The Poetry of Secrets

by Cambria Gordon

  “I could never take a phrase like that, about an affair of the heart,” began Isabel, “and turn it into something about astronomy. You could, though.”

  Atika grinned at her. “Something tells me you can do anything you set your mind to.”

  “I wish I knew what that was exactly,” Isabel demurred. “If I were Qasmūna, I’d be accepted as a poet and not marriage fodder for a boorish, power-hungry Old Christian.” She squinted up at the sky. “Sometimes I wonder if there’s something more out there, something spiritually greater, that I somehow can’t grasp.”

  “You mean like Allah?”

  Isabel nodded. “Perhaps. All I know is that I feel like an outlier. I don’t fit in to my family’s religion or Spain’s.” As Isabel tamped the fear of the Inquisition further down in her belly, it dawned on her that she now understood Atika’s desire to escape reality. Today she was doing the very same thing. “You figured out the secret, my friend. A simple, nomadic existence where all one needs is a tent and a poem. Maybe I’ll move in with you.”

  Atika finished the last of her bread. “You’re always welcome here.” She took a sip of water from a jug, then offered it to Isabel. “But there’s no armario. You’ll have to give away a few dresses before you move in.”

  Isabel held out the side of her gown. “Believe me, I’m not attached to any of these things.” Isabel was not nearly as enthusiastic as her sister about her wardrobe. To Isabel, the dresses were fussy, laborious garments that took too long to put on in the morning and too much time to untie when she was tired and simply wanted to go to sleep.

  “So is there a boorish Old Christian in your future?” asked Atika.

  Isabel grimaced. “Don Sancho Aguila. I loathe saying his name, let alone the sight of him.”

  “That sounds dreadful. Has a date been set?”

  The water tasted cool in Isabel’s mouth. “I think I bought myself some time. I told him I wanted to wait until I was eighteen. By then maybe he’ll develop leprosy and have to live in a lazar house.”

  “You’re terrible.”

  “If only I’d met Di—” Isabel stopped herself.

  “Who?”

  Oh, all right. She was bursting to tell someone. “Diego Altamirano. Handsome. Educated. Radical. Compassionate. Did I mention handsome?”

  Atika giggled. “He sounds like my Abū.”

  “Abū? I should call you the two As,” said Isabel.

  “He’s a perfume maker and would-be poet.”

  From the way Atika’s eyes glazed over, he was no doubt her lover as well.

  “Maybe you need to have one last tryst before marriage ties you up forever,” said Atika, eyebrows dancing up and down.

  “You read too much poetry.”

  Forever. Isabel couldn’t picture having to carry out her wifely duties with Don Sancho even one time, let alone for the rest of her life. When she imagined showing her nakedness to someone, it was Diego whose face popped into her mind. She flushed and turned away from Atika, not able to look at her friend squarely. These were not thoughts that a proper girl was meant to have in her head.

  Isabel’s eyes roamed the encampment, catching a small figure making her way through the tents, peering in each one. From this distance, it looked exactly like little Rachel Cohen.

  “Rachel?” Isabel called.

  The girl crept closer, surprised at hearing her name.

  Isabel stared. “What in God’s cankers are you doing here?”

  “It’s Mamá!” Rachel cried.

  Despite Papá forbidding her from seeing the Cohens, Isabel walked Rachel home. The young girl was overcome with sadness. Her mother had taken ill, and Isabel’s heart went out to her.

  Yuçe answered the door, surprised to see Isabel.

  “I came to help,” said Isabel.

  Inside, the air felt stale, odorous with something she could not name.

  Rachel ducked between them, darting into the house. “I want to see Mamá!”

  “Hold on,” said Yuçe, holding out his empty palm.

  Rachel handed her brother a small calfskin pouch. “The Gypsy woman said Mamá needs to take a tea of the mixture. It’s dandelion and nettle and fennel and something else, but I forgot.”

  “My mother is resting in the other room,” Yuçe told Isabel.

  When Isabel entered the Cohens’ second room, she had to swallow the sound of surprise that almost escaped from her mouth. Señora Cohen was unrecognizable. Gone was the dark-eyed beauty Isabel had known all her life. Her legs were swollen to three times their size. She lay abed, eye slits barely visible in the cushions of her cheeks. She appeared gigantic, probably weighing at least fifteen stones. Señor Cohen sat in a chair by his wife’s side, holding her hand.

  Señor Cohen smiled wearily. “Isabel. You don’t have to be here. Doctor Cetia is coming soon.”

  Isabel knelt by Señora Cohen’s side. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving. What does the doctor think it is?”

  “Dropsy,” said Señor Cohen. “There have been bouts before, though this is the worst we have seen. It came on suddenly, which is why I sent Rachel for the herbs. We are desperate to try anything if it will help her void the extra fluid she is carrying.”

  “Why don’t I go and prepare the tea tincture and make something for the twins to eat?” suggested Isabel.

  “That would be nice,” said Señor Cohen, watching his wife.

  “I’m not hungry,” said Yuçe, standing up straighter, trying to look older than his eleven years.

  “All the more for me,” said Rachel.

  Señor Cohen lifted his head. “Oh, and Isabel?”

  She turned back at the door. “Yes?”

  “Tell your father that I …” He stopped.

  Isabel waited. Nothing more was forthcoming.

  “That you what, Papá?” asked Yuçe.

  “That … I am sorry for the other night. The way I spoke to him. I am not proud of it.”

  Isabel nodded and left the room. That could not have been easy for him. But she wondered if relaying his message would do any good at all. Her father was the most obstinate person she knew. And there was the other problem of admitting she’d come here against his orders.

  Isabel worked over the hearth, steeping the herbs, boiling eggs. She poured the tea into a glass. Then she set everything on a pewter tray and carried it into the bedroom. Yuçe woke his mother.

  “Who’s that?” murmured Señora Cohen in a thin voice.

  “It’s me, Mamá,” said Yuçe. “Isabel’s here, too.”

  Isabel held the tea to her lips. “This should make you feel better.”

  Señora Cohen’s fingers were so thick and filled with fluid that she could not hold the cup herself. The herbal mixture dribbled out of her mouth.

  “Let me help you sit up straighter, Mamá,” said Yuçe, propping her up.

  Señora Cohen managed to get down most of the warm liquid before she laid her head back, heavy on the pallet. “Gracias,” she said, before drifting off to sleep again.

  While Rachel ate, Yuçe eyed the eggs.

  “You’re sure you’re not hungry?” asked Isabel.

  He shook his head.

  Isabel pointed to a stack of papers, stitched together between leather covers, open on Señor Cohen’s lap. “Is her illness so serious that you have to pray for her?” she asked him quietly.

  “This is not a prayer book,” Señor Cohen answered testily. “It is the Talmud.”

  An actual Talmud? If only Abuela were here!

  Isabel peered closer at the book. “Why are the texts different sizes?” Her voice was quiet, out of respect for Señora Cohen, but she could not help her curiosity.

  Señor Cohen said nothing.

  “Why won’t you answer her, Papá?”

  His father shifted in the chair, remaining silent.

  “The Talmud is different from the Hebrew Bible,” began Yuçe, explaining it to her himself. “It’s the oral law, full of rules and opinions. The reason t
he texts don’t match is that different scholars have added their commentary. The main text, or Mishnah, is in the center, but over hundreds of years, other rabbis wrote their own interpretations.”

  “How is it different from the Torah?” she asked.

  Señor Cohen crossed his arms and huffed.

  Yuçe paid him no mind. “The Torah is the story of our people, but it does not go into much detail about certain customs. For instance, we know to take four species of trees during Sucot and make a booth, but we do not know which ones. The Talmud tells us specifically how to carry out God’s commandments. Is that not right, Papá?”

  Señor Cohen closed the book and did not look at them, keeping his eyes on his ailing wife.

  “I’m going outside to play escondido,” announced Rachel. “Want to come, Yuçe?”

  He glanced at Isabel. “I’d rather keep watch over Mamá.”

  Isabel wanted to know more about the Talmud. “If it’s oral, why does it have to be written down at all?”

  Yuçe grinned. “You ask smart questions. For hundreds of years, the Talmud wasn’t written. Jews passed it down through generations by retelling the stories. But after the second temple was destroyed, with all our people spread through Europe, Africa, and Asia, we needed to have one book guiding us on Jewish life so that traditions wouldn’t be lost.”

  Señor Cohen rose abruptly from his chair. “When the doctor arrives, come find me in the workroom.”

  After he left, Yuçe called after him. “Papá, you forgot your book.”

  “I’ve read enough for today,” came Señor Cohen’s answer. “Return it to the sinagoga when Isabel leaves.” Then he slammed the front door.

  “Madre mía,” said Isabel when he left. “He still seems angry at my father. At our whole family.”

  “I think he doesn’t like women discussing the Talmud,” said Yuçe.

  And a baptized woman at that, thought Isabel. It struck her that this was a major difference between Christianity and Judaism—the idea of women scholars. Nuns prayed all day long. Many must be experts in the Bible in order to do their daily devotions. And females had been canonized as saints since the first century. Yet the Jews did not allow a woman to study. “My abuela seems to know a lot about the Talmud and she’s a woman. The granddaughter of a rabbi, though.”

  “That’s unusual,” admitted Yuçe. “The women don’t come to the sinagoga often. When they do, the men sit apart from them, and they’re separated by a curtain. In larger cities with bigger sinagogas, the women sit up in the balcony, far away from the pulpit.”

  “So according to Jewish tradition, women are not allowed to study the ancient scroll and must be separated from men at sinagoga?”

  Yuçe shrugged. “That’s how it’s always been.”

  “It’s as if they believe that women are somehow less than men.” It was the same way she was made to feel as a converso. That she was somehow not as Spanish as an Old Christian.

  “I’ve never thought of it like that before.” Yuçe picked up his father’s bound pages. He pointed to a chunk of tiny text on the left, separated from the center by a thin white line of parchment. “See this section?”

  Her interest in what was directly in front of her quelled her outrage. She ran her fingertip down the stack of strange words. “The words are aligned so perfectly.”

  “It’s made by a printing press using Rashi script. Have you heard of Rashi?”

  Isabel shook her head.

  “He was one of the greatest voices of our people. But so as not to confuse his handwriting with the more square-shaped letters in the Torah scroll, the printers made a typeface using slanted letters that looked just like it came from Rashi’s own hand.”

  Isabel’s eyes lit up. “This is entirely different than the printed Gutenberg Bible. With Rashi script, you can almost see the man who composed the words.”

  “You remind me of an old Jewish man, Isabel.”

  She laughed. “What are you talking about?”

  “You question things. That’s just what the Talmud is. One giant conversation full of questions and answers that’s taken place over hundreds of years.”

  Isabel gazed longingly at the book in his hand. She touched her finger to the page again. She felt the same sense of awe as when she first saw Qasmūna’s poem. The young poetess and Rashi were real people. Who lived full lives. Who feared. Who celebrated. Who loved.

  Isabel felt Yuçe’s eyes on her.

  “What?”

  He blushed. “Nothing.”

  But Isabel could see it plain as day. He gazed at her the same way she was looking at the Talmud. Drinking her in. She must be careful with his feelings. He was still a boy.

  “Would you like to borrow it?” asked Yuçe abruptly.

  “Oh, I could never,” protested Isabel. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?”

  Isabel immediately regretted using that word. She didn’t want to be the one teaching Yuçe about the Inquisition if he didn’t already know. Anti-Jewish laws were one thing. Condemning conversos for Judaizing and burning them at the stake was another thing entirely. He may have flights of fancy toward her, but he was still innocent at heart. Let him think Spain was still safe. “I just mean, it’s so sacred. What if something happened to it? What would your rabbi say?”

  “I can make my own decisions. I’m almost at the age of majority, thirteen, when I can wrap tefillin. I even fasted until the third hour after noon on Yom Kippur this year.” He was practically preening like a peacock, trying to impress her.

  She forced her expression to remain as serious as he was, even though she wanted to giggle. “Our family fasts as well. I know how hard it is to go without food for a whole day.” It was always around the start of Lent. Sometimes they fasted again, one month later, before Easter Sunday. Isabel never knew why, as the other Old Christian girls she knew didn’t do it. Now that Yuçe mentioned it, perhaps fasting at certain festivals was a custom held over from when her great-grandparents were practicing Jews.

  They both watched Señora Cohen sleep, her breathing shallow and labored. Then, abruptly, Yuçe handed her the book. “Por favor, Isabel.”

  “Really?”

  He blushed again. “It would be my honor.”

  With the Talmud actually in her hands, it was hard to refuse. How Abuela would love to see one! “Well, all right. Just for a short while.” She looked around the señora’s bed. “Do you have something I could wrap it up in?”

  He darted out of the room and returned with a kitchen rag. He wrapped up the book in the white cloth. “I know you’ll take good care of it.” She nodded, picturing the canister where Abuela had hidden Qasmūna’s poem.

  She placed the wrapped book underneath her mantle, folded at her feet.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Isabel sat at Señora Cohen’s bedside. When the doctor came, Yuçe fetched Señor Cohen and brought him into the bedroom. After the examination, Doctor Cetia asked Yuçe to bring him a bowl for some bloodletting. He made a small slice in the pale skin, underneath Señora Cohen’s forearm. Isabel closed her eyes, but she could hear the blood dripping into the shallow wooden container.

  When Isabel finally left before dark, Señora Cohen’s condition had not improved.

  The graying sky held little light as Isabel knelt by the shed in back of her house. She easily found the spot where Abuela had buried Qasmūna’s poem. The dirt was still overturned, like a newly dug grave. She pulled out the now empty tin canister, but Yuçe’s Talmud wouldn’t fit inside. What had she been thinking? The spine was nearly as wide as her palm. And unlike the rolled parchment of the poem, the Talmud wouldn’t bend. It appeared that inside the leather bindings were sewn two hard pasteboard attachments. She’d have to bring it in the house and remove those two bricks in the cellar where she had seen Papá hide his book of blessings.

  “What do you have there?”

  Isabel jumped. Beatriz was behind her.

  “Why must you always sn
eak up on me like that?” said Isabel.

  Beatriz looked poised for a fight. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “You didn’t answer mine.”

  The sisters glared at each other.

  “It’s none of your concern,” said Isabel finally. She held the book to her chest so Beatriz wouldn’t notice the Hebrew writing.

  “Let me see!” said Beatriz, lunging at Isabel.

  Isabel swerved and the Talmud dropped. “Now look what you’ve done!” Isabel brushed off dirt from its spine. “Have you no decency?”

  “Discúlpeme,” she said, though Isabel knew she was not sorry at all. “That’s a Jewish book, is it not?”

  Isabel ground her top and bottom teeth. Not again. She had grown weary of her sister’s suspicions. She had no more fans or jewels with which to bribe her. “What if it is? Are you going to turn me in to the Inquisition?”

  Beatriz hesitated.

  “Are you?”

  “Do you think there’s some powerful message from God in there?” Beatriz asked instead.

  This gave Isabel pause. She wasn’t sure what magic it held. But she liked having it in her possession. Knowing Abuela would read it to her if she asked brought her comfort. “Perhaps.”

  “Which God?” asked Beatriz. “The God of Moses or el Dios?”

  Isabel sighed. “I don’t know, honestly. I used to think the poets were my Gods. But they can’t explain Torquemada. Why he preaches those vile words. They can’t explain all this hatefulness.”

  “According to the gospel of John, ‘Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.’ ”

  “Then the Inquisition spies are in darkness. They don’t think of us as their brethren. They never have.”

  “You could be an object of their light now that you’ve received the baptismal waters.” Beatriz looked again at the Talmud in Isabel’s arms. “I wish you were more curious about our Bible.” This was no longer an attack. Beatriz seemed genuinely hurt that her beloved New Testament wasn’t the object Isabel was holding.

  Why didn’t Isabel want to learn more about the teachings the Dominicans espoused each Sunday? That Gospel her sister had just quoted was rather lovely. If Isabel were really being honest, it was because Christianity felt too intertwined with the monarchy. The fears that governed their lives as conversos each day were becoming so overpowering she felt like they might squeeze the breath out of her. “I guess it doesn’t speak to the freedom I’d like to live by.”