The Mapmaker's Daughter

by Laurel Corona

Her fear buzzes through the room like charged air before a lightning strike. Isaac has been tainted by his friendship with a man accused as a traitor, and it may not matter if he had nothing to do with the plot. He can’t have been involved, I tell myself. Isaac would never question whom God chose to rule. Even if he did, he would know how much suffering a Jew’s disloyalty would bring down on all of us. No, Isaac would never have plotted against King João. Never.

  A week after Braganza’s arrest, the news is grim indeed. The duke is to be executed tomorrow. When his brother went to Évora to plead with João, he was stabbed to death, and some are saying the king himself wielded the knife.

  A few days later, another rider appears at Queluz with a letter. Eliana recognizes Isaac’s hand and pries at the seal so frantically that the vellum rips.

  “My beloved wife,” Eliana reads. “I was a day and a half’s ride from home when I received a summons from João. I had not yet heard of Braganza’s arrest, but that night, people spoke of nothing else. João’s summons can only mean that he intends to move against me as well. I left my host’s home before dawn to avoid the spies, and I am now inside Spain in Segura de la Orden…”

  “Spain…” Eliana’s voice trails off. She hands the letter to me.

  I read on. “I forsook the woman whom the Lord designated for me and the children whom God graciously bestowed upon me, and I only pray that someday the success of my plan to rescue my family will merit your forgiveness for what now must seem a cowardly act. Many times I have considered turning myself in as a way of protecting you from João’s anger, but if I am dead, I can offer you nothing. I have decided the best course is to bargain for your safety from where I am.”

  “At least he’s safe,” I say. He is for now, but are we? I resist getting up to bolt the door, not wanting to convey my fear to my daughter.

  “You must immediately begin packing to leave Queluz,” I continue aloud. “Leah must do the same in Lisbon. Her husband has been accused as a co-conspirator with Braganza, and he should leave immediately to join me here. The rest of you should wait until I can arrange safe passage or, if necessary, your escape.”

  Escape? I picture fording streams and creeping through the night across pastures and mountain passes. I can’t do that, I tell myself. I am too old.

  Eliana takes the letter from me. “He says we should pack only valuables that can be easily carried and as many of his books as possible. You are to stay in Lisbon with Hadassah to wait for her new baby and leave together after we have settled in Toledo in the house he bought when his family was forced from Sevilla. When he negotiates our passage, he will hold back a final payment to João until the rest of you are safely out of Portugal.”

  Eliana rarely cries, but she is dabbing her eyes as she struggles to continue reading the letter to me. “I fear it is unavoidable that we will lose almost everything. My heart aches that I have seen Queluz for the last time, but we must never stop praising the One who has given us such blessings over the years and will sustain and strengthen us now. I am his servant, and your loving husband, Isaac.”

  We stare at each other without speaking. A gust of wind slams a door somewhere in the house, and we jump to our feet. It is too much for us, and we dissolve into sobs in each other’s arms.

  ***

  The atlas is nestled among other books and carted off to Lisbon. Joseph arrives safely in Segura de la Orden, and none too soon, for the king’s police do show up at Leah’s door to arrest him. Finally word comes from Isaac that King João has granted us all safe passage, in exchange for an exorbitant sum of money. Soldiers will take Eliana and the others to the border, and from there, Isaac’s own hired guard will bring them to Segura.

  João is apparently feeling magnanimous. After all, how does the loss of Isaac’s service compare to the gain of all his property? Even better, he will not have to repay Isaac the small fortune he borrowed for the latest expedition to Africa. Isaac has some letters of credit he will use to establish a modest living in Spain, and we have been busy sewing gold and small valuables into the hems and linings of our clothing to help us begin again in a country whose Jewish population is already uprooted and in despair.

  Eliana and I have an unspoken agreement not to discuss our losses aloud, for fear the Holy One might interpret our commiseration as ingratitude. We agree that when we are finished at Queluz, we will walk around the house to shed all our tears at once and then go for the last time to the mikveh.

  When the trunks are full, there’s nothing more to do but go to Lisbon and wait for word that it is safe to leave. There must be something more to keep us here, I think as I scan the rooms, unready to face that awful, final moment. I run my hand over the top of a cabinet, and as I look at the gray coating on my fingertips, Eliana reads my mind.

  “We should clean,” she says, casting a glance at a little triangle of matted dirt in one corner of the room.

  I shrug. “What does it matter? We don’t live here anymore.” My voice cracks, and I cover my face with my hands, feeling the hot sting of tears. Eliana puts her arms around me. “I’ll get the rags,” she says.

  For another day, we put off the inevitable as we honor the house by dusting, sweeping, and polishing. I want to touch everything we are leaving behind—the furniture, the window sills, the walls—to imprint memories on my fingertips. “It’s like preparing for Passover,” I say, which in a way we are. We are beginning our own exodus, and like the Israelites, most of what we take away will be in our minds.

  “Perhaps we should paint a red mark on the door to keep the Angel of Death away,” Eliana says, attempting a laugh.

  Or figure out a way to fool it into looking for us here, I think to myself, remembering a precious and vulnerable party that will soon be on the road to Spain.

  Finally we acknowledge there is no more to do, and we begin our good-byes. We start with the hardest part—the original house, where our oldest memories lie—and my whole body shakes with emotion as we go in the door.

  It’s already not the same, with trunks and wooden crates filling one corner of the main room, and the menorah, spice box, and many of our most beloved things packed inside. The furniture is still there—the long table and benches where I shared Shabbat dinner all those years I was hiding as a Christian, the kitchen workbench where Simona and I sealed our friendship by doing chores.

  I brace myself against the door frame of Judah and Simona’s bedroom. “This is where I gave birth to you,” I whisper to Eliana. I sit on the bed in a flood of memories. Nine-year-old Isaac is standing solemn-faced as I show him Eliana’s wet and matted hair. “I can’t tell you her name,” I remember saying. “We don’t want the Evil Eye to know she’s here.”

  I go like a sleepwalker to the other bedroom, where I used to nudge aside Chana and Rahel’s sweet, soft bodies to make room to sleep next to them. They’re both dead. I reel at the impossibility of it. In the study, Judah’s spirit sits at his table poring over the Zohar while I translate poetry and little Eliana tugs at my dress to come share Sukkot with her.

  Eventually we go into the courtyard, and I stand silently in front of the fountain. Though we had planned to share our thoughts when we were finished, now that the moment has arrived, it is too intense for either words or tears.

  Eliana speaks first. “Shall we go do our mikveh?”

  “Yes,” I say, trying to smile as I gesture to the fountain. “But let’s not do it here.” Eliana has always loved the story of Simona’s and my unconventional ceremony on that cold and rainy night so long ago. Something about my attempt at humor releases our pent-up anguish, and we start to laugh just as I did then—hearty laughter from a place so deep we are scarcely aware it exists, a place where we store our most profound thoughts, our griefs, and our sustaining joys.

  Once in the mikveh, Eliana steps into the water first. When she comes out, I notice that her belly is soft and her breasts are flat and fallen from having nursed five children. I came to this house long before she was born,
and here she is, a grandmother.

  I go into the water, and my world constricts to the present. I submerge three times, saying the blessings that are as familiar to me as breathing. Eliana helps me up the steps out of the water, for with bones growing fragile with age, I have a fear of falling.

  “They will desecrate this place,” my daughter whispers.

  “I know,” I reply. “Whoever takes over this house will have no use for a mikveh.”

  We dress in silence. Eliana goes to tell the groom to prepare the carriage to take us back to Lisbon. She returns with a small knife. Going to the outer door, she puts the blade under the edge of the mezuzah, which has announced for decades that this is a Jewish home.

  “There’s no blessing for taking this down,” she says as she pries it off. “I asked the rabbi.” She gives me a wry smile, for the rabbi we now consult is Reuben, her young son-in-law.

  She lets out a cry as the mezuzah falls into her hand. She has cut herself on the thumb, not badly but enough to leave a smear of blood on the tiny scroll that has fallen into her palm. Seeing Eliana bleeding on the threshold of this house, I am overwhelmed by the incomprehensible magnitude of what leaving means.

  Eliana presses her bloody thumb to the dark spot where the mezuzah was, leaving behind a stamp like an oval etching. “We identified our houses with blood before we left Egypt,” she says. “It was a mark of our salvation. Perhaps this will be the same.” She puts her thumb in her mouth to suck the rest of the blood away.

  I hear the voice of the driver and the sound of hooves. As the carriage bears us off to Lisbon, neither of us has the strength to prolong the agony by looking back.

  ***

  Within a few days, only Hadassah’s family and I remain in Lisbon. We receive a letter several weeks later telling us that everyone has arrived safely at Segura de la Orden, and soon they will head for Toledo. King João seems to have forgotten about the Abravanels who remain in Lisbon. We wait through the winter storms, and when the roads are clear and the weather has grown mild again, we prepare to rejoin our family.

  A few days before our departure, I make one last journey to Queluz. I tell the driver to go into the village for a few hours, because I want to be alone in my own house for a while. I don’t enter right away, but head for the small hill where Judah and Simona sleep under an ancient oak tree.

  I want to spill everything in my heart, but I feel empty already. I lower myself to the ground, wincing at the pain in my knees and hips. I wonder how I will get back to my feet without a hand to help me, but I want to be as close to the earth of Queluz as I can.

  I sit quietly, and then I start to sing. It is one of Simona’s favorites when we worked in the garden. “Lababi ya’ireni kaso’el lashaharah,” my voice rings out.

  “My heart awakens me as one seeking the dawn

  And my eye watches out for morning,

  With my mouth’s utterance, his glory I shall tell,

  And so long as my spirit is in me, I will sing.”

  I laugh until I am crying too hard to go on. “I’m singing,” I tell my best friends. “My spirit is in me, and I am still singing.”

  I remain under the tree for a while, quietly sitting with them, and then I go back to my house, stopping for a moment to remember how Jamil carried Eliana home the first time he came to Queluz. The first poppies are beginning to bloom, and I wonder if he remembers the few lines he made up for me that day. I do. I have cherished them always.

  In the sweetness of this moment with you,

  Fields of flowers, having only color and scent,

  Hang their heads in embarrassment.

  I recall how I gave him a poppy to hold to his nose, relieved to divert our attention from the attraction between us. “Have a sweet week, my love,” I whisper to him again over the distance of land and time.

  I go inside my own small house. The things I packed are already in Spain, and I cast my eyes over my empty desk and the table where Eliana and I had our meals. I lie down on the bed and shut my eyes, remembering the feel of her body, the little noises she made in the night, the times I sat by her side cooling her fevers or calming her after a bad dream…

  I wake to the sound of men’s voices and go to the door, thinking the driver has returned. Three or four men dressed in the livery of King João are standing in front of the compound. They laugh at a joke before they head inside. I feel as if I am witnessing my own death as they come out one at a time, bearing the possessions we left behind.

  “Donha Cresques?” the driver says. I did not hear or see him come up alongside me. “Are you ready to leave?”

  Is this how death creeps up on us? Are we ready to leave, and then we simply go?

  24

  VALENCIA 1492

  “It’s a mapmaker’s job to leave people unsatisfied.” Papa’s spirit whispers as I feel him take his place next to Judah and Simona. “Look at what is not there. Don’t be distracted by what is.”

  Bartolomeu Dias has rounded the bottom of Africa now. If my father were alive, he would no longer have to draw a vague line to the south, nor guess at legends like islands of gold, but I don’t think that is what he means.

  “Look at the interiors, look at the faraway places. See how little we know?”

  My fingers touch Asia and drift north. The map seems full because of all the pictures of kings and travelers and mythical beings, but he’s right. There is little to rely upon in it.

  I feel his hand on my shoulder. “The empty spaces are why we go on. They’re why people explore. We want to know the world, every last bit of it.”

  Only four years ago, almost thirty years after Prince Henry’s death, Dias’s ships were blown far out to sea in a storm. They headed east to find the coast again, and when they had sailed too long without sighting land, Dias turned the ships north and discovered the Cape of Good Hope.

  The air vibrates with my father’s excitement. “With Columbus setting out west for India, there will be maps of everywhere before long.”

  “But ignorance will continue,” Judah says. “The best we can do is nibble away at it, but if we don’t try to do at least that, we waste the spirit breathing in us.”

  “And there’s never enough time,” Simona adds. “There will always be babies you don’t get to hold, husbands and wives you never meet, graves you won’t visit, things you won’t understand. People will dance without you, drink Shabbat wine, sit in the sukkah, quarrel and make up, whether you are there or not.”

  “But you will be there, as long as anyone is alive to remember you,” my father says.

  “To call out to you,” a new spirit whispers.

  “Mother?” My heart sings at the sound of her voice.

  “Live as long as you can, for those who need you now and those whom your example will strengthen later,” she tells me.

  I shut my eyes and feel the room fill with ghosts. Chana, Rahel, my grandmother and grandfather, all the lost children, and those who lived before my time. Abraham and Jehuda Cresques, their wives, their parents and grandparents. The walls of the room dissolve as it fills with the soul of every Jew who stood at Sinai and accepted our covenant with God, those who sleep in dust and those not yet born.

  “The success of old age is to die while you still wish to live,” Judah says. “To take your last breath still wanting more.”

  TOLEDO 1484

  By summer, I am settled in the Toledo aljama. We live up a steep street, just beyond the only remaining synagogue, in a space far too small for the thirty Abravanels who have found no other place to go. We are no more crowded than anyone else, for Toledo has taken in exiled Jews from all over Andalusia.

  There is no room for books, so the rabbi has given Isaac a small space to write in a nearby yeshiva. If we were still in Portugal, my son-in-law would be looking forward to retiring into a life of contemplation. As it is, at forty-five, he will try to build the family fortune again.

  The Abravanels have no special privileges here. We wear badges
like everyone else, and we must be inside the aljama before the gates close at night. In some ways, exile is harder on us than others, for we are used to having plenty of room, and most Jews have been in cramped city quarters all their lives. Tempers flare from time to time in our home, and alliances shift almost daily. Eliana and I are pained by the loss of our loving little nest in Queluz, and the only solution is to find a house of our own, which will take money we no longer have.

  It doesn’t take long for Isaac to improve our lot. Ferdinand and Isabella have no permanent home for their court, and they spend the year here and there in their realm. Within a week of their arrival in Toledo, they summon Isaac. When he returns home that evening, he brings the stupendous news that he has been offered a job as the collector of a tax on sheep. The Abravanel’s reputation for making and lending money has followed us, and the king and queen are desperate to get money to continue the fight for Granada.

  Isaac’s plan is to use his profits to buy army provisions to sell to the crown. We’ll be back on our feet before we know it, and best of all, in a house of our own. For the first time in ages, I believe, at least a little, in the future. I am too old to adjust well to the noise and the crowds. Change is for the young, and I only want to be left in peace.

  TOLEDO 1485

  Isaac needs less than two years to make us one of the wealthiest Jewish families in Toledo. Ferdinand and Isabella’s need for money is inexhaustible, and the king and queen already find him indispensable. “It’s easy to be valued when your pockets are bulging,” Isaac says with a sardonic grin as he extends one loan after another for food and armor for their troops.

  By now, we live a few steps outside the aljama. It’s a mark of Isaac’s royal favor, although we must abide by all other rules for Jews, staying inside after nightfall and wearing our badges when we go out into the streets.

  I look out the upstairs window on a beautiful morning in May and watch a little girl and her mother on the way to market. The girl pauses to look down the tiny street leading to the aljama gate, and her mother pulls her by the arm, her lips moving in a terse scolding.