by Naomi Ragen
I stopped struggling, feeling a burning tingle that began in my forehead and streamed through my body. And as I peeked at the dark rim of his eyes, the rich thickness of his manly beard, I felt a clap and a sharp, white-hot wrench to my heart.
It was the moment where one’s soul enters into another’s and emerges, dazzled.
I sat erect, my back frozen so as not to touch his, my eyes staring ahead stupidly. It was a reaction, I thought, perfectly in keeping for anyone struck by a thunderbolt.
Already I hear the clammering of my grandchildren’s sweet, questioning voices rising urgently: “Why?” they shout. “What happened?”
How can I tell you, my children?
I can describe only the details: the facts of our meeting, his hair, clothes, eyes, body. I can describe it all, but cannot explain or justify a hundredth—nay, a thousandth—of the mesmerizing charm that bewitched me. Still, I will try.
He smelled of the forest: clean and richly honest, the scent of cool wind and dry, pleasant sun. His dark beard was soft against my cheek and his arms warm around my waist. I had seen how his eyes could turn caring and humorous, intelligent and kind. I had felt the strength of the muscles in his arms, which magically had not overpowered his gentleness. And those lips—which had come so close to my ear—how well formed they were, not thin or stingy or tightly closed; perfect for the deep, commanding voice that breathed between them.
I had never in all my life been so close to any man except my father and Miguel. And thus—may the Lord forgive me for my boldness—when finally I heard the voice of my father calling my name and saw him running toward me, I felt my heart ache with loneliness at the thought that my body should soon be separated from his.
My father’s face was filled with fear and wonder.
“I am Dr. Luna,” my father said formally, taking me from Francisco’s arms. My cheeks burned in shame. “Can you tell me, sir, what I am to make of this?”
“I’m afraid your daughter was interrupted in her innocent pleasure by an unfortunate—but praise G-d, not serious—mishap. She seems to have twisted her ankle. My brother and I were happily able to see to her safe return.” He bowed formally in the saddle.
My father, perplexed, bowed back, then laid me on a bed of soft leaves, dressing my swollen ankle with a poultice of herbs and wet roots. When he had finished, he turned to my rescuers.
“I beg you to receive a reward as befits the deed,” my father pleaded.
Both bowed and shook their heads. “The pleasure of your family’s acquaintance is our reward,” my rescuer said graciously.
“And may we beg, then, at least the same?” my father said.
“I am Francisco Mendes, and this is my younger brother, Diogo. We are traders newly arrived from Venice and Amsterdam.”
“Will you then at least join us for a meal?” my father continued. “We were about to sup in the forest.”
I could not believe my ears! I thought my father would do everything in his power to hide our secret, and instead, he invited them into it!
I saw the two strangers glance at our sukah and then at each other. The strange light in their eyes filled me with fear.
“With pleasure,” they acceded.
A hut in the forest. Why should they guess it was anything more than an elegant way to protect wealthy people from the harsh sunlight? Perhaps, I thought, this was why my father had invited them in, to show we had nothing to hide. It was a bold move, and one I hoped he would not live to regret.
When we were all gathered around the table, my father prodded them gently for greater details about themselves.
I did not understand the conversation, which centered around trade, and Vasco da Gama, and the sea route to India. I sat dazed all through the meal, not tasting anything, my thoughts a turbulent river, rushing streams intermingling in a startling dance that thrilled and frightened me.
I heard no other voice, but his. Saw no other face, but his.
“But are not the waters dangerous and hard to maneuver?” I heard my father question Francisco. I looked up, startled, thinking he read my mind.
“I’ve built the best carracks in the world: four-masted square rigs with a sail on a yard under the bowsprit and flush-laid carvel planking that will hold six hundred fifty tons.”
There was a loud gasp of surprise around the table at so many sails and such enormous tonnage. “And what do you plan to bring back?” my brother wanted to know.
“What else?” Aunt Malca interrupted. “Gold and silver, and precious gems, I warrant, to choke the coffers of kings!” She simpered, reaching for her jeweled necklace and caressing it.
“Ah, Doña, something far, far more wonderful!” Francisco Mendes laughed.
“Really?” Her eyes narrowed greedily. “Could you show us a sample, then?”
“With pleasure.”
He put his hand into his pocket and took out a small pouch.
Aunt Malca, no doubt expecting pearls or diamonds, leaned over so closely she nearly fell flat-faced upon the table.
“This is much better,” he insisted, opening the pouch and pouring its contents into his palm.
They looked like tiny black seeds.
“You sport with me, Don Francisco,” Aunt Malca complained sullenly.
“Indeed, dear lady, I do not. What you see is far more precious than any jewel known to man.” He took out a small mortar and pestle and placed the seeds inside, crushing them to a fine powder.
“Here, you be the judge,” he said, sprinkling it over the venison.
Aunt Malca took a forkful and began to cough violently. “Water! I’m on fire!” she screeched, fanning herself.
My father tasted the meat with its magic condiment and offered a piece to Miguel. Both of them sniffed cautiously, chewing slowly.
“It has a pleasant scent, and a heavenly, warm taste,” Miguel admitted. “I should like some more!”
“Ah, it has more than that, sir. It has magic properties that keep meat from rotting, and flies from landing. And it improves the taste of all food, however stinking foul!”
“Keep meat from rotting? Can it be?” Father asked wonderingly.
“It is well known in the Indies. I have flung it over our sea victuals, and the men say they never ate so well,” Diogo swore.
“What is it called?” my father asked.
“Pepper,” Francisco answered quietly. “And it will make Portugal the new Venice.”
“And my brother and I richer than kings!” Diogo slapped the table impetuously.
Aunt Malca looked at the powder again, sniffing and tasting a little on her finger. She sneezed violently.
“May the good Lord bless you with health, Doña,” Francisco said politely, a gleam in his eye.
She blew her nose. “As rich as kings, you say?” she scoffed.
“May I taste it as well?” I finally got up the courage to ask.
Francisco Mendes leaned across the table and sprinkled some on my roast capon. And when I ate it, a heavenly sword of fire touched my lips. I wanted to run into the forest and put my face in the cool running water of a stream and drink for days.
I got up abruptly, but Malca pulled me down. “Here, drink this,” she muttered, handing me some almond water. “No more running after wild forest estries for you today!”
“You are too harsh, Doña Malca,” Francisco interrupted her. “The child was lured by angels, not estries. It took the form of a beautiful doe, did it not, child? I, too, followed it,” he said. “But like most precious and beautiful things, chasing after her only encouraged her to run farther. Sometimes, it is wiser to simply sit patiently and wait.”
As he said this, he leaned back, looking at me strangely, his eyes sparkling and full of mysterious light.
The brothers stood and bowed.
“We are grateful to you for your hospitality,” Francisco began, “just as we give thanks to G-d the Father for having given us his Divine Son as Brother in the Incarnation, Teacher of Divine Tr
uth, and Savior on the cross. Whatever we might accomplish, may it be the object of His delight, and for the Glory of our Divine Jesus.”
I saw my father and brother stare at each other tensely. They crossed themselves and rose to see the visitors out.
I started from my seat. The last glimpse of his beautiful dark head, together with the echo of his fervent Christian prayer, crashed together in my brain, plunging me into a chasm of despair.
In the months that followed, I saw my body change, losing its childish angles and taking on the soft roundness of womanly beauty. New gowns were ordered for me, simple undergowns and overgowns over conical farthingales that showed my tiny waist and my newly rounded bosom to advantage.
I saw Francisco Mendes several times at court weddings, and then again at Easter at the great cathedral São Vincente de Fora. And he was always kind, but in the teasing way fathers treat their daughters’ friends. And always, at his side, were bejeweled court women wearing fur-lined capes and dresses embroidered with precious stones. My heart ached with longing and pangs of jealousy.
I was ashamed of my dreams. He was completely unacceptable, not only to my family, but to myself. And yet, I continued to dream the same dream: I was in his arms again, my cheek against his broad shoulder, and I was asking him to marry me.
The good Christian Mendes does not intend to marry now. He is gone to India with four carracks. It will be several years before he returns. You must forget him, child, my father told me in my dreams.
I wept, stunned, and my father touched my face in kindness.
It is G-d’s will, he tried to comfort me. Your intended will be another. Your pain will pass.
And in my dream, I looked at my father for the first time without the awed reverence of the child and with the objective intelligence of an equal: He was wrong, I thought. I will never take another man for my husband.
And my pain would never pass.
Reality followed close on the heels of my dreams. Francisco Mendes did indeed leave Portugal on his carracks for India, and he did not return.
In the years that followed, any number of matches were proposed to my father among our fellow conversos. Most, he rejected. As the Lord Who Sees All and Judges All knows, I never blamed him. His responsibility was a heavy one. For it was his task to see that no weak or ugly graft find its way to the beautiful tree of the House of Nasi.
For from the time when the Israelites wandered through the desert, the title “Nasi” was not merely a surname, nor even a royal title bestowed merely by inheritance. Moses himself had called upon each family and each tribe to choose its most worthy. Those chosen were called Nasi, “Prince,” by the people.
It was a title quickly shorn from those who proved undeserving.
And so, each potential bridegroom had his ancestral roots traced back five, even ten, generations. If no apostates, heretics, lunatics, or simply bad-natured villains were uncovered, then the full light of inquiry was turned upon the present. Was the family New Christian in name, or in spirit as well?
Those matches which survived all these hurdles resulted in a meeting between myself and the prospective bridegroom. In this we differed greatly from our Christian neighbors, and from many of our brethren, who betrothed their daughters without their consent at age five, and even younger, forcing them to marry men they had never even met before they took their conjugal vows.
While some of our Jewish brethren imitated their Christian neighbors in this foul practice, my father always insisted our faith forbade such things and that a father must gain his daughter’s free consent to any match. I took advantage of his piety. Again and again, I rejected the selection of his lean gleanings.
My father was chagrined, disturbed, and, finally, sad.
My aunt was utterly furious. “She who does not know how to rejoice in her youth, will find no peace in Paradise, either!”
I could not think of the matches proposed to me with joy. Those scrawny young men, pale and mute. Or the ruddy, arrogant ones. And even those dark of eye and fair of form.
What did it matter? None of them was Francisco Mendes.
In short, as I sorted them, I could picture myself quite well ensconced as the virgin daughter and spinster aunt for the rest of my days. Indeed, I was well nigh reconciled to it, and had been for five years, from the very day I had first set eyes on the man I had wanted and could not have. The man who had not wanted me.
And so my life flowed on.
I was almost eighteen years old, and my time to marry, as my aunt so cruelly but accurately pointed out, had seemingly passed me forever. It was a Sunday in April, Easter Mass, or some such Christian holiday. (I admit—we were painfully ignorant of even the rudiments of the religion in which we professed to believe. We avoided mass and never went to confession, and did our best to avoid kneeling and kissing crucifixes.) But as my brother, Miguel, had recently been appointed royal physician, my father felt that the family had no choice but to put in more frequent appearances at mass.
I dressed for church. I was wearing a dress of simple damask in dark green with a plain gold locket around my throat. My only vanity was the delicate rete of spun silk and gold entwined with small pearls that held the thick coils of my red hair. It was a beautiful hair covering, but—as Aunt Malca scolded me—much too revealing and flimsy for mass. I tossed my head and ignored her. All the ladies at court wore their hair thus, I declared. Upon which she answered me spitefully: “The brazen-faced go to hell, and the shame-faced to heaven.”
I thought no more of it until after the service ended and I was on my way out of the cathedral, my arms linked through Miguel’s and his pregnant wife’s. Suddenly, I felt a long golden-red lock impudently escape, falling down to tickle my nose. I quickly untangled my arms and stood perfectly still, working to tuck it back out of sight, as the crowd pushed my brother and his wife forward toward the doors.
For a reason I cannot explain, I felt something directly behind me, a presence solid and unmoving that pulled at me like a magnet. “Gracia!” I heard my brother call from up ahead. But instead of hurrying forward, I turned around.
There he was, that dark prince of noble birth and more noble feelings I had seen for so long in my dreams.
Francisco Mendes.
I stood there immobilized, all the blood rushing wildly though my veins, the hammers of a million urgent thoughts clamoring at my heart.
He stood relaxed, his hands clasped behind his back, making no attempt to circumvent the obstacle of my person. Instead, his dark eyes studied me with a look I had never before seen in all my days; a look of purest longing. It blazed from his whole being like a summer sun in a midday sky. I was consumed, bewitched, by its mesmerizing power.
All this happened in a magic instant, making the whole breathing and unbreathing world fade into a mist, until there was only he and I standing alone, our hearts clanging as urgently as steeple bells.
How long we stood there, I do not know. But long enough, I recall, for me to have seen our wedding, our life together, even our children, pass before me like shades. I was almost in a swoon when Miguel took my arm and led me past the Capella de San Gregorio and the Altar de la Asuncion through the Puerto Principal.
I knew without looking that he was following close behind me. When I turned to enter my carriage, he stood only footsteps away, his whole body in an attitude of expectant longing, his face suffused in an almost celestial light in whose reflected glow I felt myself transformed. It was not a passion based on knowledge or reason. For what did I know of him except what my eyes could see? Yet, I was like one of those novitiates who wear a wedding gown and marry themselves to the spirit of an unseen god.
“I must talk to him!” I implored my brother.
“A wealthy Christian nobleman who sups at the King’s own table?” Miguel hissed in fury, steering me firmly away into our carriage.
“He is as rich as Croesus! It is told that the King himself is sorely in his debt!” my sister-in-law exclaimed.
All the way home I felt dizzy and slightly ravenous, as if the churning in my stomach could be stilled by food. When we sat down to dinner, I piled my plate with rice, lentils, fish and stewed capon, sweetmeats and almond cakes. I ate and ate until I felt faint. But the churning, the hunger, continued to gnaw.
I took to my bed and wouldn’t get up for days, refusing my brother’s potions and ignoring my father’s warnings that he would bleed me if I did not come back to my senses.
I knew it was hopeless.
It was clear to me where my duty lay. Ever since my twelfth year, I had been told of how only my marriage to the right man would ensure the continuation of that passionate faithfulness to our most treasured way of life, a way of life our ancestors had struggled and died for.
Were I to defy my duty, then one of two things would happen: I would need to hide my practices, and that of my family’s, from the man I married, lest he turn on me and those I loved in hatred, betraying us to the priests. Or, far worse, I could truly become one with my husband, accepting his beliefs and thus heaping scorn on my secret self and burying it in ignominy.
And yet, my whole being yearned for him.
The madness lasted near a fortnight. When it finally passed, I felt weak and fragile, yet purified.
I had made my decision.
Happiness in the love of one man could never overcome the sorrow of so large a betrayal of all I and my family held sacred. Young as I was, I understood the difference between the joy of the moment and that of eternity. True, lasting happiness had a spark of divinity. Unless we could create a place in our love in which G-d could dwell, sanctifying us both, it would decay into ugliness. And if ugliness and sorrow were to overcome me in the end, I would quarantine it upon myself now, before it spread like the plague to all those I loved.
My father entered my bedchamber, agitated and about to lecture me again, I assumed. I cut him short, apprising him of my return to sanity. To my surprise and perturbation, this did not seem to comfort him in the least. His eyes restless, he bade me to dress and join him for dinner.
