Incantation

by Alice Hoffman

  I wished that we lived in another time, another country. But maybe that wouldn’t have mattered. There comes a time when every one of our people understands that a Jew can never be attached to a place. The rules always change, and we always lose. People will always despise us, and we must be ready to fly away. We cannot have roots in the earth of any country, only in the garden that we carry inside us.

  Two days more in the woods, and Andres did not come back.

  Three days. Four.

  My grandmother said he had taken the emerald and disappeared. She said I was a fool to trust anyone. I kept my thoughts to myself. Andres would never betray me. I knew it as well as my mother had known that my father was her one true love.

  My grandmother could not be convinced there was any hope left in our lives. She was pulling out her hair in little clumps. She was whispering prayers I didn’t know. She wanted to go home, and even though we had no home anymore, I understood when she said that we needed to go back one more time to look at the place where we’d spent our lives.

  So we could remember.

  It was dangerous, but I took my grandmother there. What else did she have? What else could I give to her? As I had sent a gift to my mother, I now gave a gift to my grandmother as well.

  We went at dusk, wrapped in black shawls. We were like foreigners in our own village. Our house looked as if it had been deserted years ago. The door had been torn off, and the yard was bare, no chickens, no pigs. I refused to think about certain things. My family, my pet Dini, the kitchen table where my great-great-grandmother had kneaded dough for bread.

  I left my grandmother to look through the house; I didn’t want to step inside.

  There was something else I needed to do.

  I went to Catalina’s house and stood in the yard. I thought about the day when we went to the Plaza, when there were sparks in her hair. I thought of how we had slept in the same bed and whispered our dreams to each other. We had called each other sister.

  Instead of knocking on the door, I picked up a stone and threw it as hard as I could. Something shattered. Something broke.

  Catalina came to the door and opened it, not all the way, but enough. I could see her.

  This isn’t what I wanted to happen, she said to me. But you betrayed me.

  I looked hard to see if she was saying some cruel joke; but, no. She meant it.

  You took my cousin, Catalina said.

  And then I understood that she had no idea what she’d done to my family. She thought love and hatred were equal.

  I tore my clothes the way my grandfather told me our people did to mourn our dead. I did it right there in Catalina’s yard, so she could see that she was dead to me. I spoke a curse that my grandmother had taught me:

  May you know another’s suffering, may you know it all the days of your life, now and forever, until you understand what you have done.

  WHEN I WENT to get my grandmother, our neighbor, Señor dePaz, came out of his house, though he clearly was nervous. He stood in the shadows of our house, beneath a trellis of white flowers that still smelled sweet, as they had every summer of my life. The scent of jasmine was everywhere; a deep and tragic scent.

  They’ve brought your brother down from the seminary, the Señor told me. They sent a dozen soldiers to get him.

  I went into my old house and told my grandmother we had to hurry. I didn’t look around, but I did grab for some of the food we had left behind. Olives and stale almond cakes. My grandmother was carrying books that belonged to my grandfather, but I told her she could take only one. She took my grandfather’s notebook, in which everything he believed was written, and she carried it close to her heart, inside her shawl.

  I’D THOUGHT my brother was safe because he was so far away from home. But nothing in our realm was far enough away. I explained to my grandmother that if we went to try and see my brother, we risked being caught. We made the decision together. We would go. Neither of us would consider doing otherwise.

  By the time my grandmother and I had reached the Plaza, my brother was already tied to a wooden post. There were fifty people tied up, all in agony, including my mother. My brother’s heresy was considered to be the worst, because he was studying to be a priest. They had stripped him of his clothes and shaved his head; they had beaten him with thin leather strips, so there wasn’t a piece of him that hadn’t been cut and scarred. They broke his bones one at a time. My grandfather could never have stitched Luis back together, not if he used all the red thread in the world.

  I saw Friar deLeon standing in the crowd. He was weeping, but that wasn’t enough for me. I told my grandmother to stay close to the wall, in the shadows. My fierce grandmother nodded her head meekly and did as she was told. I went over to the Friar, and when he saw me he put out his arms to embrace me, but I backed away.

  I thought you were supposed to be the champion of your people, I said.

  I live because I need to do that. For anyone who is left.

  Don’t you see? No one will be left. Protect them now or there will be no one to protect!

  This is a battle that goes on and on. It never ends. You’re too young to understand.

  No! You’re too much of a coward to fight.

  I was sick of lies and secrets and of battles so old we had to erase who we were to fight back. And still we lost. Still we were tied to posts.

  THE GUARDS poured water on the leather straps, and in the hot sun the straps grew tighter and tighter until they forced blood to stream out of people’s eyes and mouths. Some good people in the Plaza were praying, Christians and Jews and Muslims. But there were many in that crowd who wanted blood. The monster from deep inside the earth was crawling along the Plaza. The monster had been formed from burning books and smoke and hate, but it had grown so big and strong, it could reach up and ring the bell in the chapel of the old Duke’s house. The bell kept ringing and ringing, and the people kept screaming, and there was no way to stop it.

  MAYBE I’D thrown that stone through Catalina’s window so she would have to hear the voices of the accused. She couldn’t shut them out now. People could hear the victims crying miles and miles away. If Catalina lived to be a hundred years old, she would still hear them, even when she’d grown deaf, when she couldn’t hear anything else.

  People were laughing at my mother. They said if she was so good at magic, if she’d learned so much from her father the sorcerer, why didn’t she save herself now? Why didn’t she become a bird or a snake? I hoped she had swallowed the tablets I’d brought her from the Muslim doctor. He said she would fly like a bird when she swallowed it; she would be above the world looking down at a world of snakes.

  And then I realized she had done nothing of the sort. I looked at my brother and saw his eyes were closed. My mother had managed to get the tablets to him. Luis was no longer feeling anything. They couldn’t hurt him anymore; his spirit had moved above him, even though his body was still breathing its last ragged breaths.

  I spoke to Luis without speaking. I said a prayer that no one could hear. My lips moved quickly.

  I knew that my brother would still be a part of this world no matter what happened next. I felt my love for him so deeply that my blood seemed to flow down the street to him. My blood sang out my prayer for Luis even while he was still living in our world.

  My grandmother had made her way across the Plaza to find me. I told her to turn away when they lit the fire with their torches. Everything smelled rotten: blood and sweat and filth. The way evil smelled. I could not understand how something so horrible could be in the world, the deeds of men such as these. They were using green wood. Green wood burns so long it lasts an eternity. It smells green as it sputters and smokes, but it is the worst of deaths. That was what they wanted: suffering. They gave to us all eternity to cry for what we lost.

  Because my mother was so beautiful, the judge took pity on her. He had the sentry garrote her, breaking her neck before the fire reached her so she would not feel the flames. Th
at was the judge’s idea of pity. I thought I heard my mother gasp when they killed her, even from so far away. I thought I saw her spirit escape and fly upward.

  Fifty people were set on fire.

  And then the screaming really began. Like cold knives, like a storm, like the cries of the angels who come to earth to avenge all evil. The fire was so hot we could feel it, like a wave that pushed against us. There were so many red sparks in the air we swallowed them through our veils. The hem of my grandmother’s dress caught fire, and I had to stamp out the flames. My grandmother stood still and did nothing. If it had been up to her, she would have burned along with the others.

  My grandmother was crying beside me. I had never seen her cry, and I couldn’t look at her now. I’d been so afraid of her my whole life, and now she was afraid. I could not bear to see it. My grandmother was wearing the black scarf, as I was. No one noticed us. We were covered head to foot in ashes; two women made of ashes ready to be blown apart, carried to all the corners of the world, east and west alike.

  There was so much screaming, it was nearly impossible to think. People ran and tried to get to their loved ones. As soon as they did, they were struck down, some of them killed, bleeding, their heads opened up on the cobblestones. Nothing could change this now. It was a stone rolling down a hill, getting bigger and bigger, unstoppable, taking down everything in its path.

  The fire was out of control. People were choking on the sparks and the smoke. One of the guards breathed in fire, then clutched at his throat and chest as he lay dying. I knew we had to back away from the heat. We had to disappear from that place. But how could I leave my brother? I looked up; through the flames I could see him.

  I know this is true: He opened his eyes for an instant. Other people were writhing and melting, but my brother stopped his flight long enough to look at me. An instant that would have to last forever. And then the flames rose higher and my brother was gone.

  The smoke was so black it was like a storm cloud.

  Forever after the well water that had come from heaven would be black, filled with ashes.

  Sky

  I pulled my grandmother toward the Muslim quarter, along the narrow streets that smelled like cinnabar and sweet bay. I felt that dove inside myself, beating inside my skin, in a panic. I thought the quarter might be the only place where my grandmother and I could disappear. We wrapped our shawls over our heads; with our dark features, we looked like anyone else on the street. But we brought the smell of fire with us, on our clothes, in our hair. Some men yelled at us. We ran faster. Maybe they were saying we were bad luck. Maybe they were saying women shouldn’t be out alone as night approached.

  I went to the only address I knew. The doctor’s house. It was dusk, and I dragged my grandmother along. It was getting more difficult. She was as heavy as a person who had given up; she resisted every step, but when I pulled hard enough, she followed, like a sack of ashes that hadn’t enough life and will to disobey.

  There were no lamps burning in the doctor’s house and no patients at his door. When my mother and I used to come here, the chickens would put up a fuss; now the yard was silent. I thought of the chickens that had belonged to the doctor’s wife, scattered now, roaming our neighborhood until they were caught by Catalina’s mother or someone else. Whoever stole them would be surprised at the color of the eggs they collected the next morning. Surely they would wonder if blue eggs were a blessing or a curse. When they cracked them open, there would be human blood inside; it was true. My mother’s blood that would last forever after. The blood of my brother, my grandfather, my father.

  I wished whoever cooked those eggs and ate them would choke. I knew a curse you make always stays with you, but I didn’t care. I myself would never eat eggs again. Not even if there were nothing else to eat other than weeds and stones.

  WE SNEAKED into the doctor’s stable. No one would find us here; we could be safe for a night. There was a mule that wasn’t happy to see us; he hee-ed and hawed till I gave him some of the almond cakes I’d put in my pockets. Then the mule followed me and wouldn’t leave me alone. He had warm breath and dark eyes, and I thought about Dini. I thought about how he meant so much to me and meant nothing to the soldiers who took him. I thought about how Dini had followed me and knew when I was upset; how he’d been faithful in some way most people could not even imagine.

  I could not bring myself to think of all that the soldiers had done. If I thought about all the horrible things in the world, I would end up like my grandmother. A sack of ashes. As good as dead. Defying whatever days were granted to me, throwing them away as though I were a helpmate to those who wanted to destroy us.

  My grandmother wasn’t talking. She was wrapped in her shawl, unmoving, as though ready to be buried. My mother had whispered that our people are always buried simply, ready to join the eternal, wrapped in a white shroud and quickly placed into the earth. Everyone is made from dust and everyone returns to it. That is what she told me, and that was what I believed. In my mind, I wrapped my mother and my brother and my grandfather in white cloth. I closed my eyes and put them in the ground under an almond tree, in a place where there was always water.

  When I offered my grandmother a bit of stale cake, she waved me away. She said there was no point to anything, least of all eating. She said this world was a hole of darkness, of black light and evil and loss.

  But if that were true, there would never have been any bright light in our lives. My mother would never have existed, my brother would never have been such a fine man, Andres would not be waiting for me somewhere, though I didn’t know where.

  I told my grandmother she was wrong. We had to survive to remember. Otherwise everything we were would disappear. Those people we loved would fade as though we’d never loved them, as if they’d never walked and talked and burned. Forgetting them was the real evil. That was the hole of darkness.

  I found a cup and took water from the mule’s trough and insisted that my grandmother drink. When she was done, I made a bed for her out of an old rug. I went to stand outside when she was asleep. I looked at the swirls of stars. They were the same stars I’d always seen and might not see again once we left this place.

  The doctor came outside to say his nighttime prayers. He was still wearing the blue coat his wife had made out of my mother’s yarn, spun from the sheep in our yard, dyed with flowers from the hills above us. He prayed beside the red flower, proof of eternal love.

  The doctor acted as if he didn’t see me, but he knew I was there. After he prayed he said, It is fine for you to sleep in the stable. But leave in the morning while it’s still dark. That way the soldiers will not find you.

  I thanked him for his kindness. I think that red lily will always grow, I said. I wanted to honor his wife in some way.

  As I was leaving to return to the stable, I heard him say, Now we both have people we love who are like birds. They have flown far from anything in this world that can hurt them. They’re flying away still.

  I THOUGHT about how the soldiers had burned the books first. How the pages were like doves. Everything we knew condemned us, and our questioning condemned us most of all. Knowledge was the way of our people, and knowledge was dangerous. It was the thing that freed you and the thing that put you in peril. It was the key to the ten gates. I saw them clearly now, each and every one, the gates that were there for me. Ashes, Bones, Grass, Heart, Stone, Love, Sorrow, Blood, Earth, Sky.

  JUST BEFORE DAYLIGHT, my grandmother and I went back to the hills. We did not get there till late at night. Andres was waiting for us with two mules. I knew he wouldn’t betray me. I felt that there was hope for us somewhere in the world.

  We would go to Amsterdam, where there was the boat waiting. We were going to a place so far away, no one would follow us. We were going to an island made of stones on the other side of the ocean. Hispañola. We would fit in there because we spoke Spanish; but we would not be like everyone else. On Friday nights, as the sky darkened, as the clouds
moved out to sea, far past the island, past the shore and the stones, we would light candles and say our prayers, and no one would stop us. At last we could be who we really were. Some people say, Save yourself and you save your life. I say, Be yourself and you save your soul.

  ANDRES WAITED while my grandmother and I followed the path my mother had shown me. When we reached the pool, we took off our filthy ash-coated clothes. I saw my grandmother as the girl she once had been and the old woman she had become. I helped her into the bath and then I let myself slip into the dark water.

  It was so clear and so clean, as though the pool had come directly from heaven. The stars were caught in the water, like embers. Where we were going, there would be different stars in the sky, so I wanted to remember these, the ones floating in our heaven-water, the ones I’d known all my life.

  Even when I was an old woman, older than my grandmother, older than the oldest raven in the sky, I’d remember everything I’d ever known and seen. The ashes and the burning doves. The look on my brother’s face, the blue dye on my mother’s hands, the color of tears, the gate of sorrow, and the gate of love.

  I’d sit down and make my sons and daughters listen, though we were thousands of miles away, far on another shore.

  Remember what I’ve told you.

  Remember me.