There were times when the persecution eased, as monarchs found they could not do without our skills in government and finance, law and medicine. Our learning had been the savior of our souls, and sometimes of our bodies, though the positions our skills bought were soon envied and the cycle began anew.
When I was a young man, it came to be that even those who had submitted to baptism found that it was not enough, and Old Christians persecuted New. The price that they had paid for peace had been great, and now that peace was forfeit to the Inquisition. Our faithful watched as those who had betrayed themselves were in turn betrayed by their new Christian brethren. They suffered prison, punishment, and fire. Death was termed “relaxation,” and those who were “reconciled” found a slower death—one of destitution. Many were burned alive. Some were even condemned after death, and their heirs’ goods confiscated by the Crown. A few repented their own faithlessness and embraced death as their own redeeming punishment. Some plotted their rebellion, and they were caught and burned, or their hands were severed from their bodies and they were left to bleed to death.
Ferdinand and Isabella, the Most Catholic Monarchs, rid their land of Moors and set to rid it of Jews as well. Often have I wondered whether they truly believed that one could bring faith through sword and flame. I submitted to memory the proclamation of 1492, for we would live its effects, and I wanted in my mind the words also, the words that condemned and exiled. We believe in the power of words. As homage to my people, I would not forget. “All Jews and Jewesses, of whatever age they may be, that live, reside, and dwell in our said kingdoms and dominions shall not presume to return to, or reside therein, or in any part of them, either as residents, travelers, or in any other manner whatever, under pain of death.” Christians could not speak with us or befriend us, lest they suffer excommunication. It was a double bind, for those few who might follow their own Christian teachings and show mercy to their fellow man would be denied fellowship and redemption by their church.
That is not to say that there were many who so wrestled with their conscience. Most were glad to see us go. They coveted our goods and profited by our expulsion. We could take whatever we could carry, with this exception: no money, no gold, no silver. People sold a vineyard for a donkey, a house for a horse. Christian love of fellow men was reserved, it seemed, for fellow Christians.
Many were the accusations against us. The Jews torched Christian homes. The Jews cursed Christian churches. The Jews defiled communion wafers and flogged crucifixes. The Jews murdered Christian children. Some believed this. Perhaps men, seeing the evil in themselves, find it everywhere they look. Then, too, I grieve to write it, many who accused were New Christians, lending veracity to the absurdities. Their guilt would not let them look upon righteous men but caused them to spew forth like animals. Yet animals, they say, do not betray their own.
Thousands fled north to Navarre, but no farther, for France was closed to them. Tens of thousands took to the south to the sea, to Italy, North Africa, or to the east, to the lands of the Ottoman Empire. Tens of thousands to the west, we among them, to Portugal. We clogged the roads and seaports, and some pitied us, and some mocked. Our rabbi told us to sing to keep our spirits up, but our songs were lamentation. The last of us left Spanish soil on the ninth day of the Hebrew month Av, the day we fast to remember the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem.
King João II let us in, and those who had managed to smuggle money with them paid a thousand cruzados for an eight-ninths-residence permit. But he also wanted us to convert. Had we sacrificed our home, only to abandon our faith now? Most of us journeyed to the mountains to the north, where we have worked to this day in poverty and sorrow.
My last wish is that you hold fast this story of our family, and pass it on to those who will come after. Though it is a tale of much woe, know, my children, that you have been the wellspring of what joy I have known in this life.
Solomon Abravanel
45
Juliana
1 November 1687
I thought that my heart could feel no new sorrow, but the sufferings described by Solomon, though he lived so long ago, torment me. He writes to those who will come after, and so he writes to me. I have truly inherited this legacy of pain.
9 April 1688
It is some months now since I learned of my mother’s unjust demise and my father’s first treachery. I have struggled with this new truth: I am a Jewess. I have come to not only accept, but to enfold this legacy within me, with all of its tortured history. Though some would say that I am less, I know myself to be more than I believed, containing the sad story of Spain within me. It could be said that this lineage of mine brought me to this New World, which will embrace those who were born to it, and those of us who came, to create its own new heritage.
46
RACHEL
Now my bond to Juliana was even stronger, as we both read a heart-wrenching history of those who came so long ago. Even having been raised within her father’s household, with its beliefs and prejudices, Juliana was able to welcome this new part of her identity.
For once, though, I found Juliana too optimistic. The New World has not always been just to those who were born here, nor to those who came.
There now remained only a few more pages of the diary.
47
Juliana
16 August 1689
I have lived within these walls for nearly thirty years, chased here by the violence of one man and the injustice of another. Life here passes so slowly and uneventfully. Our battles are those of the soul. We struggle to maintain our faith in God, in our sisters, and in ourselves. We struggle to find the beauty and happiness that can exist for those of us who have been placed outside the timeless cycle that most women know, of birth, love, and death, and of seeing our daughters pass through the same stages that we have known. I have, more than most of my sisters here, known what it was to be a woman in this sense. Yet I will never see my daughter renew herself in love, repeating the creation.
1 December
A new letter came today from my correspondent Sor Juana. She and I have been writing to each other with some regularity over the past few years, though I fear that I gain so much more from her missives than she from mine. Perhaps it is just that she is glad to know of another who seeks to gain knowledge, though I fear she thinks too grandly of my level of learning. She has at times sent me some of her essays, and I must confess that they are often too difficult for me to follow completely.
In truth, I much prefer her poems. There is one poem in which I have sometimes sought a vengeful refuge. The poetess says that men are foolish for accusing women, for do they not see that they are the cause of that for which they blame us? How apt this seems to be, and how well it fits my own experience. I was condemned, even by my own father, for a man’s sin against me. Now the knowledge of my father’s betrayal of my mother compounds his guilt a thousandfold in my eyes.
8 April 1690
It is very seldom that I speak with my Mercedes, and then it is only in general terms. She seems uncomfortable in my presence, or perhaps it is only that she is indifferent to me except in my role as her superior. I have never discovered how to close this distance between us, how to let her know how I care for her, for I fear that she might question my uncommon interest. While we both live in the only home that she has ever known, I do not see a way or a purpose in telling her of her true origin. In truth, I fear that anger, rather than loving acceptance, would be her response. I also recoil at the thought of our community discerning the truth. If we were cast out, I do not know where we would go, a woman and her mother cast adrift. I must also admit that my pride in the position that I hold here is of value to me, and I would rue its loss. And so I keep my daughter in ignorance.
The illness that struck Mercedes in her childhood has never returned, nor has there been any identifiable lasting harm. She fits in well here, and I must admit that she seems content to live the life of a nun, though I do not know
her well enough to judge whether she is happy.
10 November
I have lived this life among women, and with a daughter who has not known me. This is one of God’s ironies, that I, who grew up in a world of men and never knew my own mother, must live always with women. I did not know how.
Through the years I have returned at times to that darkness to which I descended when first I came here. During those long, shadowy days, they did not know if ever I would find my way back again. Later, some told me they believed the fiend had been fighting for my soul, and that my mumbling was some distorted message from my place of struggle. Others were simply unusually kind to me afterward, and embarrassed by my previous unseemly behavior.
The first time, so long ago, a doctor was called in. He said I suffered from melancholia due to an excess of black bile. He bled me to try to bring my humors back in balance, and Madre Superior became so worried at my paleness that she forbade him to return.
Once, Madre Mónica told me that she had the singular notion that what had happened to me had indeed been an illness, but one beyond any doctor’s power to heal. She said it was an illness of the mind, and that, just as a strong body is needed to fight off the bad humors of the body, so, too, is a strong mind needed to fight back from the abyss I had approached.
Each time I have managed to emerge, some times taking longer than others. I learn nothing from these struggles, not even how to avoid or better defeat them. And always I carry the dread that I will succumb to the next assault. All that I lost haunts me still, and I do not know whether my life has brought me recompense.
21 June 1691
I have a growth within me that seems to swell each day, and I know that not much time is left to me. To distract myself from the pain, and to reflect upon my life, I have read all that I have written here over the years, and I have come to a decision. I will send Mercedes forth into the world, free of these confining walls, to live the life of a woman, a life that was denied to me and to my mother. I do not believe that she will welcome this, for she has no idea of the outside world, but I will command her, as her abbess and as her mother. I do not wish the injustices of our time and place to curtail her life, as they have imprisoned mine. I do not wish our line to wither here.
4 August
Twelve days ago I spoke to Mercedes, revealing to her the truth of her birth and enjoining her to leave the convent. At first, it seemed she could not grasp what I was telling her, but then, as understanding came, she passed from astonishment to anger and resentment that everything she had believed of her life had been a lie. She seemed not to lament that she had not received a mother’s love from me, but rather to abhor the choices I had made, without granting that I had seen no other path. She did not wish to leave the only home that she had ever known, and spoke of her desire to take her final vows, but I called upon the obedience that she owed me, and she could not stay in opposition to her abbess. I hope that in time she will come to forgive my ruling in this matter and accept her new life. I hope that she will allow herself joy.
I have made arrangements as best I could for her. In my duties of overseeing the business of the convent, I have come to know a man of the world whom I trust. I have asked him to aid Mercedes as she leaves the shelter of her home and to help her find a husband. He does not know the reason for any of this, and I am sure that Mercedes will not tell him, for she feels shame at the truth of her life. He recognizes that I do not make decisions lightly, and that I have never asked of him a favor. I have full faith that he will carry out my wishes.
Mercedes leaves tomorrow and will take with her these writings, and my instruction to pass them on, to be forever shared with the girls and women of our blood, so that they may know something of the life that I have led. Perhaps someday my descendants, reading of my plight and of my choices, will find it strange that there was a time when men were so violent against women, and that women were blamed for it. Perhaps there will be a time when religion is not used as a weapon.
As for tomorrow, I do not worry that the others here will guess our secret upon her departure, for I do not look for my child to weep as I wish her farewell. Any tears that Mercedes may shed will be for the life that she has known here, and for those sisters with whom she has been close. My need to preserve our secret has ensured that I am not among that circle. I have observed that she can be a proud woman, and her bitterness toward me, I believe, will also dam her tears. I have buried my love for her for so long that I have no doubt that, in the company of others, no tears shall rise to my eyes upon seeing my child leave me forever.
Now, though, in the solitude and black night of my room, my grief comes upon me, like a familiar specter.
5 August
My most precious Mercedes,
I have not slept at all, for today you leave me. Having now read of my life, and the choices I have made, I hope that you will come to forgive me. I fled Spain to save my life, and thus ensured your survival, too. It may be sinful arrogance, but I am proud of how I faced what could have been a fatal adversity. I will not let our history end here, in this place that has been restraint as well as refuge. Perhaps one day this story will find itself in a kinder world.
You may not credit it, but know that I have loved you from before your birth. I believe that you will be able to find fulfillment in the life to which I send you, as you were able to find contentment in the life here, which I also thrust upon you. Go forth, my daughter, to share our fate, that other women of our blood may find some wisdom or compassion in our story.
I am always your faithful mother,
Juliana Torres Coloma
48
RACHEL
I sat amid the papers I had now scattered, grieving for the death of a woman I had never known, a woman long since turned to dust. I felt a mother’s love toward Juliana, this woman I had come to know from the time she was sixteen years of age. I wanted to see her as faultless, as someone who had no choice but to do exactly as she did. Still, I couldn’t help but ask what would become of Mercedes. Juliana had condemned her own daughter to a life without a mother’s love and then sent her out into a world that she had never known.
The time had come to read all of these papers, to search for the clue that would solve their mystery.
49
Mercedes
Mexico City, 1738
To my granddaughter Luz,
I write this, having just wrested from you a promise to accept the papers I will leave explicitly for you upon my death, and to follow all of my instructions written here. You have shown some responsibility as you have approached womanhood, at least more than my other female offspring of your generation, and for that reason you were chosen. Remember the vow of silence that you have just given me, and divulge these secrets only in the manner I here prescribe. The task that I assign to you is a shameful one, but one to which you must submit, as I submitted, many years ago. I have tricked you by forcing you to promise something, the substance of which you could not imagine.
As I have kept to myself all these years the oath my mother pressed upon me, so I enjoin you to do, until the day when you compel a granddaughter of your own to take up your burden. She must make the same vow that you have made, to accept the papers upon your death. In her old age she will identify the granddaughter who will assume the task and extract the same pledges from her, to begin it all again.
I swore to my mother to pass these papers on. As you read them, know that I am the Mercedes of the diary of Juliana, or Sor Teresa, my Madre Superior, as I knew her. She commanded me to vow to pass on these writings, forcing me to forsake the only vows I had always longed to make. Yet I have “interpreted” a part of my sacred oath. That is how I have avenged myself, in some small part. I am certain that it was her intention for me to give these papers to my daughter, but those were not her precise words. She said only, “Preserve these papers, and pass them down through the female offspring of your family, my own descendants. Perhaps in some small way it will help
them to understand some other woman’s life, even if they can never know her in this world. It will establish a link for them, and for me, with women of the same blood, something I always longed for but never had.” But was not I that link, though I had lived my life not knowing it?
She wished to affirm truths that should have been her shame, and mine, and that of our family, but she did not understand it as such. Still, I have crippled the fulfillment of her desires, without breaking my word. While I am alive, no other living person will know the true circumstances of my birth. No one will ever be able to discuss the nature of the papers with another living soul. I have clung to life much past what is common, so that I could thwart my mother’s desire by waiting for you, a granddaughter, to fulfill her command. In my bitterness, I have triumphed, at least in this small way.
So that you may understand why I have perpetrated this small treachery, I will tell what you need to know of my life, and of my mother. All of my life had been spent in the convent, a serene life, and I had looked forward eagerly to taking my final vows and becoming a full-fledged member of the community. One day I was called to the abbess’s room. I was puzzled, because I had heard that she was ill, and I could not imagine why she should desire to see me. In fact, I had reason to believe that the abbess found me unworthy, for although I tried with sincere devotion to fulfill all of my duties and to make myself deserving of being a bride of Christ, time and again I had been denied the privilege of taking my final vows. I searched my heart for some offense that I might have unwittingly committed, but I could discover there no possible reason for this summons. I was so sincere then in my desire to be holy, before my mother so cruelly used me.
The Lines Between Us Page 24
