The Apprentice's Masterpiece (6 page)

Paper is less dear than parchment, it's true,
but that doesn't mean it comes cheap.
Papa says enough paper to fill just one order
costs almost the same as a very large cow.

Lying in bed, I play a new game.
Which one of the books in the world,
were it mine, would I trade for that cow?

Or, which
page
of which book
would I trade for a bite of fine beef?
Or even a hoof, or an eye,
or a tongue?

I could boil some nice leather covers
instead. Eat them as a soup.
That couldn't be worse
than this morning's bread.

What could?

The Apprentice's Masterpiece

Papa wanted to keep the line going.
He had only one child, one son—what else
should he be but a scribe?

Most families send out their sons
when they're seven or eight.
They live and apprentice with other
men, in other trades.
In exchange, the boy's parents
get a good little sum.

Well, I stayed home. I was glad.
What better teacher is there than Papa?

From every successful apprentice
a master is made.
To prove his mettle, the new master
must create—well, what else?
A masterpiece.

Papa wouldn't exempt me.
But he found me a book
that he knew I would love.

The Twelve Works of Hercules
.
The stories are full of adventure
and places that I've never been.
Best of all, Enrique de Villena,
the man who composed it,
is Cordoba's very own son.

Each day, after closing the shop,
I copied till Mama insisted I stop
to eat dinner. It was always too soon.
The words seemed to fly from my fingers.
The work wasn't work.

At the end of a year, I had my
masterpiece. Its pages were perfect.
My quill never slipped.

I was so proud.
I couldn't stop turning its pages.
Admiring the slant of my letters,
the fine, feathered strokes
of the ink.

And now it's been almost
two years since I've touched it.

What if I sold
Hercules
?

Here it sits, worthless, under my bed.
Shouldn't it feed my family
instead of just fleas and rats?

Bestseller

The Edict of Faith
has been read again.
The Father advised us
to look to the chimneys
of known conversos.
If we see smoke on Fridays,
we must denounce those
who live in that house.

Despite all this madness
there are one or two people,
very brave souls, who haven't stopped
all their business with us.
I know without asking
they want it kept quiet.
When their work is ready
I slink to their shops as if carrying tracts
by assassins.

One of these men is Señor de Allende.
He's an Old Christian—his seal of pure blood
is framed on his wall.
But he's always shown nothing but kindness
to us. He's my first stop.

When I reach his street,
I can hardly get near
for the press of the crowd.

Though few can afford to eat meat
in these times of drought, they're lined up like sheep
for this latest new thing.

A week's wage for the very same book
all their neighbors will buy and learn off by heart.

Al-Burak: Why Conversos Are Devils.

Hercules and I will have to come back.

Commission (2)

Father has sent a new patron away!
I'm so angry, I turn—
nearly yell at my father.

He is crying. This is a sight I refuse
to get used to. Yet lately, I do.

Again—poor Papa—it's over a book!

“That, my Ramon, was an
exquisite
thing.”

“A trap.” Mama's face
is nut-hard, furrowed
with new lines of frown.

“I don't think so, Raquel. Still—
I'm sorry, Ramon. How I'd love you to work
on something that fine. Then would you see
the true depth of our art.

“It was a Passover prayer book, a fine
Haggadah.
One of the few Jewish books in al-Andalus
not consumed by their fires.”

Mama says, “Isidore, don't have second thoughts.
If they found out you'd so much as touched that
one book,
they'd call it backsliding.

“Think of Ramon.
If they burned you for work
you'd chosen to do, wouldn't they take
your apprentice too?”

Backsliding

Were the choice mine, I'd do it.
I would copy that book.
I would take that bold chance.
But when is the choice ever mine?

As for that ladder, that great, famous ladder
to Christian from Jew,
I don't recall any such thing.
How can I slide down
what I never climbed up?

You know what?
I don't recall ever taking one step
that wasn't mapped out for me first.

Knives

I look, really look,
at my mother. It must be
the first time I've done so
in months.

I feel a cold shock.
Could this be the pillowy Mama
who once scooped me up
like I weighed nothing more
than a glove?

Now the bones at her collar
jut out like stashed knives.
Her skin looks too thin,
like parchment rubbed free
of a thousand mistakes.

Return

Señor Doda is here.
He's been coming to us
since before I could write.

Now he's here to return
the last book that he ordered.

“It's paper!” he says, to explain.
“My wife believes only the Jews”—
here, he cringes—“use such things.”
He smiles, turns his hands
so the palms face the sky.

“But paper is better than parchment, señor,”
I tell him. “They've used it in China
for hundreds of years.”

Señor Doda won't be swayed.
“What if I wanted to sell it again?
My wife's not alone in her thinking.
No one will touch it.

“I'm sorry, Ramon.
But I won't be allowed
back inside my own door
if I pay you for this.”

The
Familiari's
Daughter

Bea's angry. At me.

I've failed to notice
something about her.
(It seems hard to believe.)

I wheedle. “Give me a clue.”
She scowls, but relents.
“Oh, you'll never guess, you ignorant boy.
It's my skirt. Can't you tell? It's fine
Persian silk. A thousand times finer
than that old sack I wore!
A blind man could see it.”

I appease her. I tell her
her own perfect beauty
blocks everything else.
She warms up.
(Once again, those daft books
pay off for Ramon!)

I know that it's rude
to inquire about money.
But we Benvenistes have so little—
it's made me obsessed.
“So…what is the source
of this new gush of wealth?”

She claps her small hands, so glad I've asked.
Her father's been named
familiari
.
A familiar, a spy, of the Inquisition.
There are riches, it seems,
in ratting on friends.

I pretend to be thrilled.
But what I'm thinking instead:
Aren't people like him
in the business of squashing
conversos? People like Papa, and Mama,
and me?

Green

Bea invites me to lunch at her home.
She says, “Only my mother and sisters will come.”
Only?

I feel, by the end,
as if I've been grilled
by Inquisitors—four of them.

But the food!
Warm bread and plump olives. Long, thin
slices of serrano ham, marbled red and white.
More food than I've had for two solid weeks.
But the ham, slippery as it is,
seems to stick in my throat.

Later, Bea asks, “Was lunch not to your liking?
Though you ate like three men, your face
was as green as the olives.”

“It's just—”
I don't want to insult her.
“My parents—we rarely eat pork.
It's so costly, you know,” I hasten to add.

The minute it's out,
I want it back in.

Bea stares. Those luscious lips gape.
Take care, I should tell her, or you'll swallow bugs.
I cover my panic
with an awkward kiss.
She at first pulls away.
And then
she returns it.

Heirlooms

After lunching at Bea's,
I see our small rooms
with new eyes.

Though Bea's house is three times
the size of our place,
it is ten times more cluttered.

Theirs is filled up with objects.
Paintings and vases. Carpets
and crests.

All of it seems very old.
Much of it bears the Alvarez crest.
One thing is certain:
there's no mistaking
whose house you're in.

Our home is tasteful and, thanks
to Mama, always clean.

But what do we own
that says who we are?

Poem

Amir seems to think I'm out of my mind.

“Where have you been? Do your eyes see nothing?
This is no time for roses and moons!”

Is he jealous? Bea's pretty. Has he kissed any girl?

I can't tell you why, but I want him to like her.
His scorn is a fly in my cup full of wine.
“Come on”—this will get him—
“Help me write her a poem.”

He narrows his eyes. “As you will,” he says, soft.
“Bring me your slate.”

Here's what he writes.

Your lips are as red
as the blood on the hands
of your father.

“That will fire up her passion,
Ramon, don't you think?”

Edict of Grace

Over the course of one month,
explains Father Perez,
we are invited to tell on ourselves.
For these thirty days, punishments
will be several shades lighter.
Now is the time
to come clean to the Office.

The queue the next morning
at the alcazar
winds through three streets.

Papa tells us of the last
such Edict of Grace.
People owned up to things
they'd not
dreamed
of till then,
let alone done.

What's the catch?
Well, for one thing,
although they don't burn you right then,
they do record all that you say
in their file. It will be there
if—or, when—you err again.
Repeat offenders
don't fare so well.

For another, they fine you.
The Church coffers bulge
from the fantastic tales
people spin for the Grace
just to keep themselves safe
—so they think—
in the future.

One more thing: they won't let you go
till you rat on others.
“Surely,” they'll say, “you
did not act alone in these things
that you did? Don't hold your tongue.
We know that you live in the world,
and have eyes.
What more can you tell us before you go home?”

Ink

Back from Friday prayers
with Amir. We dawdled.
Papa will scold us,
I'm sure.

I'm wrong.
His mind is elsewhere.

“Papa,” I ask,
“are you unwell?”

He says not to worry—
he was just resting. Sleep, he says,
still clasps him by one hand.

His nice turn of phrase
draws my glance there.

We've finished the last
of the work that we have.

And yet Papa's fingers
are stained with fresh ink.

Garrucha

Manuel and Lope know all the tortures.

Prisoners, if released,
must swear solemn oaths
not to say what they've seen.

But Lope's uncle is
involved
with the Office. He loves
to scare ladies at dinner
with gory details.

Lope favors one called the
garrucha.
The accused hangs
by the wrists from a pulley.
Heavy weights are attached
to his feet.

They raise him up slowly.
Then let him fall
with a jerk.
His arms pull out
of their sockets.
And sometimes
his legs.
Lope assures us
it really hurts.

He adores nothing more
than acting this out.
He dangles from trees,
piercing the air with fake screams.
Lope's a strange boy.
He and his uncle
must surely be cut
from the same bolt of cloth.

Sure

It
must
be a book
inside Papa's wall.

One that leaves tired hands
spotted with ink.

Is he writing something, then,
after all?
Does it contain things
he could burn for?

Why don't I sneak in
and see for myself
rather than twisting my brain
into knots?

Because. What if I knew,
and then was arrested?

I am weak.
How would I withstand
the
garrucha
?

To condemn my papa
with my cowardice—
I couldn't take that.

So my arms and kneecaps
go dead with terror
each time I creep near his door.

Papa, your secret is safe—
if only from me.
I can't go in.

Condition

I'd wondered, of late,
why the footstomps above
had shushed to a halt.

We'd known Señor Ortiz
was still in the house.
His fine horse is there
when I pass by the stables
in Trinidad Street.
His servant still shuffles about
in señor's bedroom.
I know, for it's right above mine.

But lately the house has felt
like it's waiting.

And now comes the letter.
Señor Ortiz has the dreaded Smallpox!
He may die.
He dances already
on Death's ashen palm.
All the Reaper must do, now, is choose.
Should he, should he not, close
his strong, bony fingers and squeeze?

We're astonished:
if señor dies, says the letter,
the house will be ours.
As well as the shop.

There's a condition.
We must show loyalty
to our Queen and King.

We must, says the letter, cast
the Moor
out.
If we're to go on having a home
Amir must once more have none.

Too Long!

Papa goes up
to
reason
with him.

Mama says it takes reason to reason,
and Señor Ortiz, sadly, has none.

Papa's not daunted.

“I'm every bit as unreasonable
as he is,” Papa says.

That's a good thing?

And is it reason
to spend hours in a room
with a man who has Pox?

One more bell
has just sounded.
Time marches on.

Will my ox-stubborn papa
never come down?

Señor's Answer

is no.
Papa says
we must think
about where we might go.