The Last Jew (17 page)

On the way, Mingo told Yonah of the Alhambra's history. 'Muhammad the First, whom they called Al Ahmar ibn Nasir because he had red hair, built the first palace fortress here in the thirteenth century. A century later, the Court of Myrtles was built for Yusuf the First. Succeeding caliphs expanded the citadel and palace. The Court of the Lions was built by Muhammad the Fifth and the Tower of the Infantas was added by Muhammad the Seventh.'

Mingo halted their mounts when they reached the high, rose-colored wall. 'Thirteen towers rise from the wall. This is the Gate of Justice,' he said, pointing out a carving of a hand and a key on the gate's two arches. 'The five fingers represent the obligation to pray to Allah five times daily -- at dawn, at noon, in the afternoon, in the evening, and at night.'

'You know a great deal about the Muslim faith,' Yonah observed, and Mingo smiled but didn't reply.

As they rode through the gate someone recognized Mingo and hailed him, but no one else paid them heed. The fortress was a hive of activity, with several thousand people busily maintaining the beauty and defenses of its fourteen hectares. They left the burro and the horse in the stables and Mingo led Yonah on foot through the vast royal compounds, down a long walk overhung with wisteria.

Yonah was awed. The Alhambra was more dazzling than when seen from afar, a seemingly endless fantasy of towers, arches and cupolas, lavishly colored and adorned with lacelike stucco, honeycomb vaulting, brilliant mosaics and delicate arabesques. In the inner courts and halls, plaster moldings painted red, blue, and gold, simulating foliage, covered the walls and ceilings. The floors were marble, and wainscots of green and yellow tile lined the lower walls. In the courtyards and inner gardens there were flowers, flowing fountains, and nightingales singing in the trees.

Mingo showed him that from several windows there were fine views of the Sacromonte and the caves of the Roma, while other windows revealed the wooded gorge rushing with water. 'The Moors understand water,' Mingo said. 'They tapped the Darro River five miles up in the hills, and directed it to this place by means of a wondrously conceived waterworks that fills the pools and fountains and brings flowing water into every bedchamber.' He translated an Arabic saying on one of the walls: 'He who comes to me tortured by thirst will find water pure and fresh, sweet and unmixed.'

Their footsteps echoed as they walked through the Hall of the Ambassadors, where Sultan Boabdil had signed the articles of surrender to Ferdinand and Isabella, and which still contained Boabdil's throne. Mingo showed Yonah a bathhouse, the Baños Arabes. 'Here is where the harem lolled unrobed and made their ablutions while the sultan watched from a balcony above, choosing his bed companion. If Boabdil still reigned we would be killed for venturing here. His father executed sixteen members of the Abencerrajes family and piled their heads on the harem fountain because their chief dallied with one of his wives.'

Yonah sat on a bench and listened to the splashing fountains while Mingo kept his appointment with the steward. It took only a short time for the small man to return. As they made their way back to the stables, Mingo said he had learned that Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand were coming to inhabit the Alhambra, along with their court. 'In the recent past they have complained about the somberness of the court. The chief steward has investigated and found that I am a practicing Christian, therefore I am summoned back to the Alhambra palace, to serve the conquering monarchs as their jester.'

'Does it please you to answer their summons?'

'It pleases me that members of the Roma will return to the Alhambra as grooms, gardeners, and peóns. As for being a jester ... It is difficult to tickle the minds of monarchs. One must walk a line as narrow as the edge of a sword. A jester is expected to show cheek and daring, bandying insults that provoke laughter. But the insults must be clever and mild. Stay on one side of the line and you are cosseted and loved. Cross the line into royal fury and you are beaten, or perhaps you are dead.'

He gave an example. 'The caliph was haunted by guilty knowledge that when his father, Muley Hacén, had died, they were blood enemies. One day, Boabdil heard me speak of an ungrateful son and assumed I spoke of him. In a fury he took his sword and held its point where my legs meet, at my most precious part. When I fell to the floor, the sword followed me down and I felt the point pressing against my cods.

'"Do not prick me, sire," I cried. "My little prick does not require a prick of its own. Indeed, my small prick is petted and spoiled, cosseted and content with things as they are. The places this little prick has been, the sights it has seen!"

'"Indeed, your entire body is a mean little prick," Boabdil snarled at me. The caliph's sword stayed trained against me, but in a moment he began to tremble with laughter and then to shake, and I knew I had survived.'

Mingo saw that Yonah's face was troubled. 'Have no fear for me, friend,' he said. 'It takes work and wisdom to be a fool, but I am the very king of the jesters.' He smiled, and leaned forward toward Yonah. 'Actually, my prick is no small thing at all, and I am better endowed than Boabdil!'

Mounted again, they rode past Moorish overseers who were directing the construction of a palace wing. 'The Moors don't believe they will be driven from Spain someday, as the Jews couldn't believe it until it happened,' Mingo said. 'But the day will come when the Moors, too, will be ordered to leave. The Christians have long memories of the many Catholics who died fighting Islam. Moors made the mistake of wielding swords against Christians, as Jews made the mistake of accepting power over Christians, like birds who flew ever higher until burned by the sun.'

When Yonah was silent, Mingo looked at him. 'There are Jews in Granada.'

'Jews who have become Christians.'

'Conversos such as yourself. What else?' Mingo said, annoyed. 'If you wish to have contact with them, go to the marketplace, to the booths of the silk merchants.'

19

Inés Denia

Yonah had avoided conversos, seeing no profit in association with them. Still, he deeply longed for contact with Jews and felt it would do no harm to set eyes on those who once had known the Shabbat, even though they knew it no more.

On a quiet morning he rode Moise into the busyness of the town. Mingo had told him the marketplace in Granada had been reborn with the burst of building and refurbishing at the Alhambra. It was a large bazaar and he enjoyed leading the burro through it, beguiled by the market sights and smells and sounds, riding past booths offering breads and cakes; huge fishes with their heads removed and small fishes with their eyes bright and fresh; whole suckling pigs and the hams, parts and staring heads of fat hogs; lamb and mutton cooked and uncooked; bags of fleece; all manner of fowl, with great birds hung so their colorful tails burst into the vision and beckoned the buyer; apricots, plums, red pomegranates, yellow melons ...

There were two silk merchants.

In one of the booths a sour-looking fellow showed bolts of material to two men who fingered the silk cloth dubiously.

In the other booth a man with a turban dealt with half a dozen interested buyers, but it was another face that caught Yonah and held him. The woman stood at a table cutting lengths of silk as a boy unrolled it from a bolt. Certainly he had seen faces more engaging and pleasing than hers, but he couldn't remember when or where that might have been.

The turbaned man was explaining that the difference between silks lay in the nature of the leaves eaten by the worms.

'The leaf-feed of the worms in the region that produces this pearly silk imparts a most subtle sheen to the thread. Do you see it? It gives the finished silk the faintest glints of gold.'

'But, Isaac, it is so dear,' the customer said.

'It does cost,' the merchant conceded. 'But that is because it is rare cloth, created by lowly worms and God-kissed weavers.'

Yonah wasn't listening. He tried to fade into the background of passing bodies while at the same time standing transfixed, for he greatly enjoyed watching the woman. She was young, but a grown female, her carriage erect, her slim body rounded and strong. Her thick hair was long and unfettered, the color of bronze. Her eyes were not dark; he thought they were not blue but wasn't close enough to name the exact shade. Her face, engrossed in her task, had been darkened by the sun, but when she measured the silk by using the distance between her elbow and the knuckles of her clenched fist, the sleeve of her garment rode up her arm and he saw that where her flesh had been covered from the sun it was paler than the silk.

She glanced up and caught him watching her. For the briefest of moments their eyes held one another in inadvertent contact, but at once she turned away and almost in disbelief he saw a delicious darkening of her lovely throat.

Amidst clucking and quacking and the stink of hen shit and feathers, Yonah learned from a seller of fowls that the turbaned silk merchant was Isaac Saadi.

He hovered in the vicinity of the silk booth a long time before it was free of customers. Only a few bought, but people liked to look at silk and stroke it. Finally, though, all potential buyers were gone, and he approached the man.

How to address him? Yonah decided quickly to combine elements of their double cultures. 'Peace be unto you, Señor Saadi.'

The man responded benignly to his respectful tone: 'And unto you, peace, señor.'

Beyond the man -- surely her father? -- the young woman busied herself with bolts of silk, not looking at them.

He knew instinctively it was not a moment for disguised identity. 'I am Yonah Toledano. I wonder if you might refer me to someone who may offer me employment?'

Señor Saadi frowned. He stared suspiciously at Yonah, noting the poor clothing, the broken nose, the shaggy hair and beard. 'I know no one in need of a worker. How do you come by my name?'

'I inquired of the seller of fowls. I have high regard for silk merchants.' He smiled weakly at his own foolishness. 'In Toledo, the silk merchant Zadoq de Paternina was a close friend of my father, Helkias Toledano, may he rest in eternal peace. Are you acquainted with Zadoq de Paternina?'

'No, but I know him by reputation. He is well?'

Yonah shrugged. 'He was among those who departed from Spain.'

'Was your father a man of business?'

'My father was a great silversmith. Alas, slain during an ... unpleasantness.'

'Ah, ah, ah. May he rest.' Señor Saadi sighed. It was an iron tenet of the world in which both of them had been raised that when a Jewish stranger approached, he must be offered hospitality. But Yonah knew this man assumed that both of them were conversos, and these days to invite a stranger might be to invite an Inquisition informer.

'I wish you good fortune. Go with God,' Saadi said uncomfortably.

'And good fortune unto you.' Yonah turned away, but before he had taken two steps the older man had followed him.

'You have shelter?'

'Yes, I have a place to sleep.'

Isaac Saadi nodded. 'You must come to my table to dine.' Yonah could hear the unspoken words: Someone who knows Zadoq de Paternina, after all. 'Friday, well before sundown.'

The girl had raised her head from the silk now, and Yonah could see she was smiling.

He mended his clothing and went to a stream and scrubbed it, then he washed his body and his face and beard with equal vigor. Mana trimmed his hair and beard while Mingo, who had started to spend time again in the splendors of the Alhambra, regarded the preparations with great amusement.

'All this in order to dine with a rag merchant,' the little man jeered. 'I do not fuss so to dine with royalty!'

In another life Yonah would have brought an offering of kosher wine. Friday afternoon he went to the market. It was too late in the season to find grapes, but he bought some large dates, sweet with their own nectar. Perhaps the girl wouldn't be there. Perhaps she was a servant of the shop and not the daughter of the shopkeeper, Yonah told himself as he followed Señor Saadi's directions to his home. It proved to be a small house in the Albaicin, the old Arab quarter that had been abandoned by those who had fled after the Moors had been defeated by the Catholic monarchs. Yonah was greeted carefully by Saadi, who expressed a formal gratitude as he accepted the gift of the dates.

The girl was there, she was a daughter; her name was Inés. Her mother was Zulaika Denia, a thin, silent woman with timid eyes. Her older sister, almost fat and with heavy breasts, was Felipa. A child, a pretty little girl of six years, was Adriana, Felipa's daughter. Saadi said that Joachim Chacon, Felipa's husband, was off buying silk in the southern ports.

The four adults eyed him nervously. Only the little girl smiled.

Zulaika served the two men the dates and then the females busied themselves preparing the meal.

'Your father, may he rest ... You said he was a silversmith?' Isaac Saadi asked, spitting date pits into his palm.

'Yes, señor.'

'In Toledo, you said?'

'Yes.'

'You seek employment. You did not take over your father's shop when he died?'

'No,' Yonah said. He didn't elaborate, but Saadi was not shy about asking questions.