The Last Jew (46 page)

He rode the gray Arabian to Benzaquen's and let him graze near the barn. The men of the valley had started digging a ditch to carry irrigation water from the stream to parts of the meadow that suffered from dryness. For an hour he helped them, carrying away buckets of the earth they dug and spreading it in a low place, but even the hard work didn't dispel the curious restlessness and irritability that gripped him.

The next day was Saturday. The first thing he thought of when he opened his eyes was that he wanted to go at once to see Adriana Chacon, but almost at once Micah Benzaquen came into the barn and asked if he would go into the woods with several men, to point out medicinal herbs that might help them fight sickness when Señor Toledano was gone and they were without a physician once more.

'Unless, of course, you plan to stay here indefinitely?' Micah said. Yonah sensed that the question was half-serious, but he smiled and shook his head.

Presently he set off, accompanied by Benzaquen, Asher de Segarra, and Pedro Abulafin. He was certain he would overlook a number of valuable plants out of ignorance, but Nuño had trained him well, and he knew these men lived in the midst of an apothecary's treasure trove. To begin with, he didn't allow them to leave the meadow before he had pointed out bitter vetch that would mollify ulcers or, mixed with wine for a poultice, ease snakebite. And lupine, to be taken with wine to ease sciatic pain and with vinegar to expel worms from the bowel. In their gardens, he told them, were other valuable herbs. 'Lentils, eaten with their husks, will bind bowels afflicted with flux. So will medlars, cut into small pieces and mixed with wine or vinegar. Rhubarb will open bowels that are overly bound. Sesame seeds in wine will help an aching head and turnip will calm the gout.'

In the forest he showed them the wild pea, good for scabs and jaundice when mixed with barley and honey. And fenugreek, which needed to be mixed with nitre and vinegar to ease the monthly cramps of women. And hyacinth, to be burnt with a fishhead and merged with olive oil to make an ointment for painful joints.

At one point Pedro Abulafin, being closest to his finca, slipped away and soon returned with two loaves of bread and a jar of drink, and they sat on rocks by the stream and tore and ate the bread, and passed the jar, which contained a sour wine that had been allowed to grow stronger so it was almost like coñac.

The four of them were mellow and full of good fellowship when they came out of the woods. Yonah was wondering whether there yet might be time for the visit to Adriana he had contemplated earlier, but when he returned to Benzaquen's barn, Rudolfo García was waiting there for him.

'I wonder if you might help me, señor. It is one of my best sows. She has been trying to deliver, but despite a day of labor, she is stuck. I know that you doctor people, but ...'

So in García's company he had departed at once for the piggery, where the sow lay panting weakly on her side, clearly in difficulty, and Yonah had removed his shirt and greased his hand and arm with lard. After a bit of manipulation he had extracted a plump dead piglet from the sow, and it was like uncorking a bottle. Within a brief time eight living pigs emerged and soon were sucking mother's milk into their bodies.

Yonah's fee was a bath. García's tub was brought to the barn and the pig farmer heated and carried in two large pots of water, while Yonah scrubbed himself in contentment. When he returned to Benzaquen's he found a covered dish left by Leah Chazan, containing bread and a small round of cheese, and a cup of a sweet, light wine. Yonah ate and then went out and pissed against a tree in the moonlight. He climbed into the hayloft and moved his blanket next to the unglazed window so he could see the stars, and went to sleep at once.

On Sunday morning he accompanied Micah and Leah to the church, where he saw that Adriana sat next to her father, with his wife on the other side of him. There were empty benches available but Yonah went directly to Adriana's side and sat next to her, Leah and Micah following him to take their places on his left.

'Good morning,' he said to Adriana.

'Good morning.'

He wanted to speak with her but was prevented from doing so by the start of the service. Padre Serafino led them in a businesslike Mass. Sometimes as they knelt and rose, their bodies brushed. Yonah was aware of people watching.

Padre Serafino announced that in the morning he would appear on the western meadow to bless the drainage ditch that was being dug. After the final hymn, people lined up. As the priest went into the confessional, Leah said that unless Señor Toledano wished to confess they had best leave at once, since she had to prepare refreshment for the residents of Pradogrande who would visit her house that day in order to meet their guest and pay respects. Groaning within, Yonah had to follow them out the door.

The visitors came bearing gifts for him, honey cakes, olive oil, wine, a small ham. Jacob Orabuena gave him a remarkable woodcarving of a thrush in flight, lifelike with colors Orabuena had gained from woodland herbs.

Adriana and her father and stepmother were among those who came to call, but there was no opportunity for him to speak with her alone. Eventually she left, and inwardly he fretted and fumed.

40

Adriana Chacon

Adriana's interest in him had grown when she had observed him treating the people at Micah's barn. She was impressed by how absorbed he had been, and by the fact that he treated each person with respect. She saw that he was a tender man.

'Anselmo Montelvan is angry,' her father told her on Sunday. 'He says you are seen too much with this physician. He says it dishonors his son, your betrothed.'

'Anselmo Montelvan cares little for his small son Joseph and certainly he cares nothing for me,' she said. 'All he is concerned about is gaining control of the land that was his father's.'

'It would be best not to be seen with Señor Toledano. Unless, of course, you believe his intentions are serious. It would be a very good thing to have a physician living here.'

'I have no reason to believe he has any intentions at all,' she said peevishly.

Still, her heart leaped when Yonah Toledano appeared at her door on Monday morning.

'Will you walk with me, Adriana?'

'I have already shown you both sides of the valley, señor.'

'Please, show them to me again.'

They retraced the path along the stream, talking lazily. At midday he took his hooked line from his pocket, and a tiny can containing wriggling worms he said he had gathered at the ditch being dug in the meadow. She went to her house for a live coal from her cooking fire, and when she carried it back in a little tin pail, he had already caught and gutted four small trout for each of them. He snapped dry wood from the trees for a fire, and soon they ate the sweet blackened flesh of the trout from their hands, licking their fingers.

This time when they napped he lay down not far from her. While she was falling asleep she was aware of his quiet breathing, the rising and falling of his chest. When she awoke he was seated nearby, a tall, quiet man watching over her.

They walked together each day. The villagers grew accustomed to seeing them strolling, utterly absorbed, deep in conversation, or merely proceeding in companionable silence. On Thursday morning, as though crossing a visible line, she told him they would go to her house, where she would prepare food for a midday meal. As they walked there, she began speaking of the past. Without offering details, she said that her marriage to Abram Montelvan had been difficult and unhappy. She told him what she remembered about her mother, her grandparents, and her aunt Inés. 'Inés was more a mother to me than Felipa. To lose one of them would have been a catastrophe, but both died, and then also my grandfather and my beloved grandmother, Zulaika.'

He took her hand and held it tightly. 'Tell me about your family,' she said.

He told her frightening stories. Of his mother who had died of illness. Of a murdered older brother, and of a father who had been slain by a Jew-hating mob. Of a younger brother taken from him.

'Long ago I reconciled myself to the loss of those who are dead. I find it harder not to continually mourn my brother Eleazar, because something within me feels he is alive. If so, by now he is a grown man, but living where in the great world? He is gone from me as completely as the others. I know that he exists yet I will never see him again, and that is terrible to bear.'

The men digging the irrigation ditch had reached a place quite close to her house, and the diggers watched the man and the woman pass them by talking and listening, walking closely together.

When the door of her house closed behind them, Adriana began to tell him to be seated in the common room, but the words died in her mouth because they had turned to one another without thought, and he was kissing her face. In a moment she was kissing him also, and their mouths and bodies met.

She was soon dazed by their mutual ardor, but when he raised her skirt and then lifted the inner garment, she grew faint. She wanted to flee when she felt his hand. It must be something all men did, not only Abram Montelvan, she thought in terror and disgust. But as his mouth paid her homage with small kisses his hand spoke to her and it was different. Loving. And a warmth rose within her, spreading most pleasantly to weaken her limbs until she sank down on nerveless knees. He sank to his knees too and continued to kiss and caress her.

From outside came the voice of one of the diggers shouting to others far away: 'No, no. You must place some of the cursed stones back on the dam, Durand. Yes, back on the dam, else it won't hold the water.'

Inside the house, she and he were lying together half-dressed, the rushes on the floor beneath them rustling and crackling.

When she arched to meet him, it was easily done. He had none of Abram's difficulty, no difficulty at all; well, a physician, she told herself wildly ... She knew it was dark sin to think it the most pleasurable moment of her life, but that thought, all thoughts, fled as gradually she began to feel fright again. Because something alien was happening to her. She became certain of impending death. Please, God, she begged, wonderfully alive till the end as her entire world began to convulse and shudder, and she gripped Yonah Toledano with both hands so she would not fall off.

For the next two evenings Yonah played a new kind of game when the light faded, bidding good night early to Micah and Leah, waiting impatiently for the full, plum-colored darkness that would allow him to slip from Benzaquen's barn. He avoided the moonshine, moving in deep shadows when he could find them, making his way to her house with as much stealth as some savage determined to slit throats. Both nights her door was unlatched for him and she was just behind it, waiting to fall upon him with a wanting that matched his own. Each time she sent him out of her house well before light, since all the village folk were farmers who rose early to care for animals.

They thought they were discreet and careful. Perhaps they were, yet on Friday morning Benzaquen asked for Yonah's company. 'So we may have a discussion.'

The two of them traveled afoot to a place not far beyond the village church. Micah showed him a broad piece of verdant land stretching from the edge of the river to the rocky rise of the mountain.

'It is in the very center of the valley,' Micah pointed out. 'A good site, easily reached by any villager who might need a physician.'

Yonah was thinking of an earlier time when he had been a suitor and Benzaquen had dismissed him out of hand. He guessed that now Micah was courting him for the village.

'This land was part of the property of the late Carlos ben Sagan, may his soul rest, but has been owned by Joachim Chacon since his marriage. He has seen your interest in his daughter and has asked me to offer it to the pair of you.'

They were using Adriana as their bait, Yonah realized. It was such a nice piece of wooded land, where a house could stand on high ground yet be close enough to the stream so its sounds would be heard. A family living here might splash in the pools during the warm days of summer. There was a small field in front, the wooded mountainside beyond.

'It is centrally located in the valley. Everyone could walk to your dispensary. The men of Pradogrande would build you a fine house.

'Our population is small,' Benzaquen said carefully, fighting to be honest. 'ou would have to treat animals as well as humans, and perhaps do a bit of farming if you liked.'

It was a fine offer and deserved an answer. A gentle refusal was on his lips; he had seen the valley as Eden's garden, but he had never considered that it was for him. Yet he was afraid to refuse until he was able to determine the effect his decision would have on Adriana Chacon's life.

'Let me think on it,' he said, and Benzaquen nodded, satisfied that there had not been a refusal.

On the walk back, he asked Benzaquen to do something for him. 'Do you recall when we met each other in Isaac Saadi's house in Granada, at a Sabbath service of the old religion? Would you invite your friends to a similar service tonight?'

Benzaquen frowned. He looked at Yonah, perhaps seeing problems in him he hadn't seen before, then gave a worried smile. 'If it is something you strongly desire me to do...'

'It is, Micah.'