Joshua Then and Now

by Mordecai Richler

  “So it is true,” Mariano said.

  “What’s true?”

  “You are a Jew?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I used to drink with one in Cordoba.”

  Joshua, cashing a check from the Toronto Star Weekly to make a foray onto the peninsula, had been to Cordoba the previous month.

  Cordoba, birthplace of the incomparable Maimonides. The Rambam. Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, on whose grave in Tiberias on the shores of the Lake of Genesareth was inscribed: “From Moses to Moses there has been no one like Moses.”

  Maimonides, doctor and philosopher, the soaring Jewish intellect of the Middle Ages, wrote a book Joshua had come to cherish, The Guide for the Perplexed.

  Men frequently think that the evils in the world are more numerous than the good things; many sayings and songs of nations dwell on this idea. They say that a good thing is found only exceptionally, whilst evil things are numerous and lasting. Not only common people make this mistake, but many who believe they are wise.

  Maimonides, who was forced to flee Cordoba before the Moors when he was still a young man, journeyed on through Fez, Acre, and Jerusalem to Cairo, where he settled down as personal physician to the great Saladin. Subsequently he received a flattering offer from Palestine: “The King of the Franks in Ascalon,” that is to say, Richard the Lionhearted of England, having already heard that there’s nothing like a Jewish doctor, wanted him for his personal physician; but Maimonides declined.

  Al-Razi, Maimonides observed in The Guide for the Perplexed, once wrote a well-known book, On Metaphysics:

  Among other mad and foolish things, it contained the idea, discovered by him, that there exists more evil than good. For if the happiness of a man and his pleasure in the times of prosperity be compared with the mishaps that befall him – such as grief, acute pain, defects, paralysis of the limbs, fears, anxieties, and troubles – it would seem as if the existence of man is a punishment and a great evil for him.

  Inflamed by the vicious sermons of the Archdeacon Ferran Martinez, a mob descended on the Juderia of Cordoba shortly after Ash Wednesday 1391, and reduced the quarter where Maimonides had been born to ashes. In a great auto de fe held in Cordoba in 1665, something like 400,000 maravedis was spent on the entertainment of the Inquisitors and their guests. Fifty-seven “Judaizers” were “relaxed,” the three who held out to the last being roasted alive.

  Forget it, Joshua thought, wandering through the old quarter. Don’t be a grudgy type.

  The Juderia was now a truly serene maze of impossibly narrow streets, overleaning houses starkly white, overflowing flowerpots dripping from every wall. Where once the residents had been candidates for burning, windows or delicate wrought-iron gates now opened onto inner courtyards, one more exquisite than another. But this legacy of beauty is for the enjoyment of others, Joshua thought resentfully, not me.

  Canadian-born, he sometimes felt as if he were condemned to lope slant-shouldered through this world that confused him. One shoulder sloping downwards, groaning under the weight of his Jewish heritage (burnings on the market square, crazed Cossacks on the rampage, gas chambers, as well as Moses, Rabbi Akiba, and Maimonides); the other thrust heavenwards, yearning for an inheritance, any inheritance, weightier than the construction of a transcontinental railway, a reputation for honest trading, good skiing conditions.

  The next morning he was in Madrid, seated on the perfectly made Plaza Mayor, sipping white wine and nibbling olives as the sun went down, feeling fine, just fine, when once more his Jewishness obtruded. Descending on him unbidden. Like a press.

  Some four hundred years ago, during the Inquisition, they used to burn Jews here, right here, for sport.

  Auto de fe.

  The vast Plaza Mayor, its cobblestones nicely worn, its Herrera towers so lovely to contemplate, the porticoes perfection itself, had actually been the scene of numerous autos publicos generales, an event that once vied with bullfights in popular appeal. Many of the victims were conversos, Jews forcibly converted but suspected of continuing to practice their faith secretly, and usually the ceremony would be held on feast days in order to attract as large a crowd as possible, spiritual benefits being promised to all those present. There were once engravings extant which showed that two elaborate stagings were erected in the Plaza, one to accommodate those convicted and the other for the Inquisitors and their attendants. Pulpits and a temporary altar draped in black were set up between them, and windows looking out on the square went for large sums. The proceedings would begin at dawn with a procession through the narrow streets of the old city in which all the clergy would take part, headed by the standard of the Inquisition. Behind followed the condemned, those who were to escape the flames by confession and those who were for burning, the latter wearing a garment with a picture of devils thrusting heretics into the fires of hell. The spectacle, with sermons being delivered and sentences read, often spun out far into the night, and to light the brand which set the pyre on fire was considered a signal honor. First of all, however, spectators were encouraged to increase the sufferings of the condemned by lighting their beards, a practice known as “shaving the New Christians.”

  On this square, this outsized square, where Joshua had hoped to relax, soaking in the sun; on this square, on June 30, 1680, in the presence of Carlos II and his bride, Louise Marie d’Orléans, newly arrived from France, there was an auto de fe which began at six o’clock in the morning and lasted for fourteen hours. Sixty-seven penitents were reconciled. “It is said that one strikingly beautiful girl of about seventeen called out, as she passed the royal viewing stand: ‘Noble Queen, cannot your royal presence save me from this? I sucked in my religion with my mother’s milk; must I die for it?’ In spite of this, the king himself set afire the brand which kindled the quedamero on which she perished.”

  The Jews were originally expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, shortly after the Moors had been driven out of Granada. The king gave them three months in which to convert or leave. In 1495, an Italian Jewish traveler in Spain wrote in Hebrew:

  One hundred and twenty thousand of them went to Portugal, according to a compact that a prominent man, Don Vidal bar Beneviste del Cavalleria, had made with the King of Portugal, and they paid one ducat for every soul, and the fourth part of all the merchandise they had carried thither; and he allowed them to stay in his country for six months. This King acted much worse toward them than the King of Spain, and after six months had elapsed he made slaves of all those that remained in his country, and banished seven hundred children to a remote island to settle it, and all of them died.

  In 1497, the King compelled all the Jews of Portugal to become “New Christians,” yet many of them continued to practice their old faith surreptitiously. In 1506, two thousand of these secret Jews were literally butchered and cremated in Lisbon. An account of the massacre, by the Catholic prelate Geronymo Osorio, has survived in Latin:

  This cruel massacre was begun by five hundred, who were at last joined by several others. Transported with madness and boiling with rage, they fell upon the wretched Jews, of whom they killed great numbers, and threw many half alive into the flames. By this time several fires were kindled near the place where the first offenders had been burnt, for the canaille about the streets with eagerness and alacrity had brought fuel from all parts, that nothing might be wanting to execute this horrible design.… The shrieks and outcries of the women, together with the piteous supplications of the men, might, one would think, have softened the most savage heart into pity; but the actors in this horrid scene were so divested of humanity that they spared neither sex nor age, but wreaked their fury on all without distinction; so that above five hundred Jews were either killed or burnt that day.

  The news of this massacre having reached the country, next day above a thousand men from the villages flocked into the city and joined the murderers, and the slaughter was renewed.…

  Juanito, on discovering that Joshua was Jewish, sl
apped his cheek, amazed. The revelation emerged unforced one day as they bantered together on the sun-drenched terrace of a café. “Hey, you sit right there,” Juanito said. “You wait. We’ve got one of those on Ibiza.”

  And, overriding Joshua’s protests, he had scampered off with other fishermen, across the street, charging into the bank, where they literally plucked out a teller from behind his till and marched him to the café table. Carlos came from a family that had ostensibly been practicing Catholics for hundreds of years, but that was beside the point. He was one of those. He was an oily little man, scrawny, his skin walnut-brown, his eyes frightened now, and Joshua’s immediate reaction was, You’re not my brother, I’m not your keeper. Carlos refused the offer of a drink even as Juanito and his cronies hovered over them, boyishly pleased with their catch. “Say something to each other in Jew,” Juanito said.

  “Go to hell,” Joshua said.

  “Come on.”

  Still, Joshua hesitated.

  “You’re a fake,” Juanito hollered.

  “Shema Yisrael,” Carlos offered, “Adonai Elohainu, Adonai echad.”

  Joshua, unbidden tears welling in his eyes, recognized the phrase. Mandelcorn had taught it to him for his bar-mitzvah. My God, my God, he thought, I’m just being overwhelmed by Jews these days. First the Freibergs, now Carlos. But he was waiting outside the bank at closing time, and he took Carlos to a neighboring café for coffee.

  He was a “Marrano,” he said – that is to say, a “pig,” or secret Jew – whose family had been practicing the faith by stealth ever since the Inquisition. His family lived in a remote town perched atop a rocky hilltop in Majorca, and there were others like them there, maybe fifty. Officially parishioners of the Holy Family, they secretly ate unleavened bread, but only on the third day of Passover, so that no Christian informer could see them baking it on the traditional day of preparation. He told Joshua, his squeaky voice reduced to a whisper, “Every spring, one morning before the other villagers are awake, the secret worshippers sneak down to the riverbank and there they beat the waters with olive branches to celebrate the parting of the Red Sea. But that must seem crazy to you, coming from Canada. You can practice the religion openly there, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” Joshua agreed uneasily, “but the truth is, I don’t come from a very observant family.”

  His family, the amazing Carlos told him, had originally come from Toledo. His father still had the key to the front door of their Toledo home, a token of ownership that had been passed down through the generations. Tugging at Joshua’s sleeve, he added, “It was our people, you know, who gave Toledo its name, ‘Toledoth,’ which means ‘city of generations’ in Hebrew.” The city, he said, had originally been settled by members of the Twelve Tribes. After Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem. Even the names of some neighboring villages had been derived from Israel. “Take, for instance, ‘Aceca,’ which in Hebrew means ‘strong house.’ Or ‘Escalona,’ from ‘Askelon.’ I am a Zionist. If I order another coffee,” he asked, pressing Joshua’s arm, “will you pay?”

  “Yes. Certainly.”

  “I’m saving every penny. I’m going to emigrate to Israel one day. Would you mind if I had a pastry as well?”

  “Oh, go ahead,” Joshua said, irritated. “Just order it, will you?”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so – after all, I’m the older one – you shouldn’t frequent the brothel. Those wretched girls carry disease.”

  Jews, Jews, Joshua thought, everywhere I go there are other Jews to advise me. Clutching. Claiming. I probably wouldn’t even be safe in Senegal. Some big buck, his face reamed with tribal scars, his voice whiny, would drop out of his banana tree to grab my hand and say “Shalom Aleichem.”

  Meanwhile, there was Dr. Dr. Mueller to cope with.

  Mueller and Joshua, in common with the few foreigners and the artillery officers billeted in San Antonio, habitually ate breakfast at the Café Formentor overlooking the bay. Everybody had a favorite table on the terrace, a place that was his by common consent. The next morning Joshua arrived earlier than usual and, to his own astonishment, sat down to read his mail at Dr. Dr. Mueller’s table. Frau Weiss at one table and two army officers at another had already finished their breakfast, but as Mueller could now be seen approaching, still a small figure in the haze at the far side of the bay, they stayed to watch. Joshua hastily ordered a plate of fried eggs, so that he would at least have a knife beside him. He ate defiantly slowly to begin with, then quickly, finally gobbling, because just as Dr. Dr. Mueller rounded the rim of the bay, he was so scared that he had all but decided to yield the table to him, pretending that he had sat there by mistake. At last Mueller loomed over him, his smile condescending. “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning.”

  Dr. Dr. Mueller pulled up another wicker chair and joined him at the table. Joshua couldn’t tell what the officers were thinking, they wore sunglasses, but he assumed they felt he was acting in bad taste. Frau Weiss’s eyes were radiant.

  Still smiling, Dr. Dr. Mueller said, “Where are my hands?”

  “What?”

  “My hands.”

  “Under the table,” Joshua said, baffled.

  “If I held a gun there, I could shoot your balls off, but look,” he said, laughing as he placed his hands on the table, “empty.”

  7

  “WELL. YEAH. RIGHT. CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT A JOB’S comforter is?”

  Groping, he said, “A blanket, kind of?”

  “You haven’t been reading it,” he said, exasperated.

  “What?”

  “The Book.” And he held it up, markers sticking out here and there.

  “I’m a working man now, but.”

  “You call that door-to-door bit a job? Shit. A Job’s comforter is like if Uncle Oscar comes by unexpected on a Friday night and tells me if I’m still up shit’s creek without a paddle it’s because I was not much to begin with. How old are you now, Josh?”

  “Sixteen. And I still haven’t been laid,” he protested.

  “Fucking’s not on today’s agenda,” Reuben said, opening a bottle of Labatt’s, “and besides I’ve already taught you everything you got to know about it.”

  “Like hell you have.”

  “Have you really not been laid yet?” he asked, astonished.

  Joshua nodded.

  “You must be doing something wrong.”

  “Yeah, but what?”

  “God damn it, Josh, these are the Days of Awe and this time we are going to the fucking synagogue and right now we are going to concentrate on the Jewish tradition. Now, to come clean,” he said jauntily, “I’m not very Jewish.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not very’? Either you are or you aren’t.”

  “Boy, are you ever ignorant. Take the niggers, for instance. They come in all shades from coal-black, through shit-brown, like Sugar Ray, to just a touch of the tan. Well, it’s the same with the Hebes. Like, if you’re very Jewish, you wear one of those crazy fur hats and sidecurls and a beard. You know the type. But me, I was just born a Hebe like some guys come into this world with a clubfoot or a stammer.”

  “Hey, you make it sound like it was a real disadvantage.”

  “Well, yeah. Right. We’re not very popular.”

  “Why not?”

  “Will you stop being so difficult and maybe show a little appreciation.”

  “For what?”

  “I never had the benefit of a religious education like I’m giving you,” he said, sulking a little.

  “Why aren’t we popular?”

  “Go know.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “Well, one thing they don’t like is that since Biblical times we have a rep for driving a hard bargain. Take old Abraham, for instance. Remember I told you about him and his son? Well, once God told Abraham he wanted to destroy the cities on the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah, because they were wide-open towns, like Montreal before that little fuck Pax Plante cam
e along, full of nightclubs and strip joints and barbotte houses and places where you could screw clean. And Abraham says to him, ‘Well, yeah, right, God, but what if there are fifty righteous men there, would you still take out the cities?’ ‘No, not if there were fifty.’ ‘And if there were only forty-five?’ ‘A deal,’ God says. And not letting go, Abraham says, ‘And what if there were only forty purity-leaguers there, what then?’ ‘O.K.’ Anyway, he finally knocks God down to ten, bargaining with him.”

  “We’re not the only ones who bargain.”

  “Right. Now about Job,” he said, opening his Bible at one of his markers. “You see, if you’d only read these pages you’d learn something. God, for all his faults, ‘Thou shalt not this’ and ‘Thou shalt not that,’ was a betting man. A gambler born. And he had this big believer, Job, rich as they come but nice, and one day he bets the devil that he can take everything away from Job, absolutely everything, and he’s such a mark he’ll still have faith. ‘Oh yeah,’ the devil says, ‘you’ve got a bet.’ They shake on it. And, wham, in one day God, putting in the fix, sees that Job loses his animals and his servants and his house and even all his children, except for one. High stakes, eh? But Job, he’s a tough nut, and he continues to believe in God, though he does come round to contending with him, as they say. Quote, Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, and mighty in power? unquote. Which is really sticking it to God, who naturally loses his temper. ‘Hey there,’ God says, ‘hey you little prick, where were you when I made the world? Can you make thunder? Or rain? Or the rest of it? Like, I’m God, the capo of capos, with one hell of a track record,’ and so forth and so on. And in the end, and this is not to spoil the yarn for you, Job is rewarded by getting back everything he ever had, but double, his cut for helping God win his bet with Satan. But the Book of Job is more than just another gambling story with a happy ending. It has a moral. These are the Days of Awe, remember, and I want you to know that if you continue to believe in God, even when you’re up shit’s creek, it can pay off double at the window. If I really had to explain it, I’d say faith is a lot like playing the stock market or sitting on your luck at the poker table. Your shares may fall through the floor, like in the Great Depression, or you may not be able to buy even a pair of deuces, and if you’re chicken you sell or give up your chair. But if you keep the faith and hold on to, say, GM and other blue chips, well shit, look at what they’re worth today. Get it?”