The Apprentice's Masterpiece

by Melanie Little

stick in one place too long.

  They’re afraid we’ll make ties.

  That something will melt

  our iced-over hearts.

  But my nights don’t belong to the Inquisition

  nor to anyone else.

  There’s no way I’ll stay put in my room.

  Vast as the castles “we” take over are,

  somehow the walls between

  corridors and rooms

  are always too thin.

  So at night, I go out to escape

  shouts and pleas I’d rather not hear.

  I sit in bodegas, or dark, quiet taverns

  off quieter plazas.

  I don’t wear my cloak on these outings.

  I want to blend in.

  I’m sick of the look people get on their faces

  when they notice the badge that’s sewn there.

  A sword and a cross. And an olive branch—

  to stand for forgiveness.

  The infamous sign of the Inquisition.

  People ignore me. I try to write letters

  to Mama and Papa, but mostly I listen.

  The talk is conversos—what else is new?

  How this person said that that person ate this.

  How that person said that this person ate that.

  How Maria went to the rabbi’s son’s wedding

  just ten years ago. Or was it twenty?

  No difference. She’ll still be condemned.

  I drink wine while I sit. Don’t bother, these days,

  to water it down—it’s not like I’m proud of the work I do now.

  I snack on tapas of olives and ham.

  I eat pork, of late, without a third thought.

  All food tastes like dust

  to me now.

  Work

  Yes, I’m a cog.

  There’s no question.

  But, at my desk, I have power.

  That’s something I once

  burned to possess.

  I don’t like it.

  They are brought to me one at a time,

  as if I’m a king instead of

  the lowliest scribe in the place.

  Few of them weep.

  But the guards yank their arms

  like they’d be better off out of their sockets.

  The man—or the woman—must strip, piece

  by piece. I write down what comes off.

  I guess I looked shocked when, one day early on,

  a guard stuck his finger straight up the arse

  of a prisoner. “Sometimes I find gold!” the guard leered.

  “We can’t trust these Jews, now can we, señor?”

  I kept my face blank as a newly made slate.

  “I thought our Office dealt only with Christians,” I said,

  coolly as I could.

  But the guard merely laughed. Made a face.

  “You have only to smell, my young friend,

  to know what you’re dealing with here!”

  Plants

  Remember those endless Plants of Castile?

  Well, I thank them.

  That blessed author—I forget his name now—

  was so concerned with our Kingdom’s tally

  of lichens and ferns,

  he made me a master with numbers!

  I choose to believe that is why I’ve been given

  the most boring job in the Holy Office.

  It’s not just because my blood is impure.

  Other scribes talk, come nightfall.

  Days, they must watch things I try not to hear.

  I begin to be thankful that numbers don’t lie.

  The scribes claim that when torture starts,

  people will say anything to make it stop.

  They denounce their own mothers. Themselves.

  Their children who’ve yet to be born.

  The scribes write it down as if it were truth.

  Which is just what the courts will then call it.

  Language

  I’ve heard that soon, the Office might turn

  its gaze to the Moors baptized in the conquest.

  Some of these New Christian Moriscos,

  it’s said, still pray to Allah in private.

  I’m afraid. My ten or so words

  of Arabic are ten more than most

  of the scribes here can speak.

  What if they want me for more than just lists?

  I don’t want to witness

  any of this.

  Anyway, I’m not sure

  I could help.

  Oftimes what I hear

  from those mouths

  in those rooms

  doesn’t sound much

  like language at all.

  Shame

  When I saw my first auto-da-fé

  all those years ago,

  I was shocked. And aghast.

  No one would argue: a man or woman

  who’s burning alive makes a terrible,

  soul-chilling sight.

  But, in my heart, I was smug.

  I thought that to earn such a horrible fate,

  doled out by learned men in fine robes,

  a person must surely deserve it.

  I’m so ashamed now of how blind I was.

  Here is one case.

  A woman of sixty.

  She came in last month. I remember

  she had little else than an old woolen

  blanket she said was her father’s.

  Denounced by a neighbor, said her thin file.

  Her crime?

  Eating meat, one Good Friday,

  when they were both girls.

  That testimony was fifty years old!

  Another thing: the women were known to be rivals.

  They both sold their beer in the same market town.

  Who’s to say the denouncer

  didn’t want this one out of the way?

  The woman was sentenced today.

  She did not confess.

  And so, guilty or not, she’ll be burned.

  Letters

  I don’t blame Papa

  for hating me now.

  He often told me:

  Always be true.

  And look how I’m using

  the skills that he taught me.

  The only art here

  is the lies of the Office.

  I send home letters,

  and any small sums I’m able to save.

  But from Papa, there’s never so much

  as a word in return.

  Papa knows there’s one thing

  I need him to say.

  I forgive you.

  And since he can’t say it,

  and still be true,

  he doesn’t write back.

  Still, I address all my letters

  to both Mama and him. I won’t give up.

  I will find a way

  to help him forgive.

  Finding a Scribe

  Mama, of course,

  can’t write me back.

  She is busy, I know.

  There is also the question

  of finding a scribe she can trust—

  and who won’t charge the sky.

  Papa would never consent

  to write it: I know that.

  For the very first time

  I wish women were taught,

  like us men, how to write.

  There are nights when I so

  long for news from my home

  that I’d lop my scribe’s hand

  if Mama could have it, and use it,

  instead.

  Trust

  One should always take care

  of the wishes one makes.

  No, I haven’t awakened minus my fingers.

  But a messenger knocks while I’m still abed.

  There’s a letter for me.

  Mama has, after all, found a hand.

  Don’t be alarmed by how much I say

  in this letter, she starts.


  This scribe is a friend. I think

  we can trust him.

  Beside this, in the margin,

  is written YOU CAN.

  Water

  Ramon, she continues,

  Papa’s not well.

  His sight only gets

  worse with time.

  And then there’s the shaking

  which he still denies.

  Even when there is some small job,

  he can’t finish it.

  His hand is too weak for the pen.

  Thank you for the money for spectacles.

  What an invention they truly must be!

  Alas, we used it to pay Señor Ortiz. I’m sorry, Ramon.

  He’s raised our rent once again.

  I shouldn’t tell you—but our landlord is a New Christian too.

  His “non-Jewish blood” goes back five generations,

  but for him that’s not long enough.

  He wants Papa to forge his papers

  to say that he’s clean! Can you imagine

  your papa doing such a thing?

  Last week, Papa’s hand shook,

  tipping the glass bowl of water

  he uses to magnify script.

  The ink ran. I found him, Ramon,

  weeping over his work.

  My son, pray for your papa.

  He might be angry at me

  for telling you this,

  but each night, in his prayers,

  there is one for you.

  Blackbird Pie

  Mama’s letter makes me feel

  about as tall as a pine cone.

  But we’re feasting in honor

  of something—

  a battle’s been won? A foe

  of the Church, burned at the stake?

  Who knows?

  The rich food and wine

  eclipse thoughts of all else.

  We cut our pies—there’s one

  for each man—and live blackbirds fly out,

  squawking like mad.

  It’s just like the feasts in stories

  I once copied in our shop.

  I remember my fluttering heart,

  reading them. Not to mention

  my grumbling belly.

  Who’d have thought I would rise quite so far?

  Even that Bea I was once so in love with

  would be half-impressed. A hidalgo,

  no less—I’ve lately been given a horse.

  Speaking of ladies, aren’t some

  meant to grace feasts like this?

  The stories all had them.

  Our table hosts only grim monks and dull scribes.

  Torturers too, just come from their chambers.

  One of the blackbirds did not escape

  when the door to outside was opened.

  It sits on a rafter, seeming to wonder,

  How did I get here?

  I know just how it feels.

  Job Offers

  Only a day after I’d sold myself

  to the Inquisitor,

  Papa called me to his room.

  He asked me to help him

  with his life’s work.

  “There is a book I must send to Oman,

  in Africa. There it will hide from the fires,

  for a time,” Papa said.

  “But the passage is tricky.

  We must make a copy, in case it is lost.

  “Ramon, there is peril in this. I had wanted to keep

  it from you, for your safety.

  But we must take the chance. Please,

  will you help?”

  My heart filled with bile and it rose to my mouth.

  “Do you not think I know

  why you’re asking me now?

  It’s because your precious Amir

  isn’t here—your first choice.”

  Papa smiled his sad smile and held out his hand.

  “Come, son. It wasn’t like that. My ancestor wrote in Arabic.

  Amir helped me to translate his papers.

  Without the man’s words,

  how could I write his life’s story?

  “And, Ramon, you must know

  I was fearful for you.

  For your very life.

  Those papers contained

  many Hebrew words. To touch them

  would mean great danger for you,

  a converso. That is why I have kept them

  from you for all of these years.”

  But I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give in to him.

  I hardened my heart.

  “I can’t help you,” I told him,

  not meeting his eyes.

  “The Holy Office

  is my master now.”

  Lost

  Another letter arrives.

  It’s left on the tray

  with my hot chocolate.

  I’m ashamed to admit

  that I dread to read it.

  I drink the chocolate

  down to its dregs

  before I do.

  Dear Ramon,

  Once I thought people got,

  in the end, the life

  they deserved.

  It’s not true.

  Look at your papa.

  His misfortunes pile up—-

  we can’t see overtop them.

  We’ve heard from his uncle

  in Africa—the one he sent

  his book to, remember?

  It wasn’t received. It

  must have been lost in the mails.

  Papa worked on that book

  for many long years.

  Whenever we’d meet a Mudejar friend

  in the street, Papa would ask

  some word’s definition. Our walks were quite slow.

  You can imagine my gladness

  when Amir came!

  The book told the life of your great ancestor.

  A great scribe. A friend to all peoples. A great man.

  You know all that.

  Your papa translated that book from

  scraps of old letters

  he’d hid in his room. Your ancestor

  was a Jew. You know that too.

  What you don’t know, Ramon, is that

  three months ago, the Holy Office

  came into this house. They found all those letters.

  They were Arabic, but with some Hebrew words.

  They couldn’t read them. No matter. They were burned.

  Papa was spared because of his health.

  But now he must wear that cursed yellow garment

  —the sanbenito—when he goes out.

  Ramon, your papa is tired of the lies

  being written.

  Now those presses that print

  hundreds of books at one time

  are becoming the norm.

  Never mind what that means

  for all scribes.

  The worst of it is, lies can now spread

  a hundred times faster!

  Papa says stories of good, quiet men

  don’t sell books.

  The public prefers the fantastic—like tales of Jews who eat babies!

  A much better sell, don’t you think?

  Ramon, I don’t know

  why I’m writing all this.

  I know you must work, and your job

  keeps us fed.

  We love you.

  Mama.

  Consequence

  Without the help

  that I wouldn’t give,

  there was no time for a copy.

  Papa’s fear of arrest

  grew with each day that passed.

  So he sent it.

  The story of our ancestor’s life.

  The greatest work of Papa’s own.

  Now, thanks to my wounded pride,

  it is gone. And my hope

  that one day he’d forgive me—

  lost along with it.

  Moving

  I’ve just had word—

  I’m off to
Malaga.

  The other scribes, too,

  have been told to pack up.

  We’ll be scattered all over, as always.

  But, consulting that night, we discover

  one thing our new homes-to-be

  have in common.

  They’re all on the sea.

  Heaven

  The fortresses still overflow

  with heretics they found

  when they won back Malaga

  four years ago.

  Instead I am given a room

  in the home of a kind Christian lady.

  It is heaven!

  The sole screams I can hear

  belong to the seabirds outside

  my window, diving in the wind.

  Wandering

  I wait to find out

  what my job will be here.

  To kill time, I comb the bookstalls

  near the docks.

  There’s not much.

  Romances long cast aside

  by fickle fashion. An uncontroversial

  prayer book or two.

  No tomes on why conversos are devils,

  I’m happy to say.

  I’m just taking leave of the starved-looking man

  who stands at one stall when my eye

  lights on something familiar.

  It looks much, much older than it did years ago,

  like it has been shot from a cannon.

  But that Arabic H on the cover—

  I’d know it anywhere.

  Damn my eyes. The seller has seen

  them spark, I expect.

  His price is five times what I’m paid

  in a month. I can’t meet it.

  H stares in reproach,

  like one rung of a ladder

  I know I must climb.

  The man seems to know

  what’s coming next. He smiles

  a wide smile.

  Amir, you’re determined to keep me

  in my humble place, I just know it.

  First my knife, and now this!

  No Castilian can call himself a hidalgo—

  a worthy man—when he has no horse!

  Poem (2)

  I try to think of a question

  to pose to Hafiz, but I can’t

  hold a thing in my mind.

  I open the book near the back.

  Perhaps in his answer I’ll find

  my own question.

  My scant Arabic is creaky with rust.

  Will I understand? My heart pounds.

  What is this?

  Is this not the book, after all?

  Oh, my horse!

  Wait. Lift the first pages.

  Yes, it’s Hafiz.

  But this stuff at the back—

  the letters are tiny, the ink faint and cheap.

  I must squint hard to read it.