She shook her head. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you, but I have made up my mind to do so. I know I can trust you, senhor, and if you must confront her, and you make it clear you already know my secret, perhaps she won’t tell others, and the worst may be spared. Can I tell you and trust that you will tell no one else?”
“Of course,” Miguel said hastily, though he wished desperately that he could somehow avoid this entire conversation.
“I am ashamed,” she said, “and yet not ashamed to tell you this, but I saw the widow on my way from a sacred place. A church of Catholic worship, senhor.”
Miguel stared at her with unfocused eyes until she blended into the dark wall. He hardly knew what to think. His own brother’s wife, a woman for whom he had cared and felt desire, had revealed herself a secret Catholic.
“You have betrayed your husband?” he asked quietly.
She swallowed hard. The tears had not yet come, but they would come soon. They filled the air like a coming rain. “How can you speak of betrayal? I was never told until the eve of my wedding that I was a Jew. Have I not been betrayed?”
“You betrayed?” Miguel demanded, once again forgetting to keep his voice quiet. “How can you say so? You live in the new Jerusalem.”
“Have you or your brother or the rabbis spoken to me of what is in your Torah or Talmud other than to tell me what I must do to serve you? When I go to your synagogue, the prayers are in Hebrew and the talk is in Spanish, yet I may not learn these tongues. If I have a daughter, must I raise her to serve an arbitrary God who will not even show His face only because she is a girl? It is well for you to talk of betrayal when the world hands you all you desire. I am offered nothing, and if I wish to take for myself some comfort, am I to be condemned?”
“Yes,” Miguel said, though he did not believe it and instantly regretted having said so. But he was angry. He could not have said why, but he felt wounded, as though she had violated some trust between them.
He had not seen the tears start, but there they were, glistening upon her face. He fought the urge to pull her to his body, to feel her breasts against his chest, but he couldn’t, so instead he pressed on. “I have nothing more to say to you. Now leave me so I may think on what to do with this knowledge that I wish I had never heard.”
The cruelty of his words stuck in his throat; he knew what they would mean to her. She would wonder if Miguel might keep quiet. He now knew his brother’s wife was a papist, and that information could destroy Daniel. Miguel might reveal this information to usurp his brother’s place in the community, or he could use it to threaten Daniel into forgiving his debts.
Miguel would do none of these things. No matter how repulsive her sin, he would not betray Hannah. Even so, he felt such sudden rage that he had to punish her, and his words were the only way he knew how.
“I heard voices. Is something wrong?”
Daniel appeared at the doorway of the kitchen, looking pale. His little eyes focused on his wife, standing far too close to a retreating Miguel.
“It is only your silly brother,” Hannah said, hiding her face in the poor light. “I saw him come in wearing these wet clothes, but he refuses to change out of them.”
“It is not for a woman to decide if a man is silly,” Daniel pointed out, not unkindly. He merely illuminated information she may have forgotten. “Nevertheless,” he said to Miguel, “she may be right. I won’t have you catch plague and kill us all.”
“The entire household has an opinion on my clothes.” Miguel affected as best he could an easy manner. “I’ll go change at once before the maid is summoned to speak her piece.”
Hannah took a hurried step back, and Miguel turned instinctively toward the stairwell. Daniel had seen nothing; Miguel could be almost certain of that. What, after all, had there been for him to see? Yet he must know the full vocabulary of his wife’s expressions, and surely he had seen one upon her face that could not be a simple matter of housewifely advice.
His confusion about Hannah’s Romish inclinations was so intense that he did not even consider what she had said about Geertruid for several hours. Once he recalled her words, however, he found himself awake much of the night, regretting his cruelty and wishing there were a way to go to Hannah and ask her questions. And perhaps apologize.
Hannah was first out of the house the next morning, stepping onto the stoop to look for the bread man, whose cries she heard through windows hazy with morning cool. Before her husband had opened his eyes, before Annetje had even washed and begun to prepare breakfast for the house, Hannah had dressed herself, put her veil firmly in place, and stepped outside.
She found the pig’s head. It sat upon the stoop just inches from the door, angled in a congealed pool of blood. Already ants had begun to crawl upon it in such numbers that at first it appeared to Hannah black and writhing.
Her shriek roused the house and the closest neighbors. Miguel had slept badly and had already risen, prayed, and dressed. He sat struggling with the weekly Torah portion when her shrill voice penetrated the tiny windows of the cellar, and he was the first to find Hannah upon the steps, a hand clasped over her mouth. She turned to him and fell into his arms, burying her head in his shirt as she wept.
They called immediately for the doctor, who gave her potions to help her sleep and explained that if she could be kept calm for a day, the danger to her life would pass. Hannah had insisted that she needed no potions, she had been only startled, but the doctor would not believe a woman could receive so great a shock without its disordering her humors and, more important, he explained, the humors of the unborn baby. Daniel shot Miguel hard looks but said nothing, made no accusations. Nevertheless, Miguel could no longer ignore the simple truth that things between himself and his brother would never be the same.
from
The Factual and Revealing Memoirs of Alonzo Alferonda
I returned home one night from evening prayers (yes, evening prayers-there were still, thank God, a few small synagogues that defied the Ma’amad and permitted me to worship among their number so long as I was careful not to be seen), when I felt a hand grip my shoulder. I looked up expecting to see some desperate debtor who, fearing for his life, thought to strike at Alferonda before he could be struck. Instead, I saw Solomon Parido.
“Senhor,” I said, swallowing my relief, “I hardly thought to receive another visit from you again so soon.”
Parido appeared hesitant. He no more liked coming to see me than I liked seeing him. Perhaps he liked it less. I had nothing to lose from these encounters, but he had his pride. “I had not thought to seek you out.”
“And yet,” I observed, “here you are, lurking in the streets, waiting for me.” I had cause to be anxious that he knew I had been at worship, but he said nothing, and I could only conclude that he would not have failed to play so valuable a card. My friends at the small synagogue were safe.
Parido set his jaw as though bracing himself and turned to me. “I want to know more of what you have planned with Miguel Lienzo.”
I picked up my pace, if only a little. It was a trick I learned so long ago I hardly even notice doing it most times. Varying your pace of walking sets your companion on edge. He has to think more about trivial things than he ought, and that takes his concentration from where it needs to be. “I marvel at your presumption,” I said. “What makes you think, if I had anything planned, I would tell my enemy?”
“I may be your enemy, as you style it, but Lienzo is not. You are manipulating him.”
I let out a laugh. “If you think so, why not tell him?”
“Things have gone too far now; he’d never believe me. I’ve asked his brother to warn him off you, but I doubt that will do much good.”