The Last Jew (36 page)

He and Reyna settled into a quiet and somewhat awkward routine. When he was home he read from the small medical library or worked at his translation, while she took care not to disturb him as she went about her chores.

One evening several months after Nuño's death, as Yonah settled into his chair by the fire she refilled his glass with wine. 'Is there anything special you will want for your dinner tomorrow?' she asked.

Yonah felt the heat of the wine and the heat of the fire. He looked at her standing there, a good servant, as if she had not seen him homeless and desperate, as if he had always been lord of the finca.

'I would appreciate it if you will make a potted fowl.'

They regarded one another. It was impossible for him to guess what she was thinking. But she inclined her head, and that night she came to his room for the first time.

She was older than he, perhaps by even as much as two decades. There was white hair among the black, but her body was firm from a life of the kind of hard work that had not made an old woman of her early, and she was more than willing to share his bed. From time to time she made a remark that gave Yonah reason to believe that when she was a young woman she had also shared the bed of Nuño's Jewish maestro, Gabriel Sporanis. It was not that she came with the property. He understood that having a man's body made her feel alive, and she had happened to work alone with three men of whom, over time, she had grown fond.

Yet in the morning she was as proper and respectful a housekeeper for Yonah as she always had been to Nuño. He quickly grew to be very contented, what with the work he loved astonishingly, and her good food and the ease they brought to one another regularly in his own wooden bed.

When he walked the property it bothered him that the land wasn't properly utilized, but he didn't plan to work it, for the same reason that its earlier physician-owners hadn't done so: it would not do to have peóns on the place to observe that the barn attached to the house contained not only a dispensary and a surgical table but was occasionally used for anatomical study that many might term witchcraft.

So when spring came that year he husbanded only so much of the farm as he could manage with his own hands and available time. He established three hives of bees for honey, and pruned a few of the olive and fruit trees, manuring them with the waste of the horses. Later in the year the orchard brought them their first good harvest of fruit for cooking and the table. It was a life that allowed Yonah to enjoy the rotation of the seasons.

He did not allow himself the dangerous outward manifestations of a Jew, but on the eves of Sabbath he always burned two tapers in his chamber and whispered the prayer: 'Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to light the Sabbath candles.'

Medicine filled his life richly, almost as if it were a religion he could practice in public, but he struggled to keep alive an inner existence as a Jew. Translating had brought back much of his skill with the Hebrew language, but he had lost the ability to pray in his father's tradition. He recalled only snatches of prayers. Even the framework of the Sabbath service had slipped from his grasp. For example, he could remember that the part of the service that called for prayer while standing -- the Amidah -- was made up of Eighteen Benedictions. Try as he might, with anguish and frustration, he remembered only seventeen. Furthermore, of the prayers he could recall, one of them troubled him terribly. The twelfth benediction was a prayer for the destruction of heretics.

When he had memorized the prayers as a boy in his father's house he hadn't pondered too deeply concerning their meaning. But now, living in the dark shadow of an Inquisition that sought to destroy heretics, this prayer arrowed its way into his heart.

Did it mean that if Jews were in power instead of the Church, they would also use God to destroy nonbelievers? Was it an axiom that absolute religious power must bring with it absolute cruelty?

Ha-Rakhaman, Our Father in Heaven, one God of all, why do You allow slaughter to be done so carelessly in Your name?

Yonah was certain that the ancients who composed the Eighteen Benedictions were godly men and scholars. But the author of the twelfth benediction would not have written it if he had been the last Jew in Spain.

One day, in a pile of worthless junk behind which a one-eyed beggar-pedlar sat in the Plaza Mayor, Yonah saw an object that made him catch his breath. It was a small cup. The kind of kiddush cup, used for the blessing of the wine, that his father had made for so many Jewish patrons. He forced himself to pick up other things first, a steel bit so bent it wouldn't fit in a horse's mouth, a filthy cloth bag, a wasp's nest still attached to a bit of branch.

When he turned the cup over he saw with disappointment that it hadn't been made by his father, for it lacked the HT mark that Helkias Toledano had placed in the bottom of every cup he had made. Probably it had been made by a silversmith who had lived somewhere in the region of Saragossa. Doubtless the cup had been abandoned or bartered away at the time of the expulsion, and apparently it had not been polished since then, for it was black with the dirt and tarnish of years, and also was badly scratched.

Still it was a kiddush cup and he wanted it badly. Yet he was held back from buying it by a terrible fear. It was an object which only Jews were likely to react to. Perhaps it had been placed amidst the beggar's trash as bait, so that when it was glimpsed and bought by a Jew, condemning eyes would note the identity of the purchaser.

He nodded to the beggar and walked away, circumnavigating the plaza slowly, and examining each doorway, roof, and window for a sign that someone watched.

Yet he saw no one who appeared to mark his presence, and when he returned to the beggar he went back to rummaging among the things. He chose half a dozen objects for which he had no use or desire and included the cup, taking care to engage in the usual bargaining over price.

When he reached home he polished the kiddush cup tenderly. Its surface was marred by several deep scratches that no amount of polishing would remove, but it quickly became one of his most cherished possessions.

The autumn of 1507 was wet and cold. The sound of coughing was heard in all the public places, and Yonah worked long hours, some of the time afflicted with the same racking cough that bedeviled his patients.

In October he was summoned to the home of Doña Sancha Berga, an elderly Old Christian woman who lived in a large and well-appointed house in a fine section of Saragossa. Her son, Don Berenguer Bartolomé, and her daughter, Monica, wife of a nobleman of Alagón, were in attendance when Yonah examined their mother. She had another son, Geraldo, a merchant of Saragossa.

Doña Sancha was the widow of a famous cartographer, Martín Bartolomé. She was a slim and intelligent woman of seventy-four years. She didn't appear to be terribly ill, but because of her age he prescribed wine in hot water, to be taken four times a day, and sips of honey.

'Do you have any other complaints, señora?'

'Only my eyes. My vision has grown increasingly dim,' Doña Sancha said.

Yonah pushed the draperies on her window, allowing light to flood into her chamber, and then put his face very close to hers. When he lifted her eyelids one at a time he was able to see the faint opacity in the lens.

'It is a disease called catarata,' he said.

'Blindness in old age is a family inheritance. My mother was blind when she died,' Doña Sancha said resignedly.

'Can nothing be done for this catarata?' her son inquired.

'Yes, there is a surgical treatment called "couching," in which the clouded lens is removed. In many cases, sight is somewhat improved.'

'Do you believe this couching might be done to me?' Doña Sancha asked.

He leaned over her again and studied her eyes. He had done the operation three times, once on a cadaver and twice with Nuño standing at his elbow, talking him through the procedure. In addition, he had seen Nuño do it twice.

'Do you have any vision at present?'

'I do,' she said. 'But it grows gradually worse, and I fear the coming blindness.'

'I believe it can be done for you, but I must warn you against expecting too much improvement. While vision remains to you, however imperfect, we shall wait. The catarata is easier to remove when it is ripe. So we must be patient. I will watch, and tell you when the procedure should be done.'

Doña Sancha thanked him, and Don Berenguer invited him into his library for a glass of wine. Yonah hesitated. Usually he avoided dangerous social contact with Old Christians whenever possible, wishing to guard against situations in which they might ask of his family and inquire into possible churchly connections and mutual friends. But the invitation was friendly and gracious, and it would have been difficult to refuse, so presently he found himself seated before the fire in a wonderful room furnished with a drafting desk and four large tables covered with charts and maps.

Don Berenguer was excited and hopeful about the prospects of improved vision for his mother. 'Can you recommend a suitable surgeon to do the procedure when the catarata ripens?' he asked.

'I can do it,' Yonah said cautiously. 'Or if you prefer, I believe Señor Miguel de Montenegro would be an excellent choice.'

'You are a surgeon as well as a physician?' Don Berenguer asked in surprise, pouring wine from a heavy glass decanter.

Yonah smiled. 'As is Señor Montenegro. It is true that most practitioners concentrate either on surgery or on medicine. But a few men, some of them excellent at both professions, combine the practices. My late maestro and uncle, Señor Nuño Fierro, believed that too often surgeons mistakenly believe the only real cure is with a knife, while many physicians are capable of total dependence of physick when surgery should be called for.'

Don Berenguer nodded thoughtfully as he handed Yonah a glass. The wine was mellow and very good, the kind of vintage Yonah would expect to be offered by an aristocratic family. He soon relaxed and began to enjoy himself, for his host offered no inquiry into subjects that would cause him discomfort.

Don Berenguer disclosed that he was a cartographer, as his father and his grandfather had been before him. 'My grandfather, Blas Bartolomé, created the first scientific charts of the Spanish coastal waters, he said. 'My father concentrated on river charts, while I have contented myself with forays into our mountain regions to map altitudes, trails and passes.'

Don Berenguer showed him chart after chart, and Yonah forgot his fears as they pored over them together. He revealed to the cartographer that in his youth for a brief time he had been an ordinary seaman, and he traced his river and sea voyages on the charts, warmed by the good wine and the company, of an interesting man who, his intuition told him, might become his friend.

33

The Witness

In the first week of April, a man from the office of the alguacil of Saragossa came and informed Yonah that he was required to appear as a witness before the municipal court, 'in a judgment to take place on Thursday a fortnight hence.'

The evening before the hearing, Yonah came downstairs while Reyna was in her cooling bath in front of the fire. He took the kettle from its hook over the flames, and as he poured fresh heat into the bath water they talked of his summons to the court. 'It is about the two boys,' he told her.

The case was already celebrated in the district. On a midwinter's morning two boys, both fourteen years of age and fast friends since they were small, had had a falling-out over a little wooden horse. The boys, Oliverio Pita and Guillermo de Roda, had played with the horse for years. It was crudely carved, little more than a trinket, but one day they quarreled about its ownership.

Each claimed the horse as property he had gladly shared with his friend.

As often happens with boys, the quarrel became physical. Had they been a few years older an altercation might have resulted in a challenge and a duel, but they resorted to fists and hard feelings. Things were made worse when a parent of each of the boys reported a memory that their family owned the horse.

The next time the boys met, they threw stones at one another. Oliverio was by far the better marksman; he was untouched, but several of the missiles he launched found Guillermo, one of the stones raking his right temple. When he appeared at home with his face covered with blood, his frightened mother had sent for the physician at once, and Yonah had gone to the Roda home and treated the boy. The incident might have had a chance to fade away in time, had not Guillermo subsequently contracted a fever and died.

Yonah had explained to the grief-stricken parents that Guillermo had died of a contagious disease and not from the slight injury he had suffered weeks before. But in his grief Ramiro de Roda had gone to the alguacil and sworn out a charge against Oliverio Pita, stating that the illness had followed the head injury, and that therefore Oliverio had been the cause of Guillermo's demise. The alguacil had scheduled the hearing to determine whether the boy would be charged with homicide.

'It is a tragedy,' Reyna said, 'and now the physician of Saragossa has been drawn into it.' She was able to sense the extent to which Yonah was troubled. 'But what have you to fear in this tale of two boys.'