by Howard Fast
The city was waking, cocks crowed, chickens and goats were released from their pens. Children were turned out to play. The smoke of morning fires rose over the town and the pungent smell of charcoal burning filled the air.
Now Catherine walked through the Jewish quarter. From the houses here the men were emerging and going to worship. Catherine had been in the Jewish quarter before, but only to pass through it on a horse or in a litter. She had never walked in it on foot, close to the life it contained and to some measure partaking of that life.
She was not afraid of the Jews – but neither did she feel that she was a part of them. They were more often bearded than the Christian Spaniards and more heavily bearded. They moved quickly and purposefully. Only Catherine was without purpose as she followed them, and presently she came to their destination, the synagogue.
She had never been inside a synagogue before nor had she any clear purpose in entering one now. She did not say to herself, “I will go into the synagogue.” Neither did she say to herself, “No, I don’t want to go into the synagogue.” It was a thing she neither wanted nor avoided – and yet she went in. The synagogue was there and she entered it. If someone had asked her whether she had to enter it she would only have shrugged her shoulders. There were no hard and definite decisions within her.
She was the last person to enter the synagogue, and then the beadle, a tiny man with a snow-white beard, closed the door behind her. Inside the synagogue now there were about forty men but no other woman than Catherine.
She looked around her now, and she had the sense of a building that was very ancient. Unlike a church, its interior was perfectly rectangular. On each side, as she entered, there was a very low balcony. Catherine realized that this area must have been reserved for the women, since the men sat in the lower space. She had heard that men and women sat apart in the synagogue. The women’s sections were raised about a foot higher than the central part of the synagogue. They were separated from the central part by solid wooden railings and the railings were joined to the ceiling by a series of posts.
In the women’s part of the synagogue the benches – the only seating accommodations were plain, bare benches – ran parallel with the length of the hall. In the men’s area the benches were set parallel with the width of the hall. At the front of the synagogue, that is, the part opposite the door, there was a plain pulpit and behind the pulpit an area covered with a crimson drape. The pulpit was raised two steps from the floor, and on the pulpit there was a wooden lectern with an open parchment scroll upon it.
Catherine took her place in one of the side sections. On the pulpit there was a man whom Catherine recognized as the rabbi who had come to their house – the rabbi whose life her father had saved. He took hold of the scroll by its handles and moved it, turning both ends until he came to that section which he sought. Then he saw Catherine sitting alone at the other end of the synagogue. He met her gaze, and it seemed to Catherine that he paused to consider and to examine himself as well as the scroll in front of him. He stood thus for a substantial length of time without opening his mouth, without speaking or moving, and then he turned to the scroll and began to read.
“My God, my God – why have you forsaken me? Why so far from helping me? From the sound of my pleading? Oh my God, I cry out in the daytime but you hear me not. And in the night-time I cry out. I am not silent—” He paused then, laid his hand flatly upon the open scroll and looked at Catherine. Then he looked around at the various faces in the congregation and said to them.
“Forgive me if I speak with a different voice and make a different prayer on this strange morning. Someone has come among us. I was called upon to make a decision but I can make no decision. So I read what my fathers have written—”
Even as Mendoza was speaking threads of smoke trickled under the door and into the synagogue, filling the old building with harsh smell and crackling noise. The old beadle ran to the door of the synagogue and tried to open it. It opened outward, but now it would not respond to his efforts.
“Help me! Help me!” he cried. Men from the congregation rushed to help him. Catherine sat unmoving. Mendoza, pitching his voice high, read.
“Holy is the Lord. All the praises of Israel make a tent for you. Our fathers trusted in you. They trusted and you delivered them from evil. They cried out to you and you heard them and they were delivered. They trusted in you and their trust was not confounded—”
The crackling sound had become a roar now. Strangely as if the information of her own senses was coming from a great distance, Catherine realized that men outside were burning the synagogue. The people in the synagogue were trapped there. The whole Jewish quarter had become a Place of the Act of Faith, and in the midst of it the old building burned like tinder.
14
THE ROOM IN WHICH TORQUEMADA LIVED HIS LIFE at this time was not much larger than the cell in which Alvero lay. The room had a floor of black tile and walls of white plaster. Its only ornamentation – if one can consider it such – was a crucifix which hung from one wall. In addition to this there was a chair in the room and a bed and a small chest of drawers. In front of the crucifix there was a hempen mat and it was on this mat that Torquemada was kneeling when a monk knocked at his door.
“Come in,” Torquemada said.
The monk entered. Torquemada remained where he was, unmoving. The only illumination in the room was a bar of light that fell upon Torquemada from a high window in the wall of the cell. The monk stood inside the door and waited. Finally Torquemada finished with his devotions and rose and turned to face the monk, the broad band of light falling between them.
“Well, Brother?” Torquemada asked.
“They burned the synagogue,” the monk replied.
Torquemada’s face tightened and he nodded. “I saw the smoke. I smelled the smoke. Who burned the synagogue, Brother?”
“People – good people—”
“Good people? Or thieves and cut-throats?”
“Good Christians,” the monk said defensively.
“Good Christians.” Torquemada nodded. “Were there people in the synagogue when it burned? Were the Jews at their prayers?”
“It was the time of their prayers,” the monk said.
“Were any saved?”
“No. They all died. The wood was very old. You know how old the wood was, Prior. You know how old the synagogue was.”
“I know.” Torquemada nodded.
“As old as time,” the monk went on. “I have heard it said that the devil built the building before there were any human beings in Spain and then he gave it to the Jews—”
“Don’t talk like a fool!” Torquemada interrupted him. “Did the whole building burn?”
“It went up like a torch.”
“Who was there?”
“About forty Jews,” the monk said, “and the Rabbi Mendoza.”
“No others?”
“And a woman.”
“A woman?” Torquemada came close to the monk now so that their faces were only inches apart. “What do you mean – a woman? Few of the Jewish women go to the synagogue – except on the Sabbath.”
“This was not a Jewish woman,” the monk said defensively.
“How do you know?” Torquemada demanded.
“By the way she was dressed. She wore the clothes of a Spanish lady of wealth. She was covered with a cloak but when it fell away from her I saw the jewels she wore.”
“Did you recognize her?”
“I am not sure, Prior.” The monk was defensive, almost pleading. He wanted to move in a safe direction but he could not for the life of him anticipate what direction Torquemada desired him to move in. “She was a Christian woman,” he insisted.
“Old? Young? Of middle years? Think, you fool! What was she like? What was her appearance?”
“She was very young, I think. She put me in mind of the daughter of Don Alvero.”
“Why didn’t you stop her?” Torquemada cried, his voice shrill and fi
erce.
The monk cowered away from him, demanding, “Was it my place to stop her, Prior? She was a heretic the moment she set foot in there. Tell me – how is it my duty to stop her? It was only my duty to watch her and denounce her. God himself consumed her.”
Suddenly Torquemada grasped the monk’s robe in his clenched fists, drew him close and whispered, “How dare you?”
“What have I done?” the monk begged, panic-stricken.
Torquemada let go of the man and thrust him away. “What have you done! Do penance until you know what you have done. A hundred days on bread and water will sharpen your knowledge of sin! A hundred nights naked on your bed will sharpen your sodden sensitivity!”
The monk dropped to his knees now, stammering, “Please – please, Prior – how have I sinned? Tell me how I have sinned.”
“Get out of here!” Torquemada roared. “Leave me!”
The monk climbed to his feet and fled from the room. Torquemada stood there alone, his eyes closed, his fists clenched and finally he whispered, “God – pity me—”
15
AFTER THE MONK HAD LEFT, TORQUEMADA SAT FOR almost an hour in the darkness of his room. The fires of hell closed in upon him but he endured – and he did not question God or God’s reasons. Once, aloud, he said.
“I am your instrument.”
This did not comfort Torquemada. It was simply an acknowledgment of himself to himself. At last he rose and went out of the room and walked through the corridors of the priory. There was no one in the priory who had the courage to face him in his anger and the word had gone about that he was filled with anger. The passageways were deserted. He went down the wet stone stairs to the place where the Inquisition cells were and he came into the circle of radiance cast by a pitch torch. Taking this torch from its bracket he continued along the passageway until he come to Alvero’s cell. He opened the door and went in. Alvero lay on his bed asleep.
Torquemada stood over Alvero watching him as he slept. Alvero slept peacefully, breathing long and deeply; his sleep was innocent and untroubled. Torquemada felt a fierce wave of envy, and an even fiercer sense of hatred, but this hatred came and went; and suddenly Alvero opened his eyes and sat up, covering his eyes at first from the glare of the torch and then opening them wide to see Torquemada.
“I had no dreams,” Alvero said. “The dreams are here. Have you ever thought, Thomas, that with all our tales of hell we may be closer to the truth of it than we ever imagine? Have you ever thought that perhaps this whole world of ours is simply the hell of another existence?”
“More blasphemy?” Torquemada asked woodenly.
“How many times will you kill me?” Alvero shrugged. “How many times will you burn me?”
Alvero stared at his hands for a moment or two and then he asked softly, “Is it time, Thomas?”
“Time for what?”
“For me to die.”
“It is not time for you to die,” Torquemada replied.
“Then why have you come? You intrude on me, Thomas. All I have left is the privilege of being alone with myself, but you stand in front of me like an accusing angel. Or is it an accusing devil? What do you want, Thomas? Are you here for my soul’s sake? You have always been most profoundly concerned with the health of my immortal soul. Shall I confess myself, Thomas?”
“For my own soul’s sake, I think,” Torquemada replied.
Alvero found that amusing. He began to laugh. The laugher took hold of him and he found that his whole body was shaking with it. He could not stop himself. He doubled over with the laughter until Torquemada cried out.
“Stop it! Stop it!”
“Your soul’s sake, Thomas! Thomas, Thomas, I never thought to live to see the day when you would doubt your soul – and undertake something for your soul’s sake. Have you ever seen your soul, Thomas? Your soul is black, Thomas – black as pitch, but shrouded in gold. Festooned with a million pieces of gold all of them robbed from all the poor devils you burn in your Act of Faith. Thomas – Thomas, you are a bitter accusation against mankind. The Good Lord is an idiot – or he never would have let the waters of the flood recede. But why should I doubt you, Thomas? If you should ever step over the edge of eternity and plunge into the pit of hell all the angels will come singing to catch you, to rescue you and to welcome your stinking immortal soul. To heaven, I hope – believe me, Thomas, that is a most fervent hope. I pray that hope every night to three gods. The God of the Jews, the God of the Christians and the God of the Muslims; to all three of them. I pray that they will open their arms and welcome your stinking, shining soul to heaven. Do you know why? Can you think of a good reason why, Thomas?” Alvero waited, smiling up at Torquemada’s face; and in spite of himself Torquemada was moved to ask.
“Why?”
“The answer is obvious” – Alvero smiled – “and simple and direct – an assurance to me that if I spend an eternity in hell I will never have to see your face.”
“You have courage, Alvero,” Torquemada admitted.
“Courage!” Alvero cried, rising to his feet. “To hell with courage! What is courage? When you reach the end there is no more distance to go. If you fall off a cliff there is no way back. I have nothing to lose, Thomas. Will you burn me twice? Three times? Ten times?”
“Not even once,” Torquemada said tonelessly. “I am going to release you.”
Alvero went close to Torquemada now, face to face, and whispered to him, “What is this, Thomas? Have you had a bellyful of the rack and the thumbscrews? Is this some new method of torture, more refined, more delicate?”
“I am telling you the truth. I am going to release you.”
“No,” Alvero said. “No, not at all.” He turned back to his bed and sat down, staring at the floor of his cell, and he muttered, “No one has ever come alive from the presence of Torquemada. I know you like a book, Thomas – like a book of death. Death is the only friend Torquemada has – death and the torture room. How many hundreds have you condemned to death, Thomas?”
“But you knew this,” Torquemada reminded him. “You knew this and you remained my friend. You remained my friend because you were secure in my faith—”
“I am paying my price!” Alvero interrupted him. “Don’t talk to me about your faith. We don’t share a faith. We share nothing.”
Torquemada nodded and said, almost with detachment and utterly without emotion, “Nevertheless you will be released, Alvero. All your possessions are subject to seizure and they become the property of the Holy Inquisition. I would counsel you to go away. Go empty-handed – for this is the way we come into the world, and for you, Alvero de Rafel, it is a departure as profound, I think, as the departure that comes with death. So I say to you, go away. Your possessions are forfeit but you may take a single horse and a saddle and sidearms. You will leave here, and you will do this tonight. If you are in Segovia tomorrow I shall issue orders for your arrest.”
Staring unbelievingly at Torquemada, Alvero stood up again. Torquemada went to the door of the cell and swung it open and pointed and said.
“Go now, Alvero. I will light your way out and through the passage.”
Alvero went to him, and as he walked he asked the Prior in a whisper, “Do you mean this? God help me, in all truth, Thomas, are you lying to me? Are you playing games with me? You were my friend once – understand that I can endure very little more—”
“I mean it!” Torquemada said savagely.
Alvero stared at him. “I cannot thank you – I will not thank you. God damn you, I would almost rather die than have a kindness from you! I will not owe my life to you!”
Torquemada walked through the door and Alvero followed him, followed the circle of radiance that meant life or death, truth or falsehood, all the world or no world whatsoever. Raging and doubting Alvero followed him, and Torquemada answered thoughtfully.
“There speaks the Spaniard, not the Jew. I do you no kindness. I repay a debt.”
“What debt?” Alvero s
houted. “You have no debts to me!”
“Don’t keep trying me,” Torquemada replied angrily, “and don’t misjudge me, Alvero – for even as you hate me, I hate you!”
Alvero walked with Torquemada now, walked in the circle of light from the pitch torch, through the passageway, and in the course of his steps he nodded, clenched his fists and nodded again and agreed with the Prior.
“Best!” Alvero said. “That way is best, Thomas. With hate, Thomas. Always with hate. That way we will remember each other.”
Torquemada made no answer to this, but led Alvero along the corridor and up the staircase and through the priory and into the cool of the afternoon. They waited and stood looking across the gardens, while in response to Torquemada’s order a monk brought Alvero his horse. Alvero mounted. There was no farewell and no words between the two men.
Alvero rode away but he looked back once and saw Torquemada standing there in front of the cloister. Torquemada stood tall and grim and – it seemed to Alvero – his face was etched in pain. But when Alvero looked again there was only a man – a righteous and awful man.
16
ALVERO PEERED INTO THE LONG GALLERY OF HIS home. A fire was burning and Maria sat in a chair facing the flames. He did not enter but went to his room, where he looked at himself in a long mirror. The filthy, cadaverous and bearded stranger who returned his glance was not recognizable, even to Alvero. What was himself had disappeared, perhaps forever; and he had a feeling of emptiness, of utter despair – as if he were already dead and lost beyond finding, nor did this feeling go away when he had shaved off his beard, sponged the dirt from his body and dressed himself.
The house was strangely quiet. He had hoped at first that his daughter Catherine would not interrupt him until he was clean and clad in fresh clothes, but now he wondered where she was and why he heard no sound to indicate her presence. He was overtaken by a sudden anxiety and he finished dressing hurriedly. He dressed for the road, in leather trousers and a leather coat, and he drew on long, tough riding boots. He buckled on sword and dagger, and then in defiance of Torquemada’s instructions dropped a dozen gold pieces into his boots. Whether he would come back to Segovia or leave Segovia tonight or wait until the next morning and leave then, he had not decided, but he knew that in Spain as elsewhere a man does not travel without money.
