“Tell us, Judah,” Esther said. She smiled maternally.
Mother was looking at him with a stoney face, had begun picking nervously at the wisps of hair by her temples. When I pinched his neck for him to get it over with, Judah whimpered, “I didn’t like it.”
“Me neither,” I interjected.
“Why didn’t you like it?” Uncle asked, shooing away my help with a flapping wrist.
Judah balled up his fists and rubbed his eyes. “Because…because I don’t know. Because I didn’t.”
“Tell me why?” Uncle said softly.
“Because Isaac didn’t do anything wrong!” Judah blurted out.
“Exactly,” Uncle said. He stood up and leaned toward the boy, his hands braced on the table. “Now I’m going to tell you a secret, Judah. And secrets are very powerful things. So you must not tell it to anyone. It is only for us. Okay?”
Judah nodded, and his mouth fell open as if he were suddenly entranced; he loved Uncle’s secrets.
“Many people say that this story means that sometimes it is necessary to make a sacrifice for God,” my master began. “A terrible sacrifice, if need be. And on one level they are right. Abraham was willing to kill his son. Then there are some people who say that it was wrong of God to have asked this of a man. And wrong of the man to have agreed. Maybe they are right. I sometimes believe so myself. But here is the secret…” Uncle lowered himself across the table so that his face was but a foot from Judah’s. His eyes were flashing. Lifting a finger to his lips, he whispered, “Do not forget that Isaac means, ‘he laughed.’ That is the proof we need to be sure that the Torah is speaking metaphorically, in riddles of a very particular sort. Isaac is not Abraham’s son in this world. He is a kind of son inside Abraham himself. He is a child made up of Abraham’s laughter and sorrow, anger and tenderness, fears and dreams. And what was God asking from Abraham? That he be willing to give these up. That he be willing to give up his innermost emotions and thoughts, his dearest possessions. That he untie the knots of his mind. That he extinguish part of himself. And why? So that a door might open inside him through which God could enter. Dearest Judah, this story is asking you to open yourself to God and nothing more.” Uncle reached out to tousle his nephew’s hair, then twist his nose. “God loves you so much that he is willing to tell a terrible story and have you think bad of Him. All this so that you may one day meet Him inside yourself. He wants to be able to hug you, nothing more. Okay?”
Judah, still entranced, gave a great big nod. With gratitude, I noted how children’s moods could be altered so easily.
The lesson for me in all this—at the time—had been to think twice before doubting Uncle. But now, as I walked toward home, I thought of what he had been telling us all about sacrifice. God had asked the Biblical Abraham to give up his most cherished possession. Had He asked Uncle to give up his own life? Why? Was it so that more books could be saved from Christian flames?
Such speculations were interrupted a few minutes later by a man shouting my name. Rana must have had intuition concerning her parents; her father, Benjamin, and mother, Rachel, were rushing toward me from the top of a coming ridge. “Beri,” Benjamin shouted, running to me, his dark eyes wild with fear. “Rana, is she…?”
“She’s fine. And Miguel is fine, too. They’re safe for now.”
“Thank God.” He placed his hands against my chest. “Listen, we cannot talk, we must get to her. Give our blessings to your entire family.”
“I will.” I held his arm. “Just one thing. Have you seen Samson? He was supposed to be in Lisbon buying…”
Benjamin raised his fingertips to my lips. “As of Sunday, my daughter is a widow,” he whispered. “Samson was captured when the riot broke. He was unprepared.”
Rachel twirled her hand in the air. “Smoke. Samson is nothing more than smoke.”
“And are the pyres still burning in the Rossio?” I enquired.
Benjamin nodded. “The fires will never go out as long as we remain ourselves.”
His words seared through the numbness which seemed to advance and recede inside me at its own pace, and I realized that I had been too long away from my family. Rushing back to the city, I found the eastern and northern gates clogged with crowds of Christians and Dominican friars. The young men among them were hitting one another, cursing, preparing like bear cubs for a chance to test their prowess. To the west, however, at the St. Catherine’s Gate, I found only a small crowd of drunken old men. Later, I discovered that word had spread through the city that the King would be sending troops from the east to re-establish order in his capital; hence, this negligence of the western gates.
Apparently, I looked less like a
Amazing that anyone could find that sort of thing amusing. But the Christians stained the air with their toothless howls, and I joined them as best I could.
As I strode away from them, I began to suspect that God had allowed me to enter Lisbon at this gate so that I might visit the New Christian arms dealer Eurico Damas on my way back to the Alfama; his home was in the wealthy Bairro Alto neighborhood crowning the slope above the great shantytown just ahead. As to this enviable location, Damas told my uncle shortly after his own voluntary conversion, when the two men were still on speaking terms, “I never want to forget where I came from. No faithful New Christian would.”
Honorable sentiments. But when he was out of sight, Uncle plucked a hair from the middle of my head. Shushing my yelp, he said, “Berekiah, that man’s noble words are as anchored in his soul as this filament was in your scalp. One little tug and it’s…” He swirled his hands in the air and feigned amazement at the disappearance of the hair. “Never trust anyone who gains by the death of another. Especially such a man who later shows off his prayer shawl in public.”
With the sun low in the sky, I climbed up the tangle of unpaved streets that switchback across the western hillsides toward the Bairro Alto. Passing the jumble of wooden barracks where the poorer classes spent lives of dreamless servitude, dirty faces regarded me over shoulders as if I were an unusual sight. Children scattered dust as they chased chickens and cats. Flies fed at the corners of their eyes. A tall African slave chained at his ankle to a rusted anchor, stared at me with the intense eyes of a storyteller recording the passing of a character. I recognized a kinship in him and nodded, but he turned from me as if he’d been suspected of a crime. The air was modulated with the scents of shame and anger. Yet here and there, a few homes sprouted gardens planted with marigolds and lavenders, cabbage, turnip and fava beans.
A cobblestone plaza umbrellaed with powerful chestnut trees marked the end of the King’s tolerance; beyond this point, the pinewood planks and cloth patches of these wretched squatters ended and the polished stone of Lisbon’s aristocracy began.
I recognized Damas’ house immediately; sprouting from the limestone cornice were horned, cavern- mouthed gargoyles which had petrified me as a child. From beyond the roof, where the courtyard undoubtedly was, smoke was rising in tufts. I slipped my hand in my pouch and took out my knife, concealed it in the waistband of my pants.
To my banging on the iron grating that fronted the door, a delicate boy with a sweet round face answered. He stood on his stoop, hands on his hips. A green silk shirt and scarlet vest billowed from his chest—presumably, hand-me-downs prematurely given. With an irritated gesture, he swept a long lock of amber hair away from his cheek and tucked it under the rim of his blue beret. His hands were ash-stained. He seemed to think I was a foreign peddler; in his lilting voice, he said slowly and definitively, “We don’t have any need of whatever you’re selling.” Rubbing his chin, he left a sweaty black streak behind.
“I’m not selling anything. I’m looking for Eurico Damas.”
He looked up skeptically into the sky, then down to the ground and shrugged. “I’d start digging if I were you.” He twisted his lips into a sneer and jerked his thumb upward. “He ain’t gonna make it up there if I got any say in it.”
“Dead?”I asked.
The boy knocked against the stone doorframe. “Couldn’t be no deader.”
“You’re sure?”
“Saw his body myself. Opened his mouth and spat in it to make sure.”
