The Last Jew (19 page)

He bade a quiet good day.

20

What Mingo Learned

Mingo had been spending more and more of his time at the Alhambra, returning to the caves on the Sacromonte only one or two nights a week, and one evening he confronted Yonah with troubling news.

'Because the monarchs soon will come to the Alhambra for an extended stay, the Inquisition is planning to examine very closely all Marranos and Moriscos in the area surrounding the fortress, lest some sign of backsliding Christians offend royal eyes.'

Yonah listened silently.

'They will search for heretics until they have them in good supply. Doubtless there will be an auto de fé to demonstrate their zeal and their efficiency, perhaps more than one, with court members, or even the Crown in attendance.

'What I am trying to impart, my good friend Yonah,' he said gently, 'is that it would be prudent for you soon to go elsewhere, where the need for examination of each Paternoster of your life will be less urgent.'

*

Out of common decency, Yonah could not resist trying to warn those with whom recently he had prayed. Perhaps deep within him there was a wild hope that Isaac Saadi's family would react to him as a savior and look upon him more favorably.

But when he reached the small house in the Albaicin, it was empty.

So was the nearby house that had been occupied by the Benzaquen family, and the houses of the other New Christians. The converso families had heard of the approaching visit of Ferdinand and Isabella and had fully realized its danger to them. All had fled.

Alone in front of the abandoned houses, Yonah squatted in the shade of a plane tree. Idly, he marked four points in the dust: this mark represented the Old Christians of Spain; this, the Moors; here were the New Christians.

And the fourth mark represented Yonah ben Helkias Toledano.

He knew he was not the kind of Jew his father had been, or all the generations who had gone before. In his heart he yearned to be that kind of person but already he had become something else.

His true religion now was to be a Jew of simple survival. He had dedicated himself to continued existence as a group of one, standing apart and alone.

A few feet from the deserted house he found the little red stone that had been Adriana's plaything. He took it and placed it in his purse as a memento of the child's aunt, who was certain to haunt his dreams.

Mingo returned to the caves from the Alhambra to tell urgently of more overheard intelligence.

'Action against New Christians will occur at once. This day must see your departure from this place, Yonah.'

'What of your Roma?' Yonah asked him. 'Shall they be safe from harm?'

'My people are grooms and gardeners. We number among ourselves none so ambitious as Moorish architects and builders or Jewish financiers and physicians. The gadje don't bother to envy us. Indeed, most of them scarcely see us. When the Inquisition studies us it observes only peóns who are good Christians.'

He made another suggestion that sorely troubled Yonah. 'You should leave here without your burro. The creature is very close to the end of his life, and if he were ridden hard on the trail, very soon he would sicken and die.'

Yonah knew in his heart it was true.

'I give the burro to you,' he said finally, and Mingo nodded.

Yonah brought an apple down to the pasture and fed it to Moise, scratching the burro gently between the ears. It was difficult for him to turn away.

The small man did him one last service, arranging that Yonah would ride with two Romani men -- the Manigo brothers, Eusabio and Macot -- to deliver horses to dealers in Baena, Jaén, and Andujar. 'Macot Manigo is sending a package to Tangier, by way of a boat he is to meet in Andujar. The boat is owned by Moorish smugglers with whom we have done business for many years. Macot will try to get you on that boat, to go down the Guadalquivir River.'

There was little time for farewells. Mana gave him bread and cheese wrapped in a cloth. Mingo gave him two handsome parting gifts, a dagger of worked Moorish steel that could keep a fine edge, and the guitar Yonah had played and admired.

'Mingo,' he said, 'you must please take care that you do not make the Catholic monarchs too angry.'

'And you must not worry about me. May you have a good life, my friend.'

Yonah dropped to his knees and embraced the voivode of the Roma.

The horse traders were sweet-tempered men with swarthy skins and such facility with animals that they thought nothing of driving a delivery of twenty horses. He had grown familiar with them on the Sacromonte, and now they proved pleasant travel companions. Macot was a good trail cook, and they had brought a supply of wine. Eusabio had a lute and he and Yonah played together every night, banishing their saddle soreness with music.

During the long hours of riding under the hot sun, in his mind Yonah compared two men whom nature had formed strangely. He marveled that the tall and comely friar Bonestruca had become hating and hateful, while the gypsy dwarf Mingo had gathered so much goodness into his small body.

Yonah's own large body ached from being too long in the saddle, and his soul ached with loneliness. Having tasted warm and welcoming companionship, it was wrenching for him to return to the forlorn wandering life.

He thought about Inés Saadi Denia. He was forced to accept the fact that her path through life would be far different from his own, but he allowed himself to brood more fully over another loss. A beast of burden had been his sole and constant companion for more than three years, willing and undemanding. It would be a long time before he would cease to regret bitterly the absence of the burro he called Moise.

Part Five

THE ARMORER

OF GIBRALTAR

Andalusia

April 12, 1496

21

An Ordinary Seaman

The horse dealers stayed too long in Baena, where they left five horses with a gypsy dealer who gave them a feast, and in Jaén, where they left another half dozen animals. By the time they delivered the last nine horses to a livestock broker in Andujar they were almost a full day late. Yonah and the brothers went to the riverfront in full expectation that the African boat had come and gone, but the boat was still there, tied up at the dock. Macot was greeted warmly by the captain, a burnoosed Berber with a great, bushy gray beard. He accepted Macot's package and explained that his boat was behind schedule also; he had brought a cargo of hemp from Tangier, selling it upriver, and would return to Tangier after taking on cargo at Córdova, Seville, the small ports along the Gulf of Cádiz, and Gibraltar.

Macot spoke earnestly to the mariner, turning to point at Yonah, and the captain nodded without enthusiasm after he had listened for a while.

'It is arranged,' Macot told Yonah. The brothers embraced him. 'Go with God,' Macot said.

'And you go with God,' Yonah said. As they rode away, leading the horse he had ridden, he watched wistfully, wishing he could return to Granada with them.

But at once the captain made it obvious to him that he would travel as a laborer and not as a passenger, and he was put to work with the crew, loading olive oil that would be taken to Africa.

That night, as the Arab captain allowed the strong current to carry the shallow-draft boat down the narrow channel of the upper Guadalquivir, Yonah sat with his back against a great tun of oil. While the shadowy banks glided by, he played the guitar softly and tried not to consider that he had not the slightest idea where his life was going.

On the African boat he was the lowest of the low, for he had to learn everything about life afloat, from the raising and furling of the single triangular sail to the safest way to stow cargo in the open craft, lest a crate or a tun careen during a storm and damage the boat or even sink it.

The captain, name of Mahmouda, was a brute who struck with his fists when displeased. The crew -- two blacks, Jesús and Cristóbal, and two Arabs who shared the cooking, Yephet and Darb -- slept under the stars or the rain, wherever they were able to find a nook. All four of the crewmen were from Tangier, muscular peóns with whom Yonah got along because they were young and spirited. Sometimes at night, while he played the guitar those who were not on watch sang until Mahmouda shouted at them to shut their holes and go to sleep.

The work was not terribly hard until they reached a port. In the dark early hours of the third day Yonah had been aboard, the boat docked in Córdova and took on cargo, Yonah teaming with Cristóbal, each carrying one end of large and very heavy crates. They worked by the light of pitchy torches that gave off a fearsome stink. On the other side of the dock a group of dispirited prisoners in chains was being herded onto a boat.

Cristóbal grinned at one of the armed guards. 'You have many criminals,' he said.

The guard spat. 'Conversos.'

Yonah watched them as he worked. They appeared dazed. Some already had injuries that caused them to move painfully, dragging their fetters as if they were old people who hurt when they moved.

The boat's lading was rope and cordage, knives and daggers, and oil, which was in short supply that year. In the eight days it took them to reach the long, wide mouth of the Guadalquivir River the captain had become anxious to obtain oil, which the Tangier merchants were eagerly awaiting. But at Jerez de la Frontera, where he had counted on a large consignment of excellent olive oil, there was only an apologetic trader.

'No oil? Fuck!'

'In three days. So sorry. But please wait. In three days, all you wish to buy.'

'Shit!'

Mahmouda set the crew to doing small tasks aboard the craft while they waited. In the foulest mood, he beat Cristóbal for not moving fast enough to please him.

Jerez de la Frontera was where the prisoners Yonah had glimpsed in Córdova had been taken, to join an assemblage of former Jews and former Muslims who had been convicted, in half a dozen river towns, of backsliding from their allegiance to Christ. A large detachment of soldiers was in the town. The red flag promising impending capital punishment had been displayed, and people had begun to come into Jerez de la Frontera to witness a very large auto de fé.

After the boat had been tied to the dock for two days, the ill-tempered Mahmouda exploded when Yephet, consolidating the cargo to make room for the expected oil, tipped a barrel of wine onto its side. There were no leaks, and the barrel was swiftly righted, but Mahmouda went berserk.

'Wretch!' he shouted. 'Foulness! Scum of the earth!' He beat Yephet to the floor with his fists and then picked up a section of rope and whipped him with it.

Yonah felt the sudden, bitter anger building in him. He found himself moving forward, but Cristóbal seized him and held him back until the beating was over.

That evening the captain left the boat to search for a riverfront stew that offered a bottle and a woman.

The crewmen rubbed a little of their precious cooking oil on Yephet's battered body.

'I don't think you need fear Mahmouda,' Almar told Yonah. 'He knows you are under the protection of the Roma.'

But Yonah thought that in a blind rage Mahmouda was incapable of reason, and he didn't trust his own ability to stand by and witness further beatings. Soon after night fell, he gathered his belongings and climbed soundlessly onto the dock, then he walked away from the boat into the dark.

He walked for five days, without hurrying because he had no destination. The road followed the coast and he enjoyed looking at the sea. Sometimes the road veered inland but always Yonah could see blue water again after traveling only a little way. In several tiny villages there were fishing boats. Some of the boats were more silvered by sun and salt than others, but all of them were kept in good condition by men who depended on them for a living. Yonah saw Andalusian men intent on homely tasks, mending large nets or caulking and pitching a boat bottom. Sometimes he attempted to speak with them, but they had little to say when he asked about employment. He gathered that the fishing crews usually were related by blood or years of familial friendship. There was no employment for a stranger.

In the town of Cádiz his fortune changed. He was on the waterfront when one of the men unloading cargo from a packet ship became careless. Unable to see because of the size of a bale of cloth he carried, he took a misstep, lost his balance, and fell from the gangway. The cloth bale landed in soft sand, while the man struck his head hard on an iron mooring.

Yonah waited until the injured crewman had been carried away to a physician and the onlookers had dispersed before he approached the ship's mate, a grizzled, middle-aged sailor with a tough, scarred face and a kerchief tied around his head.

'I am Ramón Callicó. I am able to help with the cargo,' he said, and the mate saw the great, muscular body of the young man and nodded that he should go aboard, where others told him what to lift and where to set it down. He brought cargo down into the hold, where because of the heat two crewmen, Joan and César, worked almost naked. Stowing cargo, much of the time Yonah could understand their orders, but sometimes he was forced to ask them to repeat their words, which sounded like Spanish, and yet were not.