— What say you?
— Ah!…
— Did he sign me?
— And what meant it?
— Ah! You see… thank you, señor! Did I not say?…did I not know?…was I not right? No one knows the rabbi’s soul better than I do! I may not have studied much with him, for my poor head is a thick one — a pumpkinhead, that was what he called me — but I never stopped studying him I know him better than you do, madame, and I say that with all due respect… because I have known him for ages… no, do not be cross with me, Doña Flora… when you frown like that and bite your lip, I am reminded of our faraway Tamara, our motherless, widowed young bride. I beseech you, Doña Flora, be good enough not to be angry, or else the tears will begin to flow again. Since losing my only son, I am quick to cry… grief comes easily to me… it takes but a word… the least breath is enough to shatter me…
— But…
— As long as I can be here, on this little footstool, sitting at his feet. “Better a tail to the lion than a head to the fox.”
— She has recovered completely, Doña Flora. She bears herself well…
— Of course she is nursing, although not without some assistance. Her left teat went dry within a few days and left her without enough milk, and the consul made haste to send her an Armenian wet nurse who comes every evening with a supplement, for he heard say that the milk of the Armenians is the most fortified…
— In truth, he is a good angel, the consul. He has not withheld his kindness from us, and how could we have managed without him? We have been ever in his thoughts since that black and bitter day. He remains unconsoled for the loss of our Yosef, on whom he pinned great hopes. Baby Moses he calls the infant in English, and he has already issued him a writ of protectorship as if he were an English subject. Should he ever wish to leave Jerusalem for England, he may do so without emcumbrance…
— Little Moshe.
— In the Rabbi Yohanan ben-Zakkai Synagogue. Tamara dressed baby Moses in a handsome blue velvet jersey with a red taquaiqua on his head, and Rabbi Vidal Zurnaga said the blessings and performed the circumcision. The cantors sang, and we let the English consul hold and console the child for his pain, and Valero and his wife Veducha handed out candies and dough rings — here, I have brought you in this handkerchief a few dried chick-peas that I carried around with me for weeks so that you might bless them and eat them and feel that you were there… may it please you, madame… the consul and his wife blessed and ate them too…
— And here is one for him too, my master and teacher… a little pea… just for the blessing…
— No, he will not choke on it… ‘tis a very little pea…
— Ah! He is eating… His Grace understands… he remembers how he used to bring me “blessings” from weddings, how he woke me from my sleep to teach me them… now I will say it for him! Blessed be Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who createth all kinds of food.
— Amen.
— He cannot even say the amen for himself… ah, Master of the Universe, what a blow!
— No, I will cry no more. I have given my word.
— Of course, madame. God forbid that my tears should lead to his. But what can I do, Doña Flora, when I know that no matter how dry-eyed I stand before him, he — even as he is now — can read my soul! The great Rabbi Haddaya understands my sorrow. I have always, always been an open book to him…”like the clay in the hands of the potter”…ah, Your Grace…
— Slowly but surely… for I am not yet over my departure from your Jerusalem, madame, which is a most obdurate city — hard to swallow and hard to spew out. And hard too was my parting from the young bride, my son’s widow and your most exquisite ward. But most impossible of all, Doña Flora, was parting from the infant Moshe, who is so sweet that he breaks every heart. If only madame could see him… if only His Grace, my teacher and master, could have seen baby Moses in his circumcision suit, his blue blouse and red taquaiqua, peacefully stretching his limbs without a sound, without a cry, sucking his thumb, meditating for hours on end… did I say hours? For whole days at a time, in a basket on the back of a horse…
— A most excellent consular horse, madame, which bore him and his mother from Jerusalem to Jaffa.
— I should bite my tongue!
—’Twere better left unsaid.
— In truth, on a horse. But not a hair of his was harmed, madame. He reached Jaffa in perfect condition.
— What winter? There was no sign even of autumn. I see you have forgotten your native land, Dona Flora, where “summer’s end is harsher than summer”…
— Even if there was a touch of chill in the mountains, it did him no harm. He was wrapped in my robe, my fox fur that I brought from Salonika, and well padded in the basket, most comfortably and securely…
— Indeed, a tiny thing, but flawless. We miscalculated, she and I. Our parting was difficult, and so we longingly prolonged it until obstinacy led to folly…
— No, there was no guile in it; ‘twas in all innocence. When we reached the Jaffa Gate and she saw me standing there, endlessly dejected, amid the camel and donkey train that was bound for Jaffa, she said to me, “Wait, it is not meet that you leave Jerusalem in sorrow, you will be loathe to return”—and she went to the consul’s house and borrowed a horse to ride with me as far as Lifta. By the time she had tied the basket to the horse and wrapped the infant, the caravan had set out. We made haste to overtake it, and soon we were descending in the arroyo of Lifta — and the way, which at first seemed gloomy and desolate, quickly grew pleasant and attractive, because there were vineyards and olive groves, fig trees and apricots, on either side of it. When we reached the stone bridge of Colonia, there was a pleasant sweetness in the air. Jerusalem and its dejection were behind us, and perhaps we should have parted there — but then she insisted on continuing with me to Mount Castel. She thought she might catch a glimpse of the sea from there, for she remembered being taken as a child to a place from where she had glimpsed it. And so we began to climb the narrow path up that high hill. In the distance we spied my caravan, lithely snaking its way above us, and there was a great clarity of air, and the voice of the muezzin from the mosque at Nebi Samwil seemed to call to us, and we cried back to it. But we had no idea that thé ascent would take so long or that the approach of darkness was so near, and by the time we reached the top of the hill there was not a ray of twilight left, so that whatever sea was on the horizon could not be seen but only thought. My caravan was slowly disappearing down the slope that led to Karyat-el-Anab, and all we could hear from afar were the hooves of the animals scuffing an occasional stone. What was I to do, Doña Flora? Say adieu there? I did not want to return with her to Jerusalem, because I knew that I then would have no choice but to become an Ashkenazi, and I had no wish to be one…
— Because I was down to my last centavo and all out of the spices I had brought from Salonika, and had I returned to Jerusalem as a pauper, I would have had to join the roster of Ashkenazim to qualify for the dole they give only to their own. And that, Your Grace, señor y maestro mío, I was not about to do — would His Grace have wanted me to Ashkenazify myself?