The Last Jew (38 page)

More than a double fortnight after he had met the inquisitor in the street, Yonah was summoned by a brown-robed novice who said that Fray Bonestruca wished the physician to come at once to the Plaza Mayor.

When he responded, he found Fray Bonestruca sitting in the shade of the plaza's only tree.

The friar nodded to him as he rose from the bench. 'I will take you to a place. No word of what you will see or do should be repeated to any person, lest you receive my anger. I promise you that my anger can be terrible. Do you understand?'

Yonah fought for equanimity. 'I do understand,' he said evenly.

'You will come with me.'

He strode ahead, Yonah following on the horse. Several times Bonestruca looked back, his gaze going beyond Yonah to determine that they were not followed. But at the edge of the river Bonestruca didn't hesitate, lifting the skirt of his black robe above the shallow, rushing water. On the far bank he led Yonah to a finca, small but in sound condition, the new wood in a windowpane showing evidence of recent repairs. Bonestruca opened the door and swept inside without knocking. Yonah saw several bags of cloth and leather, and a wooden crate that had not been opened and unpacked. A woman stood holding a baby, two other children standing behind her, clutching her garment.

'This is María Juana,' Bonestruca said.

Yonah removed his hat. 'Señora.'

She was a plump woman, brown skinned, with a heart-shaped face, wide dark eyes, and very full, red lips. Her milk stained the material over her rounded breasts. 'He is Callicó, a physician,' Bonestruca told her. 'He will see to Filomena.'

The object of his concern was a baby, feverish and troubled by sores about the mouth. The oldest child, Hortensia, was seven, a pretty girl who appeared to be in good health, and there was a five-year-old boy, named Dionisio. Yonah's heart sank when he saw the boy. He appeared feeble and slow of mind. One of his legs was markedly bowed, and when Yonah examined him he found that the boy had the perforated palate and distinctive, pegged upper front teeth that Nuño had taught Yonah to recognize. The child squinted because of poor vision, and Yonah could see areas of opacity in both of his eyes.

Bonestruca said that his three children were exhausted and out of sorts, having arrived from Toledo with their mother only two days before. 'As for Filomena's sores, I trust that eventually they will go away. I remember when the other children had them as well.'

'Even Hortensia?'

'Yes, Hortensia also.'

'You are the children's father, Fray Bonestruca?'

'Of course.'

'When you were a younger man ... did you have the pox, malum venereum, ever?'

'Do not many young men get a taste of the pox, sooner or later? I was covered with sores like scales. But after a time I was cured, and no symptoms have returned.'

Yonah nodded discreetly. 'Well ... you gave the pox to your ... to María Juana.'

'That is true.'

'And she has given it to each of your children at birth. It is the pox that has twisted your son's limb and dimmed his eyes.'

'Then why are my Hortensia's limbs straight and her eyes bright?'

'The disease affects people differently.'

'After all, Filomena's sores will go away,' the friar said again.

'Yes,' Yonah said. But the boy's crooked leg and pegged teeth will not, he thought. And who knew what other tragedies the pox might bring into their lives.

He finished examining the children and prescribed a salve for the baby's sores. 'I shall return to see her in a week,' Yonah said. When Bonestruca asked him what was owed, Yonah quoted his usual fee for a home visit, taking care to maintain a businesslike tone. He had no wish to encourage a growing friendship with Fray Bonestruca.

Next day, a man named Evaristo Montalvo led his elderly wife, Blasa de Gualda, into the dispensary to see the physician.

'She is blind, señor.'

'Allow me to look,' Yonah said, and he led the woman into the bright light near the window.

He could see clouding in both her eyes. It was more advanced than similar clouding he had seen recently in the eyes of Doña Sancha Berga, Don Berenguer Bartolomé's mother, so ripe it made this woman's lenses appear to be a yellowish white.

'Is it possible for you to help me, señor?'

'I cannot promise to help you, señor. But it is possible for me to try, if that is what you wish. It would require surgery.'

'Cutting on my eyes?'

'Yes, cutting. You have what are called cataratas in each eye. The lenses have become cloudy, and they block your sight the way a shade blocks the light from entering a window.'

'I wish to see again, señor.'

'You will never see the way you did when you were young,' he said gently. 'Even if we are successful, you will not be able to fix your eyes on distant objects. You will be able to see only what is close at hand.'

'But that would allow me to cook. Perhaps even to sew, eh?'

'Perhaps ... but if we fail, doubtless you will be permanently blind.'

'But I am blind now, señor. So I beg you to try this ... surgery.'

Yonah bade them to come back early the next day. That afternoon he readied the operating table and the things he would need, and throughout the evening he sat next to the oil lamp and read, several times, what Teodorico Borgognoni had written about couching the eyes.

'I am going to need your help,' he told Reyna. He showed her, by lifting her own eyelids, how he wanted her to hold the patient's eyes open and prevent her from blinking.

'I may not be able to watch a cutting of the eyes,' she said.

'You may turn your head away, but you must keep her eyelids raised firmly. Can you do it?'

Reyna nodded doubtfully but said she would try.

Next morning when Evaristo Montalvo came with Blasa de Gualda, Yonah directed the old man to take a long walk before returning, then he gave Blasa two cupfuls of strong spirits in which soporific powders had been infused.

He and Reyna helped the elderly woman to lie on the table and then bound her to it with strips of strong fabric that were wide enough not to cut into her flesh, tying down her wrists and ankles and forehead so she could not move.

He took the smallest of the scalpels in the Fierro collection and nodded to Reyna. 'Let us begin.'

When the lids were raised he made tiny incisions around the lens of the left eye.

Blasa drew a shuddering breath.

'It won't take long,' Yonah said. He used the small, keen blade as a fulcrum to tip the clouded lens until it fell back, into the eye's interior regions and out of the way. Then he repeated the process on the right eye. When he was done he thanked Reyna and told her to allow the lids to close, and they unbound Blasa anc covered her eyes with cool, wet compresses.

After a time he removed the compresses and bent over her. Her closed eyes were tearing or she was weeping, and he wiped her cheeks gently.

'Señora Gualda. Open your eyes.'

Her lids unlocked. Blinking against the light, she peered up.

'You have a very good face, señor,' she said.

How strange, to find that a man he scorned and hated as a murderer and a thief was so loving and concerned as a father!

He had hoped Bonestruca would be absent when he paid his next visit to the finca by the river, but he hid his chagrin when the friar greeted him at the door. The three children, rested from the rigors of travel, appeared to be stronger and in better spirits, and Yonah discussed their diet with their mother, who mentioned with offhand pride that her children were accustomed to meat and eggs in abundance.

'And I am accustomed to excellent wine,' Bonestruca said lightly, 'which I shall now insist on sharing with you.'

It was evident that he brooked no refusal, and Yonah allowed himself to be led into a study where he had to fight to remain composed, because it contained relics of the friar's war against the Jews: a set of phylacteries, a skullcap, and -- an unbelievable sight to Yonah -- a Torah scroll.

The wine was good. As Yonah sipped and attempted not to stare at the Torah, he regarded the host who was his foe, and wondered how soon he could flee this man's house.

'Do you know how to play Turkish draughts?' Bonestruca asked.

'No. I have never heard of Turkish draughts.'

'It is a most excellent game that uses the mind. I shall teach it to you,' he said, and to Yonah's annoyance he rose and took from the shelf a square board that he placed on the small table between them, and two cloth bags.

The board was marked with alternating light and dark squares, sixty-four of them according to Bonestruca. Each of the bags contained twelve small, smooth stones; the stones in one bag were black while those in the other bag were a light gray. Bonestruca handed over the black stones and told Yonah to place them on the dark squares found in the first two rows of the board, while the friar similarly placed the lighter stones on his side. 'Thus we have made four rows of soldiers, and we are at war, señor!'

The friar showed him that play consisted of moving a stone forward diagonally, to an adjoining vacant square. 'Black moves first. If my soldier is in an adjoining vacant square, with a space beyond, he must be captured and removed. Movement of the soldiers is always forward, but when a hero achieves the opponent's back row he is crowned a monarch by placing on him another piece of the same color. Such a doubled piece may go forward or back, for no one can tell a king where he may not go.

'An army is conquered when an opponent's soldiers are all captured or blocked so they cannot move.' Bonestruca placed all the pieces back into position. 'And now, Physician, have at me!'

They played five games of war. The first two battles were over quickly for Yonah but they taught him that moves could not be made randomly. Several times Bonestruca lured him into making a foolish move, sacrificing one of his soldiers in order to win several of Yonah's. Finally, Yonah was able to recognize a trap and move away from it.

'Ah, you learn quickly,' the friar said. 'You will be a worthy opponent in the shortest of time, I can see it.'

What Yonah soon could see was that the game required a constant inspection of the board to review the purpose of the opponent's moves and gauge the possibilities that might arise. He noted the ways in which Bonestruca worked constantly to lure him into traps. By the end of the fifth game he had learned some of the defenses that were possible.

'Ah, señor, you are clever as a fox or a general,' Bonestruca said, but the friar's supple mind had defeated Yonah easily.

'I must go,' Yonah said reluctantly.

'Then you must return to play again. Tomorrow afternoon, or the day after?'

'My afternoons, I am afraid, are spent with patients.'

'I understand, a busy physician. Suppose we meet here on Wednesday evening? Come as early as you can, I shall be here.'

Why not? Yonah asked himself. 'Yes, I shall come, he said. It would be interesting to try to understand the way Bonestruca's mind worked, as revealed from his play of draughts.

On Wednesday evening he returned to the finca by the river, and he and Bonestruca sat in the study and drank the good wine and cracked almond shells and ate the meats as they perused the board and made their moves.

Yonah watched the board and his opponent's face, seeking to discern the way the friar thought, but he could learn nothing from Bonestruca's features.

With every game they played, he learned a little about the game of draughts and a tiny bit about Bonestruca. That evening they played five games, as they had at their first meeting.

'The games last longer now,' Bonestruca observed. When he suggested that they meet Wednesday eve on the following week, Yonah assented so readily that the friar smiled.

'Ah, I see that the game has captured your soul.'

'Only my mind, surely, Fray Bonestruca.'

'Then I shall work on your soul as we play, señor,' Bonestruca said.

It took Yonah two more evenings of playing draughts before he won his first game, and then he didn't win again for several weeks. But after that he began to win sometimes, and the games became harder fought and longer lasting as he came to know Bonestruca's strategies.

He thought that Bonestruca played at draughts the way he played at life, feinting, faking, toying with his opponent. The friar usually greeted him with a disarming, sunny friendliness, but Yonah never relaxed in his presence, aware of the darkness that lurked only seconds away.

'You do not have a first-rate mind after all, Physician,' Bonestruca said contemptuously after winning an easy game. Yet each time they played he was insistent that Yonah play with him again, and soon.

Yonah concentrated on learning to best him. He suspected that Bonestruca was a bully, made more powerful by fear, yet perhaps vulnerable to one who would stand up to him.

'I have been in Saragossa but a brief time, yet I have unmasked a Jew,' the friar told him one Wednesday evening, jumping one of his soldiers.