CHAPTER TWELVE

A MAN WITH A HOE

The Ineffable One and the small burro moved Yonah southward all night under a round floating moon that kept them company and lit the ass’s way. Yonah dared not stop. The priest who had come to the Martín’s house with Benito surely had reported at once that an unbaptized Jewish youth was at large, threatening Christianity. To save his life, he meant to go as far as possible from Toledo.

He had been in open country since leaving Toledo behind.

Now and again the shadowy outline of a finca, a farmhouse, appeared off the trail. Whenever a dog barked, Yonah kicked his heels to produce a trot, and he drifted past the few habitations like a burro-borne spirit.

In the first graying light he saw he had moved into a different type of land, less hilly than the terrain at home and host to larger farms.

The soil must be very good; he rode past a vineyard and an enormous olive grove, and a field of green onions. He had a great hollowness and he dismounted and gathered onions and ate hungrily. When he came to another vineyard he picked a bunch of grapes, not yet ripe but full of sour juice. His coins could have produced bread but he dared not try to buy it, lest questions be asked.

At an irrigation ditch containing a trickle of water he stopped to let the burro crop grass on the bank, and as the sun rose he sat and thought about his plight. Perhaps he should choose a destination after all. If he must wander, maybe he should direct himself toward Portugal, where some of the Jews of Toledo had gone.

Laborers carrying hoes and machetes had begun to appear. Now Yonah could see workers’ quarters at the far end of the field, and clumps of men cutting and piling brush. Most of them barely glanced at the boy and the burro, and Yonah allowed the cropping animal to eat his fill. Amazed by the good nature of the beast, by his willingness to do as he was bidden, Yonah felt a rush of gratitude.

The burro should have a name, he decided, and gave it his consideration as he remounted and rode away.

The field was scarcely out of sight behind him when he heard the chilling thunder of galloping hooves. At once he directed the burro to the side of the trail in order to watch safely. There were eight horse soldiers, and to Yonah’s consternation they drew up their mounts instead of passing him by.

They were a patrol, seven soldiers and their officer, fierce-looking men armed with pikes and short swords. One of the soldiers slid from his horse and began pissing loudly into the ditch.

The officer glanced at Yonah. “How are you called, boy?”

He tried not to tremble. In his fright he clutched at the identity he had refused when it had been offered in Toledo. “I am Tomás Martín, Excellency.”

“Where is your home?”

Doubtless the field workers had told these men they had seen a stranger. “I am lately of Cuenca,” Yonah said.

“As you have ridden from Cuenca have you seen Jews?”

“No, Excellency. No Jews,” Yonah said, masking his terror.

The officer smiled. “Nor have we, though we search. We are finally rid of them. They are either gone from here, or converted, or bound by fetters.”

“Let others have them,” the dismounted soldier, the pisser, said. “Let the damn Portuguese enjoy them. Already the Portuguese have a plague of them, so many they kill them like vermin.” He cackled, shaking his member.

“What is your destination?” the officer asked idly.

“I am bound for Guadalupe,” Yonah said.

“Ah, you go a distance. What is to be found in Guadalupe?”

“I go there … seeking my father’s brother, Enrique Martín.” It was not so hard to lie, he saw. Invention flowering, he added that he had left Cuenca because his father Benito had been killed last year while fighting as a soldier against the Moors.

The officer’s face softened. “A soldier’s lot … You look strong enough. Do you wish to work so you may buy food between here and Guadalupe?”

“Food is good, Excellency.”

“They need strong young backs at the farm of Don Luís Carnero de Palma. It is the next farm down this road. Tell José Galindo you are sent by Capitán Astruells,” the officer said.

“Many thanks, Capitán!”

The pisser scrambled back into the saddle and the patrol rode away, leaving Yonah relieved to be choking in their dust.

*   *   *

The farm of which the capitán had spoken was a very large one, and from the road Yonah could see it had many workers. It struck him that perhaps he shouldn’t ride by, as had been his intention, since the soldiers in this place had already been satisfied with his story, while others he might encounter in other regions might prove—fatally—to be more difficult.

He turned the burro into the entrance path.

José Galindo asked him nothing once the name of Capitán Astruells was uttered, and soon Yonah was standing in a dry corner of a field of onions, hacking at stony weeds with a hoe.

Midmorning, an old man with thin, ropy arms took a small wagon about the field, pulling between the shafts like a horse, stopping by groups to dispense to each worker a wooden bowl of thin gruel and a fist of rough bread.

Yonah ate so fast he scarcely was aware of taste. The food eased his belly but presently he had to piss. Every now and again someone walked to the ditch bordering the field to piss or shit, but Yonah was aware of his circumcized penis, a Jewish badge. He retained the urine until, trembling with pain and fear, he walked to the ditch and grunted in relief. He tried to cover the head of the member as his body drained. But no one was looking at him, and he finished and returned to his hoe.

The sun was hot.

Where was everyone he knew?

What was happening to him?

He worked maniacally, trying not to think, slashing as if the hoe were David’s sword and the weeds were the Philistines, or perhaps as if the weeds were the inquisitors’ men he was certain were busy throughout Spain, engaged solely in searching for him.

*   *   *

When he had been there three days, exhausted and dirty and working mechanically, he realized the date was August second. The ninth day of Ab. The day of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the last day of the departure of the Jews from Spain. He spent the rest of the day in silent prayer as well as in work, begging God over and over again that Eleazar and Aron and Juana were safely on deep water, being carried farther and farther away from this place.