The Ghost of Hannah Mendes

by Naomi Ragen

  Ortega’s job was to carry piles of the material from the storeroom to the priest’s study, and back again. It was his habit to quietly filch a few pages here and there from things that looked old and valuable. His decision to steal an entire manuscript—that is, whatever pages there were, the priest hadn’t catalogued it yet, so there is no way of knowing—was probably a result of the good price he’d been offered for the pages he’d showed the dealer. (Note: The dangers of announcing you’ll pay any price for a manuscript!)

  Anyhow, the final point of it all is that young Mr. Ortega, having filled his coffers with ill-gotten gains, has vanished. Father Serrano says the boy did contact his mother once or twice, but even that has stopped.

  We are sort of dancing around each other: Father Serrano is trying not to mind that we have in our possession property stolen from his church archives. He is also gently probing what we plan to do to young Ortega, if and when we get our hands on him (he’s a local boy, after all). We have hinted that we have no claim against the church for not turning over the material to international authorities after the war, and that the young thief doesn’t interest us, only his booty.

  I think the priest would like to be done with this, and with us, as soon as possible. And who can blame him? In the meantime, he’s promised to pump the boy’s mother for clues.

  As you can see, a bit sticky.

  So, we will wait a few days, then decide where next.

  I find that I am quite depressed about it all. It’s not like me to be wandering around impulsively in strange countries where I do not speak the language. I’m ignoring your itinerary (but it’s for your own good). For the very first time since I began this, Gran, I am wondering if it is all doomed to failure, and if the manuscript will slip through our fingers once again for another few hundred years.

  This is painful to think about, especially since I know the next part is a really important one. I’m afraid it’s the part where something happens to Francisco. Gracia, after all, called herself a “young widow.” I think I was dreading reading this part, as much as I am curious to know what happened to him.

  I will write you soon, hopefully with better news.

  My love,

  Francesca

  P.S. Still not a word from Suzanne?

  Catherine put down the letter and closed her eyes, feeling the tubes in her arm fill her veins with the medicinal poison they promised would not kill her. Yet.

  I don’t need to read the manuscript to know that part of Gracia’s life, she thought.

  I can see her as if she is sitting here across the room. A pale, fractured light comes through the wooden grilles that shade her windows from the harsh Portuguese summers. It falls on her hands, gripped in her lap; hands that are smooth with youth and yet wrinkled with the tension of a grief that startles her body and numbs her mind.

  Her eyes are vacant, staring across to where her husband’s body lies draped in black, surrounded by a hundred small candles whose wax drips like solid tears, accumulating on the cold, gray granite. She is waiting for the inevitable steps of the men who will come to carry him down that wide stone staircase and out of the house, never again to enter there or any part of that world of which she is still—to her heartbreak—an unsevered part.

  She will wait this way, keening the melodies of mourning remembered from her mother’s passing, and then her father’s, until the other women join her and the keening becomes the shrill scream of grief, its rising volume a kind of homage.

  And when they arrive, she will defy them, those learned men who insist she must not come to the cemetery to see his precious body receive the thudding shovels of earth. Oh, the horror of that first heavy clod that lands just above his breast! She will take a step of rage toward the shoveler, until she remembers it is Diogo, her husband’s own beloved brother, whose eyes shift, catching her own in a moment of terrible acknowledgment.

  She would have closed her eyes then, reliving the rituals performed to honor the dead, remembering how his tall, beautiful body was purified seven times with clean water mixed with myrtle leaves; how his soft black hair was washed and left gleaming. And her thoughts, the only way she can still be near him, will not wander until once again everything is erased by the outrageous sound of the earth falling from the shovels, a sound that grips her heart with brutal fingers, until that last thud—that last terrible, unbelievable, unbearable thud—finishes the growing mound.

  Francisco.

  Carl.

  I can see her reach for the lace of her collar, the embroidered velvet of her overmantle, ripping both in grief.

  It is only the child who will keep her sane, reminding her that there is still something of him left in the world. She will feel a fresh spasm of grief thinking of Reyna, remembering that because of her youth she did not kiss her father’s hand nor feel it rest upon her head; neither did she recite the prayer for the dead. And her love for the child will burn in her like a slow, warming fire, reminding her of her duty, demanding she must rise up in the morning, and open her blouse and give her warm breast to her baby’s sweet, demanding mouth.

  For a moment, she will feel confusion, thinking of the child’s warmth and the cold grave wherein her husband lies. Only when she sits by the grave and talks earnestly with Francisco will she hear his voice explain so clearly what it is she must now do.

  Does she plead with him, or accept? I think she pleads. Her strength comes later. There, with the scent of the newly turned earth still fresh in her nostrils, she longs for that moment she can join him, wishing away the long years that are ahead.

  But soon she will find the years cannot be wished away. That they are slow. Oh, how inexorably slow!

  Afterward, there will be the seudat hav’ra ah, and she will have the strange sensation of sitting on the floor eating eggs, olives, and bread while the mourner’s candle burns in front of her, and the visitors come in an endless stream, whispering: “May you know no further sorrow. May the deceased have eternal peace and may he pray on behalf of the mourners that they have good health and patience.”

  The meldados, the sacred learning sessions in honor of the dead, would begin: corte de mes, corte de siete meses, corte de nueve meses, and at the beginning of each, a candle would have been lit, helping the soul to rise higher and higher. She would have seen food was served to the poor, and that the old, bearded men whose chanting filled the house were given raisins, drinks, and biscochatas.

  Diogo would have said kaddish secretly. There was no one else. And she would have mourned that she herself was not permitted to say it for him herself. Mourned, but not raged. She would have bowed her head in obedience to all the customs and rituals demanded by her true faith, despite the heartbreak, the dangers, the pairs of curious eyes among the mourners who would have taken in the unChristian rites, along with the enormous wealth of the young widow and her baby daughter.

  And soon the Grand Inquisitor of Portugal would have been notified of the rich pickings to be had, and the many witnesses to be called, and the easy case to be made. Like locusts, they would have been upon her, depriving her of everything she owned, including her only child, including her very life.

  But that did not happen. She survived. She escaped.

  She had to. She had a child to protect, didn’t she? And all that her husband had worked for, given his life for, the wealth to buy their freedom?

  She was twenty-six years old when he died. The same year the Inquisition was established in Portugal.

  Catherine opened her eyes, filled with nausea and a growing sense of anguished discomfort.

  How had she survived?

  29

  It was an ancient garden, the kind that seemed to have been there always, with man and woman arriving much later and being of little importance. The palms, like bearded old men, touched the broken clouds, and the majestic eucalyptus peered down with the indifferent calm of fairy-tale giants. The sea, empty and calm as a wise blue eye, winked.

  Gabriel held Suzanne’
s hand in both of his as they sat looking out at the wide horizon, watching the moments pass through the changing light and color of the sky. And as they sat, people turned their heads to look at them.

  Wherever they went, people stared. They were the kind of couple that made you smile and secretly feel a bit desolate, so perfectly were they matched: the height, the slim, angular beauty, the flawless features. They seemed like a kind of natural aristocracy selected by forces that couldn’t be argued with. Even their hair—his dark blond, hers coppery gold—seemed touched by mythic crowns.

  He smoothed back her hair and kissed her at the temple, his warm lips making the sound of her beating heart suddenly loud and real in her ears.

  “Suzanne, marry me!”

  She reached up, holding her palms against his cheeks, staring into his eyes. And then she turned away from him.

  “When I was a little kid, I had a garden,” she began, leaning her back against his chest, the top of her head touching his chin. “It was just a small patch of ground in front of the house. But the soil was good and I watered it well and almost everything I planted grew.

  “I remember the seed packets—all kinds of strange and exotic plants from Australia and Africa and South America. I used to just open them up and fling them on the ground like dust, without digging any kind of neat furrows or sticking in little signs. And every spring I would see strange little green heads cutting through the earth, and I never knew if it was the beginning of something wonderful or just weeds, so I couldn’t bear to tear anything out of the ground. I kept waiting and watering, hoping they’d bloom. Sometimes I was disappointed, but mostly not. The colors of the flowers were unimaginable: periwinkle blue, deep apricot, mauve, scarlet, wild plum. And every single one that bloomed was a surprise and a gift.

  “Eventually, of course, the weeds just got out of hand. They choked the old plants, and wouldn’t let the new ones root deeply enough.”

  He touched her face, turning it toward him. His eyes were troubled.

  She took a deep breath. “There have been so many beginnings in my life. Things sprouting and full of promise. So many of them have turned out to be weeds.”

  His eyes were touched with fear. “What is it?”

  “I just don’t know…I don’t know if I can do this. If I can be the person to fill that place at the table and in the front pews of the women’s section…”

  “You don’t like my family?”

  “I do! I do like them all! But that doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? I’ve been fighting this my whole life. I don’t want to sink into some little round hole that’s been dug out for me. I can’t just commit myself to doing things out of a love for you. It has to be real. To be me.”

  “You have to know I would never force you to do anything you didn’t want to! But I can’t change who I am, or the things that matter to me. Suzanne, Suzanne, what are you afraid of?”

  I don’t know, she thought. Not really. Except that everything was moving so fast in a direction she had long ago rejected.

  She pictured her apartment in the village; the faces of the different men she had known over the past year; Oreo cookies and ratty bathrobes. None of it made sense if she attached Gabriel to the picture.

  “I don’t want to be a rich Jewish doctor’s wife who shops at Harrod’s! I don’t know if I want children! And if I do, I’m not sure I’d want them dressed up in white shirts and skullcaps, standing at the front of the synagogue getting a heavy scroll of law dropped on them.”

  “And if nothing at all is demanded of a child, if nothing at all is handed to him, is he better off?” he asked her quietly.

  She dropped his hands and stood up tensely. “Look, you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  He stretched his legs and put his hands in his pockets, looking down at the ground. “I was never handed anything, except maybe tennis rackets and croquet sticks! Sports. Now that was important! Every child gets something thrown at him. At home, we behaved like lapsed Anglicans. I didn’t even know I was Jewish until after my mother’s death and meeting Aunt Claudina. My parents thought it was irrelevant—more—embarrassing.

  “The week after my mother died, my father took me to Gibraltar to be with her family. We sat on the floor, we lit candles and had study sessions for her soul. It was like being pulled down into some quicksand of primitive emotion. I felt as if I was going to suffocate. But then something happened to me. It wasn’t so much participating in the rituals themselves as it was the feeling of being part of a tribe; of feeling for the first time that I was involved in something authentic, instead of all this outward posturing at being the perfect Etonian, English gentleman. This was my place. These were my people. My culture. Who I really was. I want my…our…children to have that.”

  She turned to him, and his solid reality almost broke her. It was laughable, really, the audacity of thinking she still had a real choice. She couldn’t imagine being parted from him. But just at the moment when her whole being was ready to give in, something deeper took hold: a stubbornness that screamed “foul” like an enraged and discarded mistress.

  She walked away, looking out at the sea. Then, suddenly, she turned to face him: “Gabriel, why isn’t your father here?”

  “My father,” he swallowed hard, “is not welcome here.”

  There was a short, stunned silence.

  “Why not?”

  “After my mother died, he remarried. The woman was of a different faith. To please her, he converted.”

  She shrugged. “What difference does that make?”

  He stared at her, and for the first time in their relationship, his eyes were cool.

  “What difference does it make if the few remaining bald eagles mate with swans and die out? Read the statistics. We’re a dying breed.”

  She didn’t know what to say.

  “I knew about your mother’s intermarriage,” he continued, “and about your upbringing when Marius suggested setting us up to meet. It worried me. But Suzanne, I saw you this weekend. You’re as much a part of all this as I am. If you’d just stop fighting it…”

  She stood stock-still, the color draining from her face.

  “Marius set us up?” she said dully, her eyes glassy with shock.

  “Well, indirectly. It was actually your grandmother’s and Alex Serouya’s idea.”

  “My grandmother…. You mean, none of this was an accident? That night when you came to our restaurant…?”

  “I thought you knew,” he said, his tone taking on a slight edge of caution as he watched color suddenly flood her pale face.

  No! she thought. No, no, no, no, no…. She looked across at him, her eyes full of tears. Then she laughed, almost hysterically. “And I thought it was destiny, a ghost!”

  “Suzanne, don’t!” He tried to gather her in his arms.

  “NO!” She shrugged him off.

  “I don’t understand. Why are you so offended? This is very usual among Sephardic families. Everyone in Gibraltar gets married this way. Is it so uncommon in your country?”

  In my country, she thought. In New York City, in the Village, where the phrase “Sephardic family” gave off the same musty, anachronistic odor as “Plains Indian.” Oh, yes. All the time. “Did the matchmaker get his fee already? I hope you paid him well. After all, what a find!” she said with frozen contempt, “Not only a Nasi, but also a da Costa!”

  “Suzanne! You’re being foolish! There was no question of that after we’d met! It would have made no difference to me who your family was. Suzanne!”

  But she was already halfway down the road, hailing a taxi.

  “Suzanne!” he called, disbelieving, unable to move. He could see her stiff back flinch as she climbed into the backseat, slamming the door behind her.

  30

  Loose manuscript pages, wrapped in newspaper, inside an old leather backpack filled with tangerines carried by Juan Martinez Ortega as he crosses the border to Portugal on his way to the docks of Lisbon to await an ou
tward-bound freighter.

  We had seen conversos butchered in Gouvea, Alemtejo, and throughout the land of Portugal after the earthquake that hit Lisbon in 1521, destroying the city of Santarem. The priests had blamed it on those who continued to Judaize, and King João had seized the unrest to press his purpose: the introduction of the Inquisition into Portugal.

  I saw the handwriting on the wall. The time had come to keep the sacred oath I had made to Francisco as he lay dying. Nothing but G-d’s Almighty hand itself would stay me from my purpose.

  It was no simple task. Royal decree forbade us to leave the country if our destination be some land where the hand of the Church held no power. Sea captains risked losing their lives, as well as their ships, if New Christians were found aboard heading for the lands of the Moors, or those parts of Italy outside the Holy Roman Empire.

  We gathered our belongings—those treasure chests of jewels and gold that were the fair profits of the House of Mendes in Lisbon. The rest—our great household—we left behind, intending to transfer it at a later date. Passage was duly booked for myself, Reyna, my sister, Brianda, my nephew Joseph, and several servants.

  My sister was included in our party not because of any mutual desire on either of our parts. She’d agreed to come simply because she disliked her life in my brother’s household, with its many children and chores. I agreed to take her because I understood my duty: Brianda was still of marriageable age. It was my obligation to save her from some disastrous Old Christian attachment that might come about were she left to her own devices.

  More important, I had a duty to the family. Like wolves, Inquisitors would invariably pounce upon a New Christian family’s most vulnerable member, in the hope of easily frightening them into a betrayal of all the family secrets. What might Brianda reveal at just the mere sight of the rack?