Heretics

by Leonardo Padura

  As dramatic as those silences in his stories was the silence that the Hakham now imposed that morning, after hearing Elias Ambrosius’s confession. And it ended up being so long that the young man wondered if he would die of cold and desperation. Ben Israel, too absorbed, had taken out the barley cracker hidden in the pocket of his shirt to dip it in the rest of the wine and chew it unhurriedly before at last deciding to speak.

  “I’m not going to ask you if you understand what you’re requesting of me, since I assume you must understand it. I also assume that you know what my duty is supposed to be, right now.”

  “Yes, sir, try to convince me that it’s crazy. Or denounce me to the Mahamad. Don’t try the former: I am decided. The latter is up to you, as a member of that council.”

  Ben Israel left his already empty cup directly below the mezuzah, wiped his mouth and rubbed his hands together to get rid of the remaining crumbs, and, while he was at it, bring heat back into his fingers.

  “I spent thirty years living here and I still long for the sun of Portugal … I wouldn’t find it strange that there are Jews who refuse to leave there and others here who are desperate to return.”

  Without any further explanation, the teacher entered the house and came back out with a blanket over his shoulders. He took up his seat again, noisily sucked in his snot, and looked at the young man: “Why are you asking me to help you in something so serious? Why do you come to me?”

  “Because you, Hakham, are the only one who can help me … And because I know that you would be able to.”

  The man smiled, perhaps made proud by Elias’s opinion.

  “You’re asking my support to violate a mitzvah, nothing less than the second commandment written in the tablets.”

  “A mitzvah that we Jews have been violating for two thousand years. Or was it not the Jews, according to what I learned in your classes, who painted the panels with biblical scenes in a synagogue on the banks of the Euphrates? What about the mosaics with human and animal images in the synagogue of Hamat Tiberias, on Lake Galilee? You say they didn’t just fall from the sky. What about the illustrated Sacred Scriptures? And don’t the tombstones in the cemetery of Beth Haim, right here, in Amsterdam, have images of animals on them…? And what about the angels in the Ark of the Covenant? King Solomon’s fountain raised over four sculpted elephants…? Excuse me, Hakham, but what I’m going to say to you is pertinent … Isn’t having images on the walls of your house a violation of the Law?”

  “Yes, there are bad precedents and others…” The wise man smiled again, wounded by his former student’s jab that reminded him of the portrait that for years Ben Israel had exhibited, like a challenge, right there, in his house. “There are others that are confusing. The cherubs that adorn the Ark were requested by the Creator Himself, it’s true. Although He never invoked anyone to adore them … The carved marble in our cemetery was entrusted to Gentile artisans … And I’m not the only Jew who has been painted by Mr. Van Rijn. There is also an excellent portrait by him of the notable Dr. Bueno … What I mean to say is that none of this exempts you from obedience and less still from the danger of punishment…”

  Then Elias Ambrosius played the trump card he thought would guarantee his victory: “The Torah prohibits us from adoring false idols, that is even one of the three inviolable precepts, and that is where the condemnation of the act of representing images of men and animals comes from, or of adoring them in temples or in houses … But it does not speak of the fact of learning to do so, and I only want you to help me learn with the Maestro. What I do later is my conscious responsibility … Are you going to help me or are you going to inform against me?”

  Ben Israel finally laughed openly.

  “Every time that he had to battle with his people, Moses asked himself why the Holiest, blessed may He be, had chosen the Hebrews to follow His mandates on earth and foster the arrival of the Messiah. We are the most disobedient race in creation. And that has come at a price, you know that … The worst is not that we question everything but that we rationalize that questioning. You are right … No one is preventing you from studying. But you know something? I feel to blame for you having learned to think that way … Besides, the Law is clear regarding the representation of figures that could be idolized. The prohibition refers above all to building false idols or supposed images of the Holiest … Although, I say, it leaves space for the act of creating if that task does not lead to idolatry … And each new generation, you know well, is obligated to respect the Torah and its Laws, but it is also obligated to study it, because texts require being interpreted in the spirit of the times, which are changing … Now, independently of how we interpret the Law, I ask you: Would you be capable of stopping yourself at the limit? Studying and only learning, as you say, for the joy of doing so?” He made one of his pauses, again so long that Elias came to wonder whether he had finished his speech, when at last he stood up and added: “Come, I want to show you something.”

  The Hakham picked up his mug and climbed the two steps that led to the house. The young man imitated him, intrigued by what the man could show him. They crossed the living room in disarray, deserted at that moment, and entered the cubicle where the scholar usually read and wrote. Mountains of books and papers, seemingly placed any which way, surrounded the small table, where there rested several sheets written in Hebrew, some goose feathers, and a bottle of ink. Also a carafe of wine, the luxury that the teacher could not give up. Ben Israel turned around and looked into his former student’s eyes—“Discretion is a virtue. I trust in you as you trust in me”—and, without waiting for his former student to make any comment, he leaned over the table and from a drawer took out a rolled piece of heavy paper that he handed over to the young man. “Open it.”

  At the mere feel of the texture of the paper, Elias Ambrosius knew that it was one of the engraving cards of the kind sold by Mr. Daniel Rulandts and, with utmost care, he began to unfold the roll until he opened it before his eyes. In fact, the surface was engraved with an etching, and the image represented was the bust of Ben Israel himself, dressed with forced elegance, his beard and mustache well trimmed, his head covered with his Jewish kippah. The young man said the first thing that occurred to him: “But this is not a work by the Maestro.”

  “I see how well you know him,” the Hakham admitted. “That’s what is interesting about this engraving…”

  “So who is it…? Salom Italia?” He read on the bottom corner, where the date of execution was engraved in Roman numerals: MDCXLII, 1642. “Who is Salom Italia…? Don’t tell me he’s a Jew.” Ben Israel allowed a small smile to spread across his lips.

  “Elias, all you need to know, which is already a lot, is this: yes, he is a Jew, like you, like me.”

  “A Jew? And you knew he was doing this? Whoever this Salom Italia is, he’s not an apprentice … He’s an artist.”

  “You’re on the right path…” Ben Israel threw some books to the floor and settled into his chair. “He’s not an apprentice, although he received almost no lessons from any maestro. But he has a gift. And he couldn’t avoid developing it … Of course, Salom Italia is not his real name…”

  “And what are you going to do, Hakham? Are you going to denounce him?”

  “After posing for him…?”

  Elias Ambrosius understood that he was facing something too serious, definitive, capable of pushing him forward in his aims but at the same time filling him with fears.

  “So then, what are you going to do?”

  “With this engraving, keep it. With Salom Italia’s secret and his etching, the same thing. With you, help you … After all, it’s your choice and you know the risks … As Salom Italia knew them. Besides, in this city, secrets multiply: there are several of them hidden by every Jew you see … Yes, I have an idea … And I hope that the Holiest, blessed may He be, will understand me and forgive me with His infinite grace.”

  Menasseh ben Israel stood up and rubbed his hands again: “We need fire
wood again and I am in ruins … Have you noticed that I don’t even have enough to buy milk? When will this damned winter end? Go now, I have to pray … Although it’s already a little late, isn’t it? Did you do your morning prayers…? And then I’m going to think. About you and about me.”

  * * *

  When he was finally in front of the green door of number 4 Jodenbreestraat, Elias Ambrosius felt the desire to run away. It’s not the same to make a decision as it is to carry out an act; and if he passed the threshold surveilled by him for months, always dreaming of that moment, he would be taking an irreversible step. Without wanting to, without thinking about it, he again reviewed his attire, the most presentable within his reach, but he comforted himself upon observing the careless aspect of his guide: the scholar Ben Israel looked like one of those crude and foul-smelling Jews who in recent years had migrated from the East to New Jerusalem and lived off of charity or meager municipal salaries earned for work such as removing grime and animal corpses from the canals, collecting snow in winter, and sweeping the dust from the streets the rest of the year.

  Mme. Geertje Dircx opened the door for them and, with the muteness that was typical of her (Elias already knew it), led them to the receiving room. That soldier’s widow, nearly a soldier herself, was the one charged with caring for Titus, the Maestro’s small son, even before his mother’s death, and following the passing of the mistress of the house, she had turned into a kind of housekeeper with all the power that entailed. They only waited a few minutes and from the stairs leading to the kitchen, out came the Maestro, still chewing a last bite and dressed in a smock that reached his ankles, stained in all possible colors and tightened at the waist with a hemp rope that was more appropriate for tying than for the function it was now deployed for.

  “Good day, my friend,” the Hakham greeted him, and the Maestro responded with the same words and a handshake. Elias, whom the host had not even looked at, felt his whole body tremble, shaken by the close presence of that man with the spout-shaped nose and eagle’s gaze who had such a vulgar appearance that, even knowing who he was, it was difficult to accept that he was—and no one doubted it—the greatest Maestro in a city where painters swarmed. Ben Israel mentioned to him the reason for his visit and only then did the man seem to remember him and take a sideways glance at Elias.

  “Ah, your young student … Let’s go to the studio,” he said, and after ordering Mme. Dircx to bring up a bottle of wine and two glasses, he started the ascent up the sinuous spiral staircase.

  As they went up, the young man, without shedding his anxiety, was trying to piece together everything he saw in the images of that place that he had imagined based on descriptions by the Hakham, Keil the Dane, and the businessman Salvador Rodrigues, a neighbor of the painter’s and friend of Elias’s father. Without even daring to take a glance at the works hanging in the room, among which he recognized a landscape by Adriaen Brouwer and a bust of a Virgin (without a doubt from Italy) beside a pair of works by the host, he followed them to the floor where the Maestro had his studio and, through the semi-closed door of the annex of the antechamber, he managed to see the press on which the painter printed copies of his coveted etchings. When they reached the landing of the third level, he could make out in the room at the end, to his right, the warehouse of exotic objects that the Maestro so liked to acquire in auctions and small markets around the city and, to the left, the door that was already open and gave access to the workshop. It was at that moment, while the Maestro let the rabbi pass, that the man addressed Elias Ambrosius for the first time.

  “Wait here. If you want, you can look at my collection. But don’t steal anything,” and, without another word, he closed the door to the studio behind him.

  Elias, obedient, entered the chamber where, in chaos rather than order, were amassed the most inconceivable rarities. Although his state of mind was not propitious for concentrating on observations, he looked over that display of marbles in which artificialia cohabitated with naturalia, in an amazing or amazed variety and arrangement. Placed at an angle from which he could observe the studio door, the young man ran his eyes over the series of marble and plaster busts (Augustus? Marcus Aurelius? Homer?), the boxes of shells, the Asian and African spears clustered in a corner, the books (all in Dutch) placed on a bookshelf, the taxidermied exotic animals, the iron military helmets, the collection of minerals and coins, the jars imported from the Far East, two globes, various musical instruments of whose existence and sonority the Jew had no idea. On the table rested three enormous folders that, the young man already knew, capped engravings, etchings, and drawings by Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Holbein, Lucas van Leyden, Mantegna! Cranach the Elder! Dürer!… Focused on looking at the albums, rubbing with the tips of his fingers the roughness of the impressions, all notion of time lost and removed unconsciously from his anxieties, the creaking of the door opening surprised him.

  “Come, my son,” the Hakham bid him and the trembling returned to the young man’s body.

  The Maestro’s workshop occupied the entire front half of the floor. The two windows observed so many times from the square of Sint Antoniesbreestraat, on the banks of the Zwanenburgwal lock, had the cloth curtains drawn to diminish the light, but the young man could see on the easel prepared behind the Maestro, very close to a wrought-iron stove, a medium-format panel painting with the upper half darkened to a nearly cavernous depth where, nonetheless, it was possible to make out an enormous column, something like an altar weighed down by gold filigree, and a curtain that came down from the shadows on the left. On the panel’s lower half, where the light was concentrated around a kneeling woman dressed in white, there was a group of several more figures, merely sketched over a gray background.

  The Hakham took the other free bench and left Elias standing in the middle of the room, in an embarrassing position, since he could see his reflection face-on and in profile in the two great mirrors leaning against the workshop’s front and side walls. The young man didn’t know what to do with his hands or where to direct his gaze, eager to capture every detail of the sanctum sanctorum, although he was incapable of turning the processed images into thought.

  “How old are you, kid?”

  Elias was surprised by that question.

  “Seventeen years old, sir. Just turned.”

  “You look younger.”

  Elias nodded.

  “It’s that I don’t have a beard yet.”

  The Maestro nearly smiled and continued. “My friend Menasseh has spoken to me of your aims. And since I admire daring, I’m going to do something for you.”

  Elias felt that he could float with happiness, but he limited himself to nodding, his eyes fixed on the Maestro’s hands, devoted to emphasizing his words.

  “Since for my friend’s sake, and yours, we should be discreet, and since my understanding is that you are an ambitious and headstrong young man without a pot to piss in, my only possible proposal is that, for everyone, you come to work in my workshop as a cleaning boy, for which I will reduce your tuition to fifty florins. Of course, for that price and so that everyone else thinks that you are cleaning, you really are going to clean, that’s clear … First, you will learn by watching what the rest of the students do and what I do. You can ask, but not too much, and never address me when I am working … Never … When you know everything you should know about how to set out and mix the colors, grind the stones with the mortar, prepare the canvases and panels, make paintbrushes, and have an idea of how to paint a painting and why you paint one way and not another, then I will again ask you your willingness. And if you still insist, I will give you a paintbrush. If you take that paintbrush in your hands and if that act comes to be more or less public, then it will only depend on you, and you will assume the consequences. I have too many Jewish friends who are not as crazy as this friend of ours”—he pointed at Ben Israel with his chin—“to sully my relationship with them over a dreamer who aims to paint and perhaps isn’t even good
enough to prime the walls … Does that suit you?”

  Elias, weighed down by that speech, finally looked at the Maestro’s face, which remained awaiting a response, and then at that of his former instructor, who, with a beautiful half-drained glass of wine in hand, seemed tipsy and amused by the situation.

  “Yes, I accept, sir … But I can only pay you thirty florins.”

  The Maestro looked at him as if he hadn’t quite understood him and, with his eyes, interrogated Ben Israel.

  “Please, sir, thirty florins is more than I have,” the young man then added as he felt the world coming down at his feet when he saw the Maestro shaking his head again and again. Elias, like all who knew something about that man’s life, knew that fame was not enough to meet the financial pressures to which his eccentricities led. Besides, his finances must have worsened considerably since the previous year, when various members of the arquebusiers’ society commented freely that the work commissioned had turned out to be a scam, an impertinent painting in poor taste, since it did not resemble in any way the group portraits then in fashion. Some even commented that the painter was capricious, strong-willed, and bullheaded (“It would have been better to have commissioned Frans Hals,” some of those portrayed had said, each one of whom had subscribed with the considerable sum of one hundred florins), and, almost as if it were a municipal decree, the Maestro ceased to receive that type of commission, the most profitable in Amsterdam’s picture market. Because of that, the painter’s response surprised the two Jews: “You may not have a beard, but you have guts … Well, there’s a broom. Start by sweeping the stairs. I want to see them shine. When you finish, ask Mme. Dircx what other things you should do … I think we need peat for the stoves … Go now, I want to talk to my friend a little more. And dress like what you are, a servant. Come on, go and close the door.”