“Berekiah, I think you need to explain yourself. What makes you think that…”
“I don’t have to explain myself to anyone!” I answer rudely. “Uncle’s death gives me new rights, and one of them is to be able to disregard that surly face you’re now hoping to subdue me with. Judge me if you want. Frown, pray, invoke Torah against me. I don’t care.”
“You should care. What if…”
“Be quiet, Diego! Just tell me if you know who the man is who has been making enquiries about you at your apartment?”
“What man?! What are you talking…”
“When I went to look for you this morning, your neighbor across the street, the cobbler, he told me that a man had been enquiring after you…blond, strong…a Northerner, perhaps.”
Diego’s eyes betray terror.
I ask, “Do you know why someone would be following you?”
“No,” he whispers. He takes my shoulders, grips them hard. “Unless…unless the same man is after me who killed your uncle!”
“Yes, I thought of that. But why would anyone want both of you dead?”
He shakes his head.
“Think!”
“There’s nothing!” he moans. “What could we know that…”
“Had Uncle mentioned any special book he’d discovered? Anything at all?”
He shakes his head. I take out my drawing of the girl murdered with Uncle. “And her?” I ask, unscrolling the sketch for him. “Do you recognize her?”
“Never. Who is she?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I put the drawing back in my pouch. “How about Dom Miguel Ribeiro? What do you know of him?”
“He’s a nobleman, isn’t he? The son of old Rodrigo Ribeiro, if I recall correctly.”
“Yes. Did Uncle mention him?” I ask.
“Not to me. But Beri, you must have other clues to the killer’s identity. What did you find in the cellar? Anything that would indicate this Northerner who’s been looking for me? I must know. If he’s after me, then I will have to…”
“Nothing,” I lie, unwilling to trust him just yet with the knowledge of what I’d discovered. I turn away from his skeptical eyes toward my mother. She stares into the fire dancing in the hearth. I pat her arm. “How’s Farid?” I ask gently.
She turns to me with startled eyes and says, “Berekiah, I need to know more. Was the Haggadah the only book stolen?”
“Yes, I think so. Now how’s Farid been doing?”
“Don’t you think we should…”
“Mother, just tell me how Farid…”
She pulls in her chin and turns away in defiance.
“You’re insane!” I shout. “All your ‘shoulds’ and proper ways of being. What good has it done you?!”
Tears well in her eyes and she says with desperate force, “How could you treat me like this when Judah…?”
“Go sing it to the goats!” I yell. I march away from her and Diego, realize with a mixture of aching regret and pleasure that it is I who have started this argument. Uncle’s death has released me from my past personality and my future, and it seems that rage and frustration are all that I have left of my inheritance.
I peer in on Farid in my mother’s room. He sleeps, breathes in jerks and starts as if possessed by nightmare. I rub his neck and arms with a wet towel till his inner-struggle calms. Hollowed by fear for his safety, I march out of the house.
“Where are you going?!” my mother calls after me.
“Out!”
Diego exhorts me to stop, limps to me by the courtyard gate, rubs the stubble on his cheeks thoughtfully. He says, “If you’re right about your uncle, then perhaps you’re in danger, too.”
“It’s of no importance. No Old Christian will ever hurt me again.” Staring into his eyes, I add, “Or Jew, for that matter!”
He reaches tenderly for my arm. “So innocent you are, my son. You don’t know what they can do. Berekiah, I think you and your family should just pack up and leave. That’s what I’m doing. I’m settling business matters, selling what I can and then getting away any way I can. The King won’t dare to stop us now that…”
“Peace be with you,” I interrupt, then remember the note that belongs to him. I lift it from my pouch, press it into his hand. “This fell from your turban when you were lying on the cobbles. I’m afraid it got a little stained with blood from Senhora Rosamonte. I’m sorry.”
Diego reads it, nods his understanding. “Yes, Isaac. An acquaintance from Andalusia. From Ronda. Reminding myself to meet him on that date. My memory is not what it once was. Your uncle knew him.”
“And
“The Fountain of the Mother of God. It was to be our meeting place. We were…” His words trail off and he grabs my arm as if clenched by fear. “But now maybe I understand! Isaac talked about selling your uncle a book! I assumed it was in Castilian, but now that you say he was keeping Hebrew books…”
“When?”
“A few days before his…before Sunday. We met here. You were in the store, I guess. Isaac said he owned a copy of Judah Ha-Levi’s ‘Book of the Khazars’ and your uncle inhaled as if scenting myrtle.”
“I’d very much like to meet him,” I say.
“I’ll try to locate him and bring him by tonight after dinner.”
When I thank him, Diego adds, “Maybe it doesn’t pay to go around Lisbon right now. You should…”
I wave him away, exit through the courtyard gate and start down the Rua de Sao Pedro. When I take a last look back, I see Diego’s head bobbing above the courtyard wall as he limps back to the kitchen. What if the boys who’d stoned him had been in the pay of someone, another thresher perhaps?
A man in white hops out suddenly from a doorway and thrusts a leather book in front of my face. My knife is already at his throat as he begins to scream my name. “Beri! What are you doing?!”
I lower my blade; it is only Antonio Escaravelho and his worm-eaten New Testament. A former Jewish councilman and silversmith of astounding dexterity, he became a fervent Christian after the forced conversion and an even more fervent lunatic a short time later.
Antonio reeks like old garbage. His gray beard is crusted with dirt, and his tan, leathery skin is riddled with red blisters. His gospels exude the smell of cardamon and dung, an unsympathetic combination. I hold my nose.
“God be with you,” he crows, as I put my dagger away. He winks his mad, darting eyes, presses his book up to my chin as if correcting my posture.
“I wish you wouldn’t keep accosting me like this,” I answer. I push the gospels down to his side and sigh at the sight of lice eggs dotting his frayed ropes of hair. Hoping that he can point me further along the trail to my uncle’s murderer, I ask, “Were you in your usual spot near my house when the riot began?”
He disregards my question, replies with a toothless grin, “I’ve petitioned again to go to Rome and see the Pope. It seems that this time I may get my exit card.”
“You’re not still at it!” I shout, for he’d been asking to leave Portugal for years. The King’s decree of the twentieth of April, fourteen ninety-nine, had closed all borders to New Christians.
“Indeed I am!” he exclaims as if hurt by my implication of hopelessness. “And you must join me, my boy. You and Master Abraham!”
“No more journeys for my master,” I whisper to myself, unwilling to risk Antonio’s reaction to his death. With a smile of wistful sadness, I remember that my uncle always used to tell him, “Why make such a long journey to a man so short on holiness?!” To my surprise, I repeat to the beggar another phrase of Uncle’s, “The very thought of seeing the Pope makes my scalp itch.”
