The Inquisitor's Wife

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  “Marrana! Marrana! Marrana!”

  In their eyes was the same hatred I’d seen in the butcher’s eyes when he had refused to sell anything but pork to my mother.

  Sobbing, I batted away Antonio’s protective embrace and ran home, passing my father in the street as he shouted for the children to stop. Later I learned that a family servant saw Antonio home, while one of our drivers took the elderly Jewish man to the hospital. But I went straight to my lonely room and curled up into a ball, weeping. A few moments later, my father entered and tried to comfort me.

  “Those boys did terrible things,” he said, sitting down on the bed beside me; I wouldn’t look at him. “And what they said to you was horrible.”

  “But why do they say it?” I demanded. “Why do they hate me and Mamá so much? What did we ever do to them?”

  My father let go a long sigh and, for the first time, began to look old. “They hate what they don’t understand. They’re afraid, because your mother’s ancestors were apparently … Jewish.”

  “But why is that so awful?” I demanded.

  My father drew in a breath and looked away, toward the door. And then he began to explain to me that some Old Christians were afraid of New Christians because some of the monks—most notably, Gabriel’s older brother—preached that New Christians weren’t really Christians but were secretly practicing Judaism, and that, of course, was heresy.

  I’d heard this story many times from my mother but feigned ignorance. “What were they doing that was so bad?” I asked.

  My father began to explain to me the actual heretical practices, which involved only meals and holidays, not the slaughtering of Christian babies or Devil worship—and when he came to the lighting of the Sabbath candles on Friday evening, which was done by Jewish women, I looked out the window at the sun’s last rays and stopped listening.

  Not much later, my father embraced me and left, realizing that there was nothing he could say to soothe me. I immediately went to my mother’s room, thinking to confront her angrily, but to my surprise, her door was bolted. When I knocked, Máriam eventually opened the door a crack; her dark face was stern and her attitude dismissive, but I saw pity in her dark eyes. From behind her came the muffled sound of weeping. My mother must have heard the shouts in the street; perhaps she’d even seen from her balcony that they had been directed at me.

  “Your mother isn’t well right now,” Máriam said in her low handsome voice. “It will pass, and she’ll be happy again soon. But she doesn’t want you to see her like this.”

  I dropped my gaze and swallowed furious tears; Máriam suddenly stepped out into the loggia and hugged me fiercely. I pulled back in surprise; she was sparing with physical affection.

  In the next instant, she was back standing behind the cracked-open door. “It’s a cruel thing this world does to children,” she said. Her tone lightened. “Go to Cook and tell her to make you a sweet. Tell her that your mother wants her to do so.”

  With that, she closed the door. I didn’t turn away until I heard her slide the bolt shut.

  The next Friday afternoon, when my recovered mother came to find me, I went with her into her bedroom and waited until all the servants had left and we two were alone. As Magdalena was fetching the key to open the trunk where she hid the golden candlesticks and prayer shawl, I told her coldly that I wouldn’t tell anyone about what she did on Friday evenings, but I would no longer join her. I would listen to no more tales of Sepharad, conversos or Jews, or utter Hebrew prayers or listen to her songs.

  I don’t remember the precise words I used; they were forgotten, replaced in my mind by the look of heartbreak on her beautiful face.

  I was faithful at keeping my promise; in fact, I kept it too well. Not only did I avoid Magdalena’s chamber on Friday evenings, I also took to walking far behind her when she went to market or to church, ashamed to be associated with her, and I shunned her public displays of affection. When I helped her paint ceramics in the studio, I spoke little. I began to identify more with my father and took to avoiding other converso children, instead trying to ingratiate myself with Old Christians. I looked forward to the day I would marry Antonio and be free of my mother’s heritage.

  I was young and stupid enough then to believe the other children would forget the day don Jerónimo had called me marrana. I told myself that no one would notice my darker hair, olive skin, or hazel eyes, or judge me by them if I prayed faithfully enough, went to Mass often enough, trusted Jesus and the Madonna hard enough. And I was all too oblivious to the deep pain my rejection caused my mother.

  After several months, when Magdalena realized I would never change my mind, she privately explained that she had given up the lighting of the candles, because she hadn’t realized the practice was heretical. She had begged God’s forgiveness, she told me, and received it, and would behave from then on as a pious Christian for love of me.

  I shrugged when she told me this, and left without saying a word, because she’d already proven herself capable of lying. I still loved her dearly but was too busy erecting an invisible wall between us to tell her so.

  * * *

  As the years passed, I grew to love Antonio more and more, and he loved me; I’d never met anyone so fearless, so generous with his affection, so consistently joyful. His parents and mine began to act as if our marriage was inevitable. But the day he turned seventeen, Antonio announced at a gathering of friends and neighbors that he would obey his father’s wish by getting a degree in canon and civil law at the University of Salamanca, so very far away. But he said not a word about marrying me.

  Even though he’d often spoken about going to the university, I’d secretly hoped he’d stay in town with me. I was fifteen, old enough to marry. That night, I cried myself to sleep thinking of the four years—a lifetime!—we would spend apart.

  I hadn’t been asleep long when my mother appeared in her nightgown and leaned over my bed.

  “Marisol!” she said, shaking my arm. “Get up! Hurry!”

  I woke with a start. I would have been terrified if she hadn’t been laughing. “What is it, Mamá?” I couldn’t imagine what had been so comical that she’d been moved to disturb me at such a late hour.

  “You’ll see!” she answered, grinning. “Put on a shawl; come!”

  I picked up my everyday lightweight shawl—it was spring, cool but not cold.

  “No, no!” my mother said. “Not that one!” She hurried to the closet and pulled out my best dress shawl, fine black lace shot through with gold.

  I couldn’t have been more confused. “Mamá, what is it?”

  But she cheerfully refused to answer. She dragged me out of my room, down the corridor, and into her bedroom. The lamp on the nightstand was lit. In its glow, Máriam stood gazing out onto the balcony, her back to us, her white lawn nightgown revealing the shape of her slender dark torso and legs. Her head was tilted, her hand pressed against the pillar as she listened to the sound wafting through the open door. As we neared, she turned to us smiling and stepped back to make way.

  “Go on, go on,” my mother hissed at me. She took the lamp from the nightstand and handed it to Máriam.

  A man was singing to the music of a lute out on the street below. I stepped out onto the balcony and blinked as Máriam held up the lamp beside me—not so that I could see but so that I could be seen.

  Antonio’s strong, unabashedly emotional tenor rose on the cool air, along with the perfume of flowers; I blinked again and saw him standing in the street as close as possible to my mother’s window, near the bougainvillea covering our outer walls. He was smiling, radiant, happy to embarrass himself for my sake. He wore a blue velvet tunic and cap with a white plume; beside him stood his father’s valet, the stoop-shouldered Joaquín, holding a torch at a safe remove from his young master. It cast a wavering arc of amber, painting Antonio’s face golden, while the silvery light of the half moon reflected off his hair, off the white jasmine blooms vining on the wall, off the pale ora
nge blossoms on the tree just below the balcony. Sharp shadows obscured his neck and chest; the lacquered surface of his wooden lute flashed.

  Delighted, I gripped the cold iron railing and leaned over its edge, laughing softly at the deliciousness of the cloying sweet fragrance of the blossoms mixing with the pungency of my mother’s geraniums, at the sound of Antonio’s voice, at the clear Sevillian night sky, with the spires of the cathedral and the turrets of the Royal Palace to the southeast.

  “Seville mi alma,” Antonio was singing. “Sevilla, corazón.” But at the sight of me, he broke off and gently tossed a bitter orange—it was harvest season and a pile of them littered the street—up onto the balcony, where it landed by my feet.

  Grinning, he sang a very old, very traditional tune, one popular with the local troubadours.

  “Take this orange, my love

  Round and ripe with golden skin

  With a knife do not dare part it

  For my heart remains within.”

  I couldn’t stop my delighted laughter—not until Antonio grew silent and solemn. He began to strum a tune I’d never heard before, one I soon realized was his own creation. The melody, in a minor key, was faintly Moorish, languid, full of aching desire.

  “O fair Marisol

  Will you come to your window

  Will you come to your window

  And grace my yearning eyes tonight?

  O fair Marisol

  How I’ve longed for this moment

  How I’ve longed for this moment

  Your face glowing like moonlight.”

  I drew in a breath and realized this was a moment I would long remember, one I would recount to my children, a moment when I was consumed by a happiness so great it swelled to include the entire world, the flowers, the music, the light, Antonio’s ardent love.

  This is real joy, I thought, and felt no moment in my life could ever be better than this one, but then Antonio began another verse, and impossibly, my joy increased.

  “O fair Marisol

  Will you come to your window

  Will you come to your window

  And give your answer tonight?

  O fair Marisol

  How I’ve longed for this moment

  How I’ve longed for this moment

  Will you be my wife?”

  Behind me, my mother let go a soft, girlish squeal; Máriam’s lamp swung as she shuddered with laughter.

  Antonio played another verse, this one without lyrics. Then he hushed the strings and knelt out in the dusty street beyond the walls of my father’s house, the lute resting on one thigh.

  “Marisol García,” he called, in a voice so loud that my impulse was to tell him to be quiet, that he would wake all the neighbors. I couldn’t, of course; his extravagant love had touched me too deeply. He was proud of me, a conversa; he didn’t care if he woke the Hojedas, if he woke everyone in Seville.

  “I’ve spoken with your father,” Antonio called up to me. “He has given me his permission to ask: Beloved Marisol, will you be my wife? May I call you my betrothed?”

  I steepled my hands, covered my mouth with them, and nodded, giddy. I stood on the balcony, silent, the reverberation of the lute’s strings hanging in the air between us.

  My mother’s elbow nudged me in the back and released a torrent.

  “Yes, Antonio!” I called out, though not in as loud and confident a tone as he. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes!”

  Across the street in the Hojeda house, a windowpane on the upper floor glowed with yellow light; I fancied I saw Gabriel’s silhouette in the frame.

  * * *

  We celebrated our betrothal the following week, at Antonio’s parents’ house. I gave him a fine, gilded statue of Saint Anthony of Padua, his patron saint, the finder of lost things. I’d painted it myself, making sure it was my very best work. He gave me a sapphire ring that made me think of his eyes.

  “So even when I’m gone, you’ll know I’m watching you,” he joked.

  His parents, don Pedro and doña Elena, watched the exchange with tears filming their eyes. Antonio embraced don Pedro, who, like his son, was lavish with his emotions and did not hold back his tears. Don Pedro then hugged me, saying, “You are our daughter now,” and passed me on to doña Elena for an enthusiastic kiss and welcome. They gave me a necklace with a golden heart, and I put it and the ring on and refused to take either off, even when bathing.

  Pedro and Elena embraced my father and mother as well. They admired my statue of Saint Anthony; doña Elena said, “What talent you have, Marisol. You are just like your mother—accomplished and beautiful.” My mother smiled proudly, but I averted my eyes and mumbled insincere thanks. I did not want to be like my mother; I did not want to look like a Jew, and my flicker of shame must have been obvious, because afterward, Antonio drew me aside.

  “How cruel you are to doña Magdalena! If you are to be my wife, I can hold my tongue no longer. You have shamed her. Don’t you love your own mother? She is beautiful, she is talented, she is kind! Aren’t you proud to be like her?”

  It couldn’t be said that Antonio had a bad temper; he was rarely angry, but when he was, he didn’t hide it. I recoiled, and he put a hand on my elbow, then drew it quickly away, as if afraid he might shake my arm.

  “You don’t understand,” I said stiffly. “I don’t expect you to.”

  “But what could possibly make you treat her so? Don’t tell me you’re ashamed she is a conversa!”

  I averted my eyes quickly—an admission of guilt.

  He stared at me in candid disgust. “Still you hate yourself for what you are? Do you realize that this makes you no better than Gabriel, or even Fray Hojeda? Do you really believe the stupid things people say? Your own mother!”

  “It’s easy for you,” I countered. “You’ve never been made to feel ashamed; you’ve never been taunted for what you are. Your people have never been murdered out of hatred.”

  He let go a long sigh, and with it, his anger. But he was still unhappy. “Marisol, when will you realize that the only way to have victory over such hatred is to love yourself? To love your mother and not turn in shame from her. I’ve seen you behave this way before. It’s unworthy of you. You’re a better person than that. Sometimes I think…” He trailed off, unwilling to finish the thought.

  “Say it,” I said. By this time, my own temper was rising. “Go ahead and say it. I’m marrying you just because you’re an Old Christian.”

  He was silent for a long pause and put his hand on my arm tenderly. “But then I dismiss it. Because no one could possibly feign the love you show me, Marisol. I just want you to be happy with yourself. With your mother.”

  My anger withered. “I don’t want to be unhappy.…”

  “Then promise me one thing. That you’ll look on your mother and yourself with more love. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll try,” I said, and he kissed me.

  It was only later that I realized: Antonio loved me more than I did myself.

  * * *

  Antonio left for Salamanca at dawn, on a day that promised to be brutally hot, as so many were in the late summer—cloudless beneath a blistering sun. Heat rose from the street outside the stucco walls of his father’s house, and the dry breeze held the brackish stink of the nearby river. As usual, it hadn’t rained a drop since March, the end of the wet season, and the waiting carriage was coated with dust.

  Antonio’s pale cotton tunic clung to the sweating muscles of his arms and chest; the sparse golden stubble on his cheeks and chin glittered. He’d said his good-byes to his parents, and his trunk was already loaded onto the waiting coach. He held me by my upper arms, studying my face as if afraid he might forget a detail.

  “I won’t be able to visit often,” he said, his eyes filling but his smile determined. “But I swear I’ll write you every day.”

  “You won’t be able to,” I reminded him; I couldn’t summon a smile, couldn’t keep my sadness from showing. “Not with your studies.
”

  “Then once a week, at least,” he vowed. “I mean it. And will you write to me?”

  “Every day,” I answered. My small joke failed because I began to cry immediately after saying it.

  He tried to stifle my tears by pressing his lips against mine, but my shoulders still shook. I threw my arms around him and held on tightly, but all too soon, he caught my wrists and gently freed himself.

  Our faces almost touched as he whispered, “I’ll be back soon enough. And I will marry you, Marisol, and never leave you again.” His voice broke on the last word. As he pulled away, he tried to lighten the mood. “Don’t put me aside for another man,” he teased, and winked in the direction of the Hojeda house.

  I quit weeping long enough to roll my eyes and snort softly at the thought of my ever wanting anything to do with Gabriel Hojeda. “Don’t worry,” I said.

  * * *

  Antonio kept his word and wrote often; I responded to each letter and waited anxiously for the next. He spoke of a different world—of a village smaller than Seville but crowded with students from all over Europe, eager to study at the three-hundred-year-old university. The winters were colder, sometimes killing the flowers; the summers were milder, but—and this he only hinted at—the atmosphere was far less temperate as far as conversos were concerned. Salamanca lay in the northerly province of León, where few Jews had settled, and the population was resoundingly Old Christian.

  I paid it little attention; so long as I had Antonio’s letters, I was happy enough to believe his heart and mind would never change toward me. And indeed, when he returned to Seville after two years, for his father’s funeral, he was just the same and kissed me with just as much passion.

  But sometime after he returned to Salamanca, his letters abruptly stopped coming. I wrote him again and again but received no reply. Months passed, and then a year; I finally penned a letter stating that if I did not hear from him within eight weeks, I would consider our engagement broken off.