A Guide for the Perplexed

by Jonathan Levi

  At sunset, I bathed carefully, dressed in a local cotton tent, and rang for a taxi. It was fully dark as we drove up the hill of the Alhambra, up the narrow Cuesta de Gomerez, the gift shops and guitar garages shuttered against the night. Groups of fives and sevens strolled through the Alameda, past the Puerta de las Granadas, the battlements of the Alhambra illuminated for midsummer assignations. A regiment of German school-children sat under a plane tree—Eurorock on a boombox.

  The taxi dropped me at the purple keep of the Hotel Alhambra Palace. From the entrance of the hotel, the city dropped away into the precinct of the Catholic God, the domes and spires of Santo Domingo, the Catedral, the Capilla Real, the ornate restaurants of the archbishop and his minions. The heights were reserved for Moorish nostalgia and unreconstructed skepticism. I had been lunched at the Carmen de San Francisco on several occasions by admirers who struck up conversations in the Patio de Lindaraja of the Alhambra. University professors, begranted artists, jacket-and-tie bohemians who climbed the hill on the backs of their patron saints, Lorca and de Falla. I would listen attentively, ask questions designed to flatter. In return, food, company. These were the dark days, Ben, before success.

  The Carmen was tucked one hundred yards down a narrow-walled alley. The parking guard at the hotel stared without embarrassment—I thought of asking him to walk me but couldn’t think of the Spanish words to make the request legitimate. The lanterns that gripped the walls of the alley lit the jagged shards of glass along the top of the private edge and dropped insignificant puddles into the darkness on the public side—no protection from gypsies and muggers, real or imagined. Small light, high drama—Sammy L.’s typical Spain. I was frightened, excited. My journalistic curiosity hadn’t entirely run down the plughole of my placenta. Sammy L. never spoke of individual clients, only genus and specie. This might be my only opportunity to observe him in action. Once the baby was born, I’d fly back to England, the opportunity would be lost.

  The Carmen de San Francisco showed only a small wooden door onto the alley. Inside, a vineyard of candlelit rooms draped the side of the hill into the lights of downtown Granada. The client was waiting for me at a windowside table.

  “You are exquisite,” he said, by way of introduction, staring deep into my belly.

  “I am due this week,” I explained. You never know how much you need to explain to men. He looked up into my face for the first time. Kind eyes, a small moustache, long fingers stroking, hiding a weak chin, a wedding band. An American. I had dined with worse.

  We were sitting at a table for four, but there were no jackets, wraps, purses, or disarranged cutlery to indicate any other companions. I had expected Sammy L., had expected, perhaps, a wife, a girlfriend, that I was making up a four, not a three, certainly not a two. He offered the pertinent details—forty-eight years old, married, for the second time, a photo of a Subaru, a golden retriever. He was a professor of Medical Ethics attached to a minor hospital outside New York. He ordered a bottle of Sanz while we waited, drank it alone. And when it was clear that Sammy L. had failed to join us, ordered a meal for himself, a simple consommé for me.

  We ate in silence, his choice, I assumed. My thoughts revolved so completely around my active center that there was little room, at the time, for annoyance at Sammy L.’s desertion. The American was pleasant enough, didn’t slurp or belch. The meal would be over soon, he would deposit me in a taxi. I would be in bed by midnight.

  “Sammy L. told you about my wife?” The American wiped the thin corners of his moustache with an edge of linen.

  “Sammy L. told me absolutely nothing,” I answered, hoping that he was one of those Americans who can’t drink coffee after noon.

  “A year ago this month, my wife and I were on vacation, right here, at the Alhambra Palace. She was in her eighth month, but the doctor told her it was okay to travel. We took it easy—taxis, siestas.”

  “I’m very sorry,” I said, guessing at the rest, wanting to break off the line of conversation immediately.

  “I miss her very much.” He called for the bill.

  “Your first wife?”

  “My second, and current. She’s fine, fine.” He patted my hand. “Thanks for the concern.” We waited. He paid. We stood, walked to the door. “She’ll never know your joy, that’s all.”

  Outside the air was fresher, the sky darker. From behind the wall, the rinsing of dishes in the kitchen, the opening theme from Dallas. The American seemed in cheerful spirits, in spite of his confession, and suggested a walk through the lamplit gardens of the Alhambra. I had asked Sammy L. once, without success, to drive me up to the fortress at night, to see the moon over the trellised walls—the moon that figured so large in the folktales Washington Irving had collected during the summer he passed in the governor’s apartment above the Patio de la Reja. I wanted, before I left Granada, to see the moon in the alabaster fountain, where the teenage virgin Jacinta was given the magical silver lute by the phantom of the Princess Zorahayda.

  The Lute of Zorahayda. The Lute of Kima. Ben, that story of Esau’s—it’s in the Irving collection. Irving leaves out the Jews, as far as I can remember, but otherwise tells much the same story. Could Irving be a descendant of Esau? Could Esau be a descendant of Irving? Did both men retell ancient folktales or create history?

  I took the American’s arm to guide him along the northern wall to the Torre de las Infantas, where Zorahayda last saw her sisters flee down the ravine with their Catholic—according to Irving—Catholic cavaliers. We leaned over the narrow parapet, gazing out to the Sacromonte, where the gypsy caves were beginning to glow with the tourist trade.

  “You’re very nice to come out like this.” The American turned to me. I smiled with a raise of the eyebrows and pointed out the small palace of the Generalife, across a tiny bridge.

  Suddenly the American was trying to kiss me, reaching up with one long-fingered hand for my chin, reaching down with the other to caress my belly.

  “Please,” I said, pushing him gently away. “Your wife—” The most effective tranquillizer I know.

  “I thought Sammy L. told you,” he said, immediately disengaging.

  “Told me what?” And where was Sammy L., after all?

  “Oh, please!” I could see he was embarrassed in his academic way.

  “I think”—I tried to put it kindly—“we have both been taken for a ride.” But I wondered what Sammy L. had told the American about me, my physical, my emotional state. I began to walk along the parapet away from the tower, but the path was blocked by a wheelbarrow and a ribbon barrier—“Junta Andalucía.”

  “Holland!” His voice. I turned. It was August in Granada, but the call, the single name—September, the Heath, Hook. But where Hook’s voice had warmed me back across the road into my house and mystery, the American’s call struck only icy dread into my belly—the reverse, the opposite, the evil.

  He reached, I recoiled, both of us kicked, but I had to do the running. Under the ribbon, sliding down loose gravel and ancient bricks to the grass channel ten feet below. A hole in the wall barely large enough for my belly. Down, steeper than this Subida, if less fragrant, not stopping to look around until I reached the dirt path through the ravine and across the Darro. This time, no ancestors of Esau, no itinerant musicians to pick me up, melt me down, and carry me back to Córdoba.

  Half an hour, an hour, ten minutes later, Sor Margarita answered my ringing. I was shaking, crying. Yet I had my handbag, I had my shoes. I was unscratched, unbruised, as if some unseen hand—Mohammed el-Hayzari, Kima, Zorahayda?—had picked me up and tossed me gently, with love and regret, from the ramparts of the Alhambra to the river Darro.

  I was led to a bed, undressed, and bathed. Sor Juana closed the door gently and gave me her hand.

  “When did your contractions begin?” I hadn’t noticed. “It will be soon,” she said. “Try to get some rest.”

  The room was filled with portraits of female saints. I felt strong, protected, impervious to a
ll men. Jesus, it seemed, was even barred from the room, the bare crucifix on the wall protected only by a philosophical Virgin. The walls were cool stone, bare of whitewash, clean, not sanitized. The low ceiling was comforting, the single shuttered window peaceful. A young novice sat by the door saying her rosary. Every bead or so, she glanced quickly up at me.

  “Are you praying for me?” I asked.

  “For your baby.”

  I closed my eyes and thought of my sister’s phone number. Three days in the convent, I thought. Enough time for her to wire me the plane fare back to England. I could leave Spain without having to see Sammy L.

  “Can you tell me one thing?”

  I opened my eyes. I had forgotten the novice. She stood and approached my bed.

  “I shouldn’t be bothering you, Señora, but I don’t understand,” she said.

  “What is it?” She looked down at the floor.

  “I know that the Bible, the Old Testament of the Jews, tells that the Pharaoh of Egypt decreed that all male Jews be killed at birth. I know that the mother of Moses gave up her son into the care of another woman in order to save his life. That was in Egypt, thousands of years ago. There are no such laws in Spain today. I cannot imagine that your country requires such practices.”

  I reached a hand gently up to hers. “What is your name?”

  “María.” She blushed.

  “María,” I said, lifting her chin, “I don’t have the slightest idea what you are talking about.”

  She looked up, pleased, I thought, but surprised. In a moment she was at the window, spreading apart the slats of the shutters the merest crack.

  “Those two men,” she whispered, “in the cloister.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and waddled over to the window. The light was bad, a few bare bulbs hanging under the arcade, but there was no doubt. Sammy L. and the American, talking quietly. I took María by the shoulders.

  “What do you know about those men?”

  “I only know that your husband told Sor Juana that you were giving over the child to an American professor, that you were unable to care for the child, that you did not even want to see the child when it was born, but let it have a good, new life with a loving family.”

  I feel more panic now, Ben, searching for Isabella in the early dawn, than I did that desperate night in the Convento Santa Isabel. I think the barefoot run down the ravine and up the Albaicín had callused me to whatever pain the night could possibly muster. Sor Juana walked in on the two of us. Once I had told her that Sammy L. was neither husband nor father but merely storyteller par excellence, she was in total solidarity with her large, fertile sister.

  I never discovered what happened to the men. Isabella was born at dawn, a full head of golden curls, eyes already searching, clear and open, grey as the Ocean Sea. I named her after the patron saint of the convent. We stayed on for three months, my daughter and I, in a beautiful corner room with a painting of Santa Isabel on the ceiling and the music of a fountain through the window. We were fed, fussed over, petted, spoiled. I arrived back in England on Guy Fawkes Day, a year after.

  Alone.

  Why lie to you, Ben? Forget about the three months. I gave her up. I left her. As fast as this older, independent Isabella is running from me, I ran faster. Not three months later, not after an Eden of baby clothes and breast-feeding. That night, the moment she was born.

  The reason? Sammy L.’s fiction was not entirely unattractive. Below, in the cloister, stood a plausible ending to my Andalusian folktale, a needy man to solve my ambivalence. I hesitated.

  I was willing to leave her—I didn’t deserve to keep her. The moment of doubt was the moment she was no longer mine.

  The truth? Have you ever felt as if your entire body were being ripped apart, not in the proverbial two neat halves, but in jagged shreds, flesh, bone, hanging, stinging, pain so engulfing that you don’t know which part of your body that tiny devil is going to leap from? The noise of pain, as strong as the violin, as strong as the jet fighters that smashed the windows of the Santa María, tearing an “Ayyyy” from deeper circles than the deepest flamenco has ever plumbed? The lies you will tell under torture, the curses you will sing, the loves you will disavow, the nods, the yeses, the papers you will sign?

  At the moment of birth, the moment of decision, something in me retreated, something got small.

  The truth? Three years later, when my biological statistic writ itself large and I went actively in search of a babymaker, I found only limp members and Zen aphorisms. My letters to Hook, my letters to the Convento Santa Isabel la Real went unanswered, were returned.

  The truth? I never wrote.

  The truth? Why not ask Hook?

  La Subida is relentless, Ben, the greater the light, the more horrible the stench.

  The truth? I have become wildly successful. Why capture Isabella? Why catch my heel? Why Carnegie Hall?

  HANNI—RITUAL EYE-OPENING

  Benjamin,

  Inside the Bar El Palo, ritual eye-opening. Coffee, aguardiente, men. Outside, the sun fully awake, the last Lorenzo of an old year. A cruise boat, one hundred yards of beach, maybe two miles of Mediterranean away, steaming west into the port of Mariposa. One hour until your office opens.

  Señor Carranque had taken a table outside, in a sunny corner of the terrace, where the elements had burned a hole in the reeds of the canopy. Hot chocolate, a basket of churros. Our taxi driver sat at the next table, smoking his way through a thin box of Schimmelpfennigs and pouring liberal doses of cheap sherry into a bowl of coffee.

  Past the far wall of the landward side of the café, occasional Mariposa-bound traffic blew along the coast road. An offshore breeze chilled my exhaustion. I was desperate to hunt. I was desperate to sleep.

  “¡Periódicos! ¡Periódicos!” A gray-stubbled, gray-suited old man scraped across the concrete of the patio. Strips of lottery tickets hung like a tallis around his shoulders. Under one arm, the local rags—Mariposa Ayer, Mariposa Hoy, Mariposa Mañana. He stood in front of me, shading the sun, his mouth a black O, the blue wool vest beneath his jacket a crumb-pocked journal of breakfasts yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The taxi driver took a copy of Hoy.

  “Could you ask him,” I mumbled to Señor Carranque, “if there’s any news about the airport strike?”

  “My dear Señora.” Carranque smiled. “Last night’s news will not be published for two days, perhaps three. You may enjoy staying awake all night, but in Spain, journalists like to sleep.”

  “Then how am I to learn about the strike?”

  “You are seriously interested?”

  “I’m looking for clues.”

  “Forty-five minutes,” Carranque said. “Ben’s office will open. You will find all the clues you want.” I stood up, irritated, ready to buy my own paper, make my own investigations.

  “Oi, lady! You want to know about the strike?” It was a language I recognized—English, as spoken by an educated Londoner determined to acquire the common touch. I sat down.

  “You’re surprised by my accent,” the taxi driver continued. “You didn’t blink at Maraquita’s last night.”

  “You’re the taxi driver from the airport?”

  “And the cavalry to the Villa Gabirol.”

  “I was about to ask.”

  “Of course you were.” The taxi driver snickered. He was a tall boy, fifty, even fifty-five, but a boy nonetheless, well over six feet—hair white, grown long; beard cropped, gone gray—a well-built boy with an earring, a collarless shirt, and a nasty attitude.

  “What about the airplanes?” I asked.

  “Airplanes? What airplanes?” I was about to answer when he burst out laughing, looking to the lottery man for support. I turned to my aide, but Carranque was communing with chocolate and churro.

  “You saw a bit of traffic last night.” The taxi driver stopped laughing, began to pour himself another sherry, thought better of it. “Low-flying, possibly military. But it’s a long time since you stayed
up late spotting aircraft, if I’ve got my history down right.”

  I nodded. History down right?

  “I’ve been in Mariposa off and on for well over twenty years. This is the Outbound and the Inbound of the Mediterranean, the Arrival and Departure Lounge between Europe and Africa, the New World and the Old. Our planes fly out, their planes fly in. Sometimes it’s the other way around. No one complains, unless they miss their flight.”

  “Or their windows shatter,” I added.

  “The bar? The Santa María?” The taxi driver laughed. “He won’t complain.”

  “Who won’t complain?”

  “Who?” The driver slapped the newspaper on the table. “Carranque, how long have you been leading the Señora on?” I turned to Señor Carranque as well. As a guide, he was leaving much to be desired. As a gentleman—everything.

  “Señora Hanni, you have my deepest apologies for the tone of this conversation. You will soon understand that there is little I can do.”

  “Carranque knows I need half a gill of argument to prime the morning pump,” the driver sighed. “More in winter when the tourists drop off.”

  I stood up. It looked a good ten minutes across the half mile of beach to your office.

  “It isn’t worth it,” the driver said. “He won’t open the door until nine sharp.”

  “Benjamin is there now?” I asked.

  “No, no,” he laughed, “the gatekeeper, the majordomo, Abbas.”

  Abbas? Bar El Palo. The beach. The location was familiar, a few miles east of Mariposa Antigua. What was now only ten minutes by taxi could have been an hour by horse in Esau’s time. From my distance, the building Carranque had indicated could easily have been on a pier.

  The headquarters of Santángel’s Minyan. Esau’s cave. Your office.

  “Abbas is a common Muslim name,” the driver continued. “Means Pops, as in Father, or Dad, or Old Man. Don’t let it distract you. Coincidence is the poor man’s Miracle.”