Authors: Kathryn Lasky
“Secret Jews,” I whisper. “Do Rosita and Elena know this secret?” Papa nods. So at last I am included in something. But it feels scary.
My part is coming up. In another minute Papa will ask me to say the four questions—that is my job as the youngest at the Seder table. But the problem is, no one can remember what the fourth question is. No one at this table has ever been to a Passover dinner before. I see these grown men with gray in their hair fumbling for words. It is not just the four questions that they are unsure about. There are many other things as well. But the men try to piece together what they have heard and what they think they might have heard. But still the dinner is nice.
“Ready, Luis?” Uncle Tomás asks.
“Yes,
Tío
.” I clear my throat and begin. “Why is this night different from all the other nights? Because on all other nights we eat leavened bread and on this night we eat only unleavened bread, matzo.” And I hold up a piece of the unleavened bread that Mama baked two days before, at night
when the maid was gone and would not notice. Next question. I take a big breath and hold up a horseradish root: “Why on this night are we supposed to eat especially bitter herbs?”
And now the third question. I pick up a piece of parsley and hold it by the stem: “Why on this night do we eat parsley?”
José Catalan breaks in. “I think the proper question—although, Luis, you are doing excellently—is ‘Why on this night do we dip twice the parsley in the salt water?’” I nod and begin the question again.
But still no one can remember the fourth question. Tomás said that the questions would be answered as the story of the Jews’ flight from Egypt was retold, and this is the part of the Seder, the story of the Exodus, that most interests me. Their flight from slavery. But it gives me a shudder to think about those men Papa spoke of, the men of the Inquisition. They might be able to have the power to make slaves out of the very people who sit at this table, make them slaves or perhaps kill them. And then we too, like those in ancient Egypt, would have to flee.
As I eat the food, I begin to see that this is the strangest meal that I have ever eaten. It is not just
that the food is different but that each dish is a symbol for something else. The parsley dipped in salt water is supposed to remind people of the sweat and tears of the enslaved Jews of Egypt. The green parsley itself is a symbol of hope and the coming of spring. There are certain times when we are to drink wine from our cups, but no one is quite sure when. But, still, I think, even though we are in the cellar, I have never seen such a beautiful table. Mama laid the table with the best linens, and over this is a cloth of the most beautiful lace that had been made by a cousin’s great-grandmother. So it doesn’t really matter to me if the men cannot remember everything about this meal called Seder, because now I no longer feel left out. Now I feel that I belong to something older than time and bigger than Spain, more important than kings and queens and more precious than all the riches and relics of any cathedral.
This is my favorite part of the meal: At the end we all stand up and, raising our wine cups, say together the words “Next year in Jerusalem!” In that moment I really do feel something in me, some unnamable part, maybe my soul, join with those ancient ones of the Bible with the little children,
their mothers, their fathers, the grandparents who stood on the edge of the Red Sea and waited for it to part.
Jerusalem
—what a lovely sounding word. It is like bells in my ears. I think that when I grow up, if I ever marry and have a daughter, I shall name her Jerusalem. It would be the most beautiful name in the world.
But I think Rosita will be the first of us married. I see her sneaking out to meet Juan Sebastian. I can’t believe Mama! Can she not tell that Rosita is going out to meet a boy? Under her scarf my sister has her hair piled high and I think she has rouged her cheeks. You don’t go to the convent like that. I plan to follow her.
As soon as Rosita rounds the corner after leaving the Convent of the Incarnation and steps into an alley, she takes off her scarf. I see it all from a niche in the wall of the alley that is a perfect fit for a small boy like me. I see her pull out a shiny piece of obsidian from the pocket of her kirtle and peer into the blackness. She is pleased with her reflection. I could almost hear her heart skip a beat, however, for when she looks up she sees two nuns walking toward her. They look up and smile at her, terrible,
ghoulish, lipless smiles. They are from the convent of Santa Ines. “Bless you, child,” they whisper, almost conspiratorially.
Rosita begins to thread her way through narrow streets to another alley. I shadow her expertly. She turns down an alley with no name, but in the middle of a dark stone wall there is a rust-colored door. She enters it and I am left outside. A terrible feeling creeps through me. An icy fear. I am so frightened for Rosita suddenly. I turn and run.
Last year when I walked like this behind my parents and between my two sisters to midnight mass on Christmas Eve, I was shorter than both Rosita and Elena. Now I am taller, nearly as tall as Papa. And last year when I walked to Mass I had been a Christian, and this year I am a Jew. But I shall take Communion as I always do. I shall kneel in prayer alongside Mama and Papa and my sisters. My prayer, however, will be much different. The words on my lips will be those of the Paternoster and the ones in my heart will be the Hebrew ones I have learned in the past few months, those of the Shema.
Tonight after the mass, after we return to our
house on the Calle de Jeronimo, Papa leaves by the back door through the courtyard. He will wind his way through the dimmest alleys to the church of San Salvador, the church where José de Catalan and Don Gabriel still serve on the governing body. Pedro Fernandez Benedeva, a deacon of the church and father of one of the church priests, will meet with them. He will give a report on the weapons he has brought into the cellar of his house. The men are preparing. I have followed Papa maybe thirty times since September, when it was found out that indeed men had been appointed to the tribunal of the Inquisition. Now on this Christmas Day the men of the tribunal have finally arrived in Seville. But Papa and his conspirators will be prepared. Arms have already been distributed to many important Conversos. All I know is that the inquisitors must not be allowed to take office. For this will be worse than when the pharaohs ruled in Egypt.
I hide in a tree in the neighboring courtyard where I can watch and know when the men have all entered the church, and then I sneak into the reliquary of the church to listen. The shadows are thick and I do not like to think what is inside the boxes and small caskets that rest in the niches. They are
holy relics. In one there is a finger of St. Sebastian, and in another a piece of hair from St. Jude. Death swims around me, but this is the only place where I can hear what Papa and his conspirators say. They are in the cellar beneath me and I can listen through a grate in the floor. I have listened over the weeks and heard the men speak of Jews and New Christians who have been tortured and killed in other cities. So I know that I have nothing to fear from the bones and organs of dead saints. No, it is just the living that I fear. But tonight the men take a long time to get inside the church and it is cold up in the tree. At last they are inside and I get ready to jump from my perch, but just then shadows slice across the doors of the church. I am petrified. I cannot take a breath.
“This way!” a voice hisses.
“Juan Sebastian,” another calls in a low whisper.
Juan Sebastian! What is Juan Sebastian doing here? He knows! Fool that I am. I had thought for a long while that Rosita had stopped seeing him, but a month ago I suspected they were seeing each other again. What has she told him now?
I am paralyzed in a waking nightmare. Time is slow, moments seem endless. I see men, the king’s
men, go into the church. I hear shouts, but they sound muffled and now Papa…Papa is first. His hands are bound. His face an eerie white. A ribbon of blood curls down my papa’s cheek. The other men follow. I begin to scream, but no sound comes out.
I know that I have to get back to our house and warn Mama. And just as I turn the corner, my heels grind into the cobbles. I am too late. One moment stretches into endless ones as I watch Mama and Rosita and Elena led away. Elena and Rosita are put into a separate wagon, and I hear the police chief direct the driver to take them to the Convent of the Sacred Virgin, many leagues out of the city of Seville. Mama, however, is to be taken to the office of the Inquisition. So I follow. I do not know where such an office is, but I certainly have not imagined that the wagon would stop at a wine shop behind the Plaza Major. There are three wagons lined up outside the shop—all with prisoners, their hands bound and now cloth sacks covering their heads. And there is something very curious I notice. The wheels of the wagons have been wrapped in cloth as well as the feet of the horses. The horses’ mouths have been muzzled. The door to the wine shop
opens and the prisoners are led in.
That is the last time I see my parents until nearly two months later, on February 6, 1481.
But I have learned my first lesson of the Inquisition: The Inquisition comes in silence.
It did not take long for them to rename our street. It was soon called La Calle de Muerte, the street of death. It was named after Mama and Papa, burned at the stake in the first auto-da-fé of the Inquisition. Within days of their arrest, everyone knew that it was because of Rosita that the conspirators were discovered. But I still do not believe Rosita was truly a traitor. She loved Juan Sebastian. She trusted him. But what does it matter now? I live between the shadows, in a time between time. I sleep in the old house of the lepers. No one comes near there. It is the safest place I can be, really. If I were discovered, they would throw me into prison. Girls they send to convents, but boys of my age—and I am soon to be fourteen—they send to prison. And where are these prisons? No one knows for sure, but it is said there are caves and dungeons beneath the city.
I have lost count of the number of autos since
that first one in which my mother and father burned. It is now April. Holy Week, and I have heard that more than two hundred Conversos have been put to the stake. The king and queen no longer attend every single one as they did in the beginning. Even death has become slightly boring to them. Of course, when someone very important is to be “relaxed,” they attend. Yes, that is what the sentence of burning at the stake is officially called, “relaxed,” because no member of the church must be directly linked to the shedding of blood. So the heretic is “relaxed,” or handed over by the tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition to the police, who carry out the sentence. And at each auto-da-fé the priest reads from the text of the Gospel of St. John: “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered: and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.”
It all works out very properly. It is not only a religion of great mystery and sacred relics but one of great convenience and practicality. Lying is essential now. Lying is the faith. Lying helped murder my parents. I shall never forget that first auto-da-fé, the one on the sixth day of February.
All week I had watched from the shadows as the
chief of police directed the workers in raising the wooden stakes by the
quemadero
, the place of burning. I saw Paco there with his father the day that they raised the statues of the four prophets at each corner of the
quemadero
. I heard someone say that indeed Paco’s father had contributed the money for the statues. I remembered thinking, Why would they want the prophets to decorate such a place? But then I thought, as I do a thousand times a day now, Nothing makes sense any longer.
On the morning of February sixth one would have thought it was a festival day. Food vendors were out, and jugglers and acrobats. And soon the procession began. A priest mounted a platform and, as he raised his arms, everyone fell to their knees and began reciting the Paternoster. I did as well, but the words became jumbled in my head. Hebrew, Latin, Spanish collided together on my tongue. How could I believe that there was a God to pray to? How could I believe that there was a thing called faith? How could anything have meaning if the word
faith
had become part of an act to kill? Auto-da-fé—act of faith. Act in which people are burned to death. When I looked up from the prayer, I saw two carts drawn by donkeys. In each cart
there were three people. At first I was relieved. I did not see Mama or Papa. But then a coldness began to creep over me as I realized what I was actually seeing. It felt as if my blood was congealing in my veins. My heart did not race, no, quite the opposite. I think it perhaps slowed and might have even stopped for a second as I realized that indeed I was looking directly at my parents. They were passing not thirty feet from me, but they had been transformed into something almost unrecognizable. They looked if not dead, unreal, like figures of effigies. Their eyes were sunken and fixed in their sockets, registering nothing. And on their gaunt bodies hung these oddly comical clothes. They wore tall, pointed hats and the tunics called
sanben-itos
. Embroidered on the tunics by the good nuns of the convent where my sisters had often helped were figures of devils and hideous monsters leaping from the flames.
“That’s to remind them,” said a bent old lady by my elbow, pointing at the gruesome embroidery.
“To remind them of what?” I asked.
“To remind them, child, of where their poor souls will go if they do not confess and repent.”
Hope suddenly swelled inside me. “You mean
they can confess and repent and be saved?”
“Well, of course, my dear. You watch.”
So I watched as my mother and father and the four other prisoners mounted the platform and were led to the stakes, where kindling had been piled. An immense white cross stood in the middle, and at this early hour of the morning the shadows cast by it were still long.