His threats seemed to stab through the wood of our door, until I believed that his voice alone might unlock the latch and allow his mob to seize us.
Luna whispered, “What shall we do if he breaks in?” Graca was mumbling frantically to herself in a mixture of Portuguese and another language I did not understand. I caught the word
Drumming started in Midnight’s belly and grew in intensity. “John, tell me very, very precisely what that hyena outside is saying,” he whispered.
His use of the word
“Keep praying, sister,” Luna whispered to her.
Midnight stood up, slipped out of his shoes, and grabbed the poker from its place beside the hearth. Positioning it over his shoulder like a spear, he rushed to the door.
“Don’t go out!” I begged.
He nodded to me and crouched, eyes fixed on the jiggling handle.
Lourenco Reis spoke through the door. “Graca and Luna Oliveira, you must learn of sin. You must die so that Christ may live. You must perish in the burning heart of the Son of Man.”
Shouting rose from the crowd like screeching gulls. Then, after a time, we heard them move on. Midnight came to me and we helped the Olive Tree Sisters back to their chairs, prevailing upon them to sip their cold tea. Graca gagged, then rushed upstairs. I wished to go to her, but Luna said, “She will be embarrassed. Stay here.”
Upon Midnight’s request, I began to translate for him the necromancer’s hateful words. He could not fathom their meaning, and I could think of no way of explaining what I only barely understood myself.
“John, listen closely,” Luna said. “I know that this must all seem rather odd to you, but — ” She stopped in mid-sentence when Reis began calling for Senhor Policarpo, the wheelwright, to come out and face his judgment, along with his wife and children. I was stunned that he knew them by name. He must have been watching us all for some time.
Midnight held Luna’s hand as we listened to a litany of curses against Policarpo’s family. Then we heard a single shriek rise up as though to pierce the sky.
The necromancer was now only a short ways from my home. I took my key from my pocket and held it in my fist. Though I was certain I had locked the door, my heart tumbled toward dread; Fanny was in the garden.
“We have to go home,” I declared to Midnight.
“No, John, you must not let yourself be provoked.”
“But Fanny. She is sure to start barking and they might hurt her.”
“No, I forbid you to leave. Fanny will have to take care of herself.”
From down the street, I could hear the preacher shouting, “Maria Zarco Stewart, James Stewart, and John Zarco Stewart, I summon you out to the street for your crimes against the Portuguese nation. I call upon you to bring out the African heathen — ”
I dashed for the door, but Midnight grabbed my arm roughly and ordered me to remain still.
Luna said, “I shall tell you now why you cannot leave, John. Sit.”
“No.”
“Sit now!”
I did so, but before she could speak, the necromancer’s shouting began again: “John Zarco Stewart, you have not departed from Porto as I have asked you. So you will now learn what it is to die for love. You shall be cleansed through fire, and I shall return you to God as innocent as the day you were born.”
He then called for the death of my mother and father. We waited in silence for the rest of his tirade but heard nothing more. He and the mob must have turned a corner.
“John, listen closely,” Luna said. “Under normal circumstances I would let your mother tell you, or your father, but now that this has happened …” She stood up, took a sip of tea, and smoothed a lock of gray hair behind her ear. “Do you know what a Jew is?”
“Moses was a Jew.”
“That’s right.”
“And he had a horn. And a tail.” Guessing what was to come, I shouted, “And I don’t have a horn or a tail, so I cannot possibly be a Jew!”
“Do not raise your voice, please.”
“I cannot be a Jew!” I shouted again, louder.
“John, we let you think those things about Moses. I’m sorry. Perhaps it was wrong, but we had no choice. We would not have wished you to guess sooner. Now, listen: There is no physical difference save one between Jew and Christian. On those lads who have received the covenant, a small … a small … I don’t know how to say it. What I mean to say is that — ”
“What’s the covenant?” interrupted.
“You are making me lose my place.”
“Good! I do not want to talk of these things.”
I desperately wanted everything to be as it had been. I wanted Daniel to be alive and Violeta to be happy. I wanted to imitate birds at our pond. I wanted to run to Fanny.
“You must listen,” Luna begged, taking my hands in hers. “On lads, there is a small piece of skin taken from their … from between their legs, at the tip …”
“What piece of skin?”
“A small hood. It is removed from Jewish infants when they are but eight days old.”
“But I’ve had nothing removed. I never had a hood or anything else.”
“Perhaps not, but that does not change what I am saying.”
“Which is what? You’re not making any sense at all!”
“John, if you raise your voice again …” She looked to Midnight and said in careful Portuguese, “I’m afraid this is difficult.”
Midnight replied, “John is clever. But very, very” — he shook his fists and pulled an ugly face, an imitation of me when riled. It was quite accurate and I was not at all pleased — “very excitable,” he concluded.
“I am not!” I shouted.
“Stop being so quarrelsome with us all!” Luna snapped. “And make no mistake, young man, I will knock you straight from today into next week if I have to!”
Her anger abated almost immediately, and I soon saw in her eyes that she, too, would have wished to return to the way everything had always been. But all hope for that faded completely when she said, “John, you are indeed Jewish.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Your mother is Jewish, and in Judaism, heritage passes through her alone and not through your father.” When I accused her of lying, she added, “John, your grandmother is Jewish too. And Grandfather Joao as well — blessed be his memory. He was a Portuguese Jew, but from Constantinople. He returned here before you were born.”
Graca came down the stairs now, pale, holding a handkerchief to her mouth. She apologized for leaving us.
“I was just telling John about his heritage,” Luna told her sister.
Graca bowed her head and gave a sigh, as though she had always been expecting this truth to cast a shadow over our lives one day.
“I have to go,” I said.
Graca knelt next to me. “You know, John, your grandfather was a lovely man. Intelligent and kind. With a gift for gardening, just like Midnight. Do you know how he and his family came to live in Constantinople? And why they spoke Portuguese there, unlike the Turks?”
I shook my head. She caressed my hair and smiled. “Back in the sixteenth century, your grandfather’s ancestors lived in Lisbon. They had been converted against their will to Christianity. Even so, they and their friends were still persecuted because … well, the Church and the Crown feared that they would maintain their Jewish customs, which some of them did. Thousands were arrested and put in dungeons, and many were burnt in public
