The Mapmaker's Daughter

by Laurel Corona

  “Such talk? I have spent my life paying the price for letting them splash me with their water when I was a young man living in Mallorca. Surely you should know where my heart lies.” Above his gray beard, his face is mottled with anger. “I was afraid—I confess to that! I did it to save my life, but I am not one of them. My knees may bend when they wave their crucifixes in front of me, but my mind never will.”

  He exhales with a snort so loud and horselike I might have giggled if the subject were not so serious. “Stupid fools if they think I believe that nonsense about their Hanged One and their sacred wafers and that wine they say turns to blood that he wants us to drink in his memory.” His lip curls. “Drink his blood? What kind of barbarians would do that?”

  He stops momentarily, but I know he isn’t really asking us to answer. “We live in a terrible place, a terrible time,” he goes on. “And if the Holy One means us to survive, how exactly does he mean us to do it?”

  I hate these conversations because I know, even at six, that a threat hangs over these afternoons. To Christians, we are Judaizers. To Jews, we are traitors to the faith of Moses, Marranos, swine. I fight back tears. “Can’t you unbaptize yourself?” I say, hearing the huskiness in my voice. “Can’t you say, ‘I’ve changed my mind and I’d rather be a Jew?’”

  My grandmother smiles wistfully. “I wish it were that simple, little one, but Christians believe that once they’ve wetted you, there’s no turning back.”

  My mother looks at me, and I know what she is thinking. Immediately after my baptism, she told me she took me to our spring to wash away the water and restore me to our people. The following year, the church burned down and the record of my baptism was destroyed. Mama says that makes me still a Jew in God’s eyes, but it’s not something we should mention to anyone.

  Cleansed with living water and my baptism purged by fire. I return Mama’s smile, warmed by our secret. If I should need to say I have never been baptized, no one could disprove it. If I said I was, no one could disprove that either. I don’t understand why this is important, but Mama says every secret Jew might need a story someday.

  “Best to marry Susana off quickly,” Grandfather is saying. “She has excellent prospects. She’s healthy, and the Riba family has the means—”

  “But she’s so young,” my mother protests. “She hasn’t the hips for childbearing yet.”

  “Perhaps you haven’t noticed,” Grandmother says gently. “I think she is growing them now.” She pats my mother’s hand. “And she’ll make you a grandmother all the sooner, if it’s God’s will.”

  To avert my mother’s darkening mood, we stand for the blessing after meals, after which we burst into song.

  Bendigamos al Altísimo,

  Al Señor que nos crió,

  Démosle agradecimiento

  Por los bienes que nos dió.

  I have practiced all the verses in bed so I know the song by heart. “Let us bless the Most High, the Lord who raised us. Let us give him thanks for the good things he has given us,” I sing, loudly enough to draw the smiles I crave.

  Grandfather unfurls his fingers in a loud and decisive strum of the guitar he has fetched from the corner, while the others pick up tambourines and flutes. Eventually Susana comes back inside and stands next to me, clicking castanets with my mother. Watching her, I wonder why Susana wants to be a Christian when Jews have afternoons as wonderful as this.

  Grandfather plays the first notes of Luisa’s favorite, and we jump to our feet. “Dance, Rachel, and Mojonico sing! The fat rats clap their hands.” The song creeps as slowly as a burglar at the start, and we act like statues coming to life. Each verse speeds up, until Luisa and I are waving our arms and leaping in wild circles. At the end of the last verse, we dive into pillows on the floor, holding our bellies and squealing with laughter.

  Even Grandmother is persuaded to dance. Though she complains that her joints are stiff and she is too old for such things, I watch her feet flutter like birds taking off from their nests. Finally, Grandfather puts down his guitar. “Praise to the One who has such things in his world as music,” he says, signaling our afternoon rest. Bernardo and Marisela leave for home, and Luisa flops on the pillow, her hair plastered brown at her temples with sweat.

  Mama and Susana go with Grandmother to lie on the bed while Grandfather settles into his favorite chair. I’m tired, but I don’t want to sleep. “Will you show me the atlas?” I ask, widening my eyes in hope Grandfather will find me irresistible. He musses my hair. “All right, but just for a minute. An old man needs his Sabbath nap.”

  The book is so big it knocks against my ankles as I carry it to him. He sets it alongside his chair and waits for me to hop in his lap. “Tell me the whole story again,” I say.

  “You’ve already heard it a hundred times.”

  I twist my head around to look at him. “But not for a while. I think I might have forgotten something.”

  He laughs. “You, my little radish, never forget a thing!”

  “Tell me anyway,” I say, wiggling my legs down between his thighs as he stretches his arms around me and rests the open atlas on his knees.

  The six vellum panels in the atlas are almost as long as my grandfather’s arms, and as I sit on his lap, the top of the world looms over my head. “Our king, Pedro, knew that the king of France wanted a map of the world. Catalan atlas makers were the best, and my father was best of all. I was a cartographer too, so we made this atlas for Pedro to give to his friend.”

  “Your father was Abraham Cresques,” I interrupt. Now that I’ve gotten him to show me the map, I want him to know how much, not how little, I remember. “That means Cresques should be my name too.”

  “Except that in 1391, mobs started killing Jews all over Spain, and I was baptized against my will. They forced us to take Christian names, and I became Jaume Riba. But Jehuda Cresques is my real name, just like yours is Leah even though everyone calls you Amalia.”

  “Ama-lia,” I correct him with a smile.

  “Ama-lia,” he repeats. “And when I am gone, I hope you will remember me as Jehuda Cresques, even if that won’t be on my tombstone.”

  “I will, Grandfather.”

  He doesn’t seem to hear my promise. “It was too terrible a thought never to see our work again—may the Evil Eye not punish me for such pride—so we secretly made this copy, which we’ve kept all these years.”

  Grandfather thinks for a moment. “We imagine we are on top of the ball of the world but they feel the same in China or Africa.” He kisses the top of my head. “Never forget that making a round world that no one falls off is easy for the Holy One. So next time you look around and say, ‘this world doesn’t make any sense,’ just remember that it does to him and be grateful that no one else is really in charge, even those who wear crowns.”

  “Yes, Grandfather.”

  The large page scratches my belly as he turns it to reveal the next panel. I know what I’m going to see, but it takes my breath away nonetheless. Navigational lines radiate outward in an ocean of lapis lazuli, like frost on a window against a brilliant blue sky. On the right is Spain. “Sevilla,” I say, “Toledo, Salamanca, Valencia.” I point to each city in turn, as Grandfather nods with pride. “If I ever need to make another map,” he says, “I know who to ask for help.”

  Mama comes from the bedroom. “Have you kept Grandfather up?” she scolds, but she doesn’t mean it. She takes the atlas from his hands despite my protest that I have seen only one page. “It’s time for us to get ready to leave. The cart should be here soon.”

  I crawl down from Grandfather’s lap and go to wake up Luisa. “Come on,” I say, “unless you want me to say good-bye to the chickens without you.” We make a quick trip, and on our way back, we see the cart and driver stopping at the gate. Inside, everyone is gathering around the table for the habdalah ceremony that ends Shabbat.

  Grandmother brings a special, braided candle to the table, its tip flaming. “Blessed art thou, Lord God,
king of the universe,” Grandfather chants, “who separates the sacred from the ordinary.” He pours wine into the silver cup until it overflows, then puts the candle out in it. We break out into laughter, not because it’s funny but because that’s what we’re supposed to do to make the start of the week happy.

  Grandfather takes off the lid of a small carved-ivory jar, and the aroma of cloves and cinnamon wafts through the air. After massaging the dried spices between his fingers to release more of their scent, he puts the jar under my nose. “May you have a sweet week,” he says.

  Susana inhales the heady blend next and holds the jar under Mama’s nose. When it has passed to everyone, we stand around a plate of membrillo, taking turns spooning out a morsel of the sweetened quince paste and sighing as it melts on our tongues.

  Mama and the others start down the path, but Grandmother motions to Luisa and me to stay. She dips her fingers in the remaining wine from the silver cup. She touches behind our ears for health, in our pockets for wealth, and on the backs of our necks for the quick arrival of the Messiah.

  As we walk to the gate, Grandmother picks a blossom from a quince tree and tucks it behind my ear. “Have a good week, my beloved Leah,” she says. Its fragrance fills the carriage all the way home.

  VALENCIA 1492

  I wake to the faint scent of quince blossoms and cinnamon, and I think for a moment it is Shabbat and I am in Grandfather’s lap. I feel his spirit breathing on my neck. “You kept it safe,” he says.

  “Yes, Grandfather,” I whisper. “I showed it to my daughter, to my grandchildren, and my great grandchildren, just as you shared it with me.”

  I don’t want to tell him I can protect it no further. Jews may take no more from Spain than they can carry. Take something useful, my daughter has told me. A little more clothing, or a piece of leather for new soles for our shoes. Sell the atlas and sew into my hem the few coins it will bring. I see the pain behind her resolve. The book is as much a part of her as it is of me, no easier to leave behind than an arm or a leg.

  I don’t know what I will do when my grandson Judah arrives later today to take me to the boat. I could take the vial of poison I bought from a gypsy on the road to Valencia and pour it down my throat to save myself the decision of whether to go or stay behind, but the thought of Judah finding my body on a day already full of unspeakable loss restrains me.

  “Go to the end,” my grandfather says, still behind me. I open my mouth to protest that I am already at the end. Go, stay, die, live—it’s all the same.

  “I mean the atlas,” he says, annoyed at my incomprehension. “The last panel, the one that was your favorite.” I turn to the Asia of Kubla Khan, a lumpy circle, with people and places lining its perimeter. At the top, the figures are painted upside down, or so I thought when grandfather first showed them to me. “When people think there’s only one right place to stand, they say foolish things like ‘you’re doing it wrong.’ All you have to do is go to the other side and look again at how many ways there are to see the world.” I am not sure if the solemn voice I hear is a memory or a whisper. “You must act in their world, even when every choice seems as impossible as riding a horse upside down.”

  I touch the empire of Magog, at the summit of Asia. “Behold a swarm of locusts were coming,” the prophet Amos said, “and one of the locusts was Gog, the King.” He could hardly be more fearsome than Isabella and Ferdinand. If a mapmaker painted Spain now, it would have boats sinking, refugees drowning, doleful lines of Jews on dusty roads, bonfires with black corpses hanging from stone pillars…

  “Grandfather, help me,” I plead. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Go with your heart. You cannot do otherwise.”

  “But I don’t know what my heart is telling me!” I want to protest that I am a confused old woman who can’t think straight anymore.

  He cuts off my complaint. “It’s buried in your memories. Go find out.”

  2

  SEVILLA 1433

  The windows of the cathedral admit little light on this blustery morning, and the sconces on each massive pillar give up their weak yellow glow into the looming gray overhead. The odor of tallow smoke, wet wool, and incense wafts through the nave as I stand with my family shortly after my seventh birthday, in the long line of people awaiting communion on Tosantos, All Saints’ Day.

  Father hangs back to let us go first. Susana picks Luisa up so the priest can lay a wafer on her tongue and then puts her down to receive the host herself. They make the sign of the cross, and Luisa looks up at Susana for approval.

  I stick out my tongue for the priest, but before the wafer can dissolve, I transfer it to the inside of my upper teeth, as my mother has taught me. When we return to where Susana and Luisa are standing in the nave, I see my mother run the knuckle of her thumb over her lips, and in a few seconds, she has managed to bury the unswallowed host in the folds of her underskirt.

  I wiggle the host free from my own teeth and move it to the tip of my tongue. Feigning a cough, I deposit it between my curled fingers. Clasping the other hand over my fist in a gesture of prayer, I wait for the chance to paste the sticky blob inside the hem of my sleeve.

  My mother has her own way of going to mass. She says out loud only the things she believes and mumbles her way through the rest. I do the same. The Lord’s Prayer is one of the things we both say with fervor. “It’s a Jewish prayer,” my mother tells me, “taught by a Jew to his own people.”

  She finds it amusing that Christians hang on everything an ancient rabbi said. “I understand Jesus perfectly,” Mama tells me. “I just don’t understand Christians, and I don’t think he would either.” Indeed, my mother seems on quite friendly terms with the Hanged One, as if they are both shaking their heads in bewilderment at what is done and said in his name.

  After mass, Luisa clamors for Susana to take her to see the nuns who live nearby. I’m not sure whether it’s the little cakes they lay out for visitors that make her so eager to go, or that the nuns create such a commotion over how pretty she is. Though I would rather not, my mother always makes me go too. “It helps us look like good Christians,” she tells me with a wistful smile.

  Going home afterward, we skirt the edge of the neighborhood where the Jews live. Grandfather told me there used to be a Jewish quarter protected by a wall and a locked gate, but there were terrible riots a while back, and all but a few hundred Jews died or moved away. Christians moved into the vacant houses and shops, and the remaining Jews pay a neighborhood guard to watch over their houses, though all their protectors do is doze in the shade or tell jokes outside the tavern.

  None of the guards are in sight when we hear the first screams. Without thinking, we run around the corner to see where the noise is coming from. A group of young men is beating up a Jewish merchant outside his shop, yelling something about how he’s defiling Tosantos by being open for business.

  “This isn’t our holiday,” his daughter is screaming. “You want some wine? You want some bread? Who do you think we’re open for?”

  People are spilling onto the street. A few come to the man’s defense, but most seem bent on a brawl. Susana pulls us into a doorway as people stream past. Seeing another Jewish merchant hurriedly closing his shop, two boys pick up fruit from the baskets he has not yet taken inside and stomp it to pulp on the cobblestones.

  “Apples for sale!” one says, picking up the whole basket and marching down the street. “Apples for free!” he corrects himself. “Jew apples for free.”

  Two of his companions drag the greengrocer outside and throw him against the wall so violently I hear his head hit the stones. They are so close we could almost be caught by the backswing of the clubs that suddenly appear in their hands. Luisa is screaming, and I am plastered to the wall of the doorway, my cries frozen in my throat.

  Finally the guards arrive, but the crowd is howling for blood. One of them pulls up a man kneeling next to the limp body of the greengrocer and pummels him with his fists. The guar
d fighting near our doorway pulls a club from his belt, dealing his opponent a savage blow on the head. Blood spatters and the man falls, his splayed arm trailing across the front of my dress. He lies face up at my feet, his lifeless eyes staring skyward as a pool of blood forms underneath his head.

  The guard’s sweating face is convulsed, and a noise like a wild animal comes from deep inside him as he turns to find someone else to fight. I feel Susana yanking my arm. Carrying Luisa and dragging me behind, she gets us out of the street and in the direction of home. I am sobbing so hard I can’t breathe as I hang onto her skirt, and Luisa is clinging so tightly that Susana cannot put her down. She is staggering with the burden of both of us by the time we reach our door.

  “A man—” I say, barely able to speak through my sobs. “I saw a man die. He touched me, Mama.” I look at my blood-splattered dress, and I run to the kitchen just in time to spew the remains of the nun’s cakes in an empty bowl.

  “Il Dio ke se apaide de mosostros,” my mother whispers, her face ashen. “May God have mercy on us.”

  Father is heading out the door with a stout piece of wood. “Lock the door behind you,” he commands. “If the fight spreads here, hide in the cellar.”

  “How will you get back in if I lock the door?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he says, and then he is gone.

  Mama pulls us all to her. “Praise to the Holy One,” she says, “for keeping you safe.”

  Susana breaks away, curling her lip in a way that bares her teeth. “It’s people like you that make these things happen,” she hisses. “Can’t you just call him Our Father? Do you have to give us all away?”

  Her knees give out under her, and she falls to the floor sobbing. When Mama tries to put her arms around her, Susana shrinks into a ball, screaming at her not to touch her, not to touch her ever again. Luisa is clinging to me, and I can think of nothing to do but go in the bedroom and hide under the covers with her until the rage in the streets and inside our home has passed.