The Mapmaker's Daughter (2 page)

“They act like Jews, Mama. It makes me uncomfortable. You know it does.” Mama hunches silently over the covered basket she carries, as if she has not heard Susana’s comment.

We arrive at the stables and, after hiring a driver and cart, we are soon in the countryside amid fields of red poppies, dotted with splashes of blue, yellow, and white, as chaotic and wild as if they had been painted by a blind man. Black-and-white magpies fly with wings so shiny they look dipped in water. The scent of newly tilled earth teases my nostrils until I sneeze.

My legs jiggle in anticipation of the chance to run in the open air and to use the loud voice I have to hush at home, calling out to whomever will listen, even if it’s just the ducks in the yard or the clouds already billowing in the immense blue sky.

Luisa is squirming, tired of bouncing along the rutted dirt road. “Go to sleep,” I tell her. “We’ll get there faster that way.” She lays her head in my lap, and though I want to stay awake, the jostling makes my head slump, and we doze until the barking dogs in the village wake us.

My grandfather is waiting at the gate to his farm, catching Luisa as she jumps out of the cart. Brushing back a stray wisp of her blond hair, he kisses her forehead. I jump down just as Grandmother hurries up the walk. “Shabbat shalom,” I whisper so the driver will not overhear. I feel her arms tighten around me, and my breath is hot against her skirt.

Mama hands our parcels to Susana before getting out herself. “Be back before dark,” she tells the driver. He nods, and with a flick of the reins, he heads off toward Sevilla.

“Shabbat shalom, Father,” Mama says when the driver is beyond hearing. “Shabbat shalom,” she repeats to Grandmother, giving her a kiss on the cheek. Her voice is so loving that I always forget they are my father’s parents, not hers.

Luisa and I run ahead to the chicken coop to check if eggs are still in the nests. Just inside the gate, tiny cheeps come from puffs of bright yellow scampering on the dirt floor. “Hold it gently in your palm,” I say, picking one up. Luisa’s face glows as she holds the chick near her face and talks to it.

Some are still breaking free of their shells, their feathers clinging to them like wet, brown spines. One is making a pitiful little sound, and thinking it might be cold, I blow on its feathers. At the feel of air on its body, it looks around, dazed. I can hear Luisa’s soft breath as she puts her chick in the nest.

“Pio, pio,” she says, imitating them.

“Pio, pio,” I repeat, taking her hand.

“There you are, my little radishes!” Grandfather comes up behind us and picks Luisa up in his arms. He puts his other hand on my shoulder. “How do you like our new additions?”

“They look like they’ve drowned when they first come out.”

“And then, before you know it, they’re like old mother hen here, with chicks of their own.”

“Grandchicks,” Luisa says.

He laughs with a great roar. “Grandchicks,” he repeats. “Pollititos.” The sound of the word makes us giggle, and we make it a game as we walk back to the house. “Pollitititos. Pollitititititos,” we say, stopping only when our tongues get tangled up in the sounds.

Inside the house, Grandmother has laid out a bowl of olives next to the embroidered cloth covering two loaves of challah and is removing hot cinders from around a kettle of stew. She wipes her hands on her apron, and stands next to my grandfather. He pours wine in a silver kiddush cup. “Blessed art thou, Lord God, king of the universe, creator of the fruit of the vine,” he says before taking a sip. He offers the cup to my grandmother and mother before lowering it to me. My cheeks pucker in anticipation even before I taste it.

Luisa stands next to me. “It tastes awful,” I whisper, as Grandfather puts his finger in the wine and touches it to her lips. She matches my grimace and shudders the way she always does, causing a ripple of laughter from the adults.

Except Susana, who wants nothing to do with these rituals. “The stew smells delicious, Grandmother,” she says, looking away.

“I made your favorite,” Grandmother says to her after we have blessed the bread and are seating ourselves on benches around the table. The scent of cloves and cinnamon wafts up from saffron broth as grandmother fills our bowls with white beans, chickpeas, and cubes of beef.

For a while, no one speaks as we enjoy Grandmother’s adafina, kept warm from yesterday, because cooking is work, and work is forbidden on Shabbat. We eat the first bites hurriedly but eventually slow down, because Shabbat meals are meant to be savored, and no one will be leaving the table until we have talked about our week, sung a few songs, and eaten all that our stomachs will hold.

A loud knock startles us. “Who’s there?” I hear the alarm in Grandfather’s voice as he goes to the door.

Grandmother hurries to hide the remainder of the bread, and my mother covers the pot of stew and takes it out the back door. A stew kept warm on a dying fire and a braided loaf means that we are observing the Jewish Sabbath, and no one must know. But it is just neighbors, Bernardo and Marisela, come with a flute and tambourine to be among their own kind making music on Shabbat afternoon.

The bread and stew are brought back to the table, and though we all claim to have had enough, the pot is soon emptied with small tastes, sopped up with the remaining bread. Susana has disappeared, using the excitement of the new arrivals to slip outside.

“You mustn’t be so hard on Susana,” Grandmother says. “Girls get moody when it’s their time to become a woman.”

“But she’s so scornful!” My mother’s eyes glisten. “She says, ‘I was born a Christian.’ What kind of talk is that? As if we can choose our ancestors?”

“Sensible talk,” Grandfather replies, raising his eyebrows. “We are Jews who cross ourselves, eat pork when a Christian puts it on our plate, and buy leavened bread during Passover even though we feed it to the chickens when no one is looking.” He shrugs, but his eyes flicker with pain. “We’ve left behind so much of who we are, perhaps it’s no longer worth the trouble to keep to our old ways.”

“Jaume!” Grandmother is aghast. “Such talk coming from you?”

“Such talk? I have spent my life paying the price for letting them splash me with their water when I was a young man living in Mallorca. Surely you should know where my heart lies.” Above his gray beard, his face is mottled with anger. “I was afraid—I confess to that! I did it to save my life, but I am not one of them. My knees may bend when they wave their crucifixes in front of me, but my mind never will.”

He exhales with a snort so loud and horselike I might have giggled if the subject were not so serious. “Stupid fools if they think I believe that nonsense about their Hanged One and their sacred wafers and that wine they say turns to blood that he wants us to drink in his memory.” His lip curls. “Drink his blood? What kind of barbarians would do that?”

He stops momentarily, but I know he isn’t really asking us to answer. “We live in a terrible place, a terrible time,” he goes on. “And if the Holy One means us to survive, how exactly does he mean us to do it?”

I hate these conversations because I know, even at six, that a threat hangs over these afternoons. To Christians, we are Judaizers. To Jews, we are traitors to the faith of Moses, Marranos, swine. I fight back tears. “Can’t you unbaptize yourself?” I say, hearing the huskiness in my voice. “Can’t you say, ‘I’ve changed my mind and I’d rather be a Jew?’”

My grandmother smiles wistfully. “I wish it were that simple, little one, but Christians believe that once they’ve wetted you, there’s no turning back.”

My mother looks at me, and I know what she is thinking. Immediately after my baptism, she told me she took me to our spring to wash away the water and restore me to our people. The following year, the church burned down and the record of my baptism was destroyed. Mama says that makes me still a Jew in God’s eyes, but it’s not something we should mention to anyone.

Cleansed with living water and my baptism purged by fire. I return Mama’s smile, warmed by our secret. If I should need to say I have never been baptized, no one could disprove it. If I said I was, no one could disprove that either. I don’t understand why this is important, but Mama says every secret Jew might need a story someday.

“Best to marry Susana off quickly,” Grandfather is saying. “She has excellent prospects. She’s healthy, and the Riba family has the means—”

“But she’s so young,” my mother protests. “She hasn’t the hips for childbearing yet.”

“Perhaps you haven’t noticed,” Grandmother says gently. “I think she is growing them now.” She pats my mother’s hand. “And she’ll make you a grandmother all the sooner, if it’s God’s will.”

To avert my mother’s darkening mood, we stand for the blessing after meals, after which we burst into song.

Bendigamos al Altísimo,

Al Señor que nos crió,

Démosle agradecimiento

Por los bienes que nos dió.

I have practiced all the verses in bed so I know the song by heart. “Let us bless the Most High, the Lord who raised us. Let us give him thanks for the good things he has given us,” I sing, loudly enough to draw the smiles I crave.

Grandfather unfurls his fingers in a loud and decisive strum of the guitar he has fetched from the corner, while the others pick up tambourines and flutes. Eventually Susana comes back inside and stands next to me, clicking castanets with my mother. Watching her, I wonder why Susana wants to be a Christian when Jews have afternoons as wonderful as this.

Grandfather plays the first notes of Luisa’s favorite, and we jump to our feet. “Dance, Rachel, and Mojonico sing! The fat rats clap their hands.” The song creeps as slowly as a burglar at the start, and we act like statues coming to life. Each verse speeds up, until Luisa and I are waving our arms and leaping in wild circles. At the end of the last verse, we dive into pillows on the floor, holding our bellies and squealing with laughter.

Even Grandmother is persuaded to dance. Though she complains that her joints are stiff and she is too old for such things, I watch her feet flutter like birds taking off from their nests. Finally, Grandfather puts down his guitar. “Praise to the One who has such things in his world as music,” he says, signaling our afternoon rest. Bernardo and Marisela leave for home, and Luisa flops on the pillow, her hair plastered brown at her temples with sweat.

Mama and Susana go with Grandmother to lie on the bed while Grandfather settles into his favorite chair. I’m tired, but I don’t want to sleep. “Will you show me the atlas?” I ask, widening my eyes in hope Grandfather will find me irresistible. He musses my hair. “All right, but just for a minute. An old man needs his Sabbath nap.”

The book is so big it knocks against my ankles as I carry it to him. He sets it alongside his chair and waits for me to hop in his lap. “Tell me the whole story again,” I say.

“You’ve already heard it a hundred times.”

I twist my head around to look at him. “But not for a while. I think I might have forgotten something.”

He laughs. “You, my little radish, never forget a thing!”

“Tell me anyway,” I say, wiggling my legs down between his thighs as he stretches his arms around me and rests the open atlas on his knees.

The six vellum panels in the atlas are almost as long as my grandfather’s arms, and as I sit on his lap, the top of the world looms over my head. “Our king, Pedro, knew that the king of France wanted a map of the world. Catalan atlas makers were the best, and my father was best of all. I was a cartographer too, so we made this atlas for Pedro to give to his friend.”

“Your father was Abraham Cresques,” I interrupt. Now that I’ve gotten him to show me the map, I want him to know how much, not how little, I remember. “That means Cresques should be my name too.”

“Except that in 1391, mobs started killing Jews all over Spain, and I was baptized against my will. They forced us to take Christian names, and I became Jaume Riba. But Jehuda Cresques is my real name, just like yours is Leah even though everyone calls you Amalia.”

“Ama-
lia
,” I correct him with a smile.

“Ama-
lia
,” he repeats. “And when I am gone, I hope you will remember me as Jehuda Cresques, even if that won’t be on my tombstone.”

“I will, Grandfather.”

He doesn’t seem to hear my promise. “It was too terrible a thought never to see our work again—may the Evil Eye not punish me for such pride—so we secretly made this copy, which we’ve kept all these years.”

Grandfather thinks for a moment. “We imagine we are on top of the ball of the world but they feel the same in China or Africa.” He kisses the top of my head. “Never forget that making a round world that no one falls off is easy for the Holy One. So next time you look around and say, ‘this world doesn’t make any sense,’ just remember that it does to him and be grateful that no one else is really in charge, even those who wear crowns.”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

The large page scratches my belly as he turns it to reveal the next panel. I know what I’m going to see, but it takes my breath away nonetheless. Navigational lines radiate outward in an ocean of lapis lazuli, like frost on a window against a brilliant blue sky. On the right is Spain. “Sevilla,” I say, “Toledo, Salamanca, Valencia.” I point to each city in turn, as Grandfather nods with pride. “If I ever need to make another map,” he says, “I know who to ask for help.”

Mama comes from the bedroom. “Have you kept Grandfather up?” she scolds, but she doesn’t mean it. She takes the atlas from his hands despite my protest that I have seen only one page. “It’s time for us to get ready to leave. The cart should be here soon.”

I crawl down from Grandfather’s lap and go to wake up Luisa. “Come on,” I say, “unless you want me to say good-bye to the chickens without you.” We make a quick trip, and on our way back, we see the cart and driver stopping at the gate. Inside, everyone is gathering around the table for the habdalah ceremony that ends Shabbat.

Grandmother brings a special, braided candle to the table, its tip flaming. “Blessed art thou, Lord God, king of the universe,” Grandfather chants, “who separates the sacred from the ordinary.” He pours wine into the silver cup until it overflows, then puts the candle out in it. We break out into laughter, not because it’s funny but because that’s what we’re supposed to do to make the start of the week happy.