resources.

'In the future, when you stroll and converse with an unmarried young woman, you must allow her to carry her own market sack,' he said severely. 'Otherwise, suitors who are more ... eligible ... might believe the female too weak to fulfill the strenuous duties of a wife.'