“He calls himself a count, the Count of Almira—but I suspect it’s all a lie.”
After I explain to Simon and Farid that this is none other than the man who took Diego to the hospital after he was stoned, they both insist on coming with me to talk with him. We walk in silence, and slowly, so that Simon can keep pace on his crutches. All that remains now from the killing are the knowing eyes of the Christians; suspicious, as if marking territory, they inform us that we are not like them. As if we didn’t know that already. Then they begin their whispers and jerk their glances away from us as if we were the living dead. As if we didn’t know that, too.
In the slanting morning shade of the cathedral’s twin bell towers, Farid signals to me that he’s certain a man is tracking us. “Since we left the house,” he gestures. “And he’s a Northerner. But don’t turn just yet.”
We pick up our pace as we descend past the Magdalena Church into Little Jerusalem. Here, we do not walk so much as navigate past the drying cakes of shit hurled by Christians into the streets. Along the cobbles, brown lines zigzag and fade, bloody trails left by Jewish bodies dragged to the pyre. Flies swirl about, poke into our nostrils, feed from our eyes. My thoughts remain with the Northerner tracking us, however. An invisible cord seems to tie us together, to be tugging me back by my shoulders. By the old schoolhouse, I glance behind. Our stalker is striding past pushcarts of dried fish. He’s the blond giant whom I saw waiting outside Diego’s apartment, I’m sure of it.
Is he White Maimon of the Two Mouths because of his pale complexion?
I take Simon’s arm, tell him about our Northern shadow. “He must be after me,” I observe. “Something I may know about Uncle…about the plot to kill him. You must separate from me.”
Simon offers an accepting smile; he will fight fate no longer. But Farid signals, “Wouldn’t it be better to confront him? Three against one.”
I nod toward Simon’s crutches. “Bad idea. Alone, I’ll be able to lose him in the alleys of Little Jerusalem. He’s not from here. He won’t know what he’s doing. I’ll meet you both at the Estaus Palace. Wait for me.”
They each nod their agreement and continue up toward the Rossio. I turn back for our spy so that I’m sure he can see me, then cut down past the lace-trimming stores toward what used to be the Jewish hospital. In a single jump, I nestle out of view into the limestone doorframe of the Inn of the Two Brothers. From here I will slip down the side alley back into the Rua da Ferraria, Blacksmith’s Street.
As I press back into the doorway, several cream-white butterflies flutter in falling angles down onto fresh horse droppings.
The Northerner suddenly stands in the intersection ahead. He removes his hat as he gazes after me. He has high, prominent cheek bones and treacherous eyes. He runs a hand through the front locks of his oily hair, replaces his hat. But his first step is wrong; he marches away from me toward Farid and Simon.
My mistake twists cold inside my gut. I creep forward with the silence of a cat. Yet this Northerner looks over his shoulder directly at me, as if gifted with the powers of a sorcerer. He stares at me with determined eyes, then begins to run. I race after him. His hat falls away. A glimmer of light slips into his fist as he pulls something from his cloak. Farid, too, has sensed danger. A hundred paces up the street, he is motioning in crazy waves toward Simon. They rush through Little Jerusalem’s Northern Gate, through the shade cut by the cupola of the Church of Sao Nicolau. Simon’s bobbing gait is awkward, hopeless. “Simon, run!” I scream. But it is impossible. He turns, drops a crutch. I see it as if through a honey-textured time: his face opening as the Northerner plunges into him; his last support flying away, his body crashing into a wall. Farid kneels over him, and the cape of the blond assassin whips behind as he flies ahead.
Chapter XVI
Simon is unable to speak. Or maybe it’s no longer necessary. He lays in Farid’s arms and says goodbye to the world with his eyes.
A stiletto with a blackwood handle inserted between his ribs is separating his body from his soul. To Farid, I signal, “Another who will not live to see tonight’s Sabbath.”
Simon’s gloved left hand grasps the handle of the knife. “Take it away,” he moans. Farid pulls it free. Like wine bursting from a spigot, blood spurts onto us. A sigh releases from the old thresher. “Thank you,” he whispers.
Farid holds up the blade as he nestles his arm under Simon’s head as a cushion. “Pointed,” he signals.
I nod my understanding; a
“I’m sorry for suspecting you,” I whisper in Hebrew to Simon. “I must have…”
He nods as if it isn’t necessary to give voice to my regrets, drops his delicate hand to my arm. He is looking across the sky and mouthing prayers. I recognize names of God, then those of his lost family. “Graca” is sculpted by his lips.
Simon’s fingers caress my arm as if to offer comfort. At the moment his soul departs, a gurgling issues from his chest and there is a quiver through his hands like a flutter of wings. I brush his eyelids closed.
Surely it is a sin for a man such as I to regard himself as a prophet, even for an instant. Yet I put my lips to Simon’s, my eyes to his eyes, my hands to his hands. I fall upon him like Elisha upon the Shunammite’s dead child. Then, inserting my thumb and forefinger into his mouth, I pry him open to my breath. I fill him with life from my life seven times. A pain on my shoulder descends in waves as my bellows empties into him. Farid is pulling me away. His eyes connote displeasure. Yet he kisses my forehead. “No more,” he signals.
When I look at Simon, there is a flowing movement like an angel’s caress across his hair. “You see!” I say aloud.
“He’s dead,” Farid replies with sure gestures. “He will wake no more.” He hugs me to him. The beats of his heart swell around me. His warmth encloses me in the darkness behind my eyelids.
We wait together. I cry for a time. Then Simon’s death dries in my thoughts, shows me the present of Lisbon. A crowd closes in on us, all curiosity and speculation, for Christians are fascinated by nothing so much as the sight of a Jew’s misfortune. I gaze down the street, signal to Farid that I’ll be away only a moment. I retrieve the Northerner’s hat. A shirtless boy with Judah’s innocent eyes hands it to me.
Back with Farid, I signal, “I’m going to see which way he ran. Can you brave these Philistines alone?”
He nods his agreement. As if spun from a frigid top, I race away. At the opening of Rossio Square, I stop, paralyzed by the twisting conflux of men and woman, carriages and horses. The ridiculous life of the square has hidden him.
An old barber in a tattered doublet calls out in a lazy Algarvian voice, “Senhor, you’re lookin’ a little scruffy. How ‘bout a shave and a haircut. Got hands so swift they could steal the black from a bat.”
“A Northerner, blond, have you seen him?!” I demand.
“Perhaps the drought will end with the new month,” he replies. He has the cheery disregard of the deaf, grips my hand and tries to lead me toward his chair. I break away. His wife is having her tufted scalp picked free of lice by a young girl. She points a hooked finger up toward the northern edge of the square. “Went that way,” she indicates.
I ask shopkeepers there about him in vain until a carpet peddler with a jumpy, effusive manner, points to the left of the Sao Domingos Church.
I race down the dirt road which we used to call the Rua da Bruxa—Witch’s Street—after the cat-eyed old hag there who used to repair a woman’s virginity for a price. A red-haired water seller playing cards by himself under an awning has seen the Northerner. “That way!” he shouts, pointing east. I enter the Moorish Quarter, continue racing ahead until the blue and white townhouses give way to wooden shacks. Where the street ends, granite steps lead up like a pleated ribbon toward the great limestone cross that marks the lower edge of the Convento da Graca. Two hundred feet up the scorched and worn hillside is the stone crown of towers and battlements that is the convent itself. I’ve reached an impasse.
Ragged waifs with dirty, devious faces, more like dwarfs than children, are kicking around a stuffed leather ball by the stairs ahead. High above, on the crest of the hillside, a tiny nun, the runt of her religious litter, screeches at them in a Galician accent. “Shoo! Get away, you little rats! You’re going to burn in hell before you can beg God’s
