Heretics

by Leonardo Padura

  “Well, make sure you do a good job of it … Haven’t you gone too far, Elias?”

  “It’s a portrait, Mariam,” he said, trying to downplay the significance of it, and he added, “A portrait made by the Maestro, like the ones belonging to Hakham ben Israel, or Dr. Bueno, who is such good friends with your father.”

  She moved her head, denying something.

  “You know it’s not. This is much more … So what are you going to do now?”

  Elias looked at the pleasant current of the canal’s dark waters, over which was falling the last light of that afternoon in Amsterdam, the good place, the home of freedom.

  “I don’t know. From now on, I don’t know how long the Maestro will continue accepting me as a student … But I can’t imagine my life as a simple printshop worker, or even as the owner of the printshop. Although I make a living moving presses and packing flyers, I won’t be able to help being a painter.”

  “For how long, Elias? Or do you think your secret is invulnerable? Don’t you know that people talk about you because of your close relationship with the Maestro?”

  “And don’t they talk about Ben Israel and the other Jews who are his friends and drink wine and smoke leaves of tobacco with him?”

  “Of course they talk … But they say other things. I only want to tell you to be careful. You spoke to me of a line … But you left that behind long ago … Now let’s go, they’re waiting for me at home for dinner.”

  When Elias went to take her hand, Mariam withdrew it. In silence, they returned to the young girl’s dwelling and Elias Ambrosius understood how far he had crossed the line behind which his religion and his time had confined him.

  * * *

  Elias, dressed in a gray tunic, his hair falling over his shoulders, was watching the Maestro work from his position, behind a table. The young Jew and Paudiss the German apprentice had dedicated two weeks to the work of priming the canvas and, later, to filling in the spaces signaled by the Maestro, applying a greenish ocher and a chestnut color that darkened the main part to black, then working with a matte gray on the columns, the walls, and the arch that would occupy the background of the piece, also delineated by the painter. In the assistants’ work, the entire center and lower part of the space remained intact, in reserve, in which the Maestro now placed the figure of the young man behind the supper table that would reproduce the episode at Emmaus.

  Although the relationship with Mariam had returned to its usual state of warmth, in those days Elias Ambrosius had devoted more time than ever in his life to thinking not about the act he wanted to carry out but rather the ways of practicing his vocation and preserving the balance, precarious but pleasant, in which his life had passed, thanks to the secret in which he had managed to preserve his audacity. It was only in those days that he’d had the true notion of how an adventure that in its origins had had much capriciousness and curiosity, of risky games and innocent tastes, had with time reached a temperature that was becoming more dangerous in the midst of an atmosphere definitively altered by the always more alarming news of the wanderings through Palestine of Sabbatai Zevi, a heretic to many, a lunatic to others, and the Messiah to a growing quantity of hope-filled Jews around the world, who talked of the advent, the return to the Holy Land, and the imminent apocalypse.

  Amsterdam’s rabbinical council lived in a constant state of meetings and tense differences of opinion. The exaltation of rabbis and community leaders reflected the danger in which Zevi and his successful campaign had placed the advantageous state of those welcomed in Amsterdam. Like one thousand six hundred years before, the arrival of a supposed Messiah was viewed with apprehension by the authorities—Jewish, Catholic, Calvinist, Muslim; kings, princes, emirs, and sultans—since the preacher’s messages implied upsetting the order, a break with the status quo, revolution, chaos. The members of the Mahamad summarized the two tendencies running through the community: those who asked for sanity and the preservation of the well-being they had reached, and those who were inclined to abandon it all to put themselves at the command of the Savior. Perhaps, with the exception of the stubborn Ben Israel, who declared left and right the falseness of that possessed demon being sent to exterminate Judaism, all housed the unsettling fear of the inscrutable possibility: What if Zevi was really the anointed and they ignored him as, centuries before, they had ignored the Nazarene? That dramatic internal tension had exploded from the conclaves of the council, and Sabbatai’s defenders and detractors alike expressed their frustration by punishing anyone within their reach. The niddui and the cherem had started to rain down on Amsterdam, distributing excommunications, civil death, a diversity of punishments, and penance for any act challenging orthodoxy. The writings of the young Baruch, son of Miguel de Espinoza, were shredded apart by scholars, and they were already talking about making an example by punishing the heretical writer who questioned even the most sacred principles of Jewish faith and the divine origins of the Book. And in the midst of that explosion of fury, intransigence, fear, and insecurity, the revelation of Elias Ambrosius’s actions could be low-lying fruit. Nearly a temptation.

  Lost in those worries, the young man came back to the reality of the workshop when he heard knocking at the door. His deep knowledge of the customs of the house warned him that it could only be one of a few intimates (or favorites: the boy Titus, the diligent Hendrickje Stoffels) to whom he had conferred the privilege of being able to interrupt him as he worked. That is why he was not surprised when the door opened and he saw the entrance of, hat in hand and a glass of wine in the other, a sword at his waist, a paper folder under his arm, the very elegant gentleman Jan Six, one of the chosen ones. But he felt his heart somersault when, behind the magistrate and poet’s figure, the face became visible of the person he least imagined to find in that place: that of Davide da Mantova.

  The Italian Jew’s departure to his country had greatly contributed to relieving the fascination that this man had prompted in Elias. Convinced besides that approaching that man who was also known as Salom Italia could be deeply unwise, bordering on insolent and, at the same time, hardly beneficial given the convictions that he already possessed, his desire to know the man’s motivations had weakened. And now, like an apparition from the great beyond, the painter was entering the realm where Elias was posing in the role of the Christ of Emmaus.

  The second feeling that overcame the young man in Salom Italia’s presence was rage and frustration when he saw how the Maestro, after greeting Jan Six with the same affection as always, shook the other artist’s hand, smiling at having him in the city again, revealing the existence of previous familiarity, perhaps even intimacy. The third reaction was entirely shock.

  “Davide,” the Maestro said as he finished wiping his hands on his apron, “I would like to introduce you to your compatriot and colleague Elias Ambrosius Montalbo … And be careful, since he could become your competitor.”

  Not even the compliment received, the first public recognition of his work, served to calm Elias’s spirits. But he immediately understood that there was no reason to be worried and many reasons for their meeting to be beneficial. If the Maestro knew Salom Italia before (did he know him when he took him to see Isaac Pinto’s scroll, two, three years before?) and had not even revealed to him the man’s identity, wrapped in the same secret, Elias could have the peace of knowing that his secret was safe in the hands of the Maestro: to everyone, he would still be a servant, one of the many Jews with whom the painter had a relationship.

  Jan Six opened the carafe and Elias diligently obeyed his master’s order to find four clean glasses. “The Venetian ones,” he added as Elias withdrew. But only when he returned to the workshop with four glasses of etched crystal did he understand that his remaining in that place had already been decided by the Maestro. Elias placed the goblets on the low table where the carafe rested (Tuscan wine, from the best vineyards of Artemino, Davide da Mantova informed) and tried to pick up the thread of the conversation, which involved
possible subjects for the etching that the Maestro had promised his friend Six, whose play Medea was ready to be handed in at the printers. Salom Italia, mundane, elegant, relaxed, was proposing ideas that could be productive for the solicited work and offered to bring the Maestro engravings, recently acquired in Venice, with re-creations of classic pictures.

  Standing, Elias Ambrosius could not take his eyes off of that Jew who seemed to enjoy the talk and the wine without a care in the world. At a given point, it was inevitable that the conversation turned to the Maestro’s work in progress, visible on the easel, and the painter explained to the Italian man what his purposes were with that revisitation to a subject that he had worked on at other times.

  “But I have already introduced you to this colleague of yours,” the Maestro then said. “I want to show you what he is capable of doing … So that you don’t think you’re the only Jew who can do this well.” He kept talking as he went to the back of the room and, after removing the stained cloth that covered it, was carrying the panel painted by Elias. The young man who couldn’t help but be shocked by that unveiling for which he had not given permission, anxiously awaited the other painter’s judgment, although first he had to hear Six’s.

  “Your student has talent…” he said, and then turned toward the Italian man to await his judgment.

  “Talent and testicles,” he declared, and for the first time addressed Elias. “It’s a beautiful piece, but very compromising.”

  “As much as an illustrated scroll of Queen Esther,” Elias countered, with a daring and quickness that surprised even himself. The Italian man smiled. Jan Six nodded. The Maestro, against his habit in such situations, remained silent, seemingly willing to enjoy the Israelite controversy.

  “Even heresy has degrees, my friend,” Salom Italia began. “Mine is daring, yours is frontal: you can say all you want that it is a self-portrait, but our wise compatriots will say that you have painted an idol that is adored in Catholic churches—the most prohibited of all.”

  “And I would ask them, upon hearing that judgment, who among them saw that heretic, which of them could confirm what the false Messiah was like … And if he had any similarity to the face painted on the panel, it was because he was Jewish, like me,” and he turned his face toward the Maestro, before concluding, “and no one doubts he was a Jew.”

  Salom Italia raised his glass toward Elias and he clinked his glass against it with all of the delicacy demanded by those expensive Venetian crystals (a gift from Davide da Mantova to the Maestro?), and drank. “I don’t know if you know that there are several conversos here in Amsterdam devoted to art,” Salom Italia continued, “and there is also another Jew, although it appears that he is so infamous as a painter that not even he takes himself seriously.”

  “I know about the conversos but not about that other Jew … But, even if he isn’t good, it is important to me that he paints … And that you also do so.”

  “I am only an aficionado … And seeing your work, I have to take off my hat to you … Do you know how many painters in the city would give their right hand to have a work of theirs worthy of being signed by your Maestro? I would be the first … If I wanted to be a painter. But that is where your biggest problem lies, my friend: if this”—and he pointed at the panel with Elias’s face—“if this is not just one of those miracles that happens sometimes and you manage to paint other works as well, it’s going to be impossible for you to remain in the shadows. Somebody will expose you, or your vanity will be stronger than your fears and you will expose yourself.” Elias looked at the Maestro, in search of a measure against which to calibrate those words charged with the unmistakable feeling of truth.

  “You can paint much more,” the Maestro declared, and Elias felt free; he didn’t know from what at that moment, but free.

  “Is it possible to see some of these pieces?” Jan Six interrupted.

  “Not right now,” Elias responded, as he regretted the decision to have returned the sketchbooks to his house, along with his small canvases and his notebooks, now hidden in the locked tower of the study he inherited from his grandfather.

  “So what would you do, Mr. da Mantova?” the Maestro continued, and Elias refocused his attention on the dialogue. He noticed that this time the Italian man, who up to that point was so sure of himself and so sarcastic, did not smile. He left his cup half full of the aristocratic wine of Artimino (whose vines, he had said at some point, fed the same cellars as the Roman pontiff) and at last responded:

  “Would that a talent like that accompany me, but I do not have it, and that greatly changes my perspective … But if the Blessed One had bathed me in that light, I would not renounce it. If I do not renounce a dimmer one, do you think I would close the doors to that splendor? My friend,” he said, focusing his attention on Elias, “men will not forgive you. Because history has shown us that men enjoy punishing more than accepting, wounding more than alleviating the pains of others, accusing more than understanding … And more so if they have some power. But God is something else: He embodies mercy. And your problem, like mine, is with God and not with the rabbis … And God, remember, is also within us; above all, within us,” he emphasized and continued: “For that reason, I have closed my businesses in Amsterdam and taken my wife with me. Because perhaps the Messiah has arrived. I am not sure, no one can be sure, despite the many signs confirming it. But, in doubt, I vote for the Messiah, and I’m going to place my fortune and my intelligence at his service. If I am mistaken and he turns out to be a fake, then the Holiest One who is within me, blessed may He be, will know that I did it with an open heart, as He asked us to receive His envoy. And if he is the true Messiah, my place has to be at his side. I believe the sons of Israel cannot run the risk of being mistaken and rejecting the one who could be our Savior.”

  * * *

  As the days passed, the commotion grew, threatening to explode. What had begun as a curiosity was starting to take on alarming proportions, and in just a few months, Amsterdam’s Jewish community was living as if it were in a state of war. Several of the richest members of the Nação, led by the affluent Abraham Pereira, decided to close up their businesses, as Davide da Mantova had done, to journey as pilgrims through the Palestinian deserts behind the presumed Messiah. The ones most exalted with the Coming dedicated hours to praying in the synagogue, to purifying themselves with ritual baths, to submitting themselves to long fasts not prescribed by the calendars, and some even handed themselves over to acts of contrition such as lying naked on that year’s much anticipated snows (another sign of the end of time, they said) and, to the horror of men like Menasseh ben Israel, even self-flagellation, in a disproportionate display of Jewish faith.

  Within the Montalbo de Ávila house, two factions in critical contention had been created: on one side was the young Amos, who said he was about to march to Palestine with a group of Eastern Jews led by the Polish rabbi Breslau, and ran around the city proclaiming the imminent end of time; on the other side was Abraham Montalbo, the father, who recommended prudence, since the information that had arrived and kept arriving about Sabbatai Zevi’s sermons and actions seemed, rather than an envoy from the Holiest come to earth, more like those of an insane person: from the most predictable actions, such as declaring that, in one of his many dialogues with Yahweh, God had proclaimed him King of the Jews and had given him the power to forgive all sins, to the most outrageous ones, like his vow to seize the Turkish crown after gathering the tribes for the purpose of getting married, on the banks of the Sambatyon River, to Rebecca, daughter of Moses, who died at the age of thirteen, and whom he had resurrected. Elias, meanwhile, was full of hesitations, but, at least in his house, he tried to maintain a cautious distance from the debates, while he missed the presence of Grandfather Benjamin, the most solid equilibrium the family had had, and whose well-reasoned advice would have helped so much in that dramatic circumstance in which the fate of so many souls could be at play.

  The November afternoon on whi
ch the first ship chartered by Jews left Amsterdam, loaded with more than a hundred people headed toward Palestine’s ports, the young Elias had approached the wharf in the company of his former Hakham. It was a scandal in the Nação that Ben Israel, rising as Zevi’s most heated critic, in recent weeks had advanced significantly in his conversations with the English authorities with whom he soon proposed to discuss in London the readmission of Jews to the island, absent from there since their distant expulsion, three and a half centuries before.

  The port of Amsterdam, always ruled by a frenzied rhythm, on that autumn day seemed definitively crazed. The ordinary traffic of stevedores, sailors, merchants, prostitutes, customs officials, beggars, buyers and sellers of bills of exchange, pickpockets, and traffickers of cheap and especially fake tobacco joined the masses—more motley than usual—of Jews leaving toward Palestine (many of them dressed as if they were already in the land of Canaan); the carriers of trunks, luggage, and packages that would accompany them; and the men and women, the elderly and the children rushing to say goodbye to them; plus the same curious bystanders as always, multiplied by the notoriety of the spectacle, which had been spoken of so much ever since the sale was announced of places on the Genovese brigantine willing to lead them to the self-proclaimed Messiah.

  Hakham ben Israel and his former student, resting on some recently arrived shipments from Indonesia, heard the bell announcing the brigantine’s imminent departure and watched the acceleration of movement in that human ant colony. “Not even in my worst nightmares, and I’ve had many of them, could I have dreamed of something like this,” the teacher said and added: “So much fighting to get to Amsterdam and make a space for ourselves here, so that these fanatics can toss it all aside. The need to believe is one of the seeds of disgrace. And this is going to be a big one … Look, there goes Abraham Pereira with his family. Luckily, his brother Moshe is staying and will keep the academy open … Until Abraham confirms he should depart.” Elias watched the procession formed by the numerous offspring of the rich businessman, one of the men who had brought about the miracle of Sephardic opulence in Amsterdam.