The Ghost of Hannah Mendes (6 page)

And this is how my mother learned that her mother had died while giving birth to her sister
.

My mother was eight years old the day that her mother died, the day all Jews were expelled from Spain. Many died that day and the days that followed, falling down on the endless, hard road—buried, as my grandmother was, in unmarked graves along the way. So pitiful were they that even Old Christians went out of their houses and stood crying on the roadside, urging them to spare themselves, to accept baptism and remain behind. But the rabbis urged them on, asking the children to play drums and cymbals, to sing
.

My mother wanted to go back to her beautiful house outside Seville. So many nights, hard stones rubbing raw her back, she dreamed of the polished steps leading to her
zaguán,
the smell of the purple flowers and the climbing vines trailing up to the little balcony off her whitewashed bedroom that was always filled with red geraniums. She dreamed of her
estrado
with its soft pillows, of her bed of down quilts and fresh straw mattresses, and of the spicy breeze that wafted through the tamarind trees
.

Many had stayed behind, her father told her later. They had shaken their heads sadly at the foolishness of preferring the hard uncertainty of exile to the soft rain of baptismal waters; waters, they winked, that could always be washed away in the
mikvah
beneath the synagogue. I can almost see my grandfather’s face as he explained this to my mother: his lips grim, his eyes touched with black humor and contempt mixed with sadness
.

But neither those who stayed, nor those like my stubborn grandfather who risked all to leave, understood that both were equally doomed. For in the end, I imagine, there was not enough water to douse Torquemada’s fires as they roasted the flesh of those cunning pretenders. Nor could my grandfather, as far as he wandered, succeed in escaping the flood of holy waters the Church was determined to pour down upon his head
.

My mother walked all the way to Lisbon, as my grandfather carried my aunt Malca, who was just a few days old. All the way, he searched for wet nurses, and when he failed to find them, he finally bought a goat and poured its warm milk through a sucking horn held between Malca’s lips. When she gagged at that, he took lumps of sugar and bread and rubbed them in a piece of linen that he shaped into a teat that Malca sucked
.

How my mother envied her infant sister—carried and fed in their father’s arms while she trudged alongside, her tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth in thirst, her stomach boiling with hunger. But even as a baby, Malca was never content, my mother recalled. At night, she never stopped crying, and during the day she whimpered and screamed
.

I sometimes try to imagine what it must have been like for my mother: how long the road was, how hard on the uncallused soles of a small child; how hot the sun, how cold the nights! Isn’t it strange, then, that my mother should also have remembered the beauty of the Spanish sky—turquoise and gold with sunlight? The lovely rolling hills and valleys, the sparkling waters, and the rosy brilliance of distant horizons? Spain’s white castles with their moats and turrets? So that, when she finally reached the border, she could not help but look back with longing, like Lot’s wicked wife as she was led by angels out of Sodom. She looked back and wondered if she, too, would be turned into a pillar of salt for her profane regret
.

But she was not to be so stricken. G-d had a different set of terrible punishments selected for her, she told me
.

The first was Lisbon
.

The confusion at the Portuguese border was terrible. Thousands of people pushing and screaming. My mother remembered bobbing in the stormy human current, her only anchor her father’s strong hand. But something was terribly wrong. They had walked over mountains, waded through streams, and been battered by rocks and branches to reach this goal. And yet, the cries were heartbreaking
.

She asked her father what there was to cry about now. But something had come over him. His gentle voice turned suddenly harsh. “Say nothing,” he demanded, his eyes burning like a devil’s
.

My mother grabbed on to him like a frightened animal, but he pried her loose, almost cruelly. Covering his eyes with both hands, she heard him say, “My sins have sapped my strength, Lord. Deliver us in your everlasting compassion.”

Then she saw him crouch over his bag of medicines and instruments, taking out his mortar and pestle and crushing some herbs, which he then mixed with goat’s milk and poured through the sucking horn into Malca’s mouth. Slowly her cries quieted, but then, just as suddenly, her body flailed as if in a fit, until it went as rigid as a piece of wood
.

My mother started to cry, but her father shook her so hard her teeth rattled like pebbles. She sat down in the dust and wiped her eyes in astonishment, watching as her father took out an old gunnysack and wrapped it around Malca so that even her face was covered. Wrapped so, he placed her in the bottom of a beggar’s pouch and buried her in feathers of down
.

Grandfather Isaac was a tall man with a broad forehead and large eyes that seemed always to be amused. She used to think of them as smiling eyes, mother told me. His lips were a calm, generous curve across his handsome chin. But that day when my mother searched his face for regret, kindness, even sorrow, she found only hot, burning coals that flashed through his narrowed lids, and lips that stretched like a jagged wound beneath his mustache. A horror washed over her as she began to understand what had really happened: Her father, her dear father, had been taken from her, and now in his body a demon dwelt
.

For this she had several proofs. First, when she searched for his shadow—the truest proof he was no demon—she could not find it. And second, he took nothing to eat, his tongue rolling in his mouth like those that lap up fire, water, air, and slime. Terrified, my mother ran through the wailing women, screaming her father’s name
.

“Demon fed on fire, water, dust, and slime, release my father’s shape!” she screamed back at the demon who pursued and overtook her. “You will dry up and return to nothing!” she shouted, wondering if she, too, was to be poisoned and wrapped in a gunnysack. But the demon in the shape of her father caught and held her fast, paying no heed to her hysterical cries
.

“All right,” he said in a whisper that was so strangely calm in her ear, a whisper that immediately made her tongue freeze in cold fear. “Maybe I am a demon. But the Portuguese soldiers are bigger devils yet.”

My mother looked at the Portuguese. They were enormous, dark men in metal helmets that hid their faces. They held sharp swords and their horses snorted and stamped the ground, filling the air with a smoky fog of dust. Vicious packs of barking dogs snapped at their heels. She then decided that the demon was preferable, and held his hand and watched quietly as he counted out the head price to the Portuguese, who then allowed him to carry her and their belongings across the border
.

As she crossed the border, she felt the dull ache of hopelessness fill her. Her mother and baby sister dead, her father possessed, she waited with stoic acceptance for her turn. She wasn’t surprised when the demon began to run toward the forest, dragging her behind him. In the darkness, she waited for him to reveal himself, to see his clothes evaporate and his head go bald, hair sprouting instead over his face and body
.

Behind each dark tree, she could see evil estries lurking, waiting to make a meal of her. Once, she was positive she’d seen the dark coiled hair of Lilith herself flashing among the branches. Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who spent her time sucking away the breath of a hundred babies a day, vengeance against Eve’s children
.

Her heart stopped cold. Suddenly, she bit the terrible hand that gripped her, drawing blood, and ran ahead, hiding behind the pines. To her surprise, the demon-father didn’t try to follow her. Instead, all his attention was riveted on her sister. My mother watched as he spilled out the down and unwrapped the gunnysack, taking out her sister’s motionless form. He slapped the baby’s face very hard, rubbing his hands roughly along her chest and back
.

My mother always stopped at this point in the story, her face flushing red. “I must tell the truth,” she would say. “I did not so much mind seeing my sister peacefully dead, all her nagging cries stilled. But I could not abide seeing her abused.”

She ran to the demon and threw all her weight against him, making up in swiftness for what she lacked in bulk, knocking her demon-father over. Just at that moment, she screamed at him the words her own dead mother had taught her to say at bedtime to keep the night demons away: “Behold, the guardian of Israel neither sleeps nor slumbers! The angel who redeemed me from all evil, bless the children so that my name and the names of my fathers, Abraham and Yitzchak be carried on….” My mother said that her demon-chasing prayer was suddenly interrupted by her father’s laughter and her sister’s cries. She looked, startled, into the demon’s face and suddenly saw it was again her father’s, whom she loved. As she held his hand and he stroked her hair, he explained how he had put Malca to sleep with mandragora and opium in order to smuggle her across the border because he had not had enough gold to pay her head price. He apologized for frightening her with tales of devils. He hadn’t known how else to keep her from accusing him of witchcraft in front of the Portuguese soldiers, who might have put him in a basket and carried him to prison—the fate of witches
.

There were no such things as demons, he told her. The only thing one had to fear in this world were human beings who had chosen evil over good
.

My mother, Esther, always repeated these words to me with pride, but I knew she herself did not believe them. She was convinced her powerful incantation had undone the devil’s work and restored her father and sister to her
.

I bless my mother in her grave for having passed such power of belief down to me. For even as a small child, I, too, felt in possession of a wondrous secret that would allow me to outwit the myriad hosts of evil spirits that roam the world threatening me and my family. For as far back as I can remember, I shared my mother’s unshakable conviction that I, too, had the cunning and strength to save myself and those I loved. I must admit, it is a feeling that has sustained me through most of my troubled life, deserting me only on two significant occasions that I shall describe in greater detail at a later time
.

But the fool is half a prophet, she liked to say. And her terrifying entrance into Portugal was a portent of things to come
.

Once across the border, it took my mother several more days to reach Lisbon. If the inn she stayed in was horrible—filthy and overcrowded—then the streets were unbearable. My mother did not mince her words in delicacy and false modesty. The slop of chamber pots dumped, making dry roads into rivers of stink; people emptying their guts from all ends where they stood; the smell of dead animals and the rotting meat—all this a thousand times over as the city swelled until there were more people than stars for counting. And as if that wasn’t enough, conditions worsened daily as thousands more arrived in the city
.

The Portuguese king had allowed those who couldn’t afford his fees to pay less on condition that they hire boats and leave for North Africa and Saloniki. And so whole families took up residence in the streets and hillsides, homeless and nearly penniless, for they had been robbed of all their worldly goods by the decrees of the Spanish monarch, and relieved of even the small remainder by paying the head price
.

Years later, I understood that some who had paid for passage to the Levant never saw a boat; while others were put afloat in unseaworthy vessels without food or water, the captains refusing to let them disembark. Thousands died at sea from disease and hunger. And of those who reached shore, many were despoiled and murdered, robbers slitting open the stomachs of young women to search for swallowed rings. And those who survived lived to see their wives and daughters unbearably outraged in public orgies. One mother, having seen two daughters murdered thus, dug herself a grave and lay down in it until she died of starvation. Bereft of clothing, some even sewed together the pages of their holy books to cover their nakedness. Most were sold into slavery by the Moors in whose lands they had hoped to find refuge, although the King of Fez, in his kindness, took them in and gave them shelter in the “Valley of Blessing.”

At the time, my mother knew nothing of such things, although I’m sure my grandfather must have known. All she knew was that instead of the roast lamb her father had promised her, there was pale bread soaked in rancid olive oil, and watery lentil soup. And for her bed, she had rags covering a hard, cold floor. And each day, the house took in more people, until even her small, thin body could no longer find room to stretch out
.

They were the fortunate ones, her father would tell her each time she complained, pointing to the streets, alleyways, gardens, and mountaintops where miserable masses swarmed over one another like panicked ants
.

My mother listened with a child’s peevish unreasonableness, her father’s words bringing her no comfort. All she knew was that her hair was matted and that her scalp and body itched beyond endurance. She scratched endlessly until once, examining her nails, she saw tiny creatures crawling over her hands. When she showed her father, his face blanched and he hurried her outside. But instead of washing her hair in perfume and combing it until it shone like copper, he shaved her scalp and threw the hair into a fire, over which he boiled her clothes in a large, stinking pot
.