his jig. I poured all my coins at his feet, pointed to his find. He nodded, spit out guttural words, tossed the hand high in the air, straight up toward the gulls. It fell, splattering blood. I snatched it up, sealed it in my pouch. From the granite steps of the Dominican Church, shouts in a voice of doom turned me: “Kill the heretics! Kill them now!” It was a squat, owl-eyed friar swathed in his robes of evil. Like a heraldic shield, he held a bloody Nazarene stick out to the crowd. Solomon the goldsmith was there, lying on the cobbles at the foot of the church steps. Belly up, bleeding like a wounded dog. As I stepped forward, he shouted my name, once clearly. Crimson ribbons streaked his white robe. Two grunting men soaked in sweat and blood were hitting him with planks of wood formed into Nazarene crosses and driven through with nails. Solomon, who caressed gold leaf into whispers from God. Solomon, who kissed me full on the lips and sobbed when he saw the illuminated Book of Esther I’d made for him. Solomon, who…
It was hard work this killing. At each whack, spurts of life emerged from the goldsmith as if from fountains viewed from heaven. The ripped meat of his punctured hands was outstretched to make it stop. Screams. Hebrew screams for King Manuel. Now to Abraham, Moses. To God. “Make it stop! O God! Make it stop!” A gurgling blood from his mouth choked him.
“Let’s shave the Jew before he dies!” one of the men shouted. Lifting a blazing branch from the pyre, he held it to Solomon’s gray beard, set it afire. The tortured goldsmith’s eyes were wide with pain, looking ferociously into the world for help.
As if an arrow of heresy had split my mind, I was thinking:
A hulking giant with a red cross painted on his forehead, carrying a rusty ax, suddenly came forward shouting for mercy and rain. With a great swing over his head, he sent the jagged blade crashing for Solomon’s neck. Life splattered as far as my feet and his ragged body collapsed like a dolls, his neck spurting blood like new wine from a cask.
When I awoke to my own presence, Christian men were staring at me; it was idiocy, but in my horror, I had involuntarily begun to whisper prayers to myself in Hebrew!
A hand caught me suddenly, tugged me back. Jerked me hard. A face I knew. David Moses? We ran through walls of reaching arms with the weightless speed of nightmare. Raced through a forest of movement. Around corners. Up stone staircases. Down shadowed alleys. Into a house. Through a closing door into welcoming darkness.
A hand fell over my mouth. Breathing came hard against my cheek. A voice I knew was whispering my name. “Quiet, Beri,” he said.
It was David Moses, our former chazan.
“Master David, did you see Solomon, the goldsmith?” I asked.
“I saw many of us,” he replied.
“But Solomon. Did you see…”
Shouts from just outside the door: “Down by the river! Let’s get going! Bring the cart!”
Master David covered my mouth with his hand. We crouched down. Our breathing ebbed together, then separated.
“Have you seen my family? My mother, Judah…”
“No. But they could be anywhere.”
“I must go back…maybe they’ve made it home. I must find them and…”
He gripped my collar. “Listen, the only way to find them is to stay alive. You must get away.”
“How did it start?! Who’s responsible for this…”
“In the Dominican Church. A crucifix with a hole covered by mirror. A lit candle slipped in from the back by the friars. They tell everyone that the light is a sign from the Nazarene, a miracle. About an hour ago, a New Christian, Jacob Chaveirol, the tailor, he was…”
“I went to school with his son, Menni. He’s brilliant in Torah. A man of wonders. He has a shop up…”
“He’s an idiot! He said how much better it would be if Christ gave us rain instead of fire!”
“And…?”
“Beaten to death. They slit his abdomen and pulled out his… Two priests called on the congregation to kill the Jews. His brother, Isaac, killed as well, ripped to pieces. The head in the bell tower, it’s his. Northern sailors contributed money for the wood of the pyre. And soon…and soon…” David’s words faltered.
“And the King, why doesn’t he come to our defense? Twenty years we were given to…”
“King Manuel?!” Master David sighed. “He a coward, but he’s not stupid. He knows that if he sends troops to our aid, the mob will call for his head. The people hate him almost as much as they hate the Jews. He’ll give the riot time to burn itself out, then take control of the city again.”
He and I clung together in silence. I could not speak of Uncle; my revelations would have confirmed that he would never return to me. And I could trust no New Christian until I learned more about the murder. I asked, “Have you heard anything of the fate of Father Carlos or Diego the printer?” When David shook his head, I added, “And Samson the vintner?”
“Not a word,” he replied.
My eyes were adjusting to the gloom; we were in a spiral stairwell. Above us, dim light filtered through a thin portal covered by a grill. Suddenly, I could distinguish a face above us peering around the central axis of the stairs. I lunged. Caught a leg. Stifled a scream with my hand. It was a girl. She struggled, but I held her with the force of my stored fear. “Stop! I won’t hurt you!” I said.
She fought me for a moment more, then shook free of her terror. Her breathing came warm against my hand.
“Damn her!” the chazan whisper-screamed.
“We can’t stay here anyway,” I said. “We’re too close to the Rossio. You go now and I’ll meet you outside the
“But what about you?” he asked.
“You’ve saved me once. I’ll do the rest. Now that I’ve awakened to what is happening, I’ll get away. Just get rid of your shawl.”
“I can’t,” he said. He hid it back inside his mantle.
“And you think that Jacob the tailor was crazy? Look, I’ll meet you beyond St. Anne’s. Go!”
Master David paused as if to speak, then squeezed my arm and dashed out the door.
Power and fear produce a color of emotion unlike any other, and with the girl in my grasp, I felt my body to be silver, reflective, beyond confinement. “I’m going to let you go in a minute,” I said.
She breathed hot against me. As I unfurled my hand, she straightened up and tugged my fingers back to her mouth. Her tongue flicked like sexual prayer against my palm, traced edges of desire along my thumb and forefinger. She reached fingertips to my sex. Squeezed once with the pressure of curiosity. The in and out of our intertwining breathing gave rhythm to our tongues dancing together. Two sinful lunatics we were, swelling together in a stairwell with a riot just outside. She took my hand. “Upstairs,” she whispered.
Does the body have its own life separate from the mind? How could I have let her lead me on after having seen my uncle? Or does sex serve a healing function which we refuse to admit?
I followed her into a room grayed by a drawn curtain. The lock of the door clicked like a bolt in a dream. Lines of light at the window drew me from her. From here, I could see we were on a side street about fifty paces from Rossio Square, just inside the Moorish Quarter. Shouts filtered up as if through layered fabric. My heart suddenly skipped a beat; Master Solomon’s face was burning before me. Except that he had Uncle Abraham’s emerald eyes. They were vacant, cold, staring beyond me. So much death, so much blood. The girl’s hand was stroking my behind. I turned for her mouth, but she ducked below, began caressing my desire with a liquid warmth, swirling with a wild craving, hiding me inside a gulping shadow with no form and all need, moaning desperately as I held her to me and swirled her hair over my quivering chest and licked the petals of her ears. As if mounting the contours of darkness itself, I gripped her shoulders and fondled the tickling desire of her breasts, thrust harder and deeper into the warm wet darkness until she was gasping as if crying and I was exploding as if free-falling into a bottomless cavern.
