The Last Jew (26 page)

We have orders that if the Count Vasca should not be here at our arrival, we must leave the sword and armor in his treasury and receive written receipt attesting to its safe delivery,' he said.

The steward frowned, not happy to take orders from strangers.

'I am certain the count has been waiting impatiently for the armor made by Maestro Fierro,' Yonah said. He did not have to add, If it should be lost on your account ...

The steward led them into a stronghold, unlocked ponderous doors whose hinges cried out for oil, showed them where to place the armor, where to place the sword. Yonah wrote out the writ of receipt but the steward was barely literate, and it took a long time to help him read the note. Paco and Luis stared, impressed, and Angel looked away. 'Hurry on, hurry on,' he muttered, resenting Yonah's ability.

Finally the steward scrawled his mark.

The men from Gibraltar found an inn nearby, their spirits lightened by the fact that their responsibility had been turned over to the castle of Tembleque. 'God's thanks, we brought it here safely,' Paco said, and the relief in his voice spoke for all of them.

'Now I want sleep in comfort,' Luis said.

'Now I want drink!' Costa declared, slamming his hand to the table, where they fell to drinking a bitter, biting wine served by a short and heavy woman with tired eyes. While she filled their cups Angel brushed the back of his hand on the stained apron covering her full thighs and rear, and when there was no objection his hand became bolder.

'Ah, you're comely,' he said, and she made herself smile. She was accustomed to men who came to the inn after long weeks of travel without women. In a short time she and Angel removed themselves from the other men and held a consultation nearby, feverish bargaining followed by a nod.

Before Angel left with her, he returned to the other three men. 'So we must meet here at the inn in three days to determine whether the count has returned,' he said, and then hurried back to the woman.

25

The City of Toledo

Paco and Luis were content to take pallets at the inn and attempt to sleep away the tiredness of a long journey. So it happened that Yonah ben Helkias Toledano, of late called Ramón Callicó, found himself riding alone through the late morning sunlight, as though in a dream. Down the road between Tembleque and Toledo. Remembering and singing as his father had sung.

'Oh, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

And the leopard shall lie with the kid,

And the cow and the bear shall feed,

While the lion eats straw like the ox ...'

When he approached Toledo, each new glimpse was a gladness and a pain. Here was where sometimes he had walked from the city with other youths to have grave, grown-up discussions -- of Talmud lessons, and of the true nature and variety of the sexual act, and of what they would be when they were men, and of the reasons for the various shapes of female breasts.

There was the rock where, only two days before he was murdered, his brother Meir, may his soul rest in peace, had sat with Yonah and taken turns playing his Moorish guitar.

There was the path to the house where once lived Bernardo Espina, former physician of Toledo, may God also grant perfect rest to his Catholic soul.

There was the path to the place where Meir was killed.

Here was where Yonah had sometimes tended the flock of his uncle Aron the cheese maker. There was the farmhouse where Aron and Juana had lived, with unfamiliar children now playing by the door.

Yonah clattered across the Rio Tagus as sunlight glinted hard on the water, hurting his eyes, the mare's hooves exploding through the bright, clear shallows, wetting his legs.

Then he was riding up the cliff trail to the height, the trail that Moise the burro had descended so surely in the dark of night, and which now the poor mare climbed clumsily and nervously in full daylight.

At the top, nothing had changed.

My God, he thought, You have scattered and destroyed us and You have left this place exactly the same as it was.

He rode slowly down the narrow way that ran near the cliff. The houses matched his memories of them. The old neighbor, Marcelo Troca, was still alive, there he was, grubbing in his garden while near him another burro was listlessly eating his garbage.

The Toledano house was still standing. There was a stench in the air; the closer Yonah came, the stronger was the stench. The house had been repaired. Only ... if you knew where to look and then searched very carefully, it was still possible to see the faint signs of a past fire.

Yonah stopped the horse and dismounted.

The house was occupied. A man of middle years came through the door and was startled to see him standing there holding the horse's reins.

'Buenos días, señor. Is there a thing you wish of me?'

'No, señor, but I feel a dizziness, a touch of the sun. Will you permit me to go to the shade behind your house and rest for a moment?'

The man studied him uneasily, noting the horse, the mail vest, Mingo's knife, the sword hanging from his left side, the bearded stranger's hard edge. 'You may seek out our shade,' he said reluctantly. 'I have cool water. I will bring you drink.'

Behind the house, things were the same and yet vastly different. Yonah went at once to the secret place, searching for the loose stone behind which he had left the message for his brother Eleazar. There was no longer a loose stone. The place had been tightly plastered.

The odor came from behind what had been his father's workshop. There were hides and animal skins, some soaking in vats before they could be scraped, others drying in the air. He tried to identify the exact spot where his father was buried and saw that an oak tree grew from it, already almost as tall as Yonah.

The householder returned with a wooden cup and Yonah drained it of water despite the fact that it was as if he took in the heavy smell when he swallowed.

'You are a tanner, I see.'

'I bind books and make my own leathers,' the man said, watching him closely.

'May I sit for another moment?'

'As you wish, señor.' But the man remained, watchful -- lest Yonah should purloin a wet and stinking skin? More likely he was fearful for valuable books in the workshop, or perhaps he had gold. Yonah closed his eyes and recited the Kaddish. Despairing, he knew he would never remove his father's body from this stinking and unmarked place.

I shall never stop being a Jew. I swear it, Abba.

When he opened his eyes, the bookbinder still stood there. Yonah saw that when he had gone inside for the water he had placed a tool in his belt, a wicked hooked knife doubtless meant to trim leather. Yonah had no quarrel with the man. Clambering to his feet, he thanked the bookbinder for his kindness. Then he returned to his horse and rode away from the house where once he had lived.

The synagogue looked much the same but now it was a church with a tall wooden cross rising from the peak of the roof.

The Jewish cemetery was gone. All the stone memorial markers had been taken away. In several areas of Spain he had seen gravestones with Hebrew inscriptions used to build walls and roadways. The cemetery had been transformed into a grazing meadow. Without markers, he knew only the approximate area of his family graves, and he went there, aware that he made a strange picture as he stood among the sheep and goats and said the prayer for the dead.

Riding toward the center of the city he came to the communal ovens, where a group of women were hectoring the baker for burning their bread. Yonah knew the ovens well. Once, they had been kosher. As a boy, each Friday he had brought the family bread there for baking. In those days the ovens were run by a Jew named Vidal, but now the baker was a hapless fat man with no means of defense.

'You are a lazy, dirty man, and a fool,' one of the women said. She was young and comely, if somewhat fleshly. As Yonah watched, she took one of the ruined breads from her basket and shook it under the baker's nose, insulting him with a vengeance. 'You think I come here to see my good bread turned into dog shit? You should be made to eat it, dumb ox!'

As she turned, Yonah saw that she was Lucía Martín, whom he had loved as a boy.

Her glance slid over him, and past, and then back to him again. But she didn't pause in her departure, trudging away with her basket of burned bread.

He rode slowly down the narrow street, not wishing to overtake her. But he had ridden scarcely beyond the houses and prying eyes when she stepped from behind a tree where she had been waiting.

'Truly, is it you?' she said.

She walked to the horse and gazed up at him.

What he must do, he knew, was deny that he knew her, smile over a mistaken identity, bid her a polite farewell, and ride away. But he dismounted.

'How has it been for you, Lucía?'

She seized his hand, her eyes widening in a kind of triumph. 'Oh, Yonah. It is beyond belief that it is you. Where did you vanish, and why, when you might have been my father's son? Brother to me?'

This was the first female he had seen naked. She had been a sweet girl, he remembered, and the memory made his body stir. 'I had no wish to be your brother.'

She had been married these three years, she told him quickly, retaining a fierce grip on his hand. 'To Tomás Cabrerizo whose family owns vineyards across the river. Do you not recall Tomás Cabrerizo?'

Yonah had the vaguest memory of a sullen, rock-throwing youth who had taunted Jews.

'I have two little daughters and am with child yet again. I pray to the Blessed Mother for a son,' she said. She looked at him with wonder, noting his horse, his clothing and arms. 'Yonah. Yonah! Yonah, where did you go, how do you live?'

'Best you do not ask,' he said gently, and changed the subject. 'Your father is well?'

'My father is gone these two years. He was full of health, then one morning he was dead.'

'Ah. May he rest,' Yonah said with regret. Benito Martín had ever shown him kindness.

'May his soul rest with the Savior,' she said, crossing herself. Her brother Enrique had entered the order of Dominicans, she told him with evident pride.

'And your mother?'

'My mother lives on. Never go to her, Yonah. She would denounce you.'

Her piety had made him fearful. 'And you shall not denounce me?'

'Never then nor now!' Her eyes filled, but she stared at him angrily.

He succumbed to the need to flee. 'Go with the Lord, Lucía.'

'With the Lord, my childhood friend.'

He freed his hand but could not resist turning back to a final question. 'My brother Eleazar. Have you ever seen him here again?'

'Never.'

'You have never received a word as to his whereabouts or fate?'

She shook her head. 'No word of Eleazar. No word of any of them. You are the only Jew to return here, Yonah Toledano.'

He knew what he must do now, and whom he must find, if he was to save himself from Lavera.

He rode slowly through the central part of the city. The wall about the Jewish Quarter still stood but the gates were opened wide, and Christians lived in all the houses. The cathedral of Toledo loomed over everything.

So many people.

Surely someone here in the Plaza Mayor behind the cathedral might recognize him as Lucía had done. Thinking of her, he realized that already she might have betrayed him. By now, the cruel fingers of the Inquisition might be reaching for him as a man reaches to snare a fly. There were soldiers in the plaza, and members of the guard. Yonah forced himself to ride by them slowly, but no one gave him more than a passing glance.

He promised a coin to a gap-toothed boy if he would watch the mare.

The entrance he took into the cathedral was called the Door of Joy. As a boy he had wondered whether it fulfilled the promise of its name, but now he felt no rapture. In front of him, a ragged man dipped his hand into a font and genuflected. Yonah waited until no one was in sight and then slipped into the cathedral.

The space was vast, with a high, vaulted ceiling supported by the stone columns that divided the floor into five separate aisles. The interior looked almost empty because it was so large, but there were a lot of people scattered through the cathedral and many black-robed clerics, and the merged sound of their prayers echoed as it rose to the heights. Yonah wondered whether all the combined voices lifted to God in cathedrals and churches throughout Spain drowned out his own frightened voice when he spoke to God.

It took him a long time to make his way through the main body of the cathedral, but he didn't see the person he was seeking.

When he emerged, blinking in the bright light, he gave the boy the promised coin and asked if he knew a friar named Bonestruca.

The boy's smile disappeared. 'Yes.'

'Where might I find him?'

The boy shrugged. 'Lots of them at the Dominican house.' Grimy fingers closed upon the coin, and he ran as if pursued.