CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE HOLIDAY

At night Yonah slept on the flagstone floor of the interrogation room. Once a day he fetched food cooked nearby by the wife of the night guard, Gato, and fed the prisoners. He ate what they ate, sometimes feeding it to Moise to supplement the burro’s slim fare of weedy grass. He was waiting for a propitious time to flee. Paco said there was to be a large auto-de-fé soon, with many people in the city. That seemed to Yonah a good time to leave.

Meanwhile he kept the jail clean and Isidoro, content with his labor, left him alone. In his first days at the jail the thieves were severely beaten by Paco and the night guard, Gato, and then they were released. The drunkard was released too, only to be returned three days later to a different cell, sodden and shouting wildly.

Gradually, from the muttered curses or conversations between Isidoro and his men, Yonah learned about the charges facing some of the New Christians. A butcher named Isaac de Marspera was accused of selling meat prepared according to Jewish rite. Four of the others were accused of habitually buying Marspera’s meat. Juan Peropan was accused of owning pages of Jewish prayer, and his wife, Isabel, of willingly participating in Jewish liturgy. Neighbors of Ana Montalban had observed her using the seventh day of the week as a day of rest, laving her body each Friday before sundown, wearing clean clothes during the Jewish Sabbath.

Yonah began to be conscious of the eyes of the physician from Toledo, following him each time he worked near the man’s cell.

Finally, one morning when he was working inside the cell the prisoner spoke to him in a low voice. “Why do they call you Tomás?”

“What else should they call me?”

“You are a Toledano, but I don’t remember which one.”

You know I am not Meir, Yonah wanted to say, but he was afraid. This physician could seek to trade him to the Inquisition in return for leniency, could he not?

“Ah, you are mistaken, señor,” he said, and he finished his sweeping and left the cell.

*   *   *

Several days went by without incident. The physician spent much of his time reading his breviary and had stopped staring at him. Yonah felt that if the man wished to betray him he would have done so.

Of all the prisoners, the butcher Isaac Marspera was the most defiant, at frequent intervals roaring out blessings and prayers in Hebrew, hurling his Jewishness in his captors’ faces. The others accused of Judaizing were quieter, almost passive in their despair.

Yonah waited until he was once more within Espina’s cell. “I am Yonah Toledano, señor”

Espina nodded. “Your father, Helkias … Did he go away?”

Yonah shook his head. “Killed,” he said, and then Paco came to let him out and lock the cell, and they stopped talking.

*   *   *

Paco was a lazy man who dozed when Isidoro wasn’t near, his chair tilted against the wall. At such times he was very irritable when Yonah asked him to unlock the cells, and finally he handed Yonah the key and bade him work the locks himself.

Yonah had returned to the physician’s cell eagerly, but to his disappointment Espina showed no further desire to talk, keeping his eyes fixed on the pages of his breviary.

When Yonah entered Isaac de Marspera’s cell the butcher was standing and swaying, his tunic pulled over his head like a prayer shawl. He was chanting aloud, and Yonah drank in the sound of the Hebrew words and listened to their meaning:

“‘For the sin which we have committed before Thee by association with impurity,

And for the sin which we have committed before Thee by confession of the lips,

And for the sin which we have committed before Thee in presumption or in error,

And for the sin which we have committed before Thee wittingly or unwittingly,

For all these, O the Lord of forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.’”

Marspera was shriving himself, and with a small shock Yonah knew it must be the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishri, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. He wanted to join Marspera in the prayers, but the door to the alguacil’s office was open and he could hear Isidoro’s loud voice and Paco’s submissive one, so he swept around the praying man and locked the cell door when he left.

That day all the prisoners ate the gruel he brought to the cells save Marspera, who observed the strict fast of the high holiday. Yonah didn’t eat, either, glad of a means to declare his Jewishness without risk. He served both his portion of gruel and Marspera’s to Moise.

At night, lying sleepless on the hard floor of the interrogation room, Yonah asked forgiveness for his sins and for any slights or injuries inflicted on those he loved and those he didn’t. Reciting the Kaddish and then the Shema, he asked the Almighty to care for Eleazar and Aron and Juana, and he wondered if they still lived.

He realized that if he didn’t take steps to avoid it, he would soon lose the Jewish calendar, and decided that to prevent this he would recite the Hebrew date to himself at every opportunity. He knew that five of the months—Tishri, Shebat, Nisan, Sivan, and Ab—had thirty days, while the remaining seven months—Heshvan, Kislev, Tebet, Adar, Iyar, Tammuz, and Elul—had twenty-nine.

At certain times, leap year, days were added. He didn’t know how to deal with that. Abba had always known what day it was.…

I am not Tomás Martín, he though drowsily. I am Yonah Toledano. My father was Helkias ben Reuven Toledano of blessed memory. We are of the tribe of Levi. This is the tenth day of the month of Tishri, in the year five thousand two hundred and fifty-three.…