CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE JESTER

Winter was on the way and he rode Moise toward warmth. He had a desire to glimpse the southern sea on the other side of the Sierra Nevada, but when he approached Granada the clear nights already were chill. He had no wish to challenge the snow-covered peaks of the high sierra in winter, and instead he entered the city to spend some of his earnings on comfort for himself and the burro.

He was disquieted when he arrived at Granada’s walls, for over the grisly gate were suspended the rotting heads of executed criminals. Yet the display failed to discourage footpads, because as Yonah rode toward an inn where he hoped to find wine and food, he came upon two burly men intent on robbing a dwarf.

The small man was half their size, with a very large head, a strong upper torso, long arms, and tiny legs. He was watching his assailants warily as they approached him from two directions, one brandishing a wooden cudgel, the other holding a knife.

“Give over your pouch and save your little ballocks,” the man with the knife said, feinting toward his victim.

Without thinking, Yonah seized his sharpened hoe and slid from the burro’s back. Unfortunately, before he could intervene, the robber with the staff swung it and struck him on the head. In a moment he was lying on the ground, injured and dazed, while the man stood over him with the cudgel, ready to finish him off.

Semiconscious, Yonah saw the dwarf produce a wicked-looking knife from his tunic. His little legs skipped and scampered. His long arms became limber and writhing, the knife point flicking like a serpent’s tongue. In a moment he had penetrated beneath the flailing defenses of the armed robber, who howled and dropped his knife when the small fighter’s blade slashed his arm.

The two footpads turned and ran, and the small man picked up a stone and sent it winging hard and long to thump into one of the departing backs. Then he wiped his knife on his trousers and came to peer down into Yonah’s face.

“Are you all right, then?”

“I think I shall be,” Yonah heard himself declaring hollowly. He struggled to sit up. “… Once I’m inside and have had wine.”

“Oh, you shan’t get decent wine there. You must get off one of your asses and onto the other, and come with me,” the small man said, and Yonah took a proffered hand and was raised by a surprisingly strong arm.

“I am Mingo Babar.”

“I am Ramón Callicó.”

It occurred to him, as Moise was led out of the city and up an ascending trail, that this strange, small man, so recently an intended victim, might himself be a robber and murderer. But though he steeled himself for signs of an attack, nothing happened. The man scuttled before the burro with a shambling, spiderlike gait, his hands at the end of the long arms brushing the trail like two extra feet.

Presently a sentry perched above them on a rock called softly, “Mingo, is it you, then?”

“Aye, Mingo. With a friend.”

A few feet beyond, they passed a hole in the hill from which soft lamplight glowed. And then another opening, and several more. From the caves came cries.

“Ah, Mingo!”

“Mingo, a good eve to you!”

“Well come, Mingo!”

The small man returned all the greetings. He halted the burro before a similar entrance into the hill. When Yonah dismounted he followed Mingo into murkiness and was led to a sleeping mat in the strangest sort of a place.

*   *   *

In the morning he awakened to wonderment. He was in a cave unlike any he had ever seen. It was as though a bandit lord had set up a retreat in the den of a bear. The dim light of oil lamps merged with the gray light from the entrance, and Yonah could see richly colored carpets covering bare rock and earth. There were pieces of heavy wooden furniture, ornately carved, and a profusion of musical instruments and gleaming copper utensils.

Yonah had had a long night’s sleep. Memory of the previous evening quickly returned, and he was relieved to note that his head was clear again.

A plump full-sized woman sat nearby and placidly polished a copper urn. He greeted her and received a smile, a flashing of teeth.

When he ventured outside the cave Mingo was there, working a leather halter and watched by two children, a boy and a girl almost his own size. “A good morn to you.”

“A good morn, Mingo.”

Yonah saw they were high on the hill. Below stretched the town of Granada, a mass of houses like pink and white cubes, the town surrounded by a bouquet of trees. “It is a lovely town,” Yonah said, and Mingo nodded.

“Yes, built by Moors, so the inside of the dwellings are beautifully decorated, while the exteriors are simple.”

Overlooking the town, on the crest of a hill much smaller than the hill of the caves, was a place of rose-colored towers and battlements that made Yonah catch his breath at its sheer grace and majesty.

“What is it?” he asked, pointing.

The other man smiled. “Why, it is the citadel and palace known as the Alhambra,” Mingo said.

*   *   *

Yonah perceived that he had landed among a group of singular people, and he asked many questions that Mingo answered with good humor.

The caves were in a hill named the Sacromonte. “The Holy Mountain,” Mingo said, “called that because Christians were martyred here in the early days of the religion.” The small man said his people, gypsies of a tribe called the Roma, had dwelt in the caves since coming to Spain when Mingo was a boy.

“From where did the Roma come? Yonah asked.

“From there,” Mingo said, waving his hand in a circle that indicated the entire world. “Once—long ago—they came from a place far to the east, where runs a great sacred river. More recently, before coming here they wandered in France and Spain. But when they reached Granada they settled, for the caves make wondrously fine homes.”

The caves were dry and airy. Some were no larger than a room, while others were like twenty rooms strung in a row, deep within the hill. Even someone as unmilitary as Yonah could see that the site would be easily defended if attacked. Mingo said that many of the caves were connected with one another by fissures or natural passageways, offering means of concealment or escape should that ever become necessary.

The plump woman in Mingo’s cave was his wife, Mana. As she brought food, the small man told Yonah proudly that he and Mana had four children, two of them grown and living away from their parents.

He could see the question Yonah dared not ask, and he smiled.

“All my children are full sized,” he said.

*   *   *

Yonah met the Roma all through the day. Some straggled up from a meadow they owned below, in which they kept horses. Yonah gathered they were horse breeders and traders.

Some went to employment nearby, and still others worked at tables outside one of the caves, mending broken cooking pots, utensils, and tools they had collected from homes and businesses in Granada. Yonah watched the metalworkers with pleasure, the tapping of their hammers reminding him of Helkias Toledano’s workshop.

The Roma were affable and welcoming, accepting Yonah at once because Mingo had brought him to them. Throughout the day members of the tribe came to the small man to solve their problems. By midday Yonah wasn’t surprised to learn that Mingo was what they called voivode, chieftain of the Roma.

“And when you are not governing them, do you work with the horses or mend broken pots with the other men?”

“I was trained early to do those things, of course. But until recently, I worked down there,” he said, pointing.

“In the town? What sort of work?”

“In the Alhambra. I was a fool.”

“How do you mean, a fool?”

“A jester in the sultan’s court.”

“In truth?”

“In truth, of course, for I was jester to Sultan Boabdil, who ruled as Muhammad the Twelfth, last Moorish caliph of Granada.”

Once one became accustomed to the misshapen body, the voivode of the Roma was a man of presence. There was dignity in his face, and the men and women of the tribe plainly regarded him with respect as well as affection. It made Yonah uneasy to hear that so kind and intelligent a person had played a fool to earn his bread.

Mingo was able to discern his embarrassment. “It was employment I relished, I assure you. I was good at it. My dwarfish and ill-made body helped my people to prosper, for while at the court I was able to learn early of possible dangers the Roma should avoid, and impending opportunities for their employment.”

“What sort of man is Boabdil?” Yonah asked.

“Cruel. He was little loved when he was sultan. He lives in the wrong century, because today Islam’s military power is gone. The Muslims came from Africa to invade Iberia almost eight hundred years ago, and made all of Spain Islamic. Soon afterward, the Christian Basques fought fiercely to reestablish their independence and the Franks drove the Moors from northeastern Spain. That was the beginning. After that, through the centuries Christian armies regained most of Iberia for Catholicism.

“The Moorish sultan of Granada, Muley Hacén, refused to pay tribute to the Catholic monarchs and in 1481 launched a war against the Christians, seizing the fortified town of Zahara. Boabdil, Sultan Muley Hacén’s son, had a falling out with his father. For a time, hunted by his father’s forces, he sought asylum in the court of the Catholic monarchs. But in 1485 Muley Hacén died, and with the help of loyal subjects Boabdil came to occupy the throne.

“It was only a few months later,” Mingo said, “that I came to the Alhambra to help him rule!”

“How long did you serve as his jester?” Yonah asked.

“Almost six years. By 1491, only one Islamic place remained in all of Spain. In the preceding years Ferdinand and Isabella had seized Ronda, Marbella, Loja, and Málaga. They could not tolerate that Boabdil the Muslim sat on a throne with Mingo Babar at his feet, beguiling him with witty advice. They laid siege to Granada and soon within the Alhambra we were having hungry days. Some of the population fought bravely on empty stomachs, but by the end of the year the future was plain to see.

“I recall a cold winter night when a great silver moon shimmered in the fish pond. Only Boabdil and I were in the throne room.

“‘So you must guide my life, wise Mingo. What must I do next?’ the Sultan said.

“‘You must lay down your arms and invite the Catholic monarchs to dine well, sire, and be waiting in the Court of Myrtles to greet them graciously and conduct them into the Alhambra,’ I said.

“Boabdil looked at me and smiled. ‘Spoken like a true fool,’ he said. ‘For now that my moments of ruling are almost at an end, my majesty is more precious to me than rubies. They must come and find me sitting here in the throne room like a monarch, and for those last few moments I shall behave with pride, a true caliph.’

“That is what he did, signing the pact of surrender in his throne room on January second, 1492. When he fled into exile in Africa, from which his Berber ancestors came so long ago, I and others found it prudent to leave the Alhambra as well,” Mingo said.

“Have things changed a great deal for Granada, now that Christians are in power?” Yonah asked.

Mingo shrugged. “The mosques are now churches. Men of every religion believe they alone have the ear of God.” He smiled. “How puzzling that must be for the Lord!” he said.

*   *   *

That evening Yonah saw that the Roma dined communally, both men and women at their fires, cooking and roasting meat and fowl that ran with savory juices and filled the air with their aroma. They ate well, and the full skins that were passed held pleasant, musky wines. When the eating was done, instruments were brought from the caves, drums, guitars, dulcimers, viols, and lutes, and were played to produce a wild music that was new to Yonah, as was the free and sensual grace with which the Roma danced. He felt a sudden rush of happiness to be in the company of men and women again.

The Roma were comely. They wore clothing of bright colors and had swarthy skins with handsome dark eyes and curly black hair. He found himself drawn to these strange tribal folk, who seemed able to find and savor all the simple pleasures of the world.

Yonah spoke gratefully to Mingo about their friendliness and hospitality.

“They are good people, unafraid of the gadje, which is what we call strangers,” Mingo said. “I myself was a gadje, not born into the tribe. Have you noticed that my appearance is different from theirs?”

Yonah nodded. Both knew Mingo wasn’t referring to height. Some of the hair on his large head was gray, for he was not a young man, but most of his hair was almost yellow, far lighter than the hair of the other Roma, and his eyes were the color of a bright sky.

“I was given to the People while they camped near Rheims. A gentleman came to them with a new child who had been born with long arms and short legs. The stranger gave the gypsies a fat purse to take me as theirs.

“It was my good fortune,” Mingo said. “As you know, it is common to strangle a child at birth when he comes as misshapen as I. But the Roma honored their bargain. They never kept the details of my origins from me. Indeed, they insist I am doubtless of high birth, perhaps even of French royal lineage. The man who surrendered me had fine dress and armor and weaponry, as well as an aristocratic manner of speech.”

Yonah thought the small man indeed had a noble face. “Have you never regretted what might have been?”

“Never,” Mingo said. “For though it is true I might have been a baron or a duke, on the other hand it is also true that I might have been strangled at birth.” His fine blue eyes were serious. “I did not remain a gadje. I drank the soul of the Roma into my body with the milk of the wet nurse who became my mother. Everyone here is my kin. I would die to protect my Romani brothers and sisters, as they would die for me.”

*   *   *

Yonah lingered with the People day after day, bathing in the warmth of their fellowship, sleeping off by himself in an empty cave.

To repay the tribe’s hospitality, he sat with the pot repairers and joined their work. His father had patiently taught him the basics of metalwork when he was young, and the Roma were delighted to learn several of Helkias’s techniques for joining metal with tight, even seams. Yonah also learned from the gypsy craftsmen, observing techniques they had passed down from father to son for hundreds of years.

One evening, after the merriment of their music and dancing, for the first time in more than three years Yonah picked up a guitar and began to play. He was tentative, but soon his fingers grew certain with old skills. He played the music of piyyutim, the chanted psalms of the synagogue: Yotzer, in the first blessing before the morning Shema; Zulat, sung after the Shema; the Kerovah, accompanying the first three blessings of the Amidah; and then the haunting Selihah, sung in contrition on the Day of Atonement.

When Yonah finished playing, Mana touched his arm tenderly as the people drifted off to their homes. He saw that Mingo’s wise, grave eyes were studying him.

“Those are Hebrew melodies, I think. Played sadly.”

“Yes.” Without disclosing his own lack of conversion, Yonah told Mingo about his family, and about the terrible endings of his father Helkias and his brother Meir.

“Life is glorious, but it can be counted on to be cruel,” Mingo said finally.

Yonah nodded. “I would greatly desire to recover my father’s reliquary from its thieves.”

“There is small chance of that, my friend. From what you say, the work is unique. A piece of high art. They could not sell such an object in Castille, where people would be familiar with its theft. If it has been resold, no doubt it is gone from Spain.”

“Who would deal in such objects?”

“It is a specialized sort of theft. Over the years I have heard of two groups in Spain who buy and sell stolen relics and the like. One is in the north, and I do not have a name for anyone there.… The other is in this southern section, led by a man named Anselmo Lavera.”

“Where would I find this Lavera?”

Mingo shook his head gravely. “I cannot even guess. If I knew, I would be reluctant to tell you, because he is a very bad man.”

He leaned forward and looked into Yonah’s eyes. “You too must give thanks that you were not strangled at birth. You must forget the bitter past and make the future sweet.

“I wish you a restful night, my friend.”

*   *   *

Mingo assumed he was a converso. “The Roma also belong to a pre-Christian religion,” he confided,” a faith that worships apostles of light who struggle against apostles of darkness. But we find it easier to pray to the god of the country in which we find ourselves, so we converted to Christianity when we came to Europe. Truth to tell, when we reached the territory of the Moors, most of us became Muslims as well.”

He was concerned that Yonah wasn’t sufficiently able to protect himself when attacked. “Your broken hoe is … a broken hoe. You must learn to fight with a man’s weapon. I will teach you to use a knife.”

So the lessons began. Mingo scorned the poor dagger Fernando Ruiz had given Yonah when he had become a shepherd. “Use this,” he said, and handed over a knife of Moorish steel.

He showed Yonah how to hold the knife palm up instead of knuckles up, so he was able to stab with a rising, ripping thrust. And taught him to strike quickly, before an adversary would guess whence the next blow would come.

He taught Yonah to watch his opponent’s eyes and body so he could anticipate every movement before it was made, and to become like a feral cat, offering little target, allowing no escape. Yonah thought Mingo taught him with the insistence and intensity of a rabbi imparting Scripture to an ilui, a biblical prodigy. He learned quickly and well at the feet of a small and strangely shaped maestro, and presently he came to think and act like a knife fighter.

*   *   *

Their liking blossomed until it seemed a friendship of years instead of a few brief months.

Word had been sent to Mingo that he should come to the Alhambra and confer with its new Christian steward, a man named Don Ramón Rodriguez.

“Would it please you to see the Alhambra at close quarters?” he asked Yonah.

“It would indeed, señor!”

So next morning they rode down the Sacromonte together, the large and muscular young man, his splayed legs too long and his heft too considerable to allow comfort for his poor burro, and the tiny man perched on a splendid gray stallion like a frog on a dog.

On the way, Mingo told Yonah of the Alhambra’s history. “Muhammad the First, whom they called Al Ahmar ibn Nasir because he had red hair, built the first palace fortress here in the thirteenth century. A century later, the Court of Myrtles was built for Yusuf the First. Succeeding caliphs expanded the citadel and palace. The Court of the Lions was built by Muhammad the Fifth, and the Tower of the Infantas was added by Muhammad the Seventh.”

Mingo halted their mounts when they reached the high, rose-colored wall. “Thirteen towers rise from the wall. This is the Gate of Justice,” he said, pointing out a carving of a hand and a key on the gate’s two arches. “The five fingers represent the obligation to pray to Allah five times daily—at dawn, at noon, in the afternoon, in the evening, and at night.”

“You know a great deal about the Muslim faith,” Yonah observed, and Mingo smiled but didn’t reply.

*   *   *

As they rode through the gate someone recognized Mingo and hailed him, but no one else paid them heed. The fortress was a hive of activity, with several thousand people busily maintaining the beauty and defenses of its fourteen hectares. They left the burro and the horse in the stables and Mingo led Yonah on foot through the vast royal compounds, down a long walk overhung with wisteria.

Yonah was awed. The Alhambra was more dazzling than when seen from afar, a seemingly endless fantasy of towers, arches and cupolas, lavishly colored and adorned with lacelike stucco, honeycomb vaulting, brilliant mosaics and delicate arabesques. In the inner courts and halls, plaster moldings painted red, blue, and gold, simulating foliage, covered the walls and ceilings. The floors were marble, and wainscots of green and yellow tile lined the lower walls. In the courtyards and inner gardens there were flowers, flowing fountains, and nightingales singing in the trees.

Mingo showed him that from several windows there were fine views of the Sacromonte and the caves of the Roma, while other windows revealed the wooded gorge rushing with water. “The Moors understand water,” Mingo said. “They tapped the Darro River five miles up in the hills, and directed it to this palace by means of a wondrously conceived waterworks that fills the pools and fountains and brings flowing water into every bedchamber.” He translated an Arabic saying on one of the walls: “He who comes to me tortured by thirst will find water pure and fresh, sweet and unmixed.”

Their footsteps echoed as they walked through the Hall of the Ambassadors, where Sultan Boabdil had signed the articles of surrender to Ferdinand and Isabella, and which still contained Boabdil’s throne. Mingo showed Yonah a bathhouse, the Baños Árabes. “Here is where the harem lolled unrobed and made their ablutions while the sultan watched from a balcony above, choosing his bed companion. If Boabdil still reigned we would be killed for venturing here. His father executed sixteen members of the Abencerrajes family and piled their heads on the harem fountain because their chief dallied with one of his wives.”

*   *   *

Yonah sat on a bench and listened to the plashing fountains while Mingo kept his appointment with the steward. It took only a short time for the small man to return. As they made their way back to the stables, Mingo said he had learned that Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand were coming to inhabit the Alhambra, along with their court. “In the recent past they have complained about the somberness of the court. The chief steward has investigated and found that I am a practicing Christian, therefore I am summoned back to the Alhambra palace, to serve the conquering monarchs as their jester.”

“Does it please you to answer their summons?”

“It pleases me that members of the Roma will return to the Alhambra as grooms, gardeners, and peóns. As for being a jester … It is difficult to tickle the minds of monarchs. One must walk a line as narrow as the edge of a sword. A jester is expected to show cheek and daring, bandying insult that provokes laughter. But the insult must be clever and mild. Stay on one side of the line and you are cosseted and loved. Cross the line into royal fury and you are beaten, or perhaps you are dead.”

He gave an example. “The caliph was haunted by guilty knowledge that when his father, Muley Hacén, had died, they were blood enemies. One day, Boabdil heard me speak of an ungrateful son and assumed I spoke of him. In a fury he took his sword and held its point at my most precious part.

“‘Do not prick me, sire,’ I cried. “My little soldier, my jewel does not require a prick of its own. Indeed, though it rises to every occasion, my small prick is petted and spoiled, cosseted and content with things as they are. The places this little prick has been, the sights it has seen!”

“‘Indeed, your entire body is a mean little prick,’ Boabdil snarled at me. The caliph’s sword stayed trained against me, but in a moment he began to tremble with laughter and then to shake, and I knew I had survived.”

Mingo saw that Yonah’s face was troubled. “Have no fear for me, friend,” he said. “It takes work and wisdom to be a fool, but I am the very king of the jesters.” He smiled, and leaned forward toward Yonah. “Actually, my organ is no small thing at all, and I am better endowed than Boabdil!”

Mounted again, they rode past Moorish overseers who were directing the construction of a palace wing. “The Moors don’t believe they will be driven from Spain someday, as the Jews couldn’t believe it until it happened,” Mingo said. “But the day will come when the Moors, too, will be ordered to leave. The Christians have long memories of the many Catholics who died fighting Islam. Moors made the mistake of wielding swords against Christians, as Jews made the mistake of accepting power over Christians, like birds who flew ever higher until burned by the sun.”

When Yonah was silent, Mingo looked at him. “There are Jews in Granada.”

“Jews who have become Christians.”

“Conversos such as yourself. What else?” Mingo said, annoyed. “If you wish to have contact with them, go to the marketplace, to the booths of the silk merchants.”