Lucena (13 page)

“Steiner?”

“Helmut Steiner. That was his name. I was ten and I already knew what the word Nazi meant. My father was a Nazi.”

“What happened then?”

“My father didn’t want to run the risk so right away we moved to another, smaller, city and he was a doctor there until he died.”

She was silent again.

“From that moment on, my life changed and when I learned to read, at twelve, I was only interested in reading books about the Holocaust and Judaism.”

“What was he like?”

“Our grandfather? He was a tall, distinguished man, a good father. I don’t remember him ever shouting at me nor even telling me ever that I had done something wrong. But I quickly understood that that wasn’t worth anything because it was about the assassination of thousands of persons.”

“My grandfather a Nazi!!! I couldn’t believe it. And a distinguished Nazi...I couldn’t even pronounce it. And now what? Am I the grandson of a Nazi or an Israeli Jew? What am I now?”

“Is that like discovering that our mother was a whore?”

“What are you saying? What does that have to do with it?”

“Were you a whore too?”

“No, don’t worry. I wasn’t. I don’t know why I said that. I’m really sorry. I went too far.”

“What did he do there?”

“He was a doctor. I don’t know everything because he didn’t talk to me about it. The only thing he said over and over was “Things aren’t that simple.” And he always said that if he had to go through it again he didn’t know if he would be able to do something different. He didn’t have any money to flee. He was a young doctor who came from a family that was not rich so the easiest thing to do was to be a military doctor,”

“Didn’t he save any Jews?”

“No, he wasn’t a hero. He did what he was told. He sent the sick to their death and the well to work. He was a small screw in the mechanism.”

“A screw maybe, but small? There were no small screws there. That was a mechanism with big screws.”

“And then, at age sixteen I understood that I had to be a Jew. I went to see the rabbi in Sao Paulo to tell him that I had to be a Jew. I had to be. I had read the story of the grandchildren of Aman who were converted to Judaism when their grandfather tried to annihilate the Jewish people. And then I understood. I understood that there was only one path: to be a Jew. I told my father. He didn’t say anything. From that moment he shut up. I think he agreed with me. I remember I told him I’m converting to Judaism because the Jewish people are right. These are the people who are the most right on earth. I agree, that was an eccentric response, but it was the one I understood. From that moment he didn’t speak to me again. He hardly talked to anyone. Three years later, the same week as I had my conversion ceremony, he died of a heart attack. One year later I emigrated to Israel.”

“Mama, can you stop talking to me about those things? The more you tell me the more shocking everything seems.”

THE FIFTH DAY

Come. Today you will put on the phylacteries.
Rashi
himself wrote those phylacteries. Since then they have been mine. Not a letter has deteriorated or faded. A great miracle. Look: They are tiny. Not large like those of today. They are authentic phylacteries. Take them like this: the leather cord in the left hand. I see that you at least know how to put them on correctly, not like your cousin who studied in a secular school in Israel and I had to teach him how to wear them.
And they call it the land of the Jews
. In the Diaspora there was not a single Jew who did not know how to wear the phylacteries, not even the intellectually challenged. Perhaps there were some among the Ashkenazi, but not one of us. Not in Sefarad. Not in the Atlas mountain range. Even the deaf knew how to do it. Here is the book of prayers, the
Sidur
, Read the
Shemá
.

They are yours. These phylacteries are yours. They are a gift from a distant grandfather. When I see you, you and my son, I see many of my sons, all alike, the phylacteries are yours, forever. You have to take care of them as though they were gold. At one time I had some that our rabbi
Tam
had made but I lost them. So keep them and wear them every day and when the bad spirits try to control you or some catastrophe stalks the world, just show them and it will pass. That is what happened to me in the Amazon when I went to visit an elderly son, I found myself facing three drooling lions and then I took out the phylacteries and the lions went away. They also help with snakes. They especially helped me one time when some Indians wanted to kill me because I was white. They left me alone in a tent and there I put on the phylacteries and waited for them and when they came they began to cry and shriek and they went to see the tribal chief and then they started honoring me like a king and touching the phylacteries. That is how I saved myself many times. From thieves, pirates, Christians, Muslims, and pagans. That is how I saved myself innumerable times.

If you’re about to ask me something, don’t. Never until today have these phylacteries been apart from me. It is the first time I have given them to anyone. I am sure you know why. I am getting ready to leave this world. Nobody can live a thousand years,
one day for God
, and my joints hurt. I have been through the forties, the fifties, and sixties since the last
cleansing
crisis, which was the hardest of all and this means I will not be renewed like before. I will not return to being young. Now I am like any person, I will live one year more, or twenty, and I will die. Sometimes it seems to me that a thousand years are too many years for one person to live. And sometimes I think it is not enough as I still have so many things to do. A man doesn’t just leave the world with only half his passion in hand. Let us suppose that after a thousand years I have three quarters of my passion in my hands. There remains the last quarter. And that part increases from year to year

––––––––

I
have had a full life in spite of having had to go from one place to another, like Cain, without a mark on my forehead. They were exodus of compassion without justice in spite of everything. Whoever is not born and then dies in the same place has no consolation. Maybe I’ll go to Lucena to die there. Perhaps I’ll die here, within a week, by the sea. However it may be, you will come to me seven days before I give up my soul.

You think that with the years, you will know more. But what you know you can’t explain it or transmit it. And what you don’t know you can talk about for hours. You need to know that the teachers who know will never talk about their knowledge. Perhaps they will allow you to understand it on your own if they are good teachers. Take this. I’m giving you the bag of phylacteries. It has the inscription of Shmuel Benzimra, my son, and one of your distant grandfathers. Everything is sewn by hand, white letters on white cloth all in pure silk. Now you have the great responsibility of saving the phylacteries and the bag for future generations. I am very tired from all that I have seen and that I have not seen. This century is what has tired me the most perhaps because I don’t have the strength to continue to put up with so many changes, endless changes. The most difficult has been the creation of the State of Israel. All the hopes were dashed. That was the worst blow to us since expulsion from Sefarad. From gentlemen we became slaves. That’s why your father returned to Málaga. But you know that already. He can’t bear the humiliation, the looks, and the shameful words. But I know you will return to Jerusalem. And you know it too. We must forgive. But how much can we pardon? We forgive the Christians, including the Germans. But I don’t know how we can forgive the humiliation of the Ashkenazi’s. It is possible that Zionism is the cause of my joints aching. That precisely, not the Holocaust, nor the expulsion, nor the sacrifice of Lucena. Precisely among everything Zionism has become the sharpest pain. But I don’t want to talk to you about this because surely you have hard it many times from the mouths of your uncles and your father. Even our mother who always sees things through rose colored glasses. This is not what I want to talk to you about.

Distance yourself from rage like from the fire. Distance yourself from the Ashkenazi’s if you want your soul to remain pure and always distance yourself from lies. Those will only cause you more pain and more blows. If you see these before you, flee. Don’t try to overcome them. War only feeds them. The struggle against pain is what causes pain. The struggle against lies causes more lies and the struggle against Ashkenazi’s causes more humiliation. When you see them on the street, cross to the other side of the street. Greet them politely and continue on your way.

When you want to marry, go seek a bride among the girls of Tetuán. And only if you can’t find one, go North to look and don’t give up your search until you find the woman who will accompany you. You will find her. Desperation brings a cloud. Don’t let it grow. Because in the end, the cloud will cover you up.

There were times when I would see death every day. In times of pestilence, At times four friends would die in one single day. My wives died in my arms. My children in my embrace. And I was among them unable to die. In those days death was a consolation. In those days death was a shield from the suffering, from seeing others die. I know that many didn’t die from disease, but so as not to see the dead. I patiently picked them up, especially the little ones. I took them to the cemetery and there I dug a tomb for them. I didn’t know their names, but I made it. In less than a month I buried four of my sons and my wife. But Samuel, always know that a few survive calamities and continue to multiply. And in this family they are always called Shmuel or Samuel. For some reason they are the strongest and you are made of the strongest. Probably not always because an uncle of yours named Samuel died young. This also happened but I see that you, Samuel Benzimra, you are among the strong ones. You are made from sturdy stuff and nobody can beat you.

And there were radiant, beautiful days, when I was a carpenter for kings and nobles in Sevilla there I could earn five gold coins every day for the tables and chairs I created for them. Some are now in museums and palaces. This money is what saved your family in Portugal. I always hid it well under an olive tree. Because the olive tree will not steal. To the contrary, it generously gives us olives and oil in abundance.

Well, that is, up to not so long ago. The olive was the strongest tree but nowadays, because of industry, even the olive trees sicken. They have sicknesses from the modern world. Fewer than the others, because it is stronger, but it, as well, is ill.

Don’t worry. In a few days you will understand everything. And then you will be able to go play in the sea. How wonderful it would be if this sea were today a sea of games. Before, warships set sail from here. Pirate ships sailed the sea terrorizing us. Before, the coast was full of Jews who went seeking a new place of refuge and were sunk into the sea. Then the sea was the largest Jewish cemetery until the Germans came and changed our ashes into a source of our thoughts. But then, who knew that even being devoured by a human being could be an acceptable death? The
Talmud
says there are nine hundred three kinds of death. So we are not equal, not even in death. There are nine hundred three kinds of death and our people have tried all of them. We were drowned in the sea. We inhaled gas. Our heads were cut off. Our children were burned and they were eaten. What has not been done with our lives?

Here where after many, many years the Greeks fell, Babylonia fell, Syria, and Rome, and the British Empire, and France and we are world’s fifth great nuclear power. We survived, just a few Jews, carrying a certain Book, We did not renounce it. Never. Samuel, my son, never renounce the Book. Take it with you wherever you go. It matters not if you are religious or secular. Do NOT renounce the Book. It is fundamental. It will nourish you, as much if you know it or not. From it you will receive air to breathe. Not from the gentiles. It will satiate your thirst, not the faucet; from it you will eat your fill, not from the trees. Take it with you always. Also the phylacteries and the bag. It is the Book.

I’m not preaching to you, my son. Now you are young. I know that in an hour you will have forgotten my reproaches and recommendations. Young folks can’t learn from their elders until they have tried things for themselves. And now that the generations have gotten muddled. Sometimes young folks know more than the elders and rightly so. I know I am boring you. YOU would prefer to hear stories about kings and the Amazon, but I also know that one day in the country, under an olive tree in a few years, one day you will remember what I have told you today. And then you will say: Now I understand what Lucena told me.

SHABAT SHALOM

Menashé Benzimra left the synagogue angry because his son Samuel had arrived late, almost at the end of the service. The only thing he did not look forward to was arriving home. It was one o’clock in the afternoon and he didn’t want his wife after him trying to calm him down, something that made him very nervous. Another Saturday without smoking. Disgusting Saturday! What I need now is a cigarette. What an annoyance! He went to the bar next to the synagogue the “Oceano” and on entering he was greeted with “Good morning Mr. Benzimra.” The waiter, who knew him, asked him if he wanted squid tapas. “Yes, and a brandy, please.”

Right away one of the fellows who attended synagogue approached him, Yitshak Wahnish, who also ordered squid and a glass of red wine.

“You here?” said Wahnish.

“You say that like I‘m not here every Saturday. Why should I go home?”

“I thought that perhaps you would go to see “
sajená
.”

“She’s not in Málaga today.”

“You look worried.”

“It’s my son. He wants to be a writer. You hear? He wants to be a writer. Young folks are insane. Insane I tell you. What would he live on?”

Menashé was getting worked up and Wahnish thought he’d better do something to calm him down.

“It’s not THAT terrible. One can live on that. He could write for a newspaper, or be a published author like Julio Llamazares, or García Márquez, or like... There are a lot of guys who live writing books. Why not?”