The Last Jew (9 page)

It was his favorite fishing place; through the years he had used it well. A large rock overlooked the pool, easy to reach because its flat top was almost the height of the trail, while an overhanging tree provided shade for both the fish that gathered in the pool and the fisher who sat on the rock.

The baited hook entered the water with a plop. Yonah waited expectantly, but when there was no sign of a strike he settled down on the rock with a sigh. There was a slight breeze, the rock was cool, and the quiet sounds of the river were calming and pleasant. Somewhere far downstream two men called to one another, and nearby, a bird trilled.

He want aware of drowsiness, just a diminution of sounds and awareness, until he slept.

He was awakened with a start when someone slid the end of the pole from under his leg.

'You have a fish,' the man said.

Yonah was frightened. The man was as tall as Abba, a friar or monk in black robes and sandals. His voice was soft and kind, and Yonah thought he had a good face. 'He is a very large fish. You wish the pole?'

'No, you may catch him,' Yonah said reluctantly.

'Lorenzo,' someone called from the trail, and Yonah turned to see another black-robed man waiting there. The fish was lunging for the brush dam at the top of the pool, but the tall man raised the tip of the pole. He was a good fisher, Yonah noted. He didn't pull it up so sharply that it endangered the line, but he led the fish back by taking in the line with his left hand, a little at a time, until the catch, a fine bream arching back and forth on the hook, was hauled to the top of the rock.

The man was smiling. 'Not so big, after all, eh? They all seem very large at first.' He held out the fish. 'You wish him?'

Of course Yonah did, but he sensed that the man wanted the fish too.

'No, señor,' he said.

'Lorenzo,' the other friar called. 'Please, there is no time. He will be looking for us.'

'All right!' the tall man said irritably, and slid a finger under a gill the better to carry the fish. Gentle eyes as deep as the pool looked at Yonah.

'May Christ bring you luck,' he said.

9

Visitors

The next morning the sky turned a greenish black and there were shuddering claps of thunder and a good deal of lightning, then the storm quieted, but it rained for two days. Yonah's uncle Aron and aunt Juana came to Yonah's house and Juana said it was unusual for rain to fall so heavily ín the month of Tammuz.

'But not unheard-of,' her husband said.

'No, of course not unheard-of,' Juana said, and nobody suggested it was a bad omen. The air was hot even though the moisture fell, and on the second day the rain lightened and then stopped.

Benito Martín had ridden through the rain on both days, carrying Helkias's sketches rolled and wrapped against the wet in a piece of leather. He had unrolled the drawings at seven churches and two monasteries. By now, every priest and monk in Toledo had heard of the loss of the priory's ciborium, but nobody offered any knowledge of what had happened to the reliquary after it had been stolen.

His last stop had been at the cathedral, where he had knelt and said a prayer.

When he finished praying he stood and saw that he was being watched by a tall friar with an extremely handsome face. Martín knew from common gossip that the people ín the plazas referred to this friar as El Guapo, the Beautiful One, and that he was with the Inquisition, but Benito couldn't remember his name.

He continued the business of showing the sketches to priests, of whom there was no shortage in the cathedral. He had shown the drawings three times, with the familiar lack of success, when he looked up and met the tall friar's eyes again.

The man crooked a forefinger.

'Let me see.'

When Benito gave him the sketches he studied each of them at length. 'Why do you show them to priests?'

'They are designs of a reliquary that has been stolen. The silversmith who fashioned it seeks to learn if its whereabouts are known.'

'The Jew Toledano.'

'Yes.'

'Your name?'

'I am Benito Martín.'

'You are a converso?'

'No, Friar, I am an Old Christian.'

'Helkias Toledano is your friend?'

It should have been easy to say Yes, we are friends.

Benito was fond of the cathedral. It was his habit to visit it often, because the lovely vaulted place always made him feel his prayers could go straight up, into the ears of God, but this friar was spoiling the cathedral for him.

'I am a goldsmith. At times we have conferred about matters of our trades,' he said warily.

'Have you relatives who are conversos?'

'I do not.'

'Has the silversmith already left Toledo?'

'He is soon to be gone.'

'Has he spoken to you of Jewish prayer?'

'No. Not ever.'

'Do you know whether he has spoken of prayer with any Christian?'

'No.'

The friar handed back the sketches. 'You are aware that Their Majesties have specifically forbidden any Christian to give comfort to Jews?'

'I have not given comfort,' Benito said, but the friar may not have heard, for he had already turned away.

Bonestruca, Benito remembered, that was the name.

The rain had stopped by the time he rode to the Toledano house.

'So, my friend,' Helkias said.

'So, my friend. Is it truly to be tomorrow?'

'Yes, tomorrow,' Helkias said, 'whether or not the Count of Tembleque returns so I can collect my money. If we wait longer it will be too late.'

Helkias told Benito they would pack the burros early. He and his sons were carefully separating the few belongings they could carry with them. 'What we leave behind is yours, as you wish.'

'I thank you.'

'For nothing.'

Martín gave Helkias his disappointing report, and Helkias thanked him and shrugged: the results were not unexpected. Then, 'You know the friar they call the Beautiful One, a tall Dominican?' Martín asked.

Helkias looked at him in puzzlement. 'No.'

'He is an inquisitor. When he saw me showing the sketches he made me understand he disapproved of my errand. He asked questions about you, too many questions. I fear for you, Helkias. Have you had dealings with that friar -- perhaps some difficulty or unpleasantness?'

Helkias shook his head. 'I have never talked with him. But save your concern, Benito. Tomorrow night I will be far from here.'

Benito was ashamed that a friar could cause him nervousness.

He asked if he might bring Eleazar to the Martín house for the rest of the afternoon, so the child could say farewell to his beloved playmate, little Enrique Martín.

'He might as well stay the night, with your permission?' Martín said.

Helkias nodded, aware that the boys would never see one another again.

Yonah and his father had worked well into the evening by candlelight, completing the arduous details of their departure.

Yonah enjoyed sharing tasks with his father. It was not unpleasant to be alone with him, with Eleazar gone for the night. They made piles of their belongings, one pile composed of things they would leave behind, a smaller pile that they would pack onto the burros at dawn -- clothing, foodstuff, a prayer book, a set of his father's tools.

Before it grew late, Helkias put his arm around Yonah and ordered him to bed. 'Tomorrow we travel. You will need your strength.'

But Yonah had only just fallen asleep to the comforting sound of Helkias sweeping the floor when his father shook him, roughly and urgently. 'My son. You must leave the house through the rear window. Hurry.'

Yonah could hear it, the sounds of many men coming down the road. Some were singing a fierce hymn. Others were shouting. They were not far off.

'Where? ...'

'Go to the cave in the cliff. Do not come out until I come there for you.'

His father's fingers dug into his shoulder. 'Listen to me. Go now. Go at once. Let no neighbor see you.' Yonah threw half a loaf of bread into a small sack and thrust it at him. 'Yonah. If I don't come ... stay as long as you are able, then go to Benito Martín.'

'Come with me now, Abba,' the boy said fearfully, but Helkias shoved his son through the window and Yonah was alone in the night.

He circled cautiously behind the houses, but at some point he needed to cross the road to get to the cliff. When he was beyond the houses he moved to the road in the darkness and for the first time he saw the lights approaching, terrifyingly near. It was a large group of men, and the torchlight glinted sharply on weapons. He was trying not to sob but it didn't matter, because their noise was very loud now.

And suddenly Yonah was running.

10

The Lair

The narrowness and shape of the tunnel to the cave cut out most sound but now and again something came to his ears, a muffled roar, a howl like the wind in a far-off storm.

He wept quietly, lying on the floor of rock and earth as if fallen there from a great height, heedless of the pebbles and stones under his body.

After a long while he sank into sleep, deeply and gratefully, escaping from his small stone prison.

When he awakened he had no idea how long he had slept, or how much time had passed since he had entered the cave.

He was aware that what had dragged him from sleep was the sensation of something small moving over his leg. He stiffened, thinking of vipers, but finally he heard a familiar faint scurrying and he relaxed, unafraid of mice.

His eyes long since had become accustomed to the velvet blackness but couldn't pierce it. He had no idea whether it was day or night. When he was hungry, he gnawed at the bread his father had given him.

Next time he slept he dreamed of his father, in the dream studying the well-known face, the very blue eyes set deep above the strong nose, the wide, full-lipped mouth above the bush of beard, gray as the springy halo of hair. His father was speaking to him. But Yonah couldn't hear the words or didn't remember them when the dream was over and he awakened to find himself lying in his animal lair.

He remembered the last thing his father had said to him, his stern instruction that Yonah was to wait in the cave until Helkias came to tell him all was well, so he finished the rest of the bread and lay there in the dark. He was powerfully thirsty, and he recalled that Meir had taught him to take a small pebble when there was no water, and suck on it to start the saliva flowing in his mouth. He searched with his hands, finding a pebble just the right size, brushing it off with his fingers. When he placed it in his mouth the saliva came and he sucked like a babe at a teat. Soon he remembered to spit out the pebble when he started to sink back into the deep well of sleep.

Thus time passed amid dry hunger and consuming thirst and escape into slumber, and a terrible, growing weakness.

The moment came when Yonah knew that if he stayed longer in the cave he would die there, and he began slowly and painfully to crawl out of his hole.

When he turned the corner of the L-shaped tunnel the radiance struck him a blow and he stopped crawling until he could see in the terrible light.

Outside, he noted by the sun that it was afternoon. The day was silent save for loud birdsong. He climbed up the narrow trail carefully, realizing the Lord had protected him during his desperate descent in evening darkness.

As he walked homeward he met no one. When he came to the cluster of houses he saw with a burst of joy that all appeared untouched and as usual.

Until ...

His own house was the only one ravished. The door was gone, ripped from its hinges. Furnishings were taken or ruined. Everything of value -- Meir's Moorish guitar! -- was gone. Above each window a fan of black on the stone showed where fire had consumed the sills.

Inside there was waste and desolation and the smell of the torch.

'Abba!'

'Abba!'

'Abba!'

But there was no answer and Yonah was frightened by the sound of his own shouting. He went outside and began to run toward Benito Martín's house.

The Martín family greeted him with a stunned joy.

Benito was pale. 'We thought you were dead, Yonah. We believed they threw you over the cliff. Into the Tagus.'

'Where is my father?'

Martín went to the boy, and as they swayed to and fro in a terrible embrace he told Yonah everything without saying a word.

When the words came, Martín related a horrifying story.

A friar had gathered a crowd in the Plaza Mayor of Toledo. 'It was a Dominican, a tall man, name of Bonestruca. He had revealed great curiosity about your father when I showed drawings of his reliquary at the cathedral.