The Last Jew (53 page)

She was in awe of the plain silver goblets his father had made. The black tarnish proved stubborn and mean, but Yonah collected the winter's accumulation from the henhouse floor and soaked each cup in the acidic embrace of wet chickenshit; then he rubbed and rubbed with more of the terrible mixture on a soft cloth, and after a soapy scrubbing and more rubbing with dry cloths, each cup gleamed like Count Vasca's armor. Adriana placed the goblets on a small table situated so they richly caught the leaping reflections of the fire, and she turned toward the wall the damaged portions of the two dented and scratched cups.

In the grove near the hilltop, the trees soon were heavy with small, hard green olives, and Adriana gloated over them and planned to press oil at the moment of perfect ripeness. In Yonah's absence she had bought a few goats for a small herd. Though the seller had claimed that three of the she-goats had been freshened, only a single goat showed any sign of being with kid. But Adriana was untroubled by such annoyances, because in the last week of summer it became clear that she was pregnant herself. Yonah was very pleased, and Adriana dwelt in calm ecstacy.

But the coming child made the difference.

In early autumn Reyna and Álvaro came to visit, and while the women sat and drank a glass of wine, the two men went to the hilltop and paced off the dimensions of a new barn.

Álvaro scratched his head when he saw what Yonah wanted. 'Shall you need a barn quite that deep, Ramón?'

But Yonah shook his head and smiled. 'So long as we are building, let us build,' he said.

Álvaro had constructed several houses, and Yonah contracted with him to raise the outer walls of a barn with a tile roof to match the roof of the hacienda. All through the autumn and winter Álvaro and Lope, the young man who was his assistant, collected stone and hauled it to the hilltop in a wagon pulled by oxen.

Adriana gave birth in March, laboring through a long, windy night and bearing her infant in the chill light of morning. Yonah extracted the man-child from her and as the baby opened his mouth and yowled he felt the last aloneness melt within him.

'He is Helkias Callicó,' Adriana said, and when he placed the swaddled infant into her arms she said words that were never uttered, even in their most private moments. 'Son of Yonah Toledano,' she whispered

The following spring, Álvaro and Lope dug a shallow trench to Yonah's specifications and laid the foundation. As the walls began to rise under their labor, Yonah took to working with the two builders, using every moment he could spare from his patients. He learned to choose and mate the stones carefully, and how to balance stone on stone so their stresses became the wall's strength. He even insisted on learning how to mix the mortar, blending pulverized shale with clay, sand, limestone, and water to make a rough cement. Álvaro was amused by his questions and his energy. 'You wish to cease being a physician and work at my trade,' he said, but they enjoyed the experience of laboring together.

The barn was finished during the first week of June. When Álvaro and Lope had been paid and had departed, Yonah began to labor alone in the cooler parts of the day, collecting additional materials in early morning and before dusk. Through the late summer and into the fall, on his own land he lifted rocks and stones into his barrow and unloaded them within the barn.

It was November before he could put the stones to use. He ran a line that cut a narrow slice of the barn's space from the rear of the structure and began to build an interior stone wall, to duplicate the outer rear wall.

In the darkest corner of the barn he built a low, narrow doorway through the new wall, and around the doorway he constructed a bin of pine logs. The bin was divided. In the front portion he stacked cut firewood, while over the section closest to the wall he installed a trapdoor at a shallow depth. The trapdoor allowed him access to the secret room, while whenever it was not in use it was hidden completely when more firewood was stacked on it.

In the long, narrow space between the walls he assembled a table and brought in two chairs and every outward manifestation of his Jewishness -- his kiddush cup, Sabbath candles, the two medical books in Hebrew, and a few scrawled pages of remembered blessings, idioms, and legends.

On the first Friday evening after the barn was completed, he stood on the hilltop near Nuño's grave with Adriana, who held their son. Together they studied the darkening sky until they could identify the white glitter of the first three stars.

Earlier he had lighted a lamp in the barn to preclude having to do so after the Sabbath had begun, and now in its light he cleared away the firewood and opened the trapdoor. He went in first and took the baby from Adriana, stooping to carry the child through the small door and into the dark space beyond. In a moment Adriana had joined them with the lamp.

It was a simple service. Adriana lighted the candles and they said the blessing together, welcoming the Sabbath Queen. Then Yonah chanted the Shema: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

It was all they had of liturgy.

'A peaceful Sabbath,' he said, and kissed her.

'A peaceful Sabbath, Ramón.'

They sat in the quiet place.

'See the light,' Yonah said to the child.

He was not Abraham and the little boy was not Isaac, to be made a martyr on an Inquisition stake, a burnt offering to God.

This was the only time Helkias would see the secret room until he could think as a man.

Yonah's Jewishness would live on in his own soul, where it could not be molested, and he would come here and visit his artifacts whenever it was safe. If he was preserved in life long enough to see his children reach the age of reason, he would bring each son or daughter into this secret place.

He would light the tapers and sing unfamiliar prayers, and attempt to help the next generation of the Callicó family to understand what had gone before. He would tell the tales -- stories of grandparents and uncles the child would never know, of a man whose hands and mind made beauty out of metal, of glorious sacred objects, of a golden rose with a silver stem. Stories of a better time, and of a departed family, and of a vanished world. After that, he and Adriana were agreed, it was up to God.