Land of Burning Heat

by Judith Van GIeson

  “I didn’t see any children buried nearby. Isabel Suazo died when she was only twenty-two. Chuy Santos sent me to his grandmother’s house last night. Someone ran me off the ditch road into a tree in Isabel’s yard.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  Claire considered her bruised arm. “Not really, but my truck was damaged. I thought I saw a light in Isabel’s house when I drove by. After the accident I went into the house with the police. Candles had been burning and the mirrors were covered in black. I went to the grandmother’s today and she told me she had covered the mirrors and left candles burning in the house.”

  “Jews burn Shabbat candles on Friday nights to mark the beginning of the Sabbath. Covering the mirrors in black after a death is an old Jewish custom. Mourners are not supposed to be thinking about vanity. Mourning is only supposed to last for ten days, but people here may have lost sight of that. What is the grandmother’s name?”

  “Tey.”

  “That could be a diminutive of Ester, and Esther was the Hebrew Queen of Persia.”

  Claire liked to hear his excitement grow and know that someone else shared the joy of discovery.

  “There were several Ester Santoses in the cemetery.”

  “Here’s what I think,” he continued. “I think Isabel Santos married into a Jewish family. Somehow the last words of Joaquín Rodriguez ended up in the hands of the Santos family, maybe through the Suazos. The Rodriguezes and the Suazoses could be related. Both names have a Portuguese connection and some of the Sephardim went to Portugal before emigrating to the New World.”

  “Have you learned any more about the cross?” Claire asked.

  “It was made in Mexico in the late sixteenth century. It’s from the same period as the bones, but so far that’s the only way we can connect them. It’s possible the bones belong to a Suazo and the Santos family moved into a Suazo house.”

  “There’s another possibility.” Claire’s mind had leapt ahead of Harold Marcus’s, but she’d had more time to think about what she’d learned in the cemetery. She was in New Mexico looking at the mountains that inspired big thoughts, whereas he was likely to be in a suburban house where the only view was of his backyard. She had learned when solving problems related to her work that sometimes it was best to return to the premises that had been taken for granted and reexamine them. “Suppose the first Manuel Santos to arrive in New Mexico was connected to Joaquín Rodriguez and brought the cross and the document with him. Maybe the Santoses were Jews before they came to New Mexico. Maybe the marriage between Isabel and Moises was an intrafaith marriage.”

  “Well, all the forensic techniques in the world won’t tell me whether the skeleton belonged to a man who was circumcised. Strontium testing of tooth enamel could tell me if he spent time in Portugal as a boy. If he did, it would be an indication of Judaism, but it wouldn’t be proof. And the question remains, how do you explain the family having the name of a saint and an Inquisitor?”

  “I can’t,” Claire said. “But I’ll keep trying.”

  “I’ll do what I can to speed things along here. Do you think the Santos family has been telling you all they know?”

  “Not entirely.”

  “Perhaps if you tell Tey what you’ve discovered, she’ll tell you the whole truth.”

  “Perhaps,” Claire said.

  She said good-bye to Harold, hung up the phone and went to her window. The shadows on the mountain had begun to merge with the twilight. Soon the creatures of the night would be slipping out of their nests and their dens—the owls, the bats, the snakes and coyotes. In Harold’s mind there was a line between truth and untruth and the methodological method could put the facts into one column or another. But that wasn’t the way Tey Santos would look at things.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  CLAIRE REVISITED TEY THE FOLLOWING MORNING while the bells of Our Lady of Sorrows called the people of Bernalillo to church. She expected Manuel to be at the service but not Tey. She didn’t know where Chuy would be, although the casino was always a possibility.

  When she pulled into the yard, she was relieved not to see his truck. Tey was in the garden among corn stalks that were taller than she was. To be able to maintain a house and a garden at the age of ninety-two was a major accomplishment. Claire attributed Tey’s long life to living in and caring for this fertile spot.

  She stopped tending the corn and leaned on her cane when she saw Claire. “Hola,” she called. “It’s a beautiful morning.” She didn’t seem at all surprised that Claire had returned.

  “Hola,” said Claire. “Do you have any time to talk to me?”

  “I have nothing left but time,” Tey said. She maneuvered her way out of the corn stalks and headed for a bench parked under the willow tree. Claire followed and sat down beside her. The temperature was already in the nineties, but it was ten degrees cooler in the shade of the tree. Willows drew a lot of water and were rare in New Mexico. This one seemed to be converting ground water into a waterfall as the leaves cascaded around them creating a sheltered, private place, a good place to share a secret.

  “You have a lot left,” Claire said. “You have a house, a garden, a dog, a family.”

  “Verdad,” Tey said. “And God gave me this nice tree to sit under.”

  “It’s lovely here.” Claire could have easily spent the morning exchanging pleasantries with Tey, but she was afraid Chuy would show up and there were things she preferred to say when he wasn’t around.

  “I went to the cemetery after I left here yesterday to pay my respects to Isabel,” she began. “Someone had placed a pebble on top of her tombstone.”

  Tey’s black eyes were alert, but she said nothing.

  “I walked around the graveyard and came across graves for Isabel Santos de Suazo and Moises Suazo. They shared a tombstone and it had a six-pointed flower carved on it with a symbol inside. When I got home I called a friend who is Jewish.” She had decided not to mention the Smithsonian at this point, thinking that the institutional connection might put Tey off. “He told me that he has seen similar flowers on Jewish tombstones, that it is an old Jewish custom to leave a stone at a grave.”

  “What else did he tell you?” Tey asked, clutching the top of her cane.

  “It is also a Jewish custom to light candles on Friday nights to mark the Sabbath and to cover the mirrors when someone dies. That Tey is a nickname for the Hebrew name Esther.”

  Tey seemed to be stepping into the truth and blinking her eyes at the light. She said without hesitation, “Somos Judios.” We are Jews. “I am named for Queen Esther. That name has been in my family forever.”

  It was where Claire’s investigations had been leading, but she was so startled to hear Tey say so that she felt the bench was tipping and spilling her into deep water.

  “Our ancestors were Jews,” Tey said. “Sometimes we named a son Jesus so no one would know. For years we always married Jews, but now there are hardly any left. The make-believe Catholics became real Catholics. If those bones under the house belong to our ancestor, they are the bones of a Jew. But that’s all I know. I don’t know anything about Manuel Santos before he came here. I don’t know why he had the name of a saint and an Inquisitor. I never heard of Joaquín Rodriguez until Isabel told you about that piece of paper.”

  “Did Isabel know you are Jewish?”

  “No. I am the only one who knows that now. When I die the secrets go with me. The women pass on the religion and the tradition of the Jews. When they are old enough, we tell the young women, but Isabel died before I could tell her. Now there is nobody left to tell.”

  “Chuy and Manuel don’t know?”

  “No. They may think they know a little, but they don’t know everything.”

  “Would Manuel be upset to find out? He’s a devout Catholic, isn’t he? Wouldn’t it be hard now to think of himself as a Jew?”

  “It would be hard,” Tey agreed. “Because his wife is very Catholic. At first the Jews had to pretend to be Catholic. We
could lose our land or our life if anyone found out. But as time went by some people became real Catholics and forgot where they came from. Some families gave a son to the church so the church wouldn’t know they were Jews. If you could read, they thought you were a Jew. We were called the people of the book. If a son became a priest he could read the Old Testament and bring it home. In the old days when they were both in hiding from the friars, the Penitentes let the Jews practice in their moradas. They chanted in the old language.”

  “Do you ever want to go to a synagogue and connect with the Ashkenazi Jews?”

  “No,” Tey said. “It’s not the same. They are white people who drive big cars. We have been hiding from the church, lighting candles, speaking the old language, never eating pork, sweeping to the middle of the room, practicing the old ways, doing things in secret for four hundred years. We are not like the other Jews. It hurts me when I hear other Jews are hurt and killed. Adonay es mi dio. His words are in my heart. I am part of them, but I am different. It’s too late to change that.”

  “I could put you in touch with my Jewish friend Harold Marcus at the Smithsonian. I know he would love to talk to you.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to talk to anybody. I am only telling you this because you are a woman I can pass my story on to and you knew my Isabelita. There is a mezuzah in her house, very old. Would you like to see it?”

  Claire supposed mezuzah was a Hebrew word, but she didn’t know what it meant. “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s a little box with a prayer inside.” Tey gripped the top of her cane and prepared to push herself off from the bench. “Let’s walk. It’s a nice day.”

  “Are you sure?” Claire asked. “I’ll be happy to drive.”

  “No. It’s good to walk. I say His words sometimes when I walk along the road.”

  Tey stood up and led the way, refusing any help as she climbed the ditch bank. Her pace was steady as a tortoise but much slower than the pace Claire kept when she walked. She checked her impatience by cranking up her powers of observation. The ditch road was shaded by the branches of cottonwoods. The sun broke through the leaves and dappled the path, giving it the shifting reality of a pointillist painting. The weeds were high beside the ditch. The sun hadn’t touched the wild pink morning glories yet and they were still in bloom. A duck flapped its wings and lifted out of the ditch, which was brown and muddy from the recent rains. Claire could see the water ripple and hear it lap against the banks. They came to the carcass of a dead bird in the road. Tey stopped and poked it with her walking stick.

  “A coyote did that,” she said. “They come here at night. When my dog hears them he cries and asks to come inside.”

  The ditch was a watering hole, where animals came to drink, to eat and get eaten. During the night it was wild and dangerous, a place where Claire herself had felt hunted. But in the morning it was green, fertile and peaceful, far removed from the noise and danger of the street. Along here nothing appeared to have changed for centuries. Claire was glad they had taken this walk so she could remember the ditch as it appeared now and not as a place where an SUV had pursued her in the rain.

  After her comment about the coyotes, Tey kept silent and focused on picking her way down the dusty road. As they approached the old house Claire offered her arm and helped her down the path that led to the embankment. The rain had washed away any tracks. As soon as she was on level ground again Tey let go of Claire’s arm. They walked to the door. Tey took keys from her pocket and unlocked it. “Chuy locked the house yesterday,” she said. “We can’t leave it open any more with all those bad boys around.”

  The light was dim inside the house, but Claire could see that the mirrors were still covered.

  “The closet door is open,” Tey said. “Was it open when you were here?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was closed when I left. I always keep it closed.” She went to the closet, reached around the door and slid her right hand along the inside of the doorjamb. “The prayer is supposed to be on the door post of the house, but my grandmother hid it here. It’s gone,” she cried. “Our little mezuzah is gone. Look.”

  She placed Claire’s hand against the doorjamb, and she felt a hollow section a few inches long carved out of the wood.

  “The mezuzah had a prayer inside that kept this house safe. And now my Isabelita is dead and the mezuzah is gone. This is not a place for people to live anymore.”

  “Was it still here after Isabel died?”

  “Yes. I felt it Friday when I lit the candles.”

  “Did Chuy or Manuel know about it?”

  “No. It’s hidden here. You can’t find it unless you know where to look.” Tey made her way to the sofa and sank into the cushions. Claire felt that the spirit that had kept her so fierce and strong was escaping along with the dust from the cushions.

  “Help me find out who took it,” Claire said. “It could be the person who ran me off the road. It could be Isabel’s killer.”

  “You think we are related to this Joaquín? “ Tey asked.

  “I don’t know if you are related, but I think you are connected in some way. You used the same phrase Joaquín used: ‘Adonay es mi dio’.”

  “It’s what my mother said, descance en paz. Why didn’t my Isabelita show me what she found? Why did she tell you and that May Brennan?”

  “Maybe she didn’t have time to show it to you.” It was a lame explanation, but the only one Claire could offer at the moment.

  Tey’s tired shrug implied she didn’t believe it either. “That May came to see me once to ask me about the grave of Isabel Suazo, but I wouldn’t tell her anything. It was none of her business. You think those bones that were under the floor will tell us something?” she asked.

  “They might.”

  “Okay. Go ahead. Take my blood, do your tests. Find out what you need to know.” She pulled up her sleeve and offered a scrawny bare arm to Claire.

  “Someone else will have to do the tests,” Claire said.

  “I will tell Chuy and Manuel the family story. They’re big boys; it’s time they knew. No one is going to take our land now. You find out what happened to my Isabelita. You think she was killed for being a Jew? They stopped killing us for that long ago.”

  “I don’t think she was killed for that. I think she was killed because someone wanted the document she found, but the police want to believe it was Tony Atencio. You need to go to them. Tell them everything. Tell them about the mezuzah. Detective Romero is a local boy. He knows something about the old ways.”

  “What is his first name?”

  “Jimmy.”

  “I think I know Adela, his grandmother. Okay, I will call him.”

  “Let me get my car and drive you back to the house.”

  “Okay,” Tey said.

  “Will you be all right here? Do you want me lock the door?”

  “I’ll be all right. What can anybody do to me now? I heard about an old woman in Chama. A bear came into her house looking for food and killed her. To be killed by a bear or a robber—what’s the difference? When you’re old, dying in your own house is not a bad way to go.” She thumped her cane against the floor. “If that robber comes back, I’ll make him sorry he killed my Isabelita.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” Claire said.

  She hurried along the ditch, too busy thinking about Tey to notice much except that the sun had landed on the wild morning glories and the blossoms had shriveled.

  Tey had moved outside and was sitting under the portal when Claire returned. She seemed to have regained some of her spirit. “Not my day to be killed by a bear or a robber,” she said.

  When Claire dropped her off at the other house she said, “You find that killer for me.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Claire said, “but you need to call the police.”

  “Okay,” said Tey.

  ******

  As she drove home through the Sandia Pueblo Claire thought how often on
e generation forgets the past leaving the next to search and reinvent. If knowledge was passed down from one generation to the next, she would know all about her own ancestors. As it was, she knew next to nothing. She liked the phrase “people of the book” and identified with it. Not because she had a Jewish connection. When the Reyniers fled Europe they were persecuted for being Protestants and by now they were very lapsed Protestants. But Claire was a book person who turned to the written word for solace and for answers. The question she needed to answer was whether Isabel had been killed because the Santoses were people of the book. The long arm of the Inquisition could not have reached out of the past to punish Isabel in the twenty-first century, but there might have been some other connection. Had Isabel learned the Santoses were descended from Jews, and was that what she called to tell Claire? Was she intending to bring the cross and the document to the center? Could someone else have learned of the connection like May Brennan, Peter Beck, Warren Isles, or her own brothers? Could Joaquín Rodriguez’s last words have remained somewhere in Isabel’s house? Had someone gone back to the house for the document or the mezuzah, been surprised by Claire, and run her off the road? Did that someone know she was coming?

  It might hurt Manuel’s standing with the Church and his career to have his Jewish background come out, but would he kill his own sister to suppress that information? Maybe he had meant to warn and not to kill. Maybe Isabel had fallen and hit her neck during a struggle over the document. Claire hadn’t had any physical altercations with her own brother as an adult, but they’d had plenty when they were growing up.

  She visualized the same scenario with Isabel’s other brother. Suppose Chuy found out about the document, learned it was valuable and needed money to pay off his gambling debts? Isabel refused to give it to him and they struggled. If the document had been sold, it might be hidden but at least it would be preserved.