“Bleed?” I whisper. “How much?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Violante says. “It differs.”
“On my wedding night, it was a flood,” Susana says.
Lionor frowns at her. “The important thing is that there should be some. You may have ruined your chance to prove your virginity, although I am sure your husband will not doubt it.”
I am shuddering, and Lionor puts an arm around my shoulder. “What men do, women must endure. You’ll find after the first few times, it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“When I was married,” Susana adds, “the priest told me that if I found it unpleasant, I should concentrate on becoming with child from it.”
“Now, it is true that some women find the encounter pleasant,” Violante says, ignoring her, “but I would suggest that if you are one of those, you don’t appear to enjoy it too much. Your husband might think you will look elsewhere for more, and since he will be away so often, perhaps it’s best to fight off any…excitement…you may feel.”
“Oh my goodness,” Lionor says, looking out the window. “We’re almost in Lisbon!” My heart sinks even further. Much as I want to get out of the coach, away from the torment of this conversation, I know that when the coach stops, the inevitable will be one step closer.
Diogo’s front door is open, and the pathway has been strewn with flowers. Two servants come out at the sound of the carriage and wait near the front steps. One of them helps me down, introducing himself as the butler, Alvaro.
The other servants assembled at the door are a blur of names and faces. The last is Catellina, my new maid. She looks a little younger than me, with cheeks that blotch when I speak to her. She and Alvaro usher us into a room where Diogo is waiting with a few of his friends. They all rise, and Diogo comes to me, flushed with wine I can smell on his breath. “Welcome to your new home,” he says.
After supper, Catellina takes me upstairs to my quarters, with Susana and the ladies following behind. In the dressing room, a silk nightgown has been laid out from an open chest of linens and undergarments. “Whose are these?” I ask, worrying for a moment there is another woman in the house.
“Senhor Marques has kept all the seamstresses in town busy preparing a trousseau for you,” Catellina says. “The tailor will be coming tomorrow to fit you for your dresses.” The chest contains more clothing than I have owned my entire life. “You can choose another nightdress, if you prefer,” the maid tells me, misunderstanding my silence as displeasure.
“No,” I say. My voice sounds so small I hardly recognize it. “This is beautiful.”
While Susana and the ladies watch, Catellina helps me remove my dress and undergarments. I cling to my chemise, because I have never undressed in front of anyone since I was a little girl. They wait for me silently, and I know I must do what they expect. After a moment of nakedness, I am covered with the nightdress, and Catellina pulls back the covers to help me into bed.
I pull a blanket up to my chin, but Lionor shakes her head. “You must not look like a frightened child,” she says, pulling it gently away. The pink of my nipples shows through the thin fabric, and I struggle to keep myself from crossing my arms.
Diogo comes into the bedchamber wearing a robe, which his manservant helps him remove. Clad only in a night shirt, he settles himself beside me. One by one, the guests wish us well and leave.
Diogo puts his arm around my shoulder. “Are you afraid?” he asks. I nod, unable to speak.
“Perhaps it’s best just to take care of it.” He doesn’t remove his shirt or my gown but simply pushes fabric aside as he gets on top of me. He pumps his hips for a while before rolling off to lie on his back. “I guess I’m too drunk,” he says. “Or maybe it’s all the excitement. Would you mind if we got it done tomorrow?”
I don’t know what to say. I’ve been rescued from the horrors I have been imagining, but they’ll still be ahead of me. I want to say I’d rather it be over, but Diogo has already blown out the candles. “Good night,” he says, turning his back on me without another word.
8
LISBON 1444
I lie awake for hours listening to Diogo’s shallow breath. The next thing I know, the room is filled with sunlight, and birds are chirping in the trees outside the window where Diogo is sitting.
I pull back the covers and see a bloodstain on the sheet. “How did that get there?” I ask, wondering if it is possible to sleep through such an event.
“I did it,” he says, shrugging his shoulders.
“Why?”
He gets up and looks out the window. “To preserve your honor. So no one would think there wasn’t any blood.”
“But we haven’t—” I say. “We didn’t—”
His loose sleeve comes up his arm, and I see blood seeping through a white bandage. “For your honor,” he repeats. “Tonight, we’ll try again.”
He rings for Catellina, pulling back the covers to make sure the blood is visible from the door.
The maid is there before the sound of the bell has died. “Help my wife dress,” Diogo orders, “and see to the bed right away.” Her eyes dart to the stain. She curtseys, and I follow her into my dressing room.
Catellina helps me into a dress and finds me a pair of matching slippers. “Your hair, Donha Marques,” she says, going to a drawer and taking out a white cloth that she pulls tight around my forehead and smooths over the top and sides of my hair.
Of course—this is how married women look. I picture my braid flying in the salt air of Sagres. Gone. In its place, I can picture nothing at all.
***
Diogo and I don’t succeed the next time, or the next. When two weeks have passed, I can think of nothing else. I sink into self-recrimination, telling myself I am not pretty enough, womanly enough, charming enough, something enough. He spends most of his time out with his friends, and when they are at the house, they are in his library, a room I have been told he would prefer me not to visit. I get in bed looking as attractive as I can and force myself to remain awake, but if he comes to me at all, he soon quits in frustration and goes to his own room.
By the time a month has passed, I am grateful that Diogo had the foresight to bloody the sheet so no one will know there is anything amiss. Then one night, I wake to hear him breathing heavily by the bed. Without a word, he presses on top of me. I feel hardness between my legs, and though part of me wants to protect myself, in sheer relief I open them willingly.
He wastes no time, driving hard into me, then lets out a grunt as he thrusts once, twice, three times. I feel sharp pain as my body stretches to accommodate something so big. Almost immediately, I feel hot liquid coursing inside me, and just as it stops, he does too, freezing in place before falling over on the bed with a groan.
Is that all there is to it? All the stories of lusty knights and forbidden passion—had they no truth to them at all? Shocked and betrayed, I am overcome with loneliness so deep I want to cry.
Voices rise from downstairs. “I must go back to my guests,” Diogo says. When he is gone, I touch between my legs and find only a smear of milky liquid and no blood. Lionor and Violante were right. I had been broken by my time on Chuva, but they were wrong about my husband caring. I roll over and pull the covers up around me. It’s done, I think. At least it’s done.
The next morning as I dress to go out to visit my new neighbors, a messenger arrives. “Senhora Marques,” he says with a deep bow. “I have word from Sintra that you should come as quickly as you can.”
When he averts his eyes, my heart sinks. “It’s my father, isn’t it?”
“I am to inform you that your father died last night,” he says. “Your sister is waiting for you.” My knees buckle, and Alvaro catches me before I collapse. Did he die while Diogo and I were—? The possibility seems so horrible I can hardly take a breath.
Within an hour, I am in a carriage headed for Sintra, and it isn’t until I am out of the city that I realize it didn’t occur to me to leave word with Diogo tha
t I was gone.
***
Papa’s body, laid out on the dinner table, seems impossibly small, as if death were only the final diminishment in a process that had taken years. The house is empty. There is no sign of the children, and Susana is at the church arranging for the funeral mass and burial.
My eyes fill with tears as I take his still graceful-looking hand in my own and kiss it. Such works of art, such knowledge flowed through these fingers! How hard he worked to make his contribution. I wish there were some way I could honor him, send him off with the love and admiration he deserves.
Memories of my grandmother preparing my mother’s body for burial come to mind, but all I can remember is how much water it took and how gentle and thorough she was. I get a bowl and fill it. At least I can wash his hands. I slide each of his fingers between my own, working by feel because my eyes are blinded with tears. I cup his cold palm in my own and stroke the top of his hand, feeling the bony protrusion of his knuckles and the corded sinews underneath the cold, pale skin.
“Blessed art thou, Lord God, king of the universe…” My voice trails off. Papa wouldn’t want a Jewish blessing. Or would he? I never knew how he really felt about being a Jew by blood. Perhaps he didn’t either.
Would he want to be joined to his ancestors now, having done his duty by protecting his family? Had he too honored the Holy One in the only way he could? I continue the blessing, knowing I am really saying it for me.
“What are you doing?” Susana’s voice breaks the stillness, and I whirl around to see her standing in the doorway. Behind her are several men carrying a wood coffin. “The Hail Mary,” I say, unconcerned with the obviousness of my lie. “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” I intone, continuing to wash his hands. “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”
“Amen,” Susana says by rote.
“Pray for us,” I whisper to the mother of the sad and betrayed Hanged One, and this time I mean it.
***
Papa is buried the next day in the Christian cemetery. Susana has by now realized that the house is not his, and she can remain in it only long enough to settle his affairs. She storms around in a barely subdued fury about the pains she had taken to be with her father and how ungrateful everyone is.
I have never known such loneliness. I don’t want to be in Sintra now, but Diogo’s house in Lisbon is so bleak that I can’t make myself go back. I send word to him that I will be gone a few days, and I tell Susana I am leaving that afternoon. There’s only one place that can comfort me.
Shortly before nightfall, as rain is turning the roads to mud, my carriage pulls up at the Abravanel’s house in Queluz. The table has just been laid for supper, and another soup bowl is brought for me. The girls squeeze in on their bench to make room, and Isaac bangs his spoon to get my attention. After the blessings have been recited, Judah prays that I will find comfort in my father’s memory and peace in God’s will.
The children are uncharacteristically quiet, and we soon finish the simple meal of soup and bread. Simona takes Isaac to bed, while the girls clear the table and wash the dishes. Judah lights a candle at his desk, says the blessing for study, and opens the Zohar. I follow Simona and sit as she sings to Isaac until he dozes off.
When she gets up to leave, I ask her to stay a little longer. I struggle to hold back sobs as I tell her about the delayed consummation of my marriage and how it and my father’s death are linked in my mind.
“You feel unclean,” Simona replies, and I realize that’s exactly the right word. “I think I know something that will help.” She takes two large pieces of plain cloth from a chest. “Come with me.”
A temporary break in the clouds casts pearly moonlight onto the courtyard. I hear the fountain spilling water and raindrops falling from the roof into buckets, but other than that, the night is quiet. It’s cold enough for me to see my breath, but Simona, to my surprise, is stripping off her clothes. She unpins her hair and shakes it loose, and then, wrapping a sheet around herself, she goes barefoot to the fountain. “Come on!” she says. Incredulous, I take off everything and follow her. The soles of my feet burn on the cold tiles, and I hop back and forth to relieve them.
“Mayyim hayyim,” Simona says. “Do you know what that is?”
“Living water,” I say, trembling from both the cold and the memories.
Simona puts her sheet on the wall, climbs in the fountain, and waits for me to do the same. “Usually women go to the mikveh alone,” she says when we both are standing naked and shivering in the water, “but I thought you might not know how to do it.”
“I used to watch my mother,” I say, crouching to splash my thighs and belly in preparation for the shock of sitting down. Cold sears my buttocks, my spine, my shoulders as I immerse. My scalp feels pierced with needles as my head goes under, and my hair balloons out. We immerse ourselves three times as Simona intones the blessings, after which we scurry out to cover ourselves.
Just as we do, a cloud bursts overhead. Despite the cold, a warmth suffuses me, and I begin to laugh, really laugh, from somewhere deep inside. Simona laughs too. Draped in useless wet sheets, with hair like matted rope, we turn our faces to the sky and let the rain pelt us as we catch the drops on our tongues like children.
***
Inside the house, Simona lends me some warm clothing, and we brush our hair by the fire. When she’s no longer shivering, she gets up to take care of some mending in her basket, and I stay there, letting the heat penetrate my skin as I watch her and her husband absorbed in their activities.
I hear the girls giggling in bed and feel a pang of regret that I never had a sister I could do that with. Luisa was too young, and Susana was Susana. Even in this perfect moment, Susana would find something lacking, and I am glad she is not here.
Simona was right. The mayyim hayyim made me feel clean, but it did more. I am open to life again. My burdens seem lifted, although I know nothing has changed except in my mind. I imagine my spirit soaring above this house, looking down on a nimbus of golden light surrounded by cold rain and darkness. I am inside the light with Judah and Simona, because their love expands so effortlessly, because they saw me suffering and took me in, because they are my friends.
Everything you need is within your reach. The thought flows through me with such intensity that I sense Papa and Mama’s spirits hovering nearby, telling me not to be afraid and that whatever happens, I am strong enough to deal with it.
I close my eyes, enfolded in a world where blessing and breath are one. A belief seeps into my heart that I can handle anything, even Diogo, and that perhaps my mother saw that I would find a way to work my life out whether I married him, someone else, or no one at all.
I open my eyes to see Judah watching me. “Forgive me for staring,” he says, “but the Zohar was revealing itself through you.” His eyes are shining. “Would you like to see something?”
As I move away from the fire, the warmth on my back feels as if I am sprouting wings. He shows me a pattern of circles and interconnecting lines at the front of the book he is reading. “It looks like the design for a garden,” I say. “With fountains and walkways connecting them.”
He smiles. “It is a garden, in a way. It’s the key to understanding the word and the being of the Holy One.”
I am puzzled. “I thought the Torah was the word of God.”
“The Zohar tells us how to find the Word inside the words.” His face glows. “Did you ever wonder what it means that man is made in God’s image?”
“I haven’t given it much thought.”
He shrugs. “Most people don’t. They settle for the flattering idea that God must have two legs and one head. But of course, that’s not possible, because God is formless. If he looked like something, there would have to be other things he did not look like, and of course there is nothing that God is not.”
He makes a circle with his finger over the page. “This garden, as you put it, represents the ten aspects of God, the sefirot.” He
touches the circle at the top. “This is Keter—the crown. Part of Ayin.”
I recognize the word. “Nothingness?”
He nods. “In this state, God is understood only as whole. It is his different aspects that complicate things for our feeble minds. I suppose Keter could be called ‘everythingness,’ but then we might picture it crowded with things, when really it is simple, pure, all.”
He gives me a moment to think before going on. “The sefirot correspond to parts of the body. The arms, the legs”—he points to four of the circles—“and the womb and phallus, because God encompasses both masculine and feminine.”
“We’re walking symbols of the Holy One,” I whisper, in awe of the staggering thought.
Judah is obviously pleased. “Made in his image.” He touches the two sefirot immediately below the crown. “Some think the Zohar is only for men, but they misunderstand. This is wisdom.” He touches the circle on the right and then draws his finger to the left. “And this is the womb—Binah—the understanding that flows from wisdom. Many of my friends disagree, but how could the Holy One not be telling us that those with wombs are wise enough to understand the Zohar?”
He points to other circles. “The Zohar speaks of love and power, and how when they are in harmony, the result is Chesed, compassion.”
Simona looks up from her work and smiles at her husband and then at me.
Compassion, I realize, is why this house glows. It’s the reason I always go away stronger than I came.
“Love that crumbles in the face of power is not compassionate,” Judah goes on. “You have to be brave when people are taking sides against each other—or against you. You have to assert yourself to avoid snuffing out your own light.”
Simona puts her work away. “Speaking of snuffing lights, it’s time to go to bed,” she says. Judah yawns and gets to his feet. “We don’t have an extra bed,” he says. “You’ll have to push Chana and Rahel over a little, but they won’t mind.”
I go into the little room the girls share and marvel at their lovely heads on the pillows, their fresh faces at once so substantial and ethereal. Judah and Simona have protected them well, but soon they will go out to face the surprises of being a woman, just as I am doing. I sigh and settle in bed beside them. Their softness and warmth envelop me as I drift off to sleep.
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