out to me. “Look!” she ordered.
Taking it from her, I asked, “What do you mean—what do I look for?”
“Anywhere! Open it anywhere!”
I handed Miguel back to her, let the manuscript fall open naturally. The Book of Ezra faced me, verses about the rebuilding of the Temple. Each and every name of God had been crossed out with brown ink. It was chilling, as if a talisman of evil.
Rana spoke in a hurried voice, as if stalked. “Samson told me, ‘We must bury the Jewish god. After Passover, we’ll say prayers for the Lord and then we must bury Him and then we must forget Him.’ Samson crossed out all His names!”
I stared at the defilement, then caressed the pages closed, vowing never to look again. I put the book on her table.
“I can’t live as a Christian!” Rana suddenly yelled. “I’d sooner kill myself!”
Her shout seemed to split the air between us. “But your son?” I asked. “Who would care for him?! Now that…”
“I’d rather he were dead!”
Some Jewish parents had murdered their children, then committed suicide to avoid the forced conversion nine years earlier, acts which were written in a script I’d never comprehend. “You can’t mean that,” I told Rana.
She leaned forward, placed Miguel in my arms. Her eyes glowed with frightening resolve. She grabbed a thick bread knife from the table, jumped up, pointed it toward me, her body clenched with rage. “I would do it now if you told me that I must sew a shroud for my God!”
“You would be sinning gravely if you were to ever harm this baby. He is God’s ambassador to us. Would you kill Abraham, Isaac, Moses if they stood here before you?”
She held her knife in place.
“This child is Abraham, Isaac, Moses. He is the Lord our God!” I exclaimed.
Rana dropped her weapon and began to sob. I sat her down and caressed her hair. The baby seemed entranced by her wails. Yet when she calmed, he began to kick and fuss. I gave up on trying to soothe his discomfort and handed him back to her.
Without giving myself time to consider, I took the defiled Old Testament from the table, held my breath and threw it into the hearth.
Rana gasped. “Berekiah! No! What you’ve done…”
As smoke and flame crackled from the curling, yellowing pages, I spoke in a voice that seemed to come from Uncle: “I don’t need words written for me. Not even the Torah. And you don’t either. Keep an internal Judaism. God will meet you inside, just beyond where you speak to yourself. If Samson returns…and we will all pray for his safety, then let him talk of Christianity while you breathe Judaism. Your son will know the difference. And when he is old enough to keep secrets, you shall tell him of the bride that is the Sabbath who has been waiting inside him patiently all through his childhood. And you shall celebrate their wedding together.”
The baby sought her breast again. Rana fed him, stared at his face as if seeking a glance of that future ceremony beyond his eyes.
Does one’s life goal always appear without warning, in the space of a single instant? For I knew then that I sought to offer myself as fully as Rana to someone before I died.
She shrugged as if unconvinced. “We’ll see,” she said.
At the door, we kissed. “Rana, was Samson angry with Uncle or any of the other threshers? Did that have anything to do with his loss of faith.”
“No. It was the baby. It’s one thing to live in terror yourself, quite another to condemn one you love to a similar fate. He took a long look at the baby’s future as a Jew, and he didn’t like what he saw.”
“Do you want to come with me?” I asked. “You know you’re welcome to stay with us for as long as you need to. And you mustn’t be afraid of the Other Side. It’s superstition. You’ve no need to fear leaving the house.”
“No. Thank you.” She caressed my arm. “My parents will try to come to me. If they can…”
“I understand. Remember, build an inner garden where you can hide, where you can invite Miguel when he’s old enough.” I brushed the baby’s wisps of hair again. “And if Samson returns, send him to me. We can all still use the future tense when speaking of Jews in Portugal. Perhaps he will regain his faith.”
We kissed. Yet she called me back as I set out. Her hand was trembling by her lips. “Do you think that the Lord has taken Samson in revenge…for what he did to the Old Testament?”
I closed my eyes to search for an answer, and with a chill, realized I no longer trusted God. I inscribed the sweeping gesture Farid and I make to express the unknowable.
Chapter VIII
As I walked away from Rana’s home, my descent into a hollow world unwatched by God made me cling tightly to Uncle’s story of Rabbi Graviel. On reading his words again, I recalled the last lesson he had given Judah and me; in it, my master had spoken of the need for making a sacrifice, as well. This lesson was spoken during our Passover seder, last Friday. As turnip and saffron soup was being ladled by Esther into our wooden bowls, he had nodded to me and said, “The Lord showed favor upon Sarah…”
His words had been a cue for me to chant Torah from memory beginning with that verse in Genesis. In Portuguese, so Judah would understand, I began: “The Lord showed favor upon Sarah as He had promised, and made good what he had said about her. She conceived and bore a son to Abraham for his old age, at a time…”
My uncle had me continue through the following fifty-two verses. Pausing only to wet my lips with wine, I recounted the story of Isaac, son of Abraham and Sarah, whose name means “he laughed” in Hebrew—a reference to Abraham’s great pleasure at having been able to sire a son despite his one hundred years of age.
When I recited the verse, “The time came when God put Abraham to the test,” Uncle nodded with lifted eyebrows for me to talk directly to Judah. Cupping the boy’s chin, I received the gift of his gaze. In my best theatrical voice, I continued the story:
“‘Abraham!’ the Lord called, and Abraham replied, ‘Here I am!’
“God said, ‘Take your beloved only son Isaac and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him as a sacrifice on one of the hills which I will show you.’”
Judah wriggled in his seat and bit his lip, disturbed by the prospect of Isaac’s death. I could sense him recoiling from the memory of our mother’s cursing, wounded in his soul by the way she denied him a place in her life. I took his hands in mine and told him how Abraham had bound Isaac and laid him atop an altar he’d built of wood, and how just as he raised his knife to cut life from his son, the Lord in the person of an angel intervened: “‘Do not raise your hand against that boy; do not touch him! Now I know that you are a God-fearing man. You have not withheld from me your son, your only son. I shall bless you abundantly and give you descendants until they are numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore.’”
Judah was hardly put at ease by this peaceful ending; his face swelled with yearning for reassurance. My stomach sank as I realized it was cruel of Uncle and me to have thrust a sword of Torah through his fragile defenses. I fixed my hand at the back of his neck as he looked down and away from the eyes of the family, trying to caress encouragement into him. “Eat some more soup,” I said. “It’s getting cold.”
Uncle frowned, waved my advice away and said, “Now Judah dear, I had Beri tell you this story for a reason. Tell me what you think of it.”
Eyes focused on the little boy. But his lips were sealed tight. My hand began to pat encouragement at his back; he was near crying. I stared at Uncle with bound anger, wanting to shout, “Hasn’t he been through enough in five short years! Leave Judah be or so help me…!”
“I want to know what you think,” Uncle prompted. “I will never judge you badly for telling me the truth. Never! On that you have my word.”
